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ABSTRACT
‘Authority to use force’ has been a subject of contentious debate, not least among the academics, politicians and lawyers, since the oft-occurrence of use of armed forces by non-state actors and terrorist groups in modern world. Since 9/11 terrorist attacks, most use of force by non-state actors and terrorist groups, which occurred primarily in Muslim majority states, have been categorized as acts of terrorism. This categorization has been made without any rational or sound scrutiny of such use of force and accordingly resulted in controversies. This article is a historical, legal and political account of Islamic international law on the use of force. It defines and interprets the fundamental principles of use of force in Islamic international law, such as jihad, and analyses the significance of those principles in scrutinizing legal and political authority to use force at the state level and inter-state level.
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Notes
1 Tony Blair, ‘A Battle for the Global Values’, Foreign Affairs 79 (2007): 82; and Lisa Wedeen, ‘Beyond the Crusades: Why Huntington and Bin Laden are Wrong’, Middle Eastern Policy X (2003): 56.
2 John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, Based on Gallup’s Poll—The Largest Study of its Kind (New York: Gallup Press, 2007), 136; David Ryan, ‘Framing September 11: Rhetorical Device and Photographic Opinion’, European Journal of American Culture (2004): 19; and Abdeen Jabara, ‘September 11: Doesn’t it Have a Political and Historical Context?’ Guild Practitioner 58 (2001): 136.
3 Ibid.
4 Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence (The Islamic Texts Society, 1991), 12; see also Majid Khadduri, Al-Shafi’s Risala: Treatise on the Foundations of Islamic Jurisprudence, 2nd ed. (the Islamic Texts Society, 1961), 21.
5 Majid Khadduri, The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybani’s Siyar (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1966), 38; Labeeb Ahmed Bsoul, International Treaties (Mu’ahadat) in Islam: Theory and Practice in the Light of Islamic International Law (Siyar) according to Orthodox Schools (University Press America, 2008), 1; and Mohamed Badar, ‘Jus in bello under Islamic International Law’, International Criminal Law Review 3 (2013): 593.
6 Ibid.
7 ‘Rightly guided Caliphs’ include the first four caliphs in Islam, such as Abu-Bakr, Omar, Utham and Ali.
8 Muhammad Hamidullah, Muslim Conduct of State, 4th ed. (Lahore: Ashraf Press, 1961), 18.
9 Sobhi Mahamassani, ‘The Principles of International Law in the Light of Islamic Doctrine’, Recueil des Cours 117 (1966): 205, cited in Badar, ‘Jus in bello under Islamic International Law’, 593.
10 Hamidullah, Muslim Conduct of State, 3.
11 Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (The John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1955), 47.
12 Muhammad B. ‘Abd al-Karim Sharastani, Muslim Sects and Divisions: The Section on Muslim Sects in Kitab al-Milal wa ‘I-Nihal (A.K. Kazi and J.G. Flynn tr, Kegan Paul International, n.d.), 10.
13 Mohammad T. Al-Ghunaimi, The Muslim Conception of International Law and the Western Approach (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1968), 33–5.
14 Khadduri, The Islamic Law of Nations, 24.
15 Josepha Schacht, Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 34.
16 Farooq A. Hasan, ‘The Sources of Islamic Law’, American Society of International Law Proceedings 76 (1982): 65.
17 ‘Equality of status’ of sovereign states is meant here on theoretical sense without taking into account the sovereign inequality in the decision-making process at the Security Council.
18 Shaheen S. Ali, ‘Resurrecting Siyar through Fatwas?’, in Jihad and its Challenges to International and Domestic Law, ed. M. Cherif Bassiouni and Amna Guellali (The Hague: The Hague Academic Press, 2010), 116.
19 Syed Ameer Ali, A Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Mohammed (London: Williams and Norgate, 1983), 76.
20 Adil Salahi, Muhammad: His Character and Conduct (UK: The Islamic Foundation, 2013), 214.
21 Ibid.
22 Muhammad Husayn Haykal, The Life of Muhammad (Delhi: Crescent Publishing, 1990), 256; and Hilmi Zawati, Is Jihad a Just War? War, Peace and Human Rights under Islamic and Public International Law (Edwin Mellen, 2001), 29.
23 Al-Qur’an 22:39–40, Abu Yusuf translation.
24 Ahmed Al-Dowoody, The Islamic Law of War: Justifications and Regulations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 59.
25 Joel Hayward, ‘Warfare in the Qur’an’, in War and Peace in Islam: The Uses and Abuses of Jihad, ed. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, Ibrahim Kalin and Mohammad Hashim Kamali (MABDA, 2013), 46.
26 Elsayed M. A. Amin, Reclaiming Jihad: A Qur’anic Critique of Terrorism (UK: The Islamic Foundation, 2014), 88.
27 Muhammad Haykal, ‘al-Jihad’ cited in Amin, Reclaiming Jihad, 89.
28 Ibn Kathir, Tafsir al-Qur’an al-‘Azim, vol. 1, (Riyadh: Dar al-Salam, 1998), 698.
29 David Dakake, ‘The Myth of Militant Islam’ in War and Peace in Islam: The Uses and Abuses of Jihad, ed. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, Ibrahim Kalin and Mohammad Hashim Kamali (MABDA, 2013), 128.
