Islam Beyond Violence
By Dr. Scott Kugle
The 2003 Stringfellow Lecture
Delivered March 31, 2003 at Drake University
(Do not cite or reproduce this text without explicit permission of the author, who can be reached at skugle1@swarthmore.edu)

Introduction

In the last two years, we have seen graphically how ill equipped we Americans are to talk about religion. Take for example one of the President's close advisors, Franklin Graham (the son of Billy Graham). He says out loud what the President himself censors: that "Islam is a very evil and wicked religion" that foments violence and breeds terrorism. Anyone with the least education in religious studies knows that all religions have, at some points and by some people, been interpreted as allowing or obliging violence. And all have resources, for condemning violence and urging us to find alternatives to violence when interpreted by others in other conditions. Americans have not been alone in this ignorance; currently, some Muslims are making as egregious claims that Christianity inevitably foments crusades and Judaism genocide. As citizens of the world and people with allegiance to religious traditions, we have a weighty responsibility to critique such sloppy thinking and ideological posturing that makes "us" naively good and "them" absolutely evil. Not matter who the "us" is or who the "they" might be.

In this lecture, I will try to guide you through such a critique, from a Muslim's point of view. I will try to grapple with the question of how Muslims deal with violence. I will wrestle with this question by asking how Muslims imagine peace. And I will embark on this treacherous journey to demonstrate that religious traditions are what we make of them (despite what Franklin Graham or Osama bin Laden might profess). I invite you to come along with me on this journey.

What does adhering to a religious tradition (or any system of thought) allow us to think? The contemporary Muslim philosopher, Mohammed Arkoun (who teaches at the Sorbonne in Paris) points out that adhering to a tradition allows us to create a world of discourse. This specific world of discourse Arkoun calls a logosphere. It allows us to think, imagine, argue and act in certain ways. By enabling us to do this, a tradition also dis-enables us from thinking certain things. "A number of ideas, values, explanations, horizons of meaning, artistic creations, initiatives, institutions and ways of life are thereby discarded, rejected, ignored or doomed to failure by the long-term historical evolution called tradition." (Arkoun, The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, 11).This boundary between thought and unthought always shifts--it is always a boundary of contention. We are at a point in history where thinking the unthought about violence and peace are critical matters. Recent events force us to push the envelope of our thought, because our thought is totally interwoven with our action. What can be thought leads us to act, and our patterns of action shape what we think. And further, in these current conditions of systematic perpetration of violence (whether it is labeled warfare or terrorism) our personal action or inaction is interwoven with the actions of those who act in our name. The method that I employ in this lecture is adopted from Mohammed Arkoun, who calls it Applied Islamology. Applied Islamology is not making assertions about what Islam essentially is or essentially is not (such as "Islam is a religion of violence" or "Islam is the religion of peace"). Rather, Applied Islamology is the systematic interrogation of what we know about Islam and how we know it. I will ask: "how do [Muslims] develop a critical relationship with their past and their present in order to have better control over their future, and how relevant, effective and creative would such a relationship be?" (Arkoun, The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, 10).

My hope in this lecture is to explore the boundary between thought and unthought, the enacted and the ignored, in the Islamic tradition. In particular, I will focus on this boundary in regard to possibilities of non-violence. More specifically, I will draw on the experience of Muslims in South Asia (India, Pakistan and Afghanistan) to illustrate the general points. I hope to present you with a series of points, points that may come as a surprise to American audiences (whether Muslim or non-Muslim).

1.The Islamic tradition offers resources to Muslims for creative non-violent activism.
2. Some Muslims have systematically reflected upon these resources and acted upon them.
3. They have tried and to build social movements based on Islamic principles that advocate non-violent social and political transformation.
4. These movements have sometimes succeeded with startling results that have had a deep impact on world history.

I hope to take us beyond conventional discussions of "Islam and Violence" that dominate the American media and recent scholarship. I do not want us to limit our discussion to questions or war and peace (whose war is justified and who is really for peace). I am not a political scientist. I will not directly address questions of war against Iraq, war against the Taliban in Afghanistan or the destruction of the World Trade Center by vigilante Muslim militias. I will not dabble in shallow theology that serves the questions of political science and journalism: I won't address martyrdom or suicide bombings or heavenly virgins. Hence the title of this talk: Islam Beyond Violence.
However, I also don't want to be an apologist. I will not repeat the often-quoted phrase that "Islam is the religion of peace" as if that excuses Muslims from committing acts of violence. Let's be realistic and acknowledge that some Muslims have engaged in violent acts, as have some Christians, some Jews, some Buddhists, and some Hindus. More precisely, we need to admit at the outset that all these members of various religious, in specific circumstances, justify their violent acts as motivated by their religious commitments and justified by their religious traditions. Sadly, the power and pervasiveness of religious ideologies is growing under present world-historical conditions.

Instead, I want to turn our attention to the resources of Islamic scripture, theology and interpretation that encourage and enable the restraint of violence. I do this not to avoid the difficult questions, but to bring new information and new ways of knowing into the discussion. In this gathering, I assert that subtleties are important, especially when discussing religion. Though subtleties are the first casualty in any war. "When the world is viewed down the barrel of a sixteen-inch Howitzer, subtleties seem to fade." I ask us all, as an audience, to take our view away from the gun barrels, even if just for an hour. Let's see what the world looks like through other lenses. The guns will still be there when we are finished!

The Qur'an

Let us take up a new lens for seeing and imagining the world--the Qur'an. It is foundational resource for Muslim's religious commitment and the final word in their argumentation about how to live the good life. Whether one believes that it is the Speech of God, one must admit that its claim to be the Speech of God has sparked the Prophet Muhammad to lead a revolution in the seventh century. This claim inspired a community of women and men to found a new religious community that has fundamentally changed the world we live in, and continues to shape the world-view of one-fifth of the world's population. So I invite you to reflect on the Qur'an, even if just temporarily.

Muslims share with their religious cousins, the Jews and Christians, the quality of building a religion on scripture. However, the Qur'an as scriptures is quite different, in form and in theory, from the Torah or the Gospels. Muslim theologians have presented this definition of the Qur'an, consisting of five basic points:
The Qur'an is the Speech of God, uncreated and inimitable, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the Arabic language by the angel, Gabriel.

This is, of course, a creedal definition. Mohammed Arkoun works with a more phenomenological description, which is nonetheless true to Muslim practice. What we call the Qur'an is:

a collection of initially oral utterances put into writing under historical conditions that are not yet elucidated. These utterances have then been elevated, by the industry of generations of historical figures, to the status of a sacred Book. This Book preserves the transcendent Word of God and serves as the ultimate and inevitable point of reference for every act, every form of behavior and every thought of the faithful, who themselves are to be considered as communally interpreting this heritage (Arkoun, 51).

The Qur'an offers a discourse about peace that is highly nuanced and has many levels. It gives priority to discussions of peace, as both prior to violence, more valuable than violence, and ultimately more real than violence. So let us start with the Qur'an's exposition of peace in its many levels as the necessary groundwork before addressing violence.

Peace as a Quality of God

The Qur'an's exposition of peace begins with the nature of God who is immaterial, utterly transcendent, ever-present and absolutely singular. From there, the Qur'an discusses peace in a series of vertically descending levels each of which is progressively lower, more contingent on social reality, more admitting of moral ambiguity, and more limited by material conditions of being-in-the-world.
The Arabic word for peace, Salam, is not a thing, but a state of being. It evokes a range of descriptions: being whole, being secure, being safe, being in harmony, being unthreatened, free of disruption, fragmentation or alienation. Being at peace, then, is antithetical to being effected by violence (either as the perpetrator of acts that disrupt and alienate others, or as the victim of such acts). Let's start at the top, where the Qur'an insists on pulling us. At the most transcendent level, God is Peace:

The God is the One, except for whom there is no other god, the One who Owns, the One Sanctified, the One at Peace (Qur'an 59:23).

