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8590 results in Islam

Page 129 of 430

Islam in Israel
  • Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States
  • Muhammad Al-Atawneh, Nohad Ali
  • Published online:
    06 January 2018
    Print publication:
    11 January 2018
  • Islam is the religion of the majority of Arab citizens in Israel and since the late 1970s has become an important factor in their political and socio-cultural identity. This leads to an increasing number of Muslims in Israel who define their identity first and foremost in relation to their religious affiliation. By examining this evolving religious identity during the past four decades and its impact on the religious and socio-cultural aspects of Muslim life in Israel, Muhammad Al-Atawneh and Nohad Ali explore the local nature of Islam. They find that Muslims in Israel seem to rely heavily on the prominent Islamic authorities in the region, perhaps more so than minority Muslims elsewhere. This stems, inter alia, from the fact that Muslims in Israel are the only minority that lives in a land they consider to be holy and see themselves as a natural.

  • Conclusion

  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 164-168

  • Summary

    I opened this book by quoting an exchange between Sam Harris and journalist Fareed Zakaria on the topic of jihad. Harris asserted that Osama bin Laden's “interpretation of Islam is very straightforward and honest and you really have to split hairs and do some interpretive acrobatics in order to get it… to look non-canonical.” But consider some of the “interpretive acrobatics” bin Laden performed in his generally unsuccessful attempt to convince Muslim clerics and Islamists – including many who already held anti-American sentiments – that the September 11 attacks could be justified:

  • Recognizing that he was neither a state authority nor a certified scholar, and seeking to enlist “all Muslims” in a war that would employ extreme tactics, bin Laden attempted to demonstrate that his manifestly aggressive attacks were, in fact, part of a defensive jihad. (According to the centuries-old Islamic legal tradition of aggressive jihad, he lacked the requisite authority to launch and manage a war, and his tactics would have been even more difficult to justify.)

  • In making the case for a defensive jihad, bin Laden went to great lengths to present the United States as a bona fide threat to Muslims worldwide; he pointed to various American actions and sanctions while oversimplifying and misrepresenting some of the facts on the ground.

  • Recognizing the Prophet's explicit prohibition against the killing of noncombatants, most notably women and children, bin Laden argued that al-Qaeda's tactics against the United States were necessary and served the common good (notwithstanding indications to the contrary). And although the 9/11 attacks were directed mostly at civilians (many busy at work), he asserted that he was not targeting innocents but rather “the symbol” of a threatening enemy and that collateral casualties were therefore acceptable (an assertion widely regarded as disingenuous). For good measure, however, he also attempted to make an obviously modern argument that American adult civilians could be treated as combatants because both the taxes they paid (as required by law) and the decisions made by their government officials (who were neither unanimously elected nor unanimously supported) helped shape America's foreign policy.

  • Part II - Violent Radicalism: Bin Laden, 9/ 11, and ISIS

  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 33-34

  • Summary

    Before the recent atrocities committed by ISIS, there were the haunting events of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. On a day when nearly three thousand civilians were killed in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, we learned that the perpetrators of the tragedy were Muslims who claimed to be acting in the name of Islam. What is more, televised images of some Muslims overseas rejoicing in the streets left indelible imprints in the minds of countless Westerners. Many were left to wonder how adherents of one of the world's largest religions could condone and even celebrate such barbarity and evil. English translations of the Qur'an quickly became bestsellers, and politicians and pundits throughout the world had much to say about the violent – or peaceful – nature of Islam. Occupying center stage in this global drama was the figure behind 9/11, Osama bin Laden.

  • 1 - War and Peace in the Foundational Texts of Islam

  • from Part I - Jihad
  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 7-17

  • Summary

    Muslims generally take the Qur'an (Koran) to be the “word of God,” a scripture that was revealed piecemeal to the Prophet Muhammad (570–632) over the last twenty-three years of his life. It contains passages that promote restraint and reconciliation and others that call for war. This parallels what we find in the popular biographies of Muhammad: When he began his prophetic mission in the city of Mecca as a monotheistic preacher to mostly polytheistic tribespeople, he adopted a pacifistic approach – and adhered to it despite the persecution and even murder of some of his followers. It was only after he emigrated in 622 to the city of Medina (then called Yathrib), established a community of believers, and assumed direct responsibility for the well-being of his followers that he took up arms.