30 Al- Qur’an 8:39, Abu Yusuf translation; for other Medinan verses see M. Cherif Bassiouni, ‘Evolving Approaches to Jihad: From Self-defense to Revolutionary and Regime-Change Political Violence’, Chicago Journal of International Law 8 (2007): 119, 127.
31 ‘Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you, but begin no hostilities. Verily Allah loves not the aggressors’—Al- Qur’an, Abu Yusuf translation.
32 Abdulaziz A. Sachedina, ‘The Development of Jihad in Islamic Revelation and History’, in Cross, Crescent, and Sword: The Justification and Limitation of War in Western and Islamic Tradition, ed. James Turner Johnson and John Kelsay (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 43.
33 Niaz A. Shah, ‘The Use of Force under Islamic Law’, European Journal of International Law 24 (2013): 343.
34 Said Mahmoudi, ‘The Islamic Perception of the Use of Force in the Contemporary World’ (paper presented at the International Law and the Islamic World: Towards a Multipolar International Legal System, organised by Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Public Law, Heidelberg and the Institute for Political and International Studies, Tehran, Iran, 3–5 April 2004), 13.
35 Mahmoud Shaltut, Jihad in Mediaeval and Modern Islam (Leiden: Rudolph Peters tr, E.J. Brill, 1977), 55; see also Mahmoud Shaltut, ‘The Qur’an and Combat’ in War and Peace in Islam: The Uses and Abuses of Jihad, ed. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, Ibrahim Kalin and Mohammad Hashim Kamali (MABDA, 2013), 18.
36 Shawki Allam, The Ideological Battle: Egypt’s Dar al- Iftaa Combats Radicalization (The Grand Mufti of Egypt, 2016), 175.
37 The term ‘fundamentalists’ is a contested term as it is derogatorily known in the West but not in the Muslim world.
38 Muhammad Al-Buti, Jihad in Islam, trans. Munzer Adel Absi (Damascus: Dar al-Fikr, 1995), 233; and Muhammad Abu Zahra, Concept of War in Islam (Cairo: Ministry of Waqf, 1961), 18.
39 Al- Qur’an 5:8, Abu Yusuf translation.
40 Al- Qur’an 5:32, Abu Yusuf translation.
41 Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence, 279.
42 See note 19 above.
43 Mahmud Shaltut, ‘Koran and Fighting’ cited in Asma Afsaruddin, ‘Views of Jihad throughout History’, Religious Campus 1 (2007): 169.
44 Kate Zebiri, Mahmud Shaltut and Islamic Modernism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 45.
45 Ibid.
46 Mahmud Shaltut, ‘Al-Islam wa al-Alaqat al-Dawliyyah’ cited in Al-Dowoody, The Islamic Law of War, 68.
47 Al- Qur’an 2:256, Abu Yusuf translation.
48 Al- Qur’an 9:29, Abu Yusuf translation.
49 Major T.R. Copinger-Symes, ‘Is Osama bin Laden’s Fatwa Urging Jihad Against Americans’ dated 23 February 1998 Justified by Islamic Law?’, Defence Studies 3 (2003): 44.
50 James Turner Johnson, The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 96.
51 See note 36 above.
52 Sachedina, ‘The Development of Jihad in Islamic Revelation and History’, 37.
53 M. Cherif Bassiouni, The sharia and Islamic Criminal Justice in Time of War and Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 202.
54 Cherif Bassiouni, ‘Evolving Approaches to Jihad’, 119.
55 Shaltut, ‘The Qur’an and Combat’, 21.
56 Cherif Bassiouni, The sharia and Islamic Criminal Justice in Time of War and Peace, 43.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid, 8.
59 Ian Brownlie, International Law and the Use of Force by States (Oxford University Press, 1963), 6; and Ruven Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam (Oxford University Press, 1999), 106.
60 Johnson, The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions, 25.
61 Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970), 145.
62 Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1979), 86.
63 Afsaruddin, ‘Views of Jihad throughout History’, 167.
64 Cherif Bassiouni, The sharia and Islamic Criminal Justice in Time of War and Peace, 78.
65 Mahmoudi, ‘The Islamic Perception of the Use of Force in the Contemporary World’, 2.
66 Ardalan Rezamand, ‘Use of Religious Doctrine and Symbolism in the Iraq-Iran War’, Journal of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society 9 (2010): 83.
67 Mahmoudi, ‘The Islamic Perception of the Use of Force in the Contemporary World’, 7.
68 Ibid.
69 See text adjacent to n. 58 above.
70 John Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Harvard University Press, 2009), 101.
71 Al-Buti, Jihad in Islam, 59; and Shaltut, Jihad in Mediaeval and Modern Islam, 44.
72 Ayatullah Murtada Mutahhari, Jihad and Shahadat (The Institute for Research and Islamic Studies, 1986), 103; and Sachedina, ‘The Development of Jihad in Islamic Revelation and History’, 41.
