Jihad : Q and A: religion and war

The hardline Taleban movement have promised a jihad, or holy war, should the West attack Afghanistan.

Ruth Gledhill, The Times Religion Correspondent, discusses why most mainstream religions can justify the necessity of war.
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What are the religions that justify war?
Although war would seem to be incompatible with most religious precepts, such as the moral teachings of Christ, nearly all mainstream religions, with the notable exception of Buddhism, have evolved theologies to embrace the necessity of going to war.

In Christianity St Augustine defended war when done for the good of society and when its ultimate aim was peace. Thomas Aquinas laid down three conditions for a just war, or one in which Christians could legitimately take part: it must be on the authority of the sovereign, the cause must be just and the intentions of those who fight should be good and concerned with avoiding evil.

Is there a difference between fundamentalism and extremism?
They are examples of words which mean almost the opposite of each other, to the point where they meet.

Karen Armstrong, an author of Islamic history, says the word fundamentalism "was coined by American Protestants as a badge of pride, and cannot be usefully translated into Arabic". Fundamentalism is a religious term meaning belief in the literal truth of the Bible, or in Islam, strict observance of the Koran and Islamic law. It comes from the word fundamental, meaning the root, the basis or the original.

Extremism, by contrast, means taking something to the furthest limit or extreme. Hence it would be possible to describe a person as a fundamentalist extremist without tautology

. Such a person would be among the most dangerous of all, and this description would aptly fit the terrorists who hijacked the American airplanes.
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Osama bin Laden is said to follow Saudi Wahabism, while Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taleban, is an adherent of Pakistani Deobandi. What are these?

This week's Spectator

contains an excellent article

by Stephen Schwartz describing the Wahabi sect. "The attacks of 11 September are simply not compatible with orthodox Muslim theology, which cautions soldiers 'in the way of Allah' to fight their enemies face-to-face, without harming non-combatants, women or children," he writes.

The violent, intolerant and fanatical strain of Islam which originated in Arabia less than two centuries ago has become the official theology of the Gulf states. Schwartz compares it to the most extreme form of Protestant sectarianism. Any music except the drum is banned, and drinking and sexual transgressions are subject to severe punishment up to death. From its foundation by Ibn Abdul Wahab in the late 18th century, the sect was associated with the mass murder of all who opposed it.

The Deobandi school was founded in 1867 in Deoband with the aim of cultivating a sense of Islam in young people and countering the influence of the West. They distinguish between "revealed" knowledge and "human" knowledge, the latter being banned as not sacred. It is stridently militant and political.

Muslim leaders have criticised the BBC for referring to bin Laden as an Islamic terrorist. Why?
The Muslim Council of Britain wanted bin Laden referred to as a terrorist with no reference to his faith, because they feared a racial backlash was being provoked.

Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the council, said: "We will never accept the term Islamic terrorist. Islam does not permit such violence. The BBC should call bin Laden a terrorist, which is what he is. The BBC is not even-handed. It never refers to the IRA as a Catholic extremist organisation or IRA members as Catholic extremists."

The BBC declined to back down, nor should it. To back down could give an impression that bin Laden's motivation is not religious, when clearly it is.
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Q and A: religion and war

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• Technical Support generously provided by the makers of Good News Blog
• AI is sponsored in part by Dutch Amsterdam, Blanes Costa Brava Self Catering Apartments, and IerseBouwer.com