Post by Deoband on Oct 13, 2016 9:17:08 GMT
JIHAD - THE MOST JUST, HUMANE, AND NOBLE FORM OF WARFARE
[By a student of the Deen]
Jihad is the most just, humane and noble form of warfare.Even non-Muslims who have managed to maintain some degree of honesty and objectivity while studying the Laws of Jihad have been compelled to conclude that the 1400 year old, ancient, medieval, “backwards” Laws of Jihad are superior to modern, “enlightened”, international rules related to war.
A few such examples are cited below:
Roger C. Algase, in his thesis comparing the laws of Jihad with modern international law, states that the laws of Jihad:
“strikes a balance between military necessity and respect for human life in a manner which gives a higher priority to saving the lives of non-combatants than does modern international law…the Islamic law dealing with the conduct of war is in a better position than modern theory to develop an effective approach to the problems involved in the law of war crimes…”
“The growth of the legal literature in the early centuries of Islam which attempted to anticipate every possible situation which could arise in any area of human conduct leaves perhaps less room for uncertainty as to what the law is than the modern case method…The contrast between the ability of Islamic law and the ability of modern International law to develop an effective system for governing conduct in battle is nowhere more evident than in the case of air warfare [1400 years before air warfare was invented!!! – note added]…”
“The growth of the legal literature in the early centuries of Islam which attempted to anticipate every possible situation which could arise in any area of human conduct leaves perhaps less room for uncertainty as to what the law is than the modern case method…The contrast between the ability of Islamic law and the ability of modern International law to develop an effective system for governing conduct in battle is nowhere more evident than in the case of air warfare [1400 years before air warfare was invented!!! – note added]…”
“Finally, it [i.e. the thesis] argues that the laws governing the treatment of POWs are at least as equally benevolent as the Geneva Convention and are in some specific cases broader in scope. Ultimately, they carry a more convincing sanction. A declaration of jihad carries with it a robust body of law that should guide policy and behavior lest all credibility for jihad be lost…”
“the positive international law of Europe had more than eight centuries later not yet reached the high degree of humanitarianization with which the Islamic law of war was imbued.”
“...history has never known a merciful and a just conqueror as the Arabs…Few are the nations that excelled the Arabs in civility….The conduct of the Commander of the Believers, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattâb, in Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis) proves how kindly the Arab conquerors dealt with the conquered peoples, the opposite of what was done by the Crusaders in Jerusalem many centuries later…* [see Footnote 1 below]”
“The forbearance and toleration that characterized the Arab conquerors, of which historians were ignorant, seemed to explain to what extent they were able to expand their conquests… They used to show mercy to the weak, be kind towards the conquered and abide by the conditions they imposed upon themselves, to the end of those good traits… whichever region they invaded, if Syria or Spain, they treated the people with utmost gentlesness by leaving them their laws, their institutions and their religion…. Never before had the world known conquerors with such tolerance or with such gentle a religion.”
“The forbearance and toleration that characterized the Arab conquerors, of which historians were ignorant, seemed to explain to what extent they were able to expand their conquests… They used to show mercy to the weak, be kind towards the conquered and abide by the conditions they imposed upon themselves, to the end of those good traits… whichever region they invaded, if Syria or Spain, they treated the people with utmost gentlesness by leaving them their laws, their institutions and their religion…. Never before had the world known conquerors with such tolerance or with such gentle a religion.”
“Of forced conversion or anything like persecution in the early days of the Arab conquest, we hear nothing. Indeed, it was probably in a great measure their tolerant attitude towards the Christian religion that facilitated their rapid acquisition of the country….
"Had the caliphs chosen to adopt either course of action [i.e. extermination or forced conversions], they might have swept away Christianity as easily as Ferdinand and Isabella drove Islam out of Spain, or Louis XIV made Protestanism penal in France or as the Jews were kept out of England for 350 years … the very survival of these churches to the present day is a strong proof of the generally tolerant attitude of the Mohammedan governments towards them…” [The Spread of Islam in the World]
"Had the caliphs chosen to adopt either course of action [i.e. extermination or forced conversions], they might have swept away Christianity as easily as Ferdinand and Isabella drove Islam out of Spain, or Louis XIV made Protestanism penal in France or as the Jews were kept out of England for 350 years … the very survival of these churches to the present day is a strong proof of the generally tolerant attitude of the Mohammedan governments towards them…” [The Spread of Islam in the World]
“The rapidity with which Islam spread across the known world of the seventh centuries was strange enough, but stranger still is the fact that no rivers flowed with blood, no fields were enriched with the corpses of the vanquished. As warriors the Arabs might have been no better than other of their kind who had ravaged and slaughtered across the peopled lands but, unlike these others, they were on a leash. There were no massacres, no rapes, no cities burned. These men feared God to a degree scarcely imaginable in our time and were in awe of His all-seeking presence, aware of it in the wind and the trees, behind every rock and in every valley. Even in these strange lands there was no place in which they could hide from this presence, and while vast distances beckoned them ever onwards they trod softly on the earth, as they had been commanded to do. There had never been a conquest like this.”
A true representation of the only religion to have brought justice and enlightenment to the entire world on an unprecedented and rapid scale, the only religion under whose benign rule oppressed populations the world over found genuine sanctuary, and the only religion to have provided and to continue to offer a solution to the chaos, anarchy, mass-exploitation, epidemics of murder, suicides, depression, drugs, rapes, bestiality etc. currently plaguing every society today – the natural consequence of Kufr (disbelief and rejection of the Final, Divinely Revealed Law) – is more easily found in the ancient books of Islam than in any muslim community today.
