“[M]ost Muslims are absolutely ignorant of the details of the doctrine of jihad.

But so long as not one single Muslim teacher of consideration dreams of regarding these laws of the middle ages as abrogated, while a great proportion of the people exhibit the strongest inclination to restore the conditions which prevailed some centuries ago, so long does it remain impossible, however anxious we may be to do so, to omit the jihad from our calculations when forming a judgment on the relation of Islam to other religions.U.The supreme cause for the spread of the faith, both according to the letter and the spirit of the sacred law, must be found in the methods of forcible propagandism.

—C. Snouck Hurgronje, 1906-1911 “The reformer of the sacred tribe [i.e., Muhammad] became the aggressive fighter against the ‘Infidels.’ Inner communion gave way to the call of war on behalf of the faith—the jihad—as the most important practical demand, the normal outward attitude of the faithful. Partly as a cause of this ideological orientation, partly as its consequence, there came into being a practical fighting organization, which reduced the element of inner communion to the role of a means for self-discipline on the part of the warrior, and to which the Bedouins took like ducks to water. Both ideology and organization provided their vitality and grew with the task for which they had been created—the struggle for Mecca and the unification of the Arab tribes. And when, suddenly, they had arrived, become firm, grown into a power, they followed the impulse they had received. Muhammad himself attempted to reach beyond Arabia....We are here face to face with a ‘warrior nation’ and must explain from its circumstances how it became one. We see how internal struggles gave rise to a unified war organization behind which rallied all the popular forces—including those in the ideological sphere—a war machine that, once in motion, continued so long as there was steam behind it, and it did not run up against a stone wall.

—Joseph Schumpeter, 1919

“Make war against anyone who declares his hostility to Islam, after first inviting him to adopt it [Islam] or accept its protection, in such a way as to pay his debt to Allah and proclaim the shining superiority of Islam....Put in charge of your interests—may Allah guide you—a man with an iron fist who knows how to make war, who can resist the seduction of luxury in times of prosperity and is not discouraged when misfortune strikes him..[J]ihad. means the canonical war imposed on the individual and the collectivity.

—Rashid Rida, 1923

“War is defined by Muslim jurists as the expending of ability and power in fighting in the path of Allah by means of life, property, tongue and other than these. And to realize this, Muslim doctors enjoin: ‘First to preserve one's own power and then to break that of the unbelievers and to subjugate them.' As to war Islam does not allow any self-seeking aggrandizement at the expense of others, but simply to establish a theocracy, a Kingdom of Allah on earth, so no wonder at the insistence upon the point of view of the soldiery being quite selfless....Booty is to be distributed in the Islamic territory, which includes the newly conquered place if it is formally annexed to the Muslim territory even during the course of the war..

—Muhammad Hamidullah, 1935

“[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e., killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people's wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness.only a minority of the Jews keep their word..[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.”⁶

—Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, 1968

“The pejorative characteristics of Jews as they are described in Muslim religious texts are applied to modern Jews. Anti-Judaism and anti-Zionism are equivalent— due to the inferior status of Jews in Islam, and because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery, the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by Jihad. Here the Pan-Arab and anti-Western theses that consider Israel as an advanced instrument of the West in the Islamic world, come to reinforce religious anti­Judaism. The religious and political fuse in a purely Islamic context onto which are grafted foreign elements. If, on the doctrinal level, Nazi influence is secondary to the Islamic base, the technique with which the Antisemitic material has been reworked, and the political purposes being pursued, present striking similarities with Hitler's Germany. That anti-Jewish opinions have been widely spread in Arab nationalist circles since the 1930s

is not in doubt. But their confirmation at [Al] Azhar [University] by the most important authorities of Islam enabled them to be definitively imposed, with the cachet of infallible authenticity, upon illiterate masses that were strongly attached to religious traditions.”⁷

—Bat Ye'or, 1974 “Muhammad’s God endorsed a policy on conquest, instructing his believers to fight against unbelievers wherever they might be found....Arab soldiers were told on the eve of the battle of Qadisiyya, with reference to Iraq; ‘if you hold out...then their property, their women, their children, and their country will be yours.’ God could scarcely have been more explicit. He told the Arabs that they had a right to despoil others of their women, children, and land, or indeed they had a duty to do so: holy war consisted in obeying.

—Patricia Crone, 1987 “All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence—the Sunni, the Shiite.and all the ancient and modern schools of jurisprudence—agree that any invader, who occupies even an inch of land of the Muslims, must face resistance. The Muslims of that country must carry out the resistance, and the rest of the Muslims must help them. If the people of that country are incapable or reluctant, we must fight to defend the land of Islam, even if the local [Muslims] give it up. They must not allow anyone to take a single piece of land away from Islam. That is what we are fighting the Jews for. We are fighting them....Our religion commands us....We are fighting in the name of religion, in the name of Islam, which makes this Jihad an individual duty, in which the entire nation takes part, and whoever is killed in this [Jihad] is a martyr. This is why I ruled that martyrdom operations are permitted, because he commits martyrdom for the sake of Allah, and sacrifices his soul for the sake of Allah. We do not disassociate Islam from the war. On the contrary, disassociating Islam from the war is the reason for our defeat. We are fighting in the name of Islam.. Everything will be on our side and against Jews on [Judgment Day], at that time, even the stones and the trees will speak, with or without words, and say [according to the canonical hadith, Sahih Muslim, book 41, number 6985]: “Oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim, there’s a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” They will point to the Jews.

—Yusuf al-Qaradawi, 2006 “Obstruction in the way of preaching Islam does not mean only a legal obstacle, but greater power or domination of a non-Muslim state against Muslims is by itself a great obstacle against the propagation of Islam. There are no legal restrictions in most of the countries today in preaching Islam, but since their grandeur and authority is established in the world, it has led to developing a universal feeling which forms a greater obstacle than the greatest legal binding free propagation of Islam. For this reason the most important purpose of Jehad is to break this grandeur so that the resulting psychological subordination should come to an end and the way of accepting the Truth [i.e., Islam] becomes smooth. As long as this grandeur and domination persists the hearts of the people will remain subdued and will not be fully inclined to accept the Religion of Truth. Hence Jehad will continue. The Qur’an said: [Koran 9:29 —‘Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.’] Here killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay Jizyah after they are humbled or overpowered. If the purpose of killing was only to acquire permission and freedom of preaching Islam, it would have said ‘until they allow for preaching Islam.’ But the obligation of Jizyah and along with it the mention of their subordination is a clear proof that the purpose is to smash their grandeur, so that the veils of their domination should be raised and people get a free chance to think over the blessings of Islam. Imam Razi [d. 1209; the great classical Sunni Koranic commentator] has written the following commentary on this verse: ‘The purpose of Jizyah is not to let the unbelievers stay in their contumacy against Islam but sparing their lives to give them a chance for a time during which they may hopefully get convinced of the truth of Islam and embrace it. So when an unbeliever is given time wherein he would be observing the respect and honor of Islam, and hearing the arguments of its vitality, and also observing the baselessness of disbelief, these things would convince him to turn towards Islam. This, in fact, is the real purpose of legalizing Jizyah.’ The other question worthy of notice is: Do we find an example that the Prophet (PBUH [Peace Be Upon Him]) and his companions ever sent any missionary groups in other countries before Jehad and waited for their reaction to allow or disallow the missionary work? Did they go for Jehad only when they were refused to carry out the missionary work for Islam? Was any mission sent to Rome before attacking them? Was any attempt made to avoid Jehad against Iran and did they contend on seeking permission for preaching Islam for that purpose? Obviously it was not so. Thus there can be no other conclusion that only a permit for missionary activities was not the aim. If that would have been the only aim many of the bloody combats could [have been] stopped only [on the] condition that no obstacle would be placed in the way of the mission of Islam. But at least in my humble knowledge there has not been a single incident in the entire history of Islam where Muslims had shown their willingness to stop Jehad just for one condition that they will be allowed to preach Islam freely. On the contrary the aim of Muslims as declared by them in the battle of Qadsi was, ‘To take out people out from the rule of people and put them under the rule of people and put them under the rule of Allah.’ Similarly, the Qur’an said: [Koran 8:39] ‘And (you O Believers) fight them until persecution is no more and the Din [religion] is all for Allah.’ In the exegesis of this verse, my reverend father Mufti Muhammad Shafi has written: ‘The meaning of religion is Authority and domination. Thus the meaning of this verse would be that Muslims should continue until the Muslims are safeguarded against their contumacy, and the religion of Islam becomes a dominating power so that it offers protection to Muslims from the atrocities and mischiefs of others.’ He further said: ‘The nutshell of this explanation is the Jihad against the enemies of Islam is obligatory on Muslims until the danger of their mischief or evil-doings is over, and the domination of Islam is established over all other religions. Since this will occur only near the end of the world, the command of Jihad remains till the last day.’ In short, my humble self is of the view that the purpose of Jihad is not just to get the right of missionary activities in any country, but it aims at breaking the grandeur of unbelievers and establish that of Muslims....[I]n my view [it] is not correct...that just by permitting missionary activities a non-Muslim state becomes ‘non-hostile and compromising’ and Jihad against them does not remain lawful or desirable.”¹⁰

—Mufti M. Taqi Usmani, 2008

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