Jihad and Women in the Quran - Essay Example

s Jihad and Women in the Quran Islam is regarded as a peace-seeking religion, but the socially constructed view of Islam and Muslims across the world as supporters of violence has heightened after the 9/11 attack in US. The skeptical debate of jihad and its scripturally mandated violence have been reiterated time and again. However, accepting this politically construed depiction of a religion as an institution of armed violence and Quran as a holy book that exhorts its adherents to violent actions is beyond critical reasoning. The understanding of Qur’anic doctrine on relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, exemplified either by ‘dynamic’ method or classical jurisprudence, is subject to socially stereotyped views as well as political misinterpretations. However, when one does a historical assessment of jihad doctrine, particularly the war-jihad and gender-jihad, it is possible to state that Muslims have no obligation to wage jihad on the basis of Qur’anic readings. Commonly, Muslims’ understanding of the Quran is based on one’s own reading of the text or one’s attempt to extract the meaning from the text. The discussion here focuses on this assertion in relation to few readings on war and gender issues thereby exploring the essence of Islam and interpretation of Quran regarding jihad against these particular issues. There is still a continuous suspicion among the people of the world when it comes to the question of terrorism based violence and the role of Islam and its radical followers. The dialectical interpretation of fundamentalism, women-rights, and many such infelicities, with no regard to cultural, social, religious, and economic differences also owes to the wrong interpretation of Islam, particularly the jihad. However, the major misunderstanding lies on the interpretation of the Qur’anic readings, with many extracting its meaning textually rather than contextually thereby wrongly interpreting it. Particularly, the concept of jihad or ‘just war’ is often misinterpreted in the essence of Islamic law as a justification for violence or war by various institutions. Whatever the reason for jihad be, either war or gender oppression, the entire doctrine is strongly rooted on the Qur’anic readings and its interpretations. In that direction, it can be observed that misunderstanding of jihad as a violent concept or a declaration of war by the radicals can bring religious justifications for warfare in the name of God. “Differences about the status and nature of jihad are a marked feature of early Islamic law, and details about the conduct of jihad continue to reflect historical circumstance throughout the history of Islamic law in the Middle East”.1 The trajectory of modern Islamic discourse on jihad relies on two main modalities as per the classical jurists from the post-Prophetic era or Khilafah. It is referred to as jus in bello, the ‘aggressive jihad’, which is a proactive one and jus ad bellum, the ‘defensive jihad’, which is engaged in times when Muslim lands are being attacked. When one views the war jihad concept from the perspective of Qur’anic readings, it is clear that there are certain rules, regulations, and moral codes which has to be followed by the combatants while engaging in war. This ordained standards of morality, legitimacy, and justice on the part of the combatants has been overlooked or misinterpreted at various instances. The reason for this wrong or biased interpretation of Qur’anic readings is because of the problematic comprehension of its meaning from different perspectives. The concept of modern war jihad lies totally on the choice between either an aggressive or a defensive doctrine and thereby waging war against others, by basically perceiving it as adhering to the Islamic law. This dominant doctrine of ‘just war’ becomes an Islamic legal thought implied by the monopolized authorities who barely recognizes the mutual non-aggression in the Qur’anic readings. However, the Islamic understanding of jihad from the Qur’anic scriptures is probably not limited to the moral rules of going to war and the justification for resultant violence.2 It has to be inquired with reasoning and argument by Islamic religious authorities. But, these authorities are attempting to justify the causes and circumstances for waging war, through various rules and doctrine as specified in the Quran. Nevertheless, this is not the reality of Islamic war jihad because it is being hijacked by various religious and political groups for a long time, as a means to justify different forms of violence. Most importantly, the invocation of jihad by many splinter groups among the Islamic communities has contributed to the misuse of jihad, which in turn contradicts the Islamic religion and its original doctrine. Apart from the war jihad, the recent marching of ‘gender jihad’ by Islamic feminists from around the world has caught notable attention. It is considered to be a fight against the male chauvinistic, homophobic or sexist implications of the Qur’anic readings. The legal inferiority of women in Islamic countries has heightened the issues of gender suppression and the need for freedom from their bondage. As per the Quran scriptures, the purpose of any jihad is to provide freedom and security for a group people who face constant threat. In that direction, gender jihad has consistent grounds