    THE CONTEXT

    By all accounts, seventh-century Arabia was a world in which tribes regularly clashed. “In this society,” historian Fred Donner writes, “war (harb, used in the senses of both an activity and a condition) was in one sense a normal way of life.” Indeed, “a ‘state of war’ was assumed to exist between one's tribe and all others, unless a particular treaty or agreement had been reached with another tribe establishing amicable relations.” In the absence of such treaties or agreements, the clans of Mecca and the surrounding region could only find reprieve from war in the Ka‘ba sanctuary (throughout the year) and everywhere else during four “forbidden months” – the first, seventh, eleventh, and twelfth months of the Arabian lunar calendar. These forbidden months, recognized throughout Arabia, facilitated an annual pilgrimage to Mecca in the twelfth month and a “lesser pilgrimage” in the seventh, not to mention commercial trade. Beyond these restrictions, however, the pre-Islamic Meccans seem to have condoned and often engaged in tribal warfare and caravan raids.

    The Qur'an attests to this reality:

    Can [the unbelievers] not see that [God has] made [them] a secure sanctuary [in Mecca] though all around them people are snatched away?

    (29:67)

  • 5 - “We Will Take Revenge”: A Word on ISIS

  • from Part II - Violent Radicalism: Bin Laden, 9/ 11, and ISIS
  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 78-94

  • Summary

    Osama bin Laden has been replaced by ISIS in today's headlines. And although the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda was the precursor to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, formed in 2013) – also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Daesh (an Arabic acronym), or simply the Islamic State (IS) – the dissimilarities between ISIS and al-Qaeda central are profound. For example, ISIS, which was disowned by al-Qaeda under the leadership of Ayman al-Zawahiri, has attempted to establish a caliphal state apparatus; while bin Laden's al-Qaeda generally eschewed videotaped executions (instead opting for sensational terrorist attacks), ISIS, for some time at least, seemed to be using videotaped executions to entice potential recruits and project an aura of strength; and while the “face” of al-Qaeda, bin Laden, recorded and published numerous statements, the self-proclaimed caliph of ISIS, known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (né Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri), has, as of this writing, been quieter.

    Born in 1971 in the Iraqi city of Samarra, al-Baghdadi was raised in a lower-middle-class farming family. He earned a PhD in Islamic studies in 2007 from a university in Baghdad established by Saddam Hussein. (Both his master's thesis and doctoral dissertation were on the subject of Qur'anic recitation, not Islamic law.) His path to a doctorate, however, was complicated. In February 2004, he was detained by American forces and held for roughly ten months after visiting a friend who was wanted by the United States. Following his release, al-Baghdadi's move toward radicalism became more obvious: he joined al-Qaeda in 2006 and, later that year, was assigned the task of overseeing the implementation of Islamic law in the newly formed, al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). He became the leader of ISI in 2010 and then ISIS when it was established three years later. In 2014, he declared himself caliph of the world's lone “Islamic state.”

    In the eyes of those who recognize al-Baghdadi's authority, he is in a position to sanction and call for aggressive jihad. (All indications suggest that the overwhelming majority of Sunnis reject al-Baghdadi's claim to the caliphate.) Even before al-Baghdadi's reign, the leadership of ISI embraced aggressive jihad and directed it mainly against neighboring Shi'ites (whom ISI and now ISIS members generally regard as unbelievers).

