Abstract
The book examines contemporary Muslim interpretations of the doctrine of jihad in light of modern realities as perceived by political science and international law. Although the author, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Economics at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, states in the Introduction that he intends to examine the “validity of the classical doctrine of jihad in the modern era,” it is evident that he considers it to be unrealistic, ineffective, and invalid. This is in fact the argument of the work, despite the somewhat off-target Foreword by B. Ramcharan (a former United Nations official and professor of human rights) suggesting that Dizboni has set out to counter “caricatures” of jihad produced by “extremists and Western commentators,” with the goal of “helping people of goodwill to draw upon genuine Islamic traditions” (ii). Islam and War is a much more serious work that subjects thought about jihad – for the first time, as far as I am aware – to thorough practical analysis. The author situates his study in the context of a challenge to the formerly dominant Realist paradigm of International Relations by normative analyses that take into account the influence of culture. Jihad is a natural topic at such a juncture, especially with the rise of political Islam. The book also has the merit of bringing together political science and Islamic studies. The present review, it should be said, is written from the point of view of an Islamicist with little knowledge of political science.
The chief and persistent problem with modern doctrines of jihad, according to Dizboni, is a continued reliance on traditional ideas such as that of a worldwide Muslim community (ummah) and the continual expansion and ultimate triumph of Islam, notions that are very far from the realities of a world of nation-states in which Muslim-majority countries have limited power and no prospect or even intent of putting the doctrine into practice. The author aims to show how continued attachment to traditional concepts and the failure to find a new framework render irrelevant not only the theories of figures such as Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian thinker executed in 1966, who continues to inspire Islamists today, but also writing that makes a stab at incorporating modern theory, such as the multi-volume “research project” of the Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), which attempts to create out of Islamic material a model of international relations with the potential to supersede Western models. In Dizboni’s view, the IIIT project was confused and contradictory at the outset, as it inserted itself into a relativistic turn in international relations while insisting, as he says, on “Islamization of the World as the necessary destination toward which all humanity is evolving” (24). A number of modernists are also treated, with the observation that they too are generally preoccupied with re-examining Islamic texts and history – with “doctrine building” rather than theory building (18), as Dizboni puts it – and thus fail to address the present in a manner direct and detailed enough to be really useful. Finally, Dizboni demonstrates that war in the modern world is no longer rational or cost-effective, so that triumphalist theories of jihad would be disastrous if applied. This discussion, occupying about half the work and including an extensive historical background, diagrams and tables, seems much longer and more detailed than necessary. The goal may have been to lay out the argument for an empirical and historical rather than idealizing, ahistorical analysis of war in order to inspire Muslim analysts to apply similar perspectives to their own tradition, and this hope is in fact voiced in the conclusion.
The author has overlooked (with the exception of one paragraph on p. 145) the significant modern trend of re-casting jihad as a purely defensive action. This type of thought goes back at least to the Indian Sayyid Ahmad Khan in the 19th century, with similar ideas expressed in the 20th century by, among others, the luminaries of Islamic modernism Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) and Rashid Rida (d. 1935). The idea that jihad is essentially defensive still has considerable currency today; since Dizboni points to the IIIT jihad research project as an example of a work that continues traditional triumphalism, we might mention another publication, also from IIIT, which tries to leave the classical doctrine behind and concentrate on peace and co-existence, i.e. a 2001 pamphlet by the Syrian-American academic and activist Louay Safi titled Peace and the Limits of War. The concept of defensive jihad was prompted by the reality of limited power (of colonialism, in fact) and inadvisability of war, exactly the factors that Dizboni asserts modern doctrine has failed to heed. The existence of this line of thought seems inconvenient for Dizboni’s argument that modern theories of jihad continue to see war as a viable instrument without taking into account its costs; although on the other hand, his point that jihad doctrine is inadequately developed for modern circumstances would still apply, since discourse on defensive jihad is generally thin and essentially apologetic. As the author says, modern Muslim thinkers, with a few exceptions such as the Sudanese-American Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, prefer to “adopt the classical analysis” in an attempt to “keep the existing paradigm working” (145) rather than contemplating a paradigm shift.
Theories of jihad may seem too easy a target for political science, but Islam and War does the tradition a favour by taking it seriously and thus effectively demanding a better performance. This is an extremely important matter, considering that failure to think practically and fully about jihad leaves free space for jihadists to engage in their own chaotic practice. Leaving behind the concept of jihad altogether in favour of secularization might be, as Dizboni seems to suggest, the best path, but dealing with the tradition by scientifically re-formulating it in light of the social sciences and law might be an interim option.