The God, Allah, is the One who owns everything disqualifying all other beings from owning anything in an independent way (owning wealth, owning the means to power, owning status, owning their own qualities, owning an independent and self-sustaining being). The God, Allah, is the One Sanctified and kept Holy beyond the clinging grasp of other beings. The God, Allah, is the One at Peace who is whole, secure, not affected by any division, disharmony, disruption or alienation."The One who is Peace" is the supreme use of the word "peace" in the Qur'an. It is one of the qualities of God, sometimes called God's Names: "To God belong the beautiful qualities so invoke God by these qualities" (Qur'an 7:180).

These qualities bridge the distance between the incorporeal being and our marvelous but limited powers of reason and imagination. They give us positive knowledge about the nature of God, who is otherwise beyond our ability to delimit or conceptualize. They give us the means to invoke and call upon the One God in prayer, petition or meditation. As in the example of the Prophet Muhammad's prayer, embodied in musical form in the Qawwali devotional chant (in a startling eleven-beat cycle) of Amir Khusro:

Allahuma anta al-Salam wa minka al-Salam wa ilayka tarji`u al-Salam
Dearest Allah you are Peace and from you comes Peace and Peace is returning back to you.Peace in the Speech of God

This absolutely singular God (beyond time, space, materiality and conception) is the One at Peace, from whom there comes peace. This is the next lower level. This is the God who speaks and whose speech resonates in the creation of all things. All things are created through the speech of Allah and inspired with the breath of Allah. If Allah decrees that something happen Allah says 'Be!' And it is. Allah is the Speaking and the Speech.
If Allah's absolute singularity (that is incomparable and transcendent generates) difference from Christian theology, Allah's quality of being Speech and whose Speech is the Spirit of all things creates a bridge with Christian theology. Of the many things that Allah creates by speaking is Peace: "Salam Qawl min Rabb Rahim.
Peace a word from a Compassionate Lord" (Qur'an 36:58). Peace here is a word of greeting, welcoming one into a state of intimacy and harmony. The closest one can come to the God, asserts the Qur'an, is in a time beyond time and a place beyond place: paradise called Dar al-Salam." Peace, a word from a Compassionate Lord" is a verse that completes the Qur'an's most moving description of the soul, departing from this routine world and passing over into the next world. "Peace" is the greeting that brings the soul over that threshold, showing that the soul is pleasing to God and is content with God. From being a description of the Divine essence, Peace becomes a description of that eschatological moment when the soul leaves all ambiguity and discord, has passed through suffering and judgement, and becomes whole in intimacy with God.

And the trumpet will be blown and suddenly from their tombs they rush forth to their Lord
They call out, 'Woe unto us! Who has raised us up out of our resting places?"
'This is what the Compassionate one has promised and true was the word of the Messenger
Even with a single blast and they are gathered all together before us.
On that day, no person will be wronged, but each will be repaid only for what they have done
On that day, the companions of the garden will be engrossed in bliss
They and their partners, under cool shade, in comfort reclining
They will have fruit and whatever they might call for
'Peace,' a word from a Compassionate Lord (Qur'an 36: 51-58).

This is a sequence of verses recited in funerals to bless the dead and ease the grief of those who remain. Qur'an calls this placeless place, paradise, "The Abode of Peace." Most of the incidents of the word Salam, Peace, in the Qur'an are descriptions of paradise. Peace is the word that ushers souls into that state. Peace be upon you is what is pronounced to souls who enter there: "Enter with Peace and remain forever beyond time" (Qur'an 50:34).

But "The Abode of Peace" is not just in the next life. If can be, in less absolute way, the state of people here on earth, if they find a way to live in accord with the will of God and in wholesomeness. Our view descends with this verse from the heavens to the earth, like the rain it invokes.

Allah it is who makes your way easy on sea and on land.
Imagine that you are the people traveling by boat
We make it move for them with a wholesome wind
Then people are overjoyed with the wind
Until we send a storm upon them
And the waves overwhelm them from every side
And they feel themselves surrounded by peril
Then they call on Allah
Purifying for Allah their sense of moral duty
Imploring, "Save us from this so that we might be sincerely thankful!"
Yet when we deliver them from danger
They covet the earth in ways to which they have no right.
Oh you people, you covet and crave to the detriment of your own souls!
You have a little time to enjoy the life of this world
Then inevitably to Us do you return
Then We will inform you of the consequence of everything you have done.
The life of this world is like the water
We cause it to rain down from the sky
And it mixes with the soil
And compounds in the plants that grow from the soil
From which the people eat and their animals too
Until the earth displays its rich ornamentation
And appears beautiful
And the people of the earth think they have full power over it.
Then our command comes to the earth
By night or by day
And we make the earth dry up and wither
As if yesterday's plenty had never been enriched.
In this way we make clear our signs to the people
Who consider carefully and think profoundly.
Allah calls people to the Abode of Peace
And guides whomever Allah wills to a straight path.
To those who cultivate good deeds will come
A beautiful condition and even more,
Their faces will never be overcome with abjection
Nor overshadowed with darkness.
Those are the companions of paradise
They will abide there beyond time (Qur'an 36: 51-58).

So being at peace is a state in this earthly life as well as a state of being in the next life after resurrection and judgement. More specifically, being at peace in this life is a condition for being granted a more absolute, unconditioned state of peace after death. Yet, this world is dangerous, constantly changing under foot, threatening to break up our sense of security and wholeness with forces of disruption. The worst force of disruption is greed, covetous and egoistic self-aggrandizement. These lead us to claim more than we have a right to, to claim to be more than we are. To claim power that is not ours, wealth that has been entrusted to us to share; and in overstepping our bounds, we split ourselves, fragment our concentration, sully our sincerity, and step into the realm of alienation. This is the opposite of being at peace, and this is the origin of suffering, pain and violence.

Peace as a condition of people
There are people in this world who manage to keep themselves free of such alienation. The Qur'an continually pronounces "Peace be upon" the prophets. In one chapter, the Qur'an intones "Peace be upon Noah… Peace be upon Abraham…Peace be upon Moses and Aaron…Peace be upon the family of Ya Sin [Muhammad]…and Peace be upon all the Prophetic messengers." In another chapter about the nativity of Jesus, the Qur'an blesses John the Baptist "Peace be upon him the moment of his birth and the moment of his dying and the moment when he is raised again alive." Soon after the Qur'an reports that Jesus said:

'Indeed I am a servant of Allah
Who gave me the Message and made me a Prophet.
And made me blessed where I might be,
And entrusted me to establish prayer
And encourage others to give of their wealth
As long as I may live.
And enjoined me to be loving with my mother
not an overweening tyrant
and therefore to suffer miserably.
So Peace be upon me the moment I was born
And the moment I pass away
And the moment I am raise up again alive.'
That is Jesus the son of Mary
A word of truth
about which they dispute (Qur'an 19:30-34).

In response to this revelation that all the prophets are kept in a state of being at peace, Muslims devotionally say "Peace be upon them" when mentioning any of the prophets in writing or speaking.
What is the significance of the Prophets being kept in a state of being at peace? We have seen that the next life in paradise, that the Qur'an urges us to imagine vividly, is one of being at peace: in the sense of being made whole, kept safe, enjoying security, and protected from suffering. However, the lives of the Prophets were anything but secure or safe! "Never was there a Prophet accepted by his people" says the Qur'an, and tells of their trials, their exiles, their suffering rejection and even oppression.
For us in this world of obstacles, discord and alienation, then, peace is not the same as tranquility. Peace is only achieved through struggle and endurance with the Prophets as our guides. At this more bewildering level of reality, the Qur'an attaches "Peace" to the word "Paths."

There has come to you from Allah a bright light and a clear Message
By which Allah leads those who follow the way pleasing to Allah,
Leads them along the paths of peace,
Leads them from darkness into the light as Allah wills,
And guides them to a straight path (Qur'an 5:17-18).

