Jihād and just war: Overt and covert analogies

Ella Landau-Tasseron*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Jihād, among other things, is a set of rules for conducting war that was developed within the Islamic tradition. It is often compared to the just war doctrine, developed within the Western tradition. Such comparisons are explicit and they sometimes carry an argument or a message. I call these comparisons overt analogies. There are also covert analogies between the two traditions, namely, such that are intentionally drawn but are unacknowledged. In this article, I first characterize the two traditions, namely jihād and just war, and make some comments on overt analogies. My main argument is that such analogies suffer from serious flaws, and that the two traditions are in fact not compatible with one another. I then focus on covert analogies by examining a test case: legitimate resort to warfare, as treated by two major modern Muslim thinkers, one Sunnī and one Shīʿī: Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī and Āyat Allāh Murtażā Muṭahharī. My argument is that both thinkers modeled their views on the topic not only on the jihād tradition but also on just war and modern liberal ideas, without admitting it. Nevertheless, they both remain within the classical Sunnī jihād tradition (even though Muṭahharī is a Shīʿī). Surprisingly the result of this investigation is that these two scholars, who are of very different persuasions, backgrounds and political circumstances, hold almost identical views on the legitimate causes for jihād.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-48
Number of pages48
JournalJerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
Volume2020
Issue number48
StatePublished - 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Jihād
  • Jus ad bellum
  • Jus in bello
  • Just war
  • Murtażā Muṭahharī
  • Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī

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