By Yoginder Sikand, NewAgeIslam.com

Is the war that continues to rage in Afghanistan in the wake of America’s invasion and consequent occupation of the country an Islamically-legitimate jihad according to the Islamic shariah? Is it permissible, according to the shariah, for Muslims from other countries to travel to Afghanistan to participate in this war on the side of the Taliban, who are engaged in what they call a jihad against the American occupation forces? As on numerous other issues, there seems no consensus among Islamic scholars on what precisely the shariah has to say, if at all, about these weighty matters. Some clerics, including leaders of the Taliban, declare the war in Afghanistan against the American occupation forces to be a jihad in no unambiguous terms. Accordingly, not only do they permit non-Afghan Muslims to join the war on the side of the Taliban but even go to the extent of arguing that it is a basic Islamic duty for them to do so. Others, less vocal perhaps, argue to the contrary. These two opposed positions reflect widely divergent understandings and interpretations of shariah prescriptions.

The debate about the ‘authentic’ shariah commandments related to these two issues concerning the ongoing war in Afghanistan is no mere academic one. In neighbouring Pakistan, the war in Afghanistan, from the time of Soviet invasion in 1979 right down to the present, has been an issue of major national concern. So has the Pakistani state’s shifting involvement in the seemingly never-ending Afghan conflict. From having sponsored the birth and emergence of the Taliban and playing a key, indeed indispensable, role in bringing it to power in Afghanistan, Pakistan, post 9/11, did a complete turn-around and now presents itself as a leading ally of America in its war against the Taliban. No longer does the Pakistani Government lionize the Taliban as ‘Islam-loving mujahideen’, as it once did. Now, following American diktats, Pakistani leaders denounce the Taliban as medieval-minded terrorists, who uphold a deviant and illegitimate version of Islam and who are said to be the gravest threat to the very existence of Pakistan. This radical shift (at least in theory, if not in practice) in Pakistan’s official position with regard to the Taliban owes principally to the immense pressure brought to bear on Pakistan by America, but it has also to do with the very real danger of Talibanisation engulfing Pakistan itself, which today manifests itself in a seemingly never-ending spate of bomb attacks and assassinations by suspected Taliban sympathizers in which literally thousands of Pakistanis have so far lost their lives.

Yet, despite this apparent radical shift in the Pakistani state’s stance on the Taliban, leading Pakistani Islamists, most notably Deobandi clerics who share the same hardliner version of Islam as the Afghan Taliban and who count among their disciples numerous Afghan Taliban leaders, consistently maintain that the war in Afghanistan against the American occupiers is an Islamically-mandated jihad. Under their inspiration, vast numbers of Pakistanis, mostly of the Deobandi persuasion, have, over the years, crossed the porous border separating Pakistan and Afghanistan to join the Taliban, believing this to be a religious obligation binding on them on account of their firm conviction that this war is indeed a jihad. Further radicalized by their involvement in the war in Afghanistan, activists of the Pakistani Taliban are said to have been involved in a spate of violent attacks within Pakistan itself in the name of jihad against the Pakistani state for the latter’s support to America’s war against the Taliban, creating a situation that today seriously threatens the stability of the country.

It is in this context that a fatwa recently issued by a personal friend of mine—a Pakistani Deobandi maulvi, no less—assumes particular significance. In his early 30s, Maulana Muhammad Ammar Khan Nasir is a madrasa-trained scholar from Gujranwala, who edits the respectable scholarly Islamic journal Al-Shariah. He comes from a leading family of Deobandi clerics. His father (in whose house in Gujranwala I had the privilege of staying for a couple of days some years ago), Maulana Zahid ul-Rashdi, is a senior leader of the influential Pakistani Deobandi party, the Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Islam, and a noted writer on Islamic matters. Maulana Nasir’s grand-father, the late Maulana Sarfaraz Khan, one of Pakistan’s leading Deobandi scholars, was a graduate of the Dar ul-Ulum at Deoband in pre-1947 India.

Like the Taliban, Maulana Ammar is also a Deobandi, but unlike the Taliban and numerous pro-Taliban Deobandi clerics, he does not appear to regard the war being waged by the Taliban in Afghanistan as an Islamic jihad at all. Daring to differ from the Taliban in this regard, Maulana Ammar issued a fatwa earlier this month to this effect.

The fatwa is a reply to a question put to Maulana Ammar by an unnamed questioner. ‘If someone travels to Afghanistan and joins his Muslim brethren there to seek to expel the foreign occupation forces by joining the ongoing war’, the questioner seeks to know, ‘can it be said that this person is engaged in jihad or Islamic war (islami jang), or is it the case that for a war to be called an Islamic war other conditions are also needed?’