The Qur'an offers the example of Abraham who came into conflict with his entire tribe when he rejected the worship of their idols. He even lost the acceptance of his father, who repudiated his son's warning, refused to turn away from his idols, and even threatened to kill his son by stoning. In an attempt to lessen the intensity of the conflict, Abraham said, "Peace be upon you. I will pray that my Lord might forgive you, for the Lord has been most gracious to me" (Qur'an 19:47). Muhammad saw himself as following in the footsteps of Abraham. When he was repudiated by his own Arab neighbors and family in Mecca, the Qur'an advised him "Allah acknowledges the Prophet's cry, 'Oh my Lord, truly these are a people who don't have faith!' So do not engage them and say "Peace!" In the future they will surely know the truth" (Qur'an 43:88-89).

Peace as a goal in struggle and conflict
Here we descend a step lower and closer to our mundane difficulties in life. It is not just the Prophets who say "Peace" to those who are aggressive in rejecting them or threaten their wellbeing. It is the ordinary believers who follow the teachings of the Prophets who also must do the same. In praising some early Muslims who acted righteously, the Qur'an says:

Twice will be their reward be given to them
For what they have endured with suffering
For they turn away evil with doing good
And they spend in charity from what we have provided for them
And when they hear boastful talk they refuse to engage it
Saying 'to us our deeds and to you your deeds.
Peace be unto you--
We don't desire the headstrong and ignorant' (Qur'an 28:54-55).

Here is where Islam as a religious path comes into the account. "Islam" is not essentially the name of a religion, at least not as it is used in the Qur'an. Islam is a verbal noun indicating an abstraction of an action. Islam is what one does in order to come into a state of Salam: being at peace, wholeness and accord. You can think of it as a range of actions through which one can make peace with God, be at peace with oneself, and live in peace with one's neighbors. Muslim means one who enacts such actions. The common translation of Islam into English as "surrender" is rather distorted. Surrender only makes sense in regard to making peace with a higher power, God.
In this example, peace is not a purely existential condition of being whole and in harmony within one's own soul. Rather, it is an element of an outward struggle, in which there is manifest discord, disagreement and violence (either enacted or implied in a threat). Peace is an element of the response to violence on the part of those who seek to overcome alienation between people and create concord between them. This series of verses introduce two new themes in the Qur'an's teaching: "turning away evil with good" and "enduring suffering" without retaliation. Here we enter the field of ethics and political engagement that we associate with "non-violence."

Peace as a system of action

The Qur'an teaches that enduring suffering and turning away evil with good are not just useful strategies for winning friends and influencing people. These actions are the result of inner convictions and sincerity. They are a concrete demonstration of one's inner virtue and faith. When the Qur'an describes those who understand the Message that God has revealed, it says:

They are those who are endowed with insight
Who recall to mind the truth
Those who fulfill the covenant of Allah
And do not fall short of their pledge,
Those who join together those things
Which Allah commands to be joined
Who hold their Lord in awe
And fear that their account might be judged badly,
Those who patiently endure for the sake of their Lord
And establish the prayer
And spend in charity from what we provide for them
Secretly or openly,
And deflect evil action with good action.
For such people is the final Abode:
Blissful garden of paradise into which they are ushered
As well as those of their ancestors who have lived righteously
And their spouses and their offspring
With angels coming to them from every opening, saying
"Peace be unto you for what you have endured and suffered,
Now how blessed is the final Abode!" (Qur'an 13:19-24)

There are many examples in the Prophet Muhammad's life of these two principles: deflecting evil action with good action, and patiently bearing suffering in order to transform "the enemy" into "the friend." The Qur'an taught the Prophet these principles, which are linked together integrally, for him to face opponents who were trying to incite him to violence.

Never can evil be the equal of goodness
Repel evil with what is better
Then will those who felt hatred for you
Become as if they were your intimate friends.
And nobody will be granted such goodness
Except those who exercise patience and self-restraint--
None but persons granted the greatest gift (Qur'an 41:34-35).

As long as the Muslims stayed in Mecca, surrounded by Arabs of the Quraysh tribe who rejected their new religious practices and oppressed them, they had to practice restraint: patient endurance of insult, incitement and ostracism. This led the Prophet and some of his closest followers, like Ali and Abu Bakr, to develop inner moral strength and wisdom. Companions of the Prophet developed this moral virtue by enduring attack and restraining their egoistic response; later Muslims, specifically those engaged in Sufism, cultivated the same virtues through ascetic renunciation, social service, or ecstatic love.

The goal of the Prophet and his early followers was not the elimination of enemies, but the conversion of enemies into neighbors or, possibly, members of their own community. Vulnerable members of the Muslim community were attacked or tortured. Those with families to protect them were not attacked, but were boycotted by the Meccans, who would not protect them, help them, trade with them, marry them, share water with them or even speak with them. In a place like Mecca that depended on long-distance trade and was surrounded by hostile warring tribes, this kind of boycott was akin to a death sentence by attrition rather than by assault. The Muslims lived under this boycott for three years, during which they were reduced to eating a broth made of scraps of old leather that had been boiled. The boycott was to be lift only when they surrendered Muhammad to be killed.

Fighting in the Qur'an

I mention this to place in context the history of the early Muslim community. This history is crucial to know if one is to look at later verses from the Qur'an. The Qur'an does discuss fighting. Such verses can be taken out of context, and have routinely been taken out of context. They have been quoted selectively both by hostile Western critics (from Medieval crusader polemics to Billy Graham's son Franklin and the Southern Baptist convention) and by some Muslims (from Medieval rulers and jurists who wished to justify imperial expansion to contemporary Fundamentalist leaders). It is imperative for us to read the verses that discuss, in very practical terms, the conduct of fighting. But it is equally imperative to read these verses in the balance of other verses urging endurance of suffering, finding means of doing good that eliminates the conditions that lead to fighting and renouncing the right of retaliation and vengeance. It is my contention that the verses commanding restraint of violence and urging one to deflect evil by doing good are general commands, while those verses describing fighting, condoning fighting or even commanding fighting are specific and limited to certain conditions. To read the verses about fighting as general, universal and overriding other verses is a distortion of the Qur'an and a serious misreading of the Prophet's own life.

Sohail Hashmi should be our guide on this difficult project. He is a professor of International Relations at Mount Holyoke College and is the leading scholar on Islamic ethics involving war and conflict resolution. He summarizes the Qur'an's attitude toward war as "an idealistic realism." In explanation, he writes that "human existence is characterized neither by incessant warfare nor by real peace, but by a continuous tension between the two…The unending human challenge is jihad fi sabil Allah (struggle in the way of God) to mitigate the possibility of war and to strengthen the grounds for peace" (Hashmi, 199).To understand the Qur'an's proclamations about violence and fighting, we need to place them in the framework of the early Muslim community. He further notes the importance of this endurance of the boycott in Islamic ethics:

Jihad in this extended period of the Prophet's life [the 13 years he preached in Mecca] meant non-violent resistance. For potential Muslim nonviolent activists, there are many lessons to be learned from the Prophet's decisions during these years. But regrettably, the Meccan period has received scant attention, either from Muslim activists or from jurists, historians, and moralists (Hashmi, 202).

After the boycott in Mecca, the Muslims knew that they had to move. After the Prophet was invited to Medina as a neutral arbitrator of tribal disputes. The Arab tribes there accepted Islam as a way to overcome their destructive feuds that had broken out into warfare. They accepted Muhammad as their Prophet. The Jewish tribes of Medina also accepted Muhammad, not as their Prophet, but as their civic leader, signing a pact of mutual defense and an agreement not to enter into allegiance with outside tribes, especially the hostile Quraysh in Mecca. This pact, called by historians The Constitution of Medina, was a revolutionary civic compact, the first republic which bound explicitly multi-religious communities into civic accord. Agreement to this Constitution marks the real beginning of the Muslim community and the year 1 in the Islamic calendar. In this new environment, the new religion grew into a small but dynamic community.

But the Quraysh in Mecca would not let the experiment prosper. They attacked Medina with an overwhelming force, with an element of surprise by attacking during on the sacred months when fighting among the Arabs was forbidden. Sometime during the first year in Medina, the Qur'an gave Muslims the permission to fight, under explicit conditions:

Permission [to fight] is given to those against whom war is being wrongfully waged, and verily, God has indeed the power to succor them, those who have been driven from their homes against all right, for no other reason than their saying 'Our Lord is the one God, Allah!' For, if Allah had not enabled people to defend themselves against one another, monasteries and churches and synagogues and mosques--in all of which Allah's name is abundantly extolled--would surely have been destroyed( Qur'an 22:29-40).