for discourse from the scriptures as well. Taking the jihad context for feminist views cannot be seen as a misinterpretation of Qur’anic readings because those readings clearly states at Jihad can be used not only for peaceful needs but to fight against suppression of certain sections including women. “Fight them until there is no oppression and religion is solely for God. And if they desist, then let there be no aggression except against the transgressors”.3 A gender discourse eliminating the sacred scriptures is unacceptable, which is why supporters of gender jihad define Qur’anic passages that elucidate the role of women as liberatory text. From the perspective of gender jihad, Quranic reforms for continual development of social order, particularly for the fair treatment of women, has to be carried out. This can be done by extracting relevant passages from the readings. Gender equality, in God’s view, is clearly portrayed in many of the Qur’anic verses such as “whoever does good, from male or female, and is a believer, all such will enter Paradise” (4:124). This perspective was validated by Wadud (63) who stated, “There is no inherent value placed on man or woman. The Quran does not strictly delineate the roles of woman and the roles of man to such an extent as to propose only a single possibility for each gender”.4 However, most of the time, Qur’anic passages are interpreted to imply superiority of males over females due to patriarchal biased readings. As described in Quran and teachings of the Prophet, defensive jihad does not use violence as the only means, but can be performed using legal, diplomatic, economic or political measures. Similarly, when there are minimal peaceful alternatives, jihad offers to use force but with restrictions and strict rules that contradict the modern war and gender jihad. One such rule includes causing no harm to innocents, women, children, or invalids and so any attempt for peaceful overtures from the combatant has to be accepted. “Many of the fundamental concepts of equality embraced by feminism could also be found in the Quran”.5 In that sense, gender jihad and war jihad are actually biased versions owing to misinterpretation of the scriptures. It should be noted that Qur’anic readings has to be interpreted not solely based on the textual readings of the Islamic law but by focusing on the context and circumstances based on which interpretations and applying of rules has to be done. “Engaging in warfare that is oriented towards the right social purpose with the right individual intention is a meritorious religious act. Only performances that meet these conditions fulfill the obligation of jihad”.6 This way of interpreting jihad has to be carefully done by taking into account the historic context in which the text was actually written. One of the consistent Qur’anic representation or misrepresentation of Muslims as brave and war-like arose mainly because of their willingness to fight against their attackers. As said in Quran, “God simply forbids you to take as your patrons those who attack you because of your religion or turn you out of your homes or conspire with others to turn you out of your homes”.7 As evident from these verses, it was because of the social and political tensions prevailing during the earlier periods that made it obligatory for all Muslims to respond favorably to the call for waging a holy war. It was important to fight against the ideological and violent opposition for their new religion. However, these verses, which commands any believer to wage a jihad was not actually implying the obligation to fight. Instead, it focuses on the necessity, due to a preexistent state of affairs, where fighting was considered as the only means to repel the aggression induced on the believers. From the above analysis, it can be stated that according to fundamentalist view, Qur’anic readings has to be interpreted in relation to time and place rather than extracting meaning from the actual text, without paying attention to the contextual cues. However, Qur’anic discourse and rhetoric on jihad has its own interpretations and so extracting meaning on textual basis cannot reveal details accurately. So, it is obvious that interpreting the scripture through discussion and own readings of the text is necessary as it takes positive perspective thereby positively impacting others including women. Nevertheless, proper understanding of jihad would bring some positive changes to the Islamic view of religious doctrines in the light of the modern society. Bibliography Jackson, Sherman A. “Jihad and the modern world.” Journal of Islamic Law & Culture, 7 (2002). Mottahedeh, Roy Parviz and al-Sayyid, Ridwan. “The Idea of the Jihad in Islam before the Crusades.” In the Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World. Eds. Angeliki E Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh. New York: Dumbarton Oaks, 2001. Syed, Miraj. “Jihad in Classical Islamic Legal and Moral Thought.” In the Just War in Religion and Politics. Eds. Jacob Neusner, Bruce D. Chilton and R. E. Tully. New York: University Press of America, 2013. Tremlett, Giles. “Muslim Women launch International Gender Jihad.” The Guardian. 31 October 2005. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/31/gender.religion Wadud, Amina. Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective. London: Oxford University Press, 1999. Read More