73 ‘Abd al-Karim Sharastani, Muslim Sects and Divisions, 140; Etan Cohlberg, Belief and Law in Imami Shaism (Great Britain: Variorum Aldershot, 1991), 78; and Mehdi Abedi and Gary Legenhausen, Jihad and Shahadat (The Institute for Research and Islamic Studies, 1986), 15.
74 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004), 262.
75 Hamidullah, Muslim Conduct of State, 151.
76 Ibid.
77 Hamidullah, Muslim Conduct of State, 151; and Mohammad Hashim Kamali, ‘Introduction’ in War and Peace in Islam: The Uses and Abuses of Jihad, ed. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, Ibrahim Kalin and Mohammad Hashim Kamali (MABDA, 2013), XIII.
78 Muhammad Asad, The Principle of State and Government in Islam (Dar al-Andalus: Gibraltar, 1985), 35.
79 Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith no. 2957.
80 Khadduri, Al-Shafi’s Risala, 112; and Liaquat Ali Khan, ‘Jurodynamics of Islamic Law’, Rutgers Law Review 31 (2008): 231.
81 See note 33 above.
82 Ibid.
83 Allam, The Ideological Battle, 160.
84 Asad, The Principle of State and Government in Islam, 59.
85 Ibid, 36.
86 Allam, The Ideological Battle, 130.
87 ‘The New Mardin Declaration’ (27 April 2010) http://iqra.ca/2010/the-new-mardin-declaration/ (accessed February 20, 2019); for contra see Yahya Michot, ‘Ibn Taymiyya’s “New Mardin Fatwa”. Is genetically modified Islam (GMI) carcinogenic?’, The Muslim World 101 (2011): 130.
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid.
90 ‘Abd al-Karim Sharastani, Muslim Sects and Divisions, 70.
91 Peter Mandaville, Islam and Politics (Routledge, 2014), 36.
92 Al-Shaybani, The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybani’s Siyar, trans. Majid Khadduri (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1966), 16; and Sachedina, ‘The Development of Jihad in Islamic Revelation and History’, 41.
93 Ibid.
94 Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam, 63; and Chris Waddy, The Muslim Mind (London: Grosvenor, 1990), 102.
95 See note 78 above.
96 For classical position see n. 73 and 74 above.
97 See note 83 above.
98 Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam, 78; and Allam, The Ideological Battle, 175.
99 Al-Dowoody, The Islamic Law of War, 56.
100 James Turner Johnson and John Kelsey, Cross, Crescent and Sword: The Justification and Limitation of War in Western and Islamic Tradition (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), xiv.
101 Al-Shaybani, The Islamic Law of Nations, 5.
102 Allam, The Ideological Battle, 20.
103 Amin, Reclaiming Jihad, 119.
104 Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi, Towards Understanding the Qur’an, trans. Zafar Ishaq Ansari (The Islamic Foundation, 1995), 199; and S. Khatab, ‘Hakimiyyah and Jahiliyyah in the Thought of Sayyid Qutb’, Middle Eastern Studies 38 (2002): 145.
105 Asma Afsaruddin, Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought and History (USA: OUP, 2016), 11; see also Copinger-Symes, ‘Is Osama bin Laden’s Fatwa Urging Jihad Against Americans’, 53.
106 Afsaruddin, Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought and History, 10; see also Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam, 128.
107 Copinger-Symes, ‘Is Osama bin Laden’s Fatwa Urging Jihad Against Americans’, 53.
108 Muhammad abd el Salam Faraj, al-Faridah al-Ghaibah: The Neglected Duty, trans. Johannes J. G. Jansen (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 169.
109 Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam, 130.
110 Ibid, 131.
111 Salam Faraj, al-Faridah al-Ghaibah, 169.
112 Ibid, 191.
113 Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam, 133.
114 Ibid, 134.
115 The Charter of Hamas, trans. M. Maqdsi (Dallas: Islamic Association for Palestine, 1990), sec. 22.
116 Ibid, sec. 12.
117 Mahmoudi, ‘The Islamic Perception of the Use of Force in the Contemporary World’, 8.
118 <http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm> (accessed February 17, 2019).
119 Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam, 129.
120 Ibid.
121 Ibid, 133.
122 Ibid, 140.
123 Ibid, 142.
124 Ibid, 147.
125 Khaled Abou El Fadl, And God Knows the Soldiers: The Authoritative and the Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses (Lanham, MD: University Press America, 2001), 37.
126 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 81.
127 Al-Dowoody, The Islamic Law of War, 3.
128 Abu’l A’la Mawdudi, ‘Shari’at al-Islam’ cited in Amin, Reclaiming Jihad, 93.
129 Amin, Reclaiming Jihad, 99.
130 Sayyid Qutb, ‘Zilal’ cited in Amin, Reclaiming Jihad, 100.
131 Amin, Reclaiming Jihad, 119.
132 Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam, 3.
133 Cherif Bassiouni, The Sharia and Islamic Criminal Justice in Time of War and Peace, 221.
134 Amin, Reclaiming Jihad, 124.
135 Ibid.