This is permission to fight with violence if one is wrongfully attacked. The fighting is for the purpose of defense. The definition of "wrongful attack" is religious persecution, leading to oppression that drives people from their homes and routine lives in their former communities. The Qur'an also cautions Muslims not to use this permission as license, and to exercise the utmost restraint and respect, knowing that the goal is never defeating the enemy but creating a harmonious environment:

Repaying evil with evil is an evil similar to it. Hence, whoever pardons [the enemy] and makes peace, his reward rests with Allah. For verily Allah does not love evildoers. Yet, as for those who defend themselves after having been wronged, deserve no blame whatever. Blame belongs to those who oppress [other] people and behave beyond all bounds on the earth, offending against all right. For such people is grievous suffering in store! But if one is patient in adversity and forgives, this is indeed the best resolution of affairs (Qur'an 42:40-43).

The two largest battles that the Muslims fought under the leadership of Muhammad were to defend Medina. Meccan Arab armies had approached the city, and the fighting took place directly outside the perimeter of the city. The goal was to deflect the attack, not to rout the enemy. The Qur'an explained the justification of fighting by saying:" Tumult and oppression are worse than fighting and killing" (Qur'an 2:217). The Prophet taught his followers that, in these conflicts with the Meccan Arabs who rejected the Muslims, fighting was permissible but only as a last resort, only for defense, and always in the interests of concluding a peace treaty quickly. There are numerous examples of the Prophet urging the use of non-violent means to avert hostilities or to call off an armed engagement before necessary in order to create a truce. He did this often against the advice of his closest companions, who believed more than Muhammad did in the Muslims right to fight.

The struggle with Meccan Arabs dragged on, even after their two defeats, creating a more complex situation with greater moral ambiguity. Unable to attack Medina directly, the leaders of Mecca tempted some members of the Medina to betray the terms of the Constitution. Two Jewish tribes' leaders conspired with the Meccans to undermine Muhammad, leading to warfare inside Medina. In this context comes one verse of the Qur'an, which is most disturbing if read out of its immediate historical context:

Fight against those who, despite having been given revelation before--do not believe in God nor the last day and do not consider forbidden that which God and God's Messenger have forbidden, and do not follow the religion of truth. Fight them until they pay the civic tax with a willing hand, having been subdued (Qur'an 9:29).

This verse commands the Muslims to fight against those Jewish tribes who had betrayed the constitution, which was both a civic and a religious agreement bonding them into one community with the Muslims. Read out of context, it could be interpreted as a general and universal call to fight and subdue all Jews, Christians and religious others (who had been granted revealed scriptures in earlier times). Such a reading goes beyond the bounds of the Prophet's own example.

After military assaults failed to deter the Muslims in Medina, the Meccan Arabs sought to exclude them from making the pilgrimage to the Ka`aba, which was traditionally open to all Arabs from any tribe, during a sacred month in which fighting was banned while devotion and trade were encouraged. With an army, the Meccans forbade the Muslim Arabs from taking part in this tradition, but rather than fight, the Prophet agreed to a ten-year truce, the Truce of Hudaybiyya. His companions hotly criticized him for such restraint and acceptance of apparent humiliation. However, this truce stipulated that any tribe wanting to convert to Islam and join the Muslims in Medina would be allowed to do so without interference or coercion from Mecca. This truce proved to be a great boon to the Muslims, as more and more Arab tribes joined Islam, either as active religious participants or as skeptical allies. Seeing their own defeat imminent through this peaceful situation, the Meccan elites broke the truce by attacking the Muslims again, during the four sacred months in which fighting was customarily suspended. The Muslims accepted that this meant a total war. The Qur'an, in this situation, modified its permission to fight into a command to fight:

When the sacred months are over, fight and slay the polytheist Arabs wherever you find them. Seize them and beleaguer them and lie in wait for them with every stratagem…But if one of the polytheist Arabs asks for asylum, grant it to him so that he may hear the Word of God, and then escort him to where he can be secure. This is because they are a people without knowledge (Qur'an 9:5).

Again, read without its historical context, this verse could be interpreted as a blanket justification of warfare, without limits and without restraint, against any who do not believe in One God. However, the Prophet's own example showed that this was not the goal.

Keeping Combat in Context

This short period of total warfare resulted in the Muslim armed forces approaching Mecca for the first time. The leaders of the Meccan Arabs surrendered the city rather than confront the Muslim force that outnumbered them. The Prophet promised to safeguard the lives and property of those who surrendered and stayed in designated places of security. After securing the city and clearing the Ka`aba of idols, the Prophet pronounced a general amnesty that included even those who had been the leaders of military campaigns against him. Both the Qur'an and the Prophet distinguished between jihad (struggle) and qital (fighting with weapons and killing). Even in situations of fighting and killing, the Prophet upheld principles: only fighting with combatants (adult men and not women, children, slaves, or religious specialists like monks), using weapons that can be controlled and not weapons of massive destruction like fire, not destroying means of livelihood like flocks, fields, orchards or wells. The Prophet's immediate successor, Abu Bakr, gave those fighting ten commandments:

Do not betray your oaths. Do not act disloyally. Do not act neglectfully. Do not mutilate. Do not kill little children or old men or women. Do not cut off the heads of palm trees or burn them. Do not cut down fruit trees. Do not slaughter livestock except for food. You will pass people who have devoted their lives to worship in cloisters and monasteries, so do not disturb them and their devotions. You will come upon people offering you food, so if you eat any of it mention the name of God over it (Hashmi, 211).

So how do we assess the importance of these Qur'anic verses that discuss, in some detail, the conduct and justification of fighting and killing? At the most general level, we can conclude that the Qur'an sees oppression and discord as more odious than killing. Muslims must do everything in their power to prevent oppression and rectify discord, and fighting (with or without killing) cannot be ruled out categorically. More specifically, the Qur'an urges Muslims to have the courage to face combat and be willing to die, if the situation pushes them to that extreme. Sohail Hashmi has assessed these verses "undermine the possibility of an Islamic pacifism…some types of war are permissible--indeed required by God" (Hashmi, 199).

I agree that "Islamic pacifism" is impossible, if by pacifism one means the absolute and categorical refusal to engage in violent confrontation in any circumstance. The Prophet's own example would seem to dismiss this possibility. However, I think Hashmi forecloses the idea of Islamic non-violence too quickly, by dismissing the ideal of "pacifism." I would argue that the Islamic ethical ideal is not pacifism but the "Prophetic restraint of violence." If one took seriously the constraints on violence taught by the Prophet, one could not engage in anything remotely resembling modern warfare with its long-distance reach, massive destruction, and technological dehumanization of the opponent. In this view, certain kinds of violence would be absolutely beyond bounds in this ethic based on Islamic scripture. Killing with nuclear, chemical, biological weapons would be totally forbidden. Boycotts that ruin whole economies or starve populations would be forbidden. Bombs, mines or guns that kill widely and indiscriminately would be forbidden. Warfare as we know it, from this perspective, would be forbidden by Islamic teachings. Following these teachings scrupulously would be functional pacifism through the "restraint of violence" rather than absolute pacifism.

Sohail Hashmi reads the Qur'an's verses about violence as dismissing the notion of Islamic pacifism. However, with the ideal of "restraint of violence" in mind, one can insist that these verses be read within the precise historical context of their revelation. The fighting that the Qur'an justifies is limited to certain specific circumstances. It justifies fighting against particular Jewish tribes who had betrayed a compact, to the limit that they would be subdued and return to the compact to which they had independently agreed. It also justifies fighting against the polytheist Arabs [Mushrikun] who had demonstrated their persistent intent on destroying the Muslim community over a thirteen year period.The Qur'an does not specify exactly which Arabs are intended by the term "Mushrikun" but the historical context is clear: it means the Quraysh tribe which constituted the ruling class of Mecca, their clients in other tribes and their allies among the desert Bedouin. Under the principle of the "restraint of violence," one can argue that extending the narrow scope of these Qur'anic permission to fight goes against the over-all thrust of the Qur'an itself. The Qur'anic teaching to oppose oppression and fight in self-defense is stated in more universal terms. The permission and command to wage aggressive war is limited by historical conditions, which were fulfilled during the surrender of Mecca in the eighth century.