  • 4 - “Our Hearts Bleed”: 9/ 11 and Contemporary Muslim Thought

  • from Part II - Violent Radicalism: Bin Laden, 9/ 11, and ISIS
  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 62-77

  • Summary

    Contrary to popular belief, numerous prominent Muslim scholars, clerics, leaders, and organizations throughout the world publicly, explicitly, and fairly quickly condemned the September 11 attacks, often on Islamic grounds. Many of the condemnations came from some of the most outspoken critics of the United States, including controversial Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin (d. 2004), and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. If one were to study Georgetown University's 2009 list of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world – an imperfect yet useful list – one would find that the overwhelming majority of those individuals were opposed to the attacks.

    According to a major 2008 Gallup poll, the same is true for Muslims in general: after interviewing tens of thousands of Muslims across dozens of Muslim-majority countries from 2001 to 2007, Gallup found that a disturbing yet relatively small percentage of respondents – 7 percent to be precise – thought the September 11 attacks were “completely” justified; the overwhelming majority thought they were objectionable to varying degrees. Interestingly, in the case of Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim population, the minority of respondents who defended the attacks never once cited the Qur'an when justifying their stances, advancing instead “secular” and “worldly” arguments; meanwhile, many of the respondents who condemned the attacks offered “humanitarian or religious justifications.”

    As international relations scholar Fawaz Gerges observes, the umma (Muslim community) “did not respond the way bin Laden had expected, and like-minded jihadist groups accused him of heresy and treachery.” The many “ordinary” Arabs and Muslims with whom Gerges conversed shortly after the attacks – “from bank tellers to fruit vendors and taxi drivers to small shop owners” and including “those who voiced strong anti-American foreign policy views” – “concurred that the attacks were a crime.” This parallels my own experiences in post-9/11 visits to Cairo: while some of the Cairenes I spoke to insisted that America “deserved” what it got on 9/11, the general feeling was that innocent civilians were horrifically and wrongfully murdered that day.

  • 7 - “It Is about Islam”: The Case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  • from Part III - The New Atheism
  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 130-153

  • Summary

    Ayaan Hirsi Ali (née Ayaan Hirsi Magan) was born into a Muslim family in Somalia in 1969. The daughter of a once-imprisoned Somali politician, Hirsi Magan Isse (d. 2008), her family relocated to Saudi Arabia, then to Ethiopia, then to Kenya before she received asylum in the Netherlands as a young adult. There she worked at various institutions as a translator for Somali refugees, including abused Somali women. Her growing interest in political science ultimately led her to pursue a master's degree in the field at Leiden University; she completed the degree in 2000.

    By her own admission, the September 11 tragedy and the recorded statements of Osama bin Laden played a critical role in her move away from Islam toward atheism. And this move was hardly discreet, as she publicly criticized Islam in various writings, including the screenplay of her 2004 short film Submission – a film whose producer, Theo van Gogh, was brutally murdered shortly after its release by a member of the Muslim terrorist cell known as the Hofstad Group as an act of reprisal. Such threats did not paralyze Ali, who by this time was serving in the Dutch Parliament, after having won a seat there the year prior.

    In 2006, after the validity of her Dutch citizenship was publicly called into question, she relocated to the United States (she became an American citizen in 2013) and served as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. As founder of the Ayaan Hirsi Ali (AHA) Foundation – a charitable organization that aims “to help protect and defend the rights of women in the West” – and a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, she remains an influential figure, particularly in the West.

    As an author, Ali made her first big splash in the English-speaking world in 2006, with the publication of The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam. This was followed by two popular autobiographical works, Infidel: My Life (2007) and Nomad: From Islam to America (2010). Her more recent publication, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015), offers her most serious critique of Islam to date. In what follows, I shall examine her earlier books before turning to Heretic.

  • 8 - “Imagine a World with No Religion”: A Word on Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett

  • from Part III - The New Atheism
  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 154-163

  • Summary

    Moving beyond the writings of Sam Harris and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, we encounter some familiar themes in the works and statements of three other prominent New Atheists: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. We begin with Dawkins, one of the most widely recognized New Atheists. Born in 1941 in British Kenya, he is a renowned English evolutionary biologist and longtime faculty member at the University of Oxford (currently an emeritus fellow). Beginning with his 1976 classic The Selfish Gene (which, among other things, gave us the term meme), Dawkins has authored numerous books on science.

