Previous: Justification for
Violence in Islam, Part IX: Quietist Authoritarianism and Activist
Radicalism
[83] Historical development of Islam as a power-faith tradition
with its ideology firmly based on creating the ethical order that
embodied divine will on earth provided a detailed and thoroughly
developed vision of peace with justice. The basis for such a
commitment to peace with justice was the act of faith which
required active response to the moral challenge of working towards
the perfect existence. That perfect existence was conceivable by
promoting the divinely ordained scales of justice in the
religious-moral law, the Shari'a. Accordingly, peace was not
possible in a society that self-righteously disregarded the evil of
injustice. Struggle against injustice was the sole justification
for engaging in jih_d. Peace is an outcome of a society in which
there is concern for justice and not just the absence of
conflict.
[84] However, Islam also acknowledged the existence of obstacles
to the divine plan and its realization stemming in large measure
from human volition and cognition. It pointed out ways in which
those who willfully rejected the faith and its entailment in the
moral realm conspired to defeat the divine purposes. To meet this
challenge to the divine order, the use of force, even armed
struggle, was sanctioned as a legitimate defensive measure to
subdue those who were hostile to the establishment of justice.
However, at no time was human life to be destroyed without
justification because the Qur'an commanded time and again: "Slay
not the life that God has made sacred."(6:152)
[85] Precisely at this crucial juncture in sanctioning violence,
including readiness to give up one's life for the religious cause,
the role of the Prophet or the rightly guided Imam, as the
interpreter of the divine purposes for which such a sacrifice was
inevitable, becomes indispensable. Without the Prophet or the Imam,
humanity, through its divinely endowed cognition of self-subsistent
good and evil, could not expect to determine the level and the
appropriate time for such sacrifices to preserve God's purposes for
the creation.
[86] To be sure, Muslim community did not always live under what
the Muslims came to regard as the ideal leadership of the Prophet
and his righteous successors. The time came when Islam and Muslims
became entangled with unjust rulers and their misrule and tyranny.
These rulers frustrated the very ideological demand of Islam,
namely, the creation of the just order on earth. The Muslim
community could either choose to oppose and overthrow these rulers;
or tolerate them with patience until God changed its situation; or,
foster a distinct identity independent of its unjust political
system, with an active affirmation that the revealed norms of the
Shari'a would be promulgated in an ideal Islamic polity.
[87] The solution to individual cases of injustice through an
aggressive response was an activist interpretation of the Islamic
ideology that served to incite some of the most radical revolutions
throughout the history of Muslim peoples. The attitude of tolerance
to disorder with a sense of resignation, on the other hand, was a
quietist solution favored and institutionalized by those whose
interests were served under the changing basis of power in
expanding Islamic empire. The third alternative, while maintaining
sufficient ability to mobilize necessary force to put down
opposition to the promulgation of the divinely ordained legal
norms, believed in social transformation through individual moral
and spiritual reform. This was a pacifist activism that was
expressed in terms of the expectations which had been fostered by
the Islamic revelation for the guidance of humankind and the
practical policies of a cosmopolitan world.
[88] It is important to emphasize that both the quietist
authoritarian and pacifist activist postures were potentially
radical solution, awaiting the right time and conditions to realize
adequately just society. In the final analysis, Islamic revelation
by its very emphasis upon justice and equity on earth calls upon
its followers to evaluate a specific sociopolitical order and to
defend and preserve or to overthrow and transform it. The specific
response to the existing social and political situation is
extricated within a cultural setting whose most powerful symbols
are garnered to articulate the subtle and even complex religious
ideas in the discourse that speaks to a community of ordinary
people.
[89] Accordingly, Islamic ideology is both a critical assessment
of human society and a program of action, to realize God's will on
earth to the fullest extent possible. In such a strategy absolute
pacifism as understood by some Christian pacifist movements had no
place in Islam. Islamic ideal of social harmony and peaceful living
was dependent on faith in God that entailed the moral challenge of
creating a just and equitable society on earth. Nevertheless,
resort to violence in any form, without uncompromising adherence to
the twin principles of self-preservation and proportionality,
remained a central problem in Islam as its followers demonstrated
readiness to wage war for a goal beyond acts of individual justice.
In creating a total religious community, Muslim leaders were
confronted with the temptation to a spirit of exclusivity that
sought suitable expression in warfare. The readiness to use violent
means when other creative non-violent methods of resolving problems
of injustice have been suggested in Islamic revelation, has always
raised the persistent question in Islamic ethics: Is violence
inevitable to transform the human society? Not necessarily, if
humanity would respond to the divine call to heed to its own sense
of preservation. Ultimately, 'submission' to God promises peace and
security for which humanity has aspired from the time its first
representative was put on earth. It is, undoubtedly, the search for
peace and integral existence without 'submission' that has proven
to be fatal in human history.
© February
2003
Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE)
Volume 3, Issue 2