Sohail Hashmi reads the Qur'an's verses about violence as dismissing "pacifism." This complies with the strategy of Muslim jurists and Qur'an interpreters in the medieval period. They have systematically read these verses out of context, in order to justify wars of territorial expansion. Some even argued that the verses revealed later "abrogated" verse revealed earlier. Thus verses urging the restraint of violence (the endurance of suffering without retribution and the deflection of evil by doing good) are not longer in legal effect after the revelation of verses sanctioning violence. In this way, they have made conditioned permission and circumstantial imperative to be a general and universal command. They gave license to rulers and dynastic kings to pursue territorial expansion in the name of jihad.

Even then, the jurists discussed in great detail the limitations on grounds and conditions for waging war. Few however questioned the Qur'anic sanction for later wars waged by Muslim rulers, since they themselves benefited economically and politically by such expansion. Indeed, they took it for granted (the way they took for granted the legality of slavery and the naturalness of patriarchy). However, just because early Muslims or Medieval exegetes took something for granted does not mean that it was intended by the Qur'an or is justified by the Qur'an. Current world conditions give us the opportunity to now "think the unthought."

The Practice of Non-Violence Among Muslims

In the twentieth century, we have examples of Muslim leaders who did not take for granted that Islam sanctioned war or legitimated violence in general. In fact, we have examples of Muslim leaders who advocated non-violent social as the only way to live up to the Prophet Muhammad's example in the modern world order.
Contemporary discussion of non-violent resistance as an instrument of social change revolves around Gandhi. Most Americans jump directly from Gandhi to Martin Luther King in North America, and assume that Malcolm X's rhetorical opposition to Dr. King represents the "Islamic position." This position was one of criticism and denial, in which Malcolm X upheld the rights of Blacks in the USA (whether Muslim or not) to resort to violence against racial oppression.

This American discussion of non-violence and Islam is very narrow. We generally ignore the significant fact that Gandhi had close colleagues in India who were Muslim community leaders. These South Asian Muslims were more than mere helpers or hangers-on. They were integral to Gandhi's message that non-violence was not just anti-colonial opposition, but was also a program of national integration that could, potentially limit sectarian and communal tensions. These Muslim leaders deepened Gandhi's thoughts about non-violence as a multi-religious endeavor. Like Gandhi himself, they struggled to highlight the resources in their own religious tradition that could build non-violent social movements, while wrestling to reveal and repudiate the forces of violence inherent in those traditions. Gandhi recognized that Hinduism, no less than Islam, has resources for both violent and non-violent activism.Who were these Muslim personalities and what role did they play? Journalists have complained since September 11 that "there is no Muslim Gandhi." This complaint comes from our ignorance of these important personalities, not from any reputed lack in the Islamic tradition.

Abd al-Ghaffar Khan

Abdul Ghaffar"Badshah" Khan is an amazing Muslim reformer, revivalist and moral exemplar. I am shocked that more people have not heard of him or his life of struggle to achieve justice for those he saw as "the dispossessed and down-trodden." He was born in the 1890s near Peshawar, the city that lies in the borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. At that time, it was the base of the British Imperial army, from where they controlled the North West Frontier Province and guarded the gates of British colonial India. He came from a long line of well-off Pakhtun farmers. But their good fortune waned when their province became the military garrison of British India. His great grandfather had been sentenced to death by the British for participating in a mass revolt against their rule. However, armed revolts were relatively easy for the British imperial army to counter and subdue.

Abdul Ghaffar knew that ideas and ideals were not so easy to subdue. He pursued several career tracts before finding his calling. Moved by religion and having learned the Qur'an in his boyhood, he decided to follow a theological education in Arabic, but found traditional madrasas stifling and the liberal Muslim university at Aligarh too pro British. In 1910 he decided that professional life was not for him. Returning to his home province, he decided to open a nationalist school for the uneducated Pakhtuns who were his neighbors. His act was in service to his people, but was seen as politically provocative by the British colonial administration.
Abdul Ghaffar Khan said, "I am not a speaker. I do not know how to talk but I know how to act" (Tendulkar, 84). He was never a systematic theologian, but his acts were consistent and profound, marking the outlines for a Islamic theology of non-violence.

By 1914, Abdul Ghaffar Khan saw his schools educational centers for his people. He saw his modern schools as centers of nationalist and progressive politics. During WWI, the British passed a series of harsh anti-sedition laws, against which progressive leaders both Hindu and Muslim protested. Abdul Ghaffar and his apolitical father were thrown into prison, along with many others. From then on, his mission was not just education and social reform in his local community but also freedom from imperial British control.Abdul Ghaffar Khan began his own journal, the Pakhtun, the first political journal in the Pashto language. It reveals his inspiring writing but also his simplification of Islamic theology. From an article in the Journal, Pakhtun (authored anonymously, but reflecting the words of Abdul Ghaffar Khan):

One wonders why a Muslim and above all a Pakhtun is leading a life of degradation and humiliation in comparison to people of other nations…Allah has promised that whosoever possesses faith and acts will be entitled to His blessings. We must examine why we are downtrodden, why we lag behind other nations. We must search within, in the light of Islamic teachings. God has said: 'Don't lie, don't slay, don't steal, don't strike, don't practice tyranny, don't grab others' property, do good, don't do evil, keep your body, your clothes and your dwelling clean. Do not treat others in a way you do not like to be treated. Perform such acts and adopt such attitudes toward others that you would like to adopted toward you. These are the Islamic laws and orders which the Koran commendsIt is our misfortune that we are fully aware of the Islamic laws and the commandments of the Almighty (Tendulkar, 53).

In 1929, Abdul Ghaffar Khan created a non-violent social movement called the Khudai Khitmatgar movement, “The Servants of God.” . The oath to join the movement reveals is force and character:

I am a Khudai Khidmatgar, a servant of God. As God needs no service I shall serve Hi m by serving His creatures selflessly. I shall never use violence. I shall not retaliate or take revenge. I shall forgive anyone who indulges in oppression and excesses against me. I shall not be a part to any intrigue, family feuds and enmity. I shall treat every Pakhtun as my brother and comrade. I shall give up evil customs and practices. I shall lead a simple life, do good and refrain from wrong-doing. I shall develop good character and cultivate good habits. I shall be fearless and prepared for any sacrifice (Tendulkar, 59).

The movement was based on the idea that "the fear of God banishes all fear." The men who joined this movement wore red and the women wore black. They maintained order at public meetings and political rallies. They helped villagers in need and to build schools. They drilled regularly and took long marches in military fashion. They bore no arms and carried no weapons. Their claim was that Islamic resurgence was integrally linked to anti-colonial liberation and inter-religious harmony. In 1931, Abdul Ghaffar Khan came to a village along with a party of Khudai Khidmatgars and gave this speech:

The object of coming to your village is to ask your people who are asleep, negligent and unaware of the world, to wake up. Look at your condition: old rags and naked children. Your plight is such because you are ignorant about your own religion. These youths who have worn red clothes and have come from different places want to serve you, the creatures of God. And to serve the creatures of God is to serve God. The Prophet has said that the most pious and God-fearing youth is he who brings comfort to the creatures of God. Remember this also, that the Muslims alone are not the creatures of God. The Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Christians and Parsis, in short, all the creatures that live in this world, are the creatures of God. The mission of the Khudai Khidmatgars is to give comfort to all creatures of God. They are given training and take an oath to this effect. Their object is to rescue the oppressed from the tyrant. They would stand against a tyrant, whether he is a Hindu, Muslim or Englishman. If today they are against the Englishman, it is because they are the tyrants and we are the oppressed. The Khudai Khidmatgars exercise patience. If somebody abuses them, they do not abuse him in return They do not retaliate or take revenge. Our trust is in God and God will take our revenge…I have not yet told you how to turn out an Englishman, who is oppressing us all. I am going to give you such a weapon that the police and the army will not be able to stand against it. It is the weapon of the Prophet, but you are not aware of it. That weapon is patience and righteousness. No power on earth can stand against it. God has he Muslims exercised patience and the tyrants were defeated. When you go back to your villages and visit your homes, tell your brethren that there is any army of God and its weapon is patience. Ask your brethren to join the army of God. If you join it, the Europeans will try to frighten you, but you should not be frightened of them (Tendulkar, 129).