    Of course not all of his books are strictly scientific. For our purposes, his 2006 New York Times bestseller The God Delusion is most relevant. On the first page of the book, he sets the tone: “Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades,… no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres…” Religion, we are encouraged to believe, is the best explanation for these horrors.

    Reflecting on 7/7, the July 7, 2005, London suicide bombings that we know now were at least loosely linked to al-Qaeda and that claimed the lives of more than fifty civilians, Dawkins proclaims, “Only religious faith is a strong enough force to motivate such utter madness in otherwise sane and decent people.” The four bombers, Dawkins tells us, “were British citizens, cricket-loving, well-mannered, just the sort of young men whose company one might have enjoyed.” And unlike some other terrorists in other countries, these men

    had no expectation that their bereaved families would be lionized, looked after or supported on martyrs’ pensions. On the contrary, their relatives in some cases had to go into hiding. One of the men wantonly widowed his pregnant wife and orphaned his toddler. The action of these four young men has been nothing short of a disaster not just for themselves and their victims, but for their families and for the whole Muslim community in Britain, which now faces a backlash.

  • Part I - Jihad

  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 5-6

  • Summary

    Although the term jihad (literally, a “struggle” or “striving”) conveys a myriad of meanings in Islamic religious culture, in Islamic law it typically signifies an armed struggle against outsiders, primarily non-Muslims. It is this understanding of jihad that concerns us here. But before examining the Islamic legal dimensions of jihad, we shall first consider how the primary sources of Islamic thought – the Qur'an and early Muslim accounts of the actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers – portray war and peace.

  • 6 - “We Are at War with Islam”: The Case of Sam Harris

  • from Part III - The New Atheism
  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 97-129

  • Summary

    Before he was a bestselling author, Sam (or Samuel) Harris was perhaps best known as the son of an extremely successful television producer. His mother Susan Harris created popular television shows such as The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, Soap, and Benson. From 1965 to 1969, she was married to Sam's father, an actor named Berkeley Harris (d. 1984). Sam was born in 1967 in Los Angeles and was raised primarily by Susan. Although her background is Jewish (and Berkeley's family was Quaker), Sam grew up in a secular household.

    He began his collegiate studies at Stanford University in the mid-1980s, though after his second year, he chose to travel to India to study meditation with Buddhist and Hindu teachers. More than a decade later, he returned to Stanford to complete a degree in philosophy. Between his graduation in 2000 and the completion of his doctorate in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2009, Harris produced his landmark book and New York Times bestseller The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004) as well as a popular follow-up entitled Letter to a Christian Nation (2006). The End of Faith is widely considered the first book of the New Atheist era. Harris has since become a widely recognized public figure and is known for his active promotion of science and secular values.

    Harris's other books include The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010), Lying (2011), Free Will (2012), Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (2014), and, more recently, a relatively short book coauthored with British Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz entitled Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue (2015). In what follows, we shall examine, in sequential order, the two works most relevant to our project, The End of Faith and Islam and the Future of Tolerance. Separated by more than a decade, both books convey Harris's views on, among many other topics, jihad and violent radicalism.

  • Introduction

  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 1-4

  • Summary

    In the midst of a lively televised exchange between journalist Fareed Zakaria and author Sam Harris on the topic of jihad, Zakaria declared, “The problem is you and Osama bin Laden agree … after all, you're saying … his interpretation of Islam is correct.”

    “Well,” Harris responded, “his interpretation … this is the problem. His interpretation of Islam is very straightforward and honest and you really have to split hairs and do some interpretive acrobatics in order to get it … to look non-canonical.”

