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June 19, 2002, 9:10 a.m. Jihad Conquests Islamism today. By Bat Ye’or and Andrew Bostom

he ideology of jihad was formulated by Muslim jurists and scholars, including such luminaries as Averroes and Ibn Khaldun, from the 8th century onward. A recent Harvard commencement speech notwithstanding, these voluminous writings establish unequivocally the notion of jihad as a war of conquest. For example, Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) stated, "..the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universality of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everyone to Islam either by persuasion or by force...". Jihad conquests were brutal, imperialist advances that spurred waves of Arab and Turkish Muslims to expropriate a vast expanse of lands, and subdue millions of indigenous peoples, across three continents — Asia, Africa, and Europe. Moreover, jihad ideology ultimately regulated the relations of Muslims with non-Muslims. The contemporary relevance of this ideology is also clear, and disturbing. Professor John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, recently identified Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, as one of the most influential contemporary Muslim thinkers. Sheikh al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric and the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, reaches an enormous audience during his regular appearances on Al Jazeera. During a January 9, 1998 interview, Sheikh al-Qaradawi observed that Islamic law divided the People of the Book — Jews and Christians — into three categories: 1) non-Muslims in the lands of war; 2) non-Muslims in lands of temporary truce; 3) non-Muslims protected by Islamic law, that is to say, the dhimmis.

The sheikh had thus summarized the theory of jihad in a few words. Now, as we see from countless calls for jihad and daily world events, this ideology still impregnates current thinking and conduct. Jihad as such, is a genocidal war, since it orders men to be massacred and women and children to be enslaved, if there is resistance. In the Southern Sudan, the ugly living embodiment of the jihad war ideology is visible with the enslavement of the wives and children of Christian and Animist rebels by Muslim agents of the Khartoum government. Unfortunately, although many Muslims do not adhere to this ideology, formal rejection of its precepts by the major Islamic clerics at Al-Azhar University in Egypt, or in Saudi Arabia, has not occurred.

Historically, non-Muslims conquered by jihad wars were governed by the laws of "dhimmitude." As opposed to flimsy notions of "tolerance" and "protection," dhimmitude was the actual sociopolitical, and economic status of these vanquished peoples (dhimmis), including Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists. Unfortunately, this "tolerance" and "protection" was afforded only upon submission to Islamic domination by a "Pact" — or Dhimma — which imposed degrading and discriminatory regulations. The main principles of dhimmitude are: (i) the inequality of rights in all domains between Muslims and dhimmis; (ii) the social and economic discrimination against the dhimmis; (iii) the humiliation and vulnerability of the dhimmis. Numerous documents from both Islamic sources and the dhimmi peoples, establish the origins and aims of these nefarious regulations, including their contemporary incarnations (for example, in Iran, Egypt, the Sudan, Pakistan, and of course in Saudi Arabia, and under the Taliban in Afghanistan).

Every society and religion has developed its own form of fanaticism, particularly during periods of expansion, or internal unrest. In the Judeo-Christian societies, however, the separation of politics and religion — sometimes, it is true, entirely theoretical — has permitted intolerance and oppression to be challenged. The men who fought for the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the Jews were Christians. Jews and Christians struggled side by side for the recognition of human rights. A similar progressive movement has yet to appear in the Muslim world, which has never acknowledged the oppressed dhimmi, or recognized that the degradation of the dhimmi represents a crime against humanity. The Muslim intelligentsia has failed to condemn both jihad as a genocidal war, and dhimmitude as a dehumanizing institution, which together resulted in imperialism, slavery, and the deportation of populations, whose historical and cultural patrimony were totally destroyed. If Muslims continue to avoid meaningful self-criticism of their own history of jihad and dhimmitude, it will be impossible for Islam to accept non-Muslims as full equals, and past prejudices will continue to be rampant.

— Bat Ye'or is the author of Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide. Andrew G. Bostom, MD, MS is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University School of Medicine