Furthermore, testifying to its Divine origin and its applicability for all times and places, Islam is the only religion whose immutable 1400 year old source-texts, laws, spirit, ethos and every other facet, have been preserved in the most minute detail with unparalleled accuracy, thus enabling any person today or in future to embrace a Way of Life that will forever remain the only panacea to all the problems afflicting this ephemeral (extremely short-lived) world, and will forever remain the only religion that secures eternal salvation for the impending life to come tomorrow.
An exposition of one aspect of Jihad, the laws of Aman (the means by which a sacred contract of safety and security is enacted between the Muslims and the enemy (harbi)) will be forthcoming here insha-Allah, which will further demonstrate that the 1400 year-old, ancient, medieval, “backwards” Laws of Jihad – all of which are unchangeable and immutable just like every other 1400 year-old ruling of Islam – are far far superior to all man-made constructs including the innumerable modernist and Salafi versions of “Islam” which have mushroomed in recent times, and which all are perversions of true Islam.
Footnote 1:
The blood-soaked pillage of the sacred city of Jerusalem by the Christian crusaders, whose brutality and barbarism were not much less than their modern, secular counterparts today, is accurately depicted by the English Historian, Thomas Hart Milman, as follows:
“No barbarian, no infidel, no Saracen, ever perpetrated such wanton and cold-blooded atrocities of cruelty as the wearers of the cross of Christ on the capture of that city. Murder was Mercy. Rape tenderness, simple plunder the mere assertion of the conqueror’s right. Children were seized by their legs, some of them were plucked from their mother’s breasts and dashed against the walls or whirled from the battlements. Others were obliged to leap from the walls; some tortured, roasted by slow fires. They ripped up prisoners to see if they had swallowed gold. Of 70,000 Saracens there were not left enough to bury the dead; poor Christians were hired to perform the office. Everyone surprised in the temple was slaughtered, till the reek from the dead bodies drove away the slayers. The Jews were buried alive in their synagogues.”
“The Saracens were massacred in the streets and in the houses. Jerusalem had no refuge for the vanquished. Some fled from death by precipitating themselves from the ramparts; others crowded for shelter into the palaces, the towers, and above all into their mosques, where they could not conceal themselves from the pursuit of the Christians. The Crusaders, masters of the Mosque of Omar, where the Saracens defended themselves for some time, renewed there the deplorable scenes which disgraced the conquest of Titus. The infantry and cavalry rushed pell-mell among the fugitives. Amid the most horrid tumult, nothing was heard but the groans and cries of death; the victors trod over heaps of corpses in pursuing those who vainly attempted to escape. Raymond d’Agiles, who was an eye- witness, says. ‘that under the portico of the mosque, the blood was knee-deep, and reached the horses’ bridles.”
“In this temple 10,000 were killed. Indeed, if you had been there you would have seen our feet coloured to our ankles with the blood of the slain. But what more shall I relate? None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared”
“Saladin had the city at his mercy. He could storm it when he wished.…On Friday 2nd October, Saladin entered Jerusalem. It was the 27th day of Rajab….The victors (i.e. the Muslims) were correct and humane.
Where the Franks, eighty-eight years before, had waded through the blood of their (Muslim) victims, not a building now was looted, not a person injured. By Saladin’s orders guards patrolled the streets and the gates, preventing any outrage on the Christians…
Then Saladin announced that he would liberate every aged man and woman. When the Frankish ladies who had ransomed themselves came in tears to ask him where they should go, for their husbands or fathers were slain or captive, he answered by promising to release every captive husband, and to the widows and orphans he gave gifts from his own treasury. His mercy and kindness were in strange contrast to the deeds of the Christian conquerors of the First Crusade.
The Orthodox Christians and the Jacobites remained in Jerusalem. Each had to pay a capitation tax in addition to his ransom, though many poorer classes were excused the payment. The rich amongst them bought up much of the property left vacant by the Franks’ departure. The rest was bought by Moslems and Jews whom Saladin encouraged to settle in the city. When the news of Saladin’s victory reached Constantinople the Emperor Isaac Angelus sent an embassy to Saladin to congratulate him and to ask that the Christian Holy Places should revert to the Orthodox Church. After a little delay his request was granted.”
Where the Franks, eighty-eight years before, had waded through the blood of their (Muslim) victims, not a building now was looted, not a person injured. By Saladin’s orders guards patrolled the streets and the gates, preventing any outrage on the Christians…
Then Saladin announced that he would liberate every aged man and woman. When the Frankish ladies who had ransomed themselves came in tears to ask him where they should go, for their husbands or fathers were slain or captive, he answered by promising to release every captive husband, and to the widows and orphans he gave gifts from his own treasury. His mercy and kindness were in strange contrast to the deeds of the Christian conquerors of the First Crusade.
The Orthodox Christians and the Jacobites remained in Jerusalem. Each had to pay a capitation tax in addition to his ransom, though many poorer classes were excused the payment. The rich amongst them bought up much of the property left vacant by the Franks’ departure. The rest was bought by Moslems and Jews whom Saladin encouraged to settle in the city. When the news of Saladin’s victory reached Constantinople the Emperor Isaac Angelus sent an embassy to Saladin to congratulate him and to ask that the Christian Holy Places should revert to the Orthodox Church. After a little delay his request was granted.”
True Islam as upheld by the likes of Salahuddin, stands poles apart to all versions of Salafi and modernist “islam”.
[Checked and approved by Mujlisul Ulama, South Africa]