In retaliation to such firebrand speeches, the British press lampooned and denounced Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Not three weeks later, The Daily Express in London ran a story entitled, Holy War Threat in India started by Abdul Ghaffar Khan with the Help of the Red Shirts. "To the ever-increasing army of Ghaffar Khan, he is not merely the dictator wearing the martyr's halo, but the God-sent liberator of Islam." The article described him as "a born publicist, an experienced blusterer, and an unequalled opportunist." Other British papers began to allege that the "Red Shirts" were allied to communist Soviet Russia and that Muslims were being armed with Russian weapons."

A year later, marital law was declared in the NWFP Province, British military occupied the main towns and imposed a curfew, and Abdul Ghaffar Khan was the first person arrested and held for three years. When he was released from prison, he was exiled from his province. But Abdul Ghaffar Khan always argued that his movement was inspired by and disciplined in non-violence:

To gain independence two types of movements were launched in our province: violent and non-violent. The violent movement was the first started, and then after three or four decades the non-violent movement was launched in 1929. The British crushed the violent movement in no time, but the non-violent movement, in spite of intense repression, flourished. The violent movement engendered fear and cowardice in the people and made them morally weak and faint-hearted. The non-violent movement removed fear from the hearts of Pakhtuns and made them brave and raised their morale. The violent movement created hatred in the hearts of the people against violence. But the non-violent movement won love, affection and sympathy of the people. It generated in the Pakhtuns the spirit of patriotism and brotherhood and brought about a great revolution in their poetry, literature and way of living. In short, violence is hatred and non-violence is love. If a Britisher was killed, not only the culprit was punished but the whole village and the entire region suffered for it. The people held the violence and its doer responsible for repression. In the non-violent movement we courted self-suffering and the community did not suffer but benefited. Thus it won love and sympathy of the people…The British considered a non-violent Pathan more dangerous than a violent Pathan, and that is why in 1932 they inflicted on them heinous acts to goad them to violence. But they failed (Tendulkar, 161).

They failed because of the outer simplicity of the movement and its inner moral dynamism. with each cadre run locally. Their distinctive dress was home-spun and dyed red with pine-bark. When leaders were arrested, new leaders could easily set into their place. The frustrated British were forced to publicly humiliate and torture the rank-and-file members to try to subdue the movement. British forces tried stripping members of their clothes in public, beating them, twisting of testicles in loops of rope until unconsciousness, throwing people in to sewage pits or lakes in freezing weather. Many were simply shot. Leaders were jailed and kept in solitary confinement.
Abdul Ghaffar Khan recognized in Gandhi a kindred spirit. Gandhi said, "It is the essence of non-violence that we give the same credit to the whole of mankind that we claim for ourselves" (Tendulkar, 319). It is as if Abdul Ghaffar Khan heard in these words an echo of the Qur'an:

Listen you people!
Revere your nurturing Lord who created you all from a single self
And created from that self its partner
Then multiplied from the two of them countless men and women.
Revere your Lord through whom you hold each accountable to each
And hold each accountable to the wombs that bore you
For Allah is constantly watching over you (Qur’an 4:1).

This account of creation links an individual to all others, proclaiming all people to exist in a network that is cosmic, biological and moral. It leads to the ethical injunction not to harm each other unjustly, as made imperative by the Qur'an after recounting Cain's murder of Abel:

Whoever kills a single person
who has not murdered another
or spread corruption in the earth
it is as it he had killed all of the people.
And whoever saves the life of a single person
it is as if he had saved the life of all the people (Qur’an 5:35).

Just as Gandhi reinterpreted Hinduism to be based on non-violent ahimsa, so Abdul Ghaffar Khan reinterpreted his Islam to be based on the "restraint of violence." For both reformers, systematic non-violent social transformation was a matter of faith. Abdul Ghaffar Khan explained that:

My non-violence has almost become a matter of faith with me. I believed in Gandhiji's ahimsa long before. But the unparalleled success of the experiment in my province has made me a confirmed champion of non-violence…Surely there is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pathan like me subscribing to this creed. It is not a new creed. It was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the Prophet, all the time he was in Mecca. And it has since been followed by all those who wanted to throw off the oppressor's yoke. But we had so far forgotten it that when Mahatma Gandhi placed it before us, we thought that he was sponsoring a new creed or a novel weapon (Tendulkar, 93-94).

This non-violence was not to be performed out of weakness and fear. It was not tranquility or inaction.

The Prophet teaches us to help the oppressed people and destroy the tyrants. The Muslims should help the oppressed people, if they want to lead an honorable life in this world. You may have read the story of the Israelites and the Prophet Moses in the Koran. When Prophet Moses exhorted the Israelites to come forward and oppose the tyrant, they replied that they were weak and could not face the enemy. The result was that for forty years they had to live under slavery. It was due to their lethargy and lack of faith in God. Islam teaches us the sovereignty of God over the world…If you want to live in this world with honor, then wake up and organize your community. You should help your brothers and remove the tyrant government, which is dominating over us all (Tendulkar 86).

His advocacy of non-violence was intensely political. In attempting to drive out the British and establish a free and independent India, Abdul Ghaffar Khan argued that religion should unite all Indian in their diversity, rather than drive them apart into exclusive and chauvinistic communities. He opposed communalist interpretations of religion.

I do not measure the strength of a religion by counting heads. For what is faith until it is expressed in one's life? It is my inmost conviction that Islam is amal, yakeen, muhabbat--right conduct, faith and love--and without these one calling himself a Muslim is like a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. The Holy Koran makes it absolutely clear that faith in one God without a second and good works are enough to secure a man salvation (Tendulkar, 48).

Despite opposition from communalist Muslims, Abdul Ghaffar Khan argued that such a universal conception of Islam was truer to the Qur'anic message. It was also necessary for political liberation. His alliance with Gandhi's Indian Congress Party, he argued, was strategic and his vision is wholly Islamic:

Only one of the two shall live here [in the North West Frontier Province] we or those Englishmen who have ruined us spiritually, morally and economically. The English too are aware of this fact. Our aim is to drive away the Britishers from this country or perish. I have not been able to find any other party except for the Congress, whose goal is to drive out the British and help the downtrodden. Our goal is also the same. You might be inclined to ask, whence I got this idea. I would tell you that you find it in your sacred book, the Holy Koran. The Prophet came forth to help the oppressed and to deliver men from slavery. Is not slavery a curse? I declare that the English are the tyrants and that the Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Parsis are the oppressed. These oppressed people have no country of their own. Their country has been taken by force and deception. Read the life of the Prophet. Turn over the pages of the Koran. We are in search of a party in cooperation with which we can destroy the oppression (Tendulkar 104).

Abdul Ghaffar was not the only Muslim to explore systematic non-violent social activism. Other Muslim leaders also cooperated with Gandhi, and the most prominent among them was Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. In many ways, the two men were a study in contrasts: Abdul Ghaffar was provincial, rugged, from the rural gentry while Azad was urban, cosmopolitan and highly educated. Both were moving public speakers, but Azad also achieved literary fame as a stylist in Urdu and theological recognition as one of the most profound modern interpreters of the Qur'an. Their approach to non-violence was also different. Abdul Ghaffar Khan opposed the violence that comes from individual egoism, while Azad opposed violence as the result of "group chauvinism."

