– Madhurima Majumder

[This is a summary of an excerpt from the chapter ‘Islam and Violence’ in the book Jonathan Lyons (2014). Islam Through Western Eyes: From The Crusaders to the War on Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press,pp 117-122.]

Jonathan Lyons in his book Islam Through the Western Eyes (2014) grapples with the underlying reasons for the Western understanding of Islam as inherently violent and hence a legitimate target of corrective violence. He argues that this is not a present-day phenomenon and can be traced as far back as twelfth century Europe where such anti-Muslim sentiments were aggressively propagated during the first crusade. Post September 11, 2001 attack on New York, the West saw a repackaging of this old sentiment that pre-supposes an Islamic world which is incapable of having any rational world view other than religious fanaticism. In the chapter titled “Islam and Violence” Lyons tries to show a link between the Western understanding of Islam as inherently violent and its discourse of the war on terrorism. The author does this by bringing in examples from popular opinions, media and social commentary on the phenomenon of contemporary terrorism.

In fact, President G W Bush’s constant reference to the word crusade in relation to the West’s prerogative to wage ‘war against terrorism’ instantly hit a nerve, especially among the conservative right. This rhetoric has aided in writing off the Islamic world as perpetrators of wrongful violence, with the secular Christian West taking upon itself the position of the protector of humanity. It has afforded the West the choice of aggressive tactics and advanced weaponry in its wars, permitted it to dismiss civilian deaths as “collateral damage” and in the same breath pronounce attacks like that of September 11 as an attack on humanity.

The question that was reiterated in the speeches of political leaders and became a staple in public opinion was not “What led to a group of people to attack?” Rather, it was the rhetorical catchphrase “Why do they hate us?” This question does not impose any serious inquiry but foregrounds the assumption that the Muslim East must hate them. Bernard Lewis’s commentary on Islam is symptomatic of this unquestioned belief. Lewis pronounces that the East has forever hated the West when he writes in What Went Wrong, “They have been hating us for a long time… and it’s very natural that they should. You have this millennial rivalry between two world religions, and for now, from their point of view, the wrong side is winning.” In fact he goes on to place the Muslim world as the losing side and places this hatred beyond the realm of doubt, as, “you can’t be rich, strong and successful and loved, particularly by those who are not rich, not strong and not successful. So the hatred is something almost axiomatic.” (2000)

This line of argument negates the possibility of any other explanation for the anti-Western sentiment among Muslims such as the rejection of Western interpretation of modernity, resistance to colonial hegemony, dismissal of life goals set in a capitalist culture and so on. Lyons in Islam and Violence demonstrates how appropriation of terms like jihad and shahid and locating them as central religious tenets has been pivotal in giving leverage to the organic connection that is drawn between Islam and violence (of the non-righteous kind!). Convenient selective focus and omission run throughout in the Orientalist tradition of scholarship on Islam. Despite having complex and multivalent meanings, a religious concept like jihad gained sudden focus and popularity and assumed one fixed meaning—that of aggressive warfare (against all non-Muslims) in the Western discourse which saw further intensification post 9/11.

A bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi gets referred to as a “jihad mission” with the assumption that the meaning of the term is universally understood and shared, even by a Muslim believer. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon in their bestselling book, The Age of Sacred Terror (2002) do not even include the term jihad in their otherwise detailed glossary. The interpretation of jihad as “holy war” has been so wholly adopted by the popular understanding that even the contemporary Muslim militant groups have often embraced a similar interpretation of jihad. This goes on to show that not only the West but even these groups find it useful in their political and religious mobilization. This has come at the cost of overlooking literature that could possibly provide an alternative to this militaristic interpretation. Though alternative readings of the concept of ‘greater jihad’ that refer to the believer’s internal struggle to overcome her/his base human nature and be a better Muslim find mention, they are often dismissed as apologetics of Muslim scholarship.

The case of such selective focus can be demonstrated by looking at the glossary entries provided by Benjamin and Simon, which present an inconsistent mix of classical and contemporary interpretations of Islamic scholarship to argue the significance of violence in the Islamic faith. A concept like dar al-harb which means “abode of war” but essentially refers to the non-Muslim world, gained much attention despite being absent in Qur’an or the prophet’s sunna1. In fact the term dar al-harb was discarded by classical jurists and yet it finds prominence in Benjamin and Simon’s writing as it aligns with their viewpoint.

To strengthen their argument of Muslims being under the religious obligation to resort to militaristic force, they refer to Lewis’ reading of the term jihad which they claim has “modern scholarly consensus”. Interestingly, this “modern scholarly consensus” strategically bypasses any actual representation or engagement with any Muslim scholar and instead prefers to see them as a unified whole. This in turn helps in ascribing definitive reading of Islamic texts devoid of any context, which may or may not reflect in the everyday lives of Muslims.

It is perhaps not so surprising that any other kind of reading that challenges their theory of the connection between jihad and violence is quickly dismissed e.g., the idea of spiritual or “greater jihad”. This is demonstrated by the author who refers to Benjamin and Simon’s endnote in their book, The Age of Sacred Terror as an example.

“The last century has seen a trend towards the interpretation of the so-called greater jihad as the more genuine form of Islamic struggle… Until recently, however, Muslim scholars were unanimous in insisting on the priority jihad had as warfare against the unbeliever. Bernard Lewis made this case most famously, but modern scholarly consensus on the matter is summed up by the new edition of Encyclopedia Islamica.” (Benjamin and Simon, 2002)

Ironically, according to Lyons, Benjamin and Simon refer to Encyclopedia of Islam (Tyan 1991) which is a standard Western reference work that is edited by Bernard Lewis. To strengthen their argument, they also cite an essay on jihad by Douglas E. Streusand (1997) who in turn draws his understanding of the term from Lewis’s work, thus making the cycle complete.

In sum, the underlying reason for the long-standing monopoly of West over the discussions on legitimate use of violence in conflicts with the Muslim world relies heavily on the Orientalist interpretations of the Muslim East as the “other”, the perfect anti-thesis of the ‘modern’ and ‘rational’ Judeo-Christian West, thus discounting the possibility of any rationale behind their actions.

Madhurima Majumder is a fellow at Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies. Email: madhurima.majumder89@gmail.com

Books referred to by the author (Lyons)

Benjamin, Daniel, and Steven Simon. 2002. The Age of Sacred Terror. New York: Random House.

Lewis, Bernard. 2002. What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. New York: Oxford University Press.

Streusand, Douglas. 1997. “What does Jihad Mean?” Middle East Quaterly 4, no. 3:9-17.

Tyan, E. 1991. “Djihad.” In Encyclopedia of Islam, 2:538-540. Leiden: Brill.