    This exchange took place a little more than thirteen years after bin Laden and his associates masterminded the deadliest terrorist operation on American soil. In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, tragedy, the notion that such violence was representative of the world's second-largest religion was widespread enough to prompt then American president George W. Bush to counter that Islam “is a religion of peace.” Numerous skeptics have since dismissed this claim, some viewing it as nothing more than a politically correct token. Among the skeptics are individuals known as “New Atheists,” a label given to popular figures such as Harris who have produced influential anti-theistic and anti-religious works in the years following the September 11 attacks and who focus much of their attention on “the problem with Islam.”

    Some New Atheist writers were themselves profoundly transformed by 9/11. In the case of the prominent ex-Muslim writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for instance, her doubts about Islam were supplanted by nonbelief when she found it “impossible” to discount bin Laden's “claims that the murderous destruction of innocent (if infidel) lives is consistent with the Quran.” As for Harris, he reportedly began writing his landmark book The End of Faith on September 12, 2001. In this best seller, Harris writes that the feature of Islam “most troubling to non-Muslims” is the very principle bin Laden invoked to justify 9/11: jihad.

    As Islamic studies scholar Michael Bonner observes, in contemporary debates on Islam, “no principle is invoked more often than jihad.” Muslims generally understand jihad to be a noble “struggle” or “striving” for the sake of God. It comprises various actions, from fighting on the battlefield to endeavoring to attain inner peace in the prayer hall.

  • 2 - Jihad in Islamic Law

  • from Part I - Jihad
  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 18-32

  • Summary

    Considering the rapid expansion of the Muslim empire during the reigns of Muhammad's political successors, the caliphs, it should come as no surprise that medieval scholars would have much to say on the topic of armed jihad. And these discussions were by no means monolithic: much like the Jewish rabbis, Muslim scholars developed a rich legal tradition marked by considerable diversity.

    We shall now turn our attention to the medieval and modern Islamic legal discourse on jihad. What follows is not intended to be an exhaustive account of Muslim scholars’ shared and conflicting rules of armed jihad but rather a survey of the principles most relevant to the subject of the present book. Accordingly, as both al-Qaeda and ISIS represent radical Sunni organizations, our focus here will be Sunni (as opposed to Shi'ite) Islamic law.

    JUSTIFYING JIHAD

    Medieval scholars delineated two major forms of armed jihad, one defensive, the other aggressive:

  • Defensive jihad was an armed struggle against an invading force. All able-bodied Muslims – male and female, young and old – were generally required to partake in this form of jihad in some way, for their community's survival was at stake.

  • Aggressive jihad was a highly regulated preemptive or offensive attack commissioned by a recognized political authority, such as a caliph. According to most scholars, this form of jihad was a collective requirement, incumbent not on each individual but on a Muslim community in general. Each year, a community's army of men was expected to set out from the “abode of Islam” to attack a neighboring people's army in the “abode of war,” a non-Muslim-controlled country with which there was no truce.

    • Although Muslim scholars conceptualized aggressive jihad as a means of promulgating Islam (typically through influence and incentives, not mandatory conversion), there was nonetheless a widespread belief that such a jihad was necessary to protect and preserve Muslim communities. Thus, while various scholars saw the unbelief of neighboring non-Muslims as sufficient grounds for declaring war on them, a popular view was that even aggressive jihad was ultimately defensive in nature. The assumed “state of war” in Arabia was not unlike the state of affairs throughout much of the premodern world: a premodern country, having no fixed territorial borders, was often as safe as it was aggressive.

  • Part III - The New Atheism

  • Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism
    Published online:
    12 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017, pp 95-96

  • Summary

    Beginning with the publication of Sam Harris's The End of Faith in 2004, the figures who have come to be widely known as the New Atheists have produced a series of bestselling books and films that have reached and deeply affected countless individuals and communities the world over. Having been galvanized by 9/11, some of the New Atheists’ works devote special attention to the “problem” of Islam and, in particular, armed jihad. Among the most prominent New Atheist critics of Islam – and the writers featured in the next three chapters – are Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.

Page 129 of 430