Maulana Ammar’s reply, issued as a fatwa, is concise and well-argued. He begins by pointing out that for any war between Muslims and non-Muslims to be considered a legitimate Islamic jihad according to the shariah, it is essential that the underlying or basic cause must not be an act on the part of the Muslim party involved the conflict that is immoral or objectionable from the point of view of the shariah. If the provocation of the war is indeed such an action then the war that follows from this act cannot be said to be a jihad.

After clarifying this vital point, thereby clearly suggesting that not every war involving Muslims and non-Muslims can be considered to be a jihad, the fatwa goes on to discuss the case of the current war in Afghanistan. The apparent cause of this war, which occasioned the American invasion of Afghanistan, Maulana Ammar writes, were the tragic events of 11th September 2001, which, he says, were engineered by Al-Qaeda. ‘In contrast to the entire Muslim world’, the fatwa reads, ‘Al-Qaeda sought to present this act as legitimate and even accepted its responsibility for it.’ In the wake of the attacks of 9/11, the fatwa continues, the Taliban, who were then in control of most of Afghanistan, offered sanctuary to the Al-Qaeda leadership. This, in turn, it says, led world powers to invade Afghanistan to topple the Taliban government.

The attacks of 9/11, therefore, the fatwa argues, were the basic cause for the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. Accordingly, the status, in terms of shariah rulings, of the ongoing war in Afghanistan—the issue of whether or not it is indeed a jihad according to the shariah—depends essentially on whether or not the attacks of 9/11, which occasioned the war, were legitimate according to the shariah. Maulana Ammar argues that the 9/11 attacks were ‘clearly against the teachings of the shariah’. Hence, he insists, the war that followed in the wake of the attacks cannot be considered to be a jihad—contrary to what the Taliban and their supporters insist. To label it as a jihad, the fatwa maintains, ‘is incomprehensible’.

This, however, does not mean that the American invasion of Afghanistan and its continuing occupation of the country is by any means legitimate. The fatwa clarifies that the Taliban do have the right to fight the occupying forces. But this armed struggle would not be considered a jihad but, rather, simply a war on the part of a former Muslim government to save or revive its power, or a national liberation war aimed at expelling the foreign occupiers of the country.

After clarifying what he regards as the nature of the current war in Afghanistan in terms of the shariah, Maulana Ammar turns to the question of whether or not it is Islamically legitimate and justified for a non-Afghan Muslim—in this case a Pakistani—to travel to Afghanistan and participate in the fighting against the American-led occupying forces. As in his characterization of the status of the war in Afghanistan, Maulana Ammar’s understanding of shariah rules in this regard are quite in contrast to that of the Taliban and numerous leading Pakistani Deobandi clerics who continue to appeal to Pakistani—and other—Muslims to join the Taliban in Afghanistan in their war against the occupying forces, insisting that this is an Islamic duty that is binding on them.

Maulana Ammar argues that it is not permissible according to the shariah ‘for citizens of any Muslim country to take any steps in any matter, especially with regard to foreign policy, that deviate from the decisions of the collective system (nizam-e ijtimai).’ Although he does not elaborate on what exactly he means by ‘collective system’, it is apparent that what is meant is the state. In other words, what he seems to suggest is that in all matters, particularly with regard to foreign policy, citizens of a Muslim state must follow the policy of their respective governments. In this regard, he points out that in the wake of the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, the Government of Pakistan declared that it no longer supported the Taliban, and that this continues to remain its official stand.

Since, so Maulana Ammar argues, it is incumbent on the citizens of a Muslim country to abide by the decisions of the state of which they are citizens, especially in foreign policy-related matters, it is, he opines, not permissible, according to the shariah, for Pakistani Muslims to participate in the ongoing war in Afghanistan along with the Taliban as long as they remain citizens of Pakistan. This rule would still hold, he clarifies, if the Government of Pakistan covertly moves away from its declared policy vis-à-vis the Taliban and secretly supports it, because this latter, would, he says, be ‘an immoral step that is not in accordance with the shariah’. However, he goes on, if any Pakistani Muslim believes that he ought to support the Taliban in the current war against the foreign occupiers of the country, the only Islamically-legitimate way he can do so is after he renounces his Pakistani citizenship and leaves Pakistani soil so that the Government of Pakistan will not have to bear the responsibility for his consequent actions.

Maulana Ammar circulated his fatwa to a group of friends on the Internet, and it must—or so I believe—have generated considerable debate and discussion. I presume he must have received some commendations but many more brick-bats from his Muslim associates. I know of just one response that he received—which he also circulated by email to people on his mailing list—one that summed up what I expected would be a typical response of a large section of Muslims to the arguments that he had made. This critic, a certain Hafiz Muhammed Samiullah Faraz from Lahore, who styles himself as the Director of the Pakistan Research Council for Quranic Sciences, berated Maulana Ammar’s fatwa by claiming that Al-Qaeda did not exist at all—it was a ‘myth’, he announced—and that ‘the drama of 9/11 and the character of Al-Qaeda’ were ‘created politically’—by the Americans themselves. ‘Al-Qaeda’, he retorted, seeking to absolve any Muslims for involvement in the attacks of 9/11, ‘was and is an American hoax that as been proven even by American analysts.’

Like many Muslims (and some others), Hafiz Faraz seemed to suggest that the attacks of 9/11 were indeed the handiwork of the Americans themselves. He might well be true, of course, but perhaps he may not, but what struck me was Maulana Ammar’s reply to his contention. The Maulana replied that ‘no serious observer who has a good understanding on events’ would ‘even consider the proposition that there was no role in the attacks of 9/11 of the ideology of the likes of Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri and extremist (intiha pasand) Muslims’ and that the attacks were, as Hafiz Faraz claimed, ‘a game invented by America simply to attack Iraq and Afghanistan.’ It is true, the Maulana noted, that America’s proclaimed ‘war on terror’ has involved ‘heinous crimes’ and that it is being pursued with an ulterior agenda, which is no longer hidden from public view. Undoubtedly, he admitted, American propaganda grossly exaggerates the capacity and power of Al-Qaeda in order to justify America’s current imperialistic offensives. However, this did not mean, he insisted, that ‘Muslim extremist groups, and especially Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri should be projected as perfectly innocent’—as many Muslims do—for this, he stressed, would betray ‘absence of moral courage’.

Further developing his critique of Al-Qaeda in the face of Hafiz Faraz’s defence, Maulana Ammar commented that the Al-Qaeda leadership had ‘not even tried to defend itself’ in the face of charges that it was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.  ‘Till now it has not felt even the need to declare that allegations against it leveled by the entire world are false’, he stressed. On the contrary, he argued, Al-Qaeda leaders have issued ‘dozens of statements and addresses wherein, contrary to the opinion of the entire Muslim world, they have termed the attacks of 9/11 and the London 7/7 bombings as legitimate and as instance of the victory and success of mujahideen.’

It is plainly apparent, Maulana Ammar writes, that Al-Qaeda does indeed exist and that Muslims should not—as Hafiz Faraz does—seek to deny its existence or that of other such extremist Muslim groups. They must not, he suggests, deny their involvement in heinous acts of terrorism by seeking to explain them away by apportioning the blame for all such acts on non-Muslims—a common enough tendency. To do so, he warns, is not just un-Islamic, but also counter-productive from the point of the welfare of Muslims themselves. Thus, he boldly states, ‘Today, the welfare of the Muslim ummah lies not in seeking to whitewash or covering up or putting a veil over reality and facts, burying their heads in the sand.’ Rather, he advises, ‘they must seriously examine, with courage and wisdom, the malaise that they are afflicted with and which our religious and militant leaders have, owing to their lack of foresight, forced an entire generation of religious-minded Muslims to fall prey to.’

Critics might argue, with some justification, that Maulana Ammar’s fatwa is, in parts, problematic. For instance, his contention (for which he does not supply any scriptural reference) that citizens of a state are bound to follow the government’s line is a recommendation that can easily be misused to argue for complete conformity and to clamp down on all forms of dissent. Equally problematic is his assumption that the attacks of 9/11 were definitely an Al-Qaeda operation, something that has yet to be conclusively proven. Those who insist it may have been an insiders’ job are not all wild ‘conspiracy-mongers’ as they are so often dismissed as. 

That said, I find the fatwa and the debate that it generated particularly striking with regard to the Maulana’s forceful plea to his fellow Muslims to admit the existence of radical ideologues and groups who routinely use Islam as a cover-up for terrorism, and to critique and counter the interpretations of Islam that they champion. The significance of this appeal is considerably enhanced by considering who he is—a Pakistani, a maulvi, and scion of a family of influential Deobandi clerics.

Copyright: NewAgeIslam.com