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

Azad grew up in a religious and scholarly family. His father was a pir (or Sufi spiritual guide). After his father's death 1909, Azad renounced his inherited role in institutional Sufism in favor of journalism and activism. He moved to Calcutta and joined the activist movement against the partition of Bengal after 1905 andBritish wars against the Ottoman Empire which led to the founding of colonial regimes in Iraq and other Arab lands. He established the journals al-Hilal in 1912 and al-Balagh in 1915. Through them, Azad denounced a class of worldly Muslim scholars who cooperated with the British colonial administration. During this activist period, he also created a political cell called Jami'at Hizbullah, "The Party of God," in 1913 in Calcutta, in an effort to engage political issues through both the publicity of words and the pressure of deeds.

Revolutionary politics failed, and Azad established an "educational" institute in 1915, Dar al-Irshad, which he hoped would reform religious education, foster independent thinking, and form a foundation for political activism (Muhibbul Hasan, Islam and Indian Nationalism, 164). Through this educational institute, Azad pleaded for Muslim scholars enter into political service in the nationalist movement. But his institution building failed. His journals were censored by the British colonial state and his presses were confiscated. These political and journalistic activities landed Azad in jail by 1916.

While incarcerated, Azad had plenty of time to contemplate the Qur'an and to write. He composed his Tarjuman al-Qur'an, a Qur'an commentary and translation, that was published in 1930. During this time of writing, he turned simultaneously inward, toward community building, and also outward toward a more universal embracing of cooperation with Sikhs and Hindus. This theological inquiry meshed with his new political alliance with the Indian Congress Party. The search for a moral community was a dire need as British resistance to the nationalist struggle engendered communal rivalries. At his time, direct political action rallied on many fronts, and new leaders came to the fore. Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in 1919, and by 1920 Azad and Gandhi along with Abdul Ghaffar Khan launched the non-cooperation and the Khilafat movement. This intersection of nationalist and religious leaders marked the high point of Muslim-Hindu unity in the face of British imperialism.

In this exploration for political possibilities, Azad delved into the concept of the Qur'an as guidance. In Azad's mature vision, Divine guidance is immanent in Allah's creating and sustaining of the cosmos moment-by-moment. In the Tarjuman, Azad elevates guidance to an abstract concept that orders the whole Qur'anic scriptural revelation and, if properly acted upon, can harmonize all divergent religious communities. Azad's horizons have expanded; he sees himself not only as the spokesman for the Muslim community, but also as a leader of inter-faith peace rooted in the Qur'anic concepts of divine revelation, inspiration and continual renewal. In this way, he constructs a systematic theology that grounds Abdul Ghaffar's experiments in a sustained reading of the Qur'an.
Azad asserts that Divine Guidance is ever-present, and is given directly from God within the sociological parameters of present history. Those people are guided who struggle to make the Qur'an relevant and applicable within their immediate circumstances. This application is not manifested through literal reading, but rather comes into being through the personality of the reformer: through inner conviction, material habits, pious practices, and political positions. In other words, guidance only comes through the text of revelation when the heart is inspired directly by rububiyat and rahmat, by the Divine's transcendent absolute superiority and imminent merciful presence.

At first humankind lived a natural life. There was neither mutual rivalry among them nor enmity between one and the another…It was at a subsequent stage when they multiplied and economic pressure gave rise among them to conflict of interests resulting in the oppression of the weak that society came to be divided into groups on the basis of interests, each hating the other. The situation demanded the delivery of a message of truth and justice. It was thus that the door of prophethood or Revelation opened, and a series of prophets followed in succession to bring home to mankind the truth which they had neglected and suffered in consequence (Azad, Tarjuman al-Quran, 1:153).

The greatest evil and obstacle in path of this guidance is "group formation" or chauvinism, which leads to a degeneration of both dogma and moral actions. The Qur'an points the way to regain this unity, through reconciliation and devotion to one God, through the exercise of righteous reformers.

In the pursuit of this mission [of bringing the participants of all religious traditions back to a single Truth], the Qur'an brings to mind the falling off from truth. This falling off is in the sphere of doctrinal beliefs, as well as in that of action. Of the several forms which this has taken, the most serious to which the Qur'an draws pointed attention is the basis of religion which it styles tashayyu` [professing partisanship] or group formation...The result was that man [sic] did not lay stress on faith and action as the basis of salvation, as much as on the way one group's interest differed from that of another. That came to be the test of truth in religion and the determining factor for salvation. Exclusivism came then into vogue everywhere, denying salvation to all except those who belong to one's own group. In fact, hatred of another's religion replaced devotion to God and righteous living (Azad, Tarjuman al-Qur'an 1:162).

Those who uphold their group (whether it is a religious sect, legal school, ruling dynasty, or ethnic community), rather than enacting the Qur'anic urge toward unity and reconciliation, miss the always-extended Divine Guidance. Such groups pursue only their narrow sectarian interests, and become mired in competing interests, schemes and machinations. Ultimately they sink into the suffering of the world that they tried to escape through forming an exclusive group and asserting their claims against others through coercive power. In contrast, those who call upon their communities to respect some limits and to harmonize with other potentially competitive groups, they are rightly guided, kept flexible and fresh, and ultimately achieve some level of justice in this world and salvation in the next world.

In Azad's exposition of the Qur'an, Revelation is a single message sent at various times to diverse people through a multiplicity of languages. Revelation reminds every people to return to the root principles of their religion: to do good, prevent the self and others from doing harm, to take responsibility for one's actions, to bring oneself into a state of integrity and one's community into a state of unity and cooperative coexistence. Azad joins this concept of transcendent with the central Qur'anic injunction to activist ethics: to enjoin what is good and forbid what is evil (Qur'an 3:17). He stresses that good is signified by the term ma'ruf, which means the known, while evil is signified by the term munkir, the unacceptable. These two categories of action are distinguished by the primary guidance given by the Creator through the act of creation. Knowing what is good and what is unacceptable is the foundation for the universal din, the basic religious urge within human nature. This ethical impulse is intrinsic to human nature instilled through the very event of creation, and thus it can not be contained exclusively by a particularistic shari`ah, or possessed by a set of scriptural injunctions, or defined by legal terms and ritual customs. Thus in Azad's view, the ethical core of the Qur'an is not dependent on the evils of group formation, exclusivity and chauvinism; the Qur'an neither contradicts nor precludes the ultimate reality posited by other religious communities.

Azad describes how true religious devotion combats divisions and group-formations. The historical path of religion has passed from an originally united community, through disagreement, disunity and variation, and then moved on into the period of revelation, which lays the basis for future reconciliation and reunion.

All belonged to one order, but they have divided themselves into diverse classes--rich and poor, high and low...In such a situation, what link may be forged to set aside these distinctions and bring all mankind together once again? The Qur'an says that such a link is possible to forge and that it is a return to the devotion to one God (Azad, Tarjuman al-Qur'an, 1:183).

In Azad's theology, "return to the devotion to one God" does not mean conversion to any particular religion. It means the recognition in each person or group that others are one of the same creation, deserving of the same rights and privileges, demanding the same accountability and responsibility. The multiplicity of religious communities is a positive good, as it challenges believers to vie with each other in good deeds. He cites the Qur'an to this point:

To each among you We have proscribed a religious law and a clear way of acting. If Allah had so willed, Allah would have made you all of one community. But Allah would test you by what Allah has given to each of you groups. So rival each other in performing good deeds! To Allah will you all return. Allah alone will show you the truth in matters over which you differ and dispute (Qur'an 5:51).

Unity within diversity was what Azad saw was the sole purpose of religion, each religion in particular and religion in general.

The unity of humankind is the primary aim of religion. The message which every prophet delivered was that humankind is in reality one people and one community, and that there was but one God for all of them, and that on that account they should serve God together and live as members of one family. Such was the message which every religion delivered. But curiously the followers of each religion disregarded the message, so much so that every country, every community and every race resolved itself into a separate group and raised groupism to the position of religion...There is nothing in the Qur'an on which so great a stress is placed as on this view of life. It is repeatedly made clear that it does not favor any exclusive group religion. Conversely, it asserts that it has come to put an end to all groupism...The divine Truth, says the Qur'an, is a universal gift from God. It is not exclusive to any race or any people or any religious group. It is not exclusively delivered in any particular language. You have no doubt created for yourselves national, geographical and racial boundaries. But you cannot so divide the divine truth…Do not worship your communities, homelands, languages or your group formations. You should worship only God (Azad, Tarjuman al-Qur'an, 1:168-72).

Azad's reading of the Qur'an takes advantage of the subtleties of the Arabic language, which Azad knew well. In his exposition, as in Arabic, to worship means to serve. To worship God was to serve God through serving God's creation. His theological speculation meshed with his public service and political activism. He joined the Congress Party and rejected as idolatrous chauvinism the British notion that they had divine right to rule through their particular civilizational genius. He was Gandhi's primary mediator with the Indian Muslim community, and urged them to participate in Gandhi's non-violent activism against British rule.

Azad struggled to live out these religious ideals to forge a peaceful unity out of a belligerent diversity. He served as the elected president of the Indian Congress Party for six crucial and dangerous years, from 1939-1946. He tried to engineer a rapprochement between the Muslim League that advocated a separate nation for Muslims and the Congress which advocated a united India. In 1946, Azad suggested a federal system with a weak central government in which Muslim majority provinces would have robust autonomy. Sadly, when Nehru succeeded Azad as Congress President, he subverted this plan and repudiated the Congress's commitment to a United Federal India, called the "Cabinet Mission Plan." By discarding this plan, the Muslim League was forced to assert its demand for a separate state and communal riots broke out. At the outbreak of WWII, in 1940, Indian nationalist leaders were confronted by a conflict that revealed their different philosophies about non-violence. The British asked Indian nationalists to post-pone their drive for Indian independence in order to contribute to the defeat of Axis powers. Azad was the Congress party president and wrote:

We were affected by the world-shaking events outside. Even more disturbing were the differences among ourselves. I…sought to take India into the camp of democracies if only India were free. The only obstacle in our way was India's bondage. For Gandhiji, however, it was not so. For him, the issue was one of pacifism and not of India's freedom. I declared openly that the Indian National Congress was not a pacifist organization but one for achieving India's freedom…Gandhiji, however, would not change his view. He was convinced that India ought not to take part in the war in any circumstance. For me, non-violence was a matter of policy, not of creed. My view was that Indians had the right to take to the sword if they had no other alternative. It would, however, be nobler to achieve independence through peaceful methods, and in any case in the circumstances which obtained in the country, Gandhiji's method was right…Gandhiji's argument is irresistible. We take up arms for defense but we use them finally for aggression. This is what happened with Islam. The Prophet took up arms for sheer self-defense, but his followers used them for aggression and conquest. We realize that we cannot go full length with Gandhiji. Non-violence, however, must remain our anchor for the freedom struggle and for coping with internal disorders (Tendulkar, 463).

Azad saw non-violence as tactical not absolute. For him it was the best way to achieve independence against British domination that was based on the arrogance of assumed legitimacy and superiority. But it was not an ethical response to foreign invasion, as threatened by the Japanese, which was based on raw aggression. Most Congress Party leaders, whether Hindu, Muslim, Parsi or Sikh, agreed with Azad.

After this discussion in 1940, Gandhi resigned from leadership positions in the Congress Party because he felt that, by trying to achieve independence through pledging to help fight in WWII, the party was loosing its commitment to non-violence. Abdul Ghaffar Khan had initially sided with Azad's argument, but later sided with Gandhi and also resigned from congress leadership. He and Gandhi held up the Khudai Khidmatgar movement as the only successfully sustained example of non-violence social transformation.

Some recent resolutions of the Working Committee (of the Congress Party) indicate that they are restricting the use of non-violence to the fight for India's freedom against constituted authority [the colonial government]…I should like to make it clear that the non-violence I have believed in a and preached to my brethren of the Khudai Khidmatgars is much wider. It affects all our life and only that has permanent value…We shall never really and effectively defend ourselves except through non-violence. The Khudai Khidmatgars must, therefore, be what our name implies--servants of God and humanity--by laying down our own lives and never taking any life.
So during this crucial period leading up to independence, Azad and Abdul Ghaffar converged and then diverged. The ethical scope of their non-violence was different, though it had a common source. However, from our vantage point long after their disagreement, Azad and Abdul Ghaffar seem like complementary figures. While both combined theology and praxis, Abdul Ghaffar was always more of a grass-roots organizer and rabble-rouser while Azad was more of an eloquent statesman and systematic theologian. Azad had an easier time accommodating himself to institutional positions of authority, and served as the Education Minister in independent India. In contrast, Abdul Ghaffar considered the Pakistan government as unjust and oppressive as the British colonial government had been and could never come to terms with it.

The Indian Congress Party's goal of an integral India free of British rule did not come to pass, for complex reasons. The British tried to play Hindus off Muslims in a policy of divide-and-rule, while communalist Hindus and communalist Muslims clashed in escalating riots. Partition between Pakistan and India happened in the midst of horrific violence and displacement. Abdul Ghaffar Khan eventually reconciled to living in Pakistan, whose government ruled his province. He served briefly in the Pakistan parliament, but by demanding autonomy for each province he was soon charged with sedition and jailed. In his brief terms out of prison, he founded a new political party: the Pakistan People's Party. After more time in jail, he moved to a life in exile in Afghanistan where he died, still campaigning for human rights for his people even at the age of 95.

It might be easy to romanticize these two personalities from the era of the Indian struggle for independence. It was an era that inspired great sacrifices and noble ideals. A skeptic might argue that their non-violent activism depended on revolutionary effervescence of their times, and is therefore limited to that time. This would be, in my assessment, and under-estimation of the power of their ideas and their firm rooting in the Qur'anic scriptural discourse. Some Muslim activists are still inspired by these ideas and see themselves as perpetuating the movement initiated by Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Azad.

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

The most eloquent of these is probably Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, a Muslim journalist, theologian and activist currently living in Delhi. He is the President of the Islamic Center of New Delhi and the editor in Chief of al-Risala magazine. He writes that

The Qur'an and Hadith are opposed to this attitude of creating the "other" and constructing divisions between "us" and "them." The Qur'an says, "Call people to the Way of your Lord with wisdom and with beautiful preaching and argue with them in ways that are best (16:125)...So revolutionary is this idea, that even an enemy is to be treated as a friend. One should consider even one's enemy as a potential friend and respond to his mistreatment with goodness. Therefore, according to the Qur'an, we do not have the right to call anyone "infidel" which is the situation that emerges when the Muslims see non-Muslims a the "other." To call people "infidel" just because they do not claim to be Muslim is to violate God's injunctions (Wahiddudin Khan, Islam and Peace, 168-9).

In many ways, he not only perpetuates but also expands the ideas of past non-violent activists. He is an insightful scholar of hadith literature, and more firmly roots Muslim non-violent practice in the life story of the Prophet Muhammad than did earlier activists. From the life-story of the Prophet, Wahiduddin Khan deduces several principles of non-violent actions:

1.Begin with the Possible
2. See advantage in disadvantage
3. Change the place of action
4. Make Friends out of Enemies
5. Turn apparent weakness into effective strength
6. The power of peace is stronger than the power of violence
7. Do not think dichotomously
8. Bring the battle into one's own favorable field
9. Be a gradualist rather than a radical
10. Be a pragmatist and not an idealist (Wahiddudin Khan, Islam and Peace, 69-72).

Wahiduddin Khan also engages in a revision of the Prophet's life story, questioning the traditional Arab chronicle of battles as glorification of military strife that does not adequately reflect the principles of the Prophet. For instance, Sohail Hashmi claims that, according to traditional records, the Prophet led or authorized over 70 military encounters: pitched battles, sieges, skirmishes, or raids. Wahiduddin Khan is very skeptical of this traditional record, noting the Arab propensity to list every face-off as a "battle" even if the two sides did not actually cross swords. He notes that the Prophet led only three major battles that would quality as armed conflicts of any major importance (Badr, Uhud and Hunayn). And these major encounters usually lasted for one day. He finds that the image of Muhammad as warrior is vastly inflated, and distracts from the more real image of Muhammad as negotiator.

Bibliography

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