ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp Jihad in Islam: Colonial Encounter, the Neoliberal Order, and the Muslim Subject of Resistance Masood Ashraf Raja Abstract Using classical and current definitions of jihad and theories of globalization and neoliberalism, this essay discusses jihad and current jihadist movements within their reactive and responsive relationships to the material conditions of the Islamic world in general and of Pakistan in particular. Written in response to the essentialist claims of American neoconservative scholars, it sug- gests that jihadist militancy is not inherently Islamic, but rather a product of the material political conditions created by the Muslim colonial experience and perpetuated by the destabilizing influ- ence of power politics, neoliberal capital, and the failure of the national promise of the postcolonial Muslim nation-states. Introduction Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the number of academic and popu- lar works1 published about Islam and jihad has increased drastically. In this publication frenzy, Islam and jihad, usually removed from their immediate cultural context, become mythic2 and are refracted through the metropolitan cultures’ anxieties and prejudices. Most of the conservative works published about political Islam and its extreme factions now openly generalize from Islam’s most fundamentalist interpretations to offer essentialized explana- tions of jihad to suggest, for example, that “the Qur’an exhorts the Muslims to fight.”3 In this ahistorical approach to the questions of Muslim identity, the particular Muslim experiences are silenced and the idea of an ossified Masood Ashraf Raja is assistant professor of postcolonial literature and theory at Ohio’s Kent State University and editor of Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies. His areas of interest are postcolonial literature and theory as well as globalization studies. ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 47 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com Muslim identity, supposedly sustained only by the Muslim sacred texts, is offered as truth. This essay aims to highlight the acts of retrieval within the Islamic cul- tural production that articulate a specific Muslim male subjectivity of a mujahid within the colonial and neoliberal paradigms of power. I suggest that the Muslim approach to the Qur’an as a sacred text is highly contex- tual and deeply responsive to the material realities of everyday existence. I discuss jihad as a reactive or responsive practice because understanding this particular aspect can be useful in unraveling the complexities of the Muslim politics of resistance, as opposed to a more essentialized approach that pro- vides, in Edward Said’s words, “a limited series of crude, essentialized car- icatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as, among other things, to make the [Islamic] world vulnerable to military aggression.”4 I must point out, however, that the world of Islam comprises more than a billion people who live in over forty nation-states and that I am in no way attempting to conflate their particular experiences under the general rubric of a unified Muslim identity. Even though my claims about the Muslim semiotic and material responses to western dictates do seem a bit totaliz- ing and universalizing, I am not suggