Is jihad a product of Islam, or of circumstances?

Is jihad created by our actions toward Muslims, as liberals and assorted anti-Americans claim? Or is jihad a belief system of an extremist offshoot of Islam, which can be defeated by democracy and the growth of moderate Islam? Or is jihad an inherent feature of Islam, existing completely independently of what non-Muslims do and totally resistant to democracy? Let’s listen to Bruce Thornton writing at Victor Hanson’s website:

The millions of Muslims who support jihadist murder do so not because they’re ignorant of our beneficent intentions and enlightened tolerance, but because of spiritual beliefs that validate jihad, beliefs ratified by 14 centuries of Islamic jurisprudence and theology. We need to get over the peculiar arrogant belief that everything the enemy does is a mere reaction to what we do, as though these people don’t have their own motivations for their actions. They know that we rescued the Muslims of Kuwait, the Muslims of Bosnia, and the Muslims of Iraq. They know that we are sacrificing our own citizens to create an ordered society that will allow Muslims to worship in peace and prosper in freedom. They know that Muslims are killing Muslims all over the world, that the greatest threats to the safety and well-being of Muslims are other Muslims, as we currently see in Sudan. They know all these things, but they don’t care, because what’s important is the jihad against the infidel, the divinely sanctioned struggle to compel the people of the world to accept Islam, live as second-class citizens, or die.

I agree with Thornton, both about the false liberal belief that our being nice to Muslims will make them like us, and about the unchanging character of jihad. But then what about my argument—which some liberals would agree with—that our attempt to spread democracy in the Muslim world exacerbates jihadism? Well, that is true, too. It is true that jihad is commanded by the central teachings and doctrines of Islam, and it is also true that the actual waging of jihad varies according to circumstances. We therefore want to put the Muslim world in a situation where the amount of jihad being actively waged will be less, not more. Spreading democracy in the Muslim world and admitting Muslims into the West increases Muslims’ motivations and opportunities to wage jihad. But isolating Muslims as much as possible from the non-Muslim world, lessening their contacts with the West and their ability to have influence over it, will decrease their motivations and opportunities to wage jihad. We cannot, as the liberals imagine, make jihad go away by accommodating Muslims and giving them whatever they want, since Muslims’ hostility to us is based not on what we do but on our identity as non-Muslims, whom Muslims are commanded to convert or kill. Nor can we, pace “conservative” reformers such as President Bush, Daniel Pipes, and Thornton’s colleague Victor Hansen, hope realistically to change the jihadist core of Islam through the spread of democracy or the promotion of “moderate” Islam, since democracy threatens Islam and so provokes more jihad, and moderate Islam does not exist. But we can, through a combination of far-seeing, tough-minded policies, put Muslims in circumstances where their will and ability to wage jihad against us will be radically reduced.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 27, 2005 02:10 PM | Send