Lectures
Radical Islamism and the Idea of Jihad
Every major culture has, in some form, a moral and political tradition on the justification of war and right conduct in war. For Christian thought and Western culture generally, that means just war tradition; for the religion and culture of Islam, it means the tradition of jihad of the sword. Just war tradition influenced the shaping of international law and remains to this day as a core for reflection and action in regard to the use of force for the good of the political community. The tradition of jihad of the sword first was defined by the Islamic jurists of the early Abbasid period (750-1258 A.D.). In important ways its provisions are comparable to those of just war, defining a “collective duty” of the Islamic state to fight wars under its legitimate leadership, for defined causes, and observing strict limits on conduct. But a secondary tradition also developed, that of the jihad of “individual duty,” which empowered every Muslim as an individual to resort to violence in an immediate emergency caused by an attack on the Muslim community. Contemporary radical Islamism has converted this latter conception of jihad into an ideology for unlimited war, as stated in the words of Osama bin Laden and his close associates, against “America and the West” by “any Muslim anywhere who is able to do it.” This lecture explores the core tradition on jihad of the sword and compares it to the just war idea; then it examines more closely the tradition of the jihad of individual duty in times of emergency, showing how contemporary radical Islam has co-opted this tradition and remade it into an ideology for unlimited holy war against America and the West.
