Would a jihad by any other name smell as sweet? [on another favorite writer, Daniel Pipes]

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News - Homefront Preparations : One Thread

Seebach:

November 2, 2002

As head of the Middle East Forum, and author of several books on that troubled region, historian Daniel Pipes has enjoyed puncturing the pretensions of university professors in the field of Middle East studies.

In June, I heard him give a talk to the National Association of Scholars convention about the way specialists in this area portray Islam, and specifically what they tell their students - and the public - about how Muslims understand the term jihad. A version of that talk appears in the November issue of Commentary (click to it from danielpipes.org).

Pipes looked at comments by more than two dozen specialists, made in newspaper opinion pieces or television interviews or quoted in news stories, on the meaning of jihad. Those sources, and not articles in learned journals that only other specialists ever see, help to form public perceptions.

Sweetness and light prevail. Jihad is the "individual struggle for personal moral behavior," as a Harvard student said last spring in his speech at commencement, which he called "My American Jihad." Who can quarrel with that?

Only four of his sources, Pipes says, admit that jihad may have "any military component whatsoever" and for three of the four, it is merely defensive.

He quotes John Esposito of Georgetown University, who said, "in the struggle to become a good Muslim, there may be times where one will be called upon to defend one's faith and community. Then \[jihad\] can take on the meaning of armed struggle."

Ahmed An-Na'im of Emory said "War is forbidden by \[Islamic law\] except in two cases: self-defense, and the propagation of the Islamic faith."

Another group allowed for defensive actions, but only as a distant second to goals of self-improvements, and the remainder described jihad in entirely peaceable ways. "To be true to the will of God." "To resist temptation and become a better person." "To create a just society."

And, quite remarkably, "resisting apartheid or working for women's rights" - that from Farid Eseck, of Auburn Seminary in New York City.

Well, words do evolve in meaning. "Crusade" used to mean a military campaign. But in modern times it has meant either a religious (but nonmilitary) effort - Billy Graham's crusades, the Campus Crusade for Christ - or, increasingly, an entirely secular effort toward some desirable end. If jihad underwent the same evolution, as no doubt in the minds of many Muslims it has, that would be all to the good.

But has that happened yet? Is Palestinian Islamic Jihad simply misnamed, given that it boasts of killing Jews? Was Osama bin Laden wrong when he named the "International Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders"?

"Have they not heard," Pipes asks, "that jihad is a matter of controlling one's anger?"

Apparently not.

The way the jihadists define the term, he says, "is in keeping with its usage through fourteen centuries of Islamic history." And that is "the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims."

Merely to say as much gets Pipes into trouble, of course, even if he is historically correct. "Merely to state a well-known fact about Islam earns one the status of a hostile bigot on a prestigious and publicly funded television show" (The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer).

That scholars "avoid or whitewash the primary meaning of jihad in Islamic law and Muslim history" is an intellectual scandal, Pipes says.

"It is quite as if historians of medieval Europe were to deny that the word 'crusade' ever had martial overtones, instead pointing to such terms as 'crusade on hunger' or 'crusade against drugs' to demonstrate that the term signifies an effort to improve society," he says.

No one should be surprised that a variety of apologists would want to blur this issue. But it is surely curious that apologists are so dense on the ground in the very places that are ostensibly dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. (Pipes himself is too regrettably pro-American to expect a university position.) Recently Pipes set up a new Web site, campus-watch.org, to monitor what's going on in the field of Middle East studies. Charges of "McCarthyism!" abound. If you'd like to see academia reacting at its thin-skinned worst, check it out.

Linda Seebach is an editorial writer for the News. She can be reached by telephone at (303) 892-2519 or by e-mail at seebach@RockyMountainNews.com.

-- Anonymous, November 02, 2002


Moderation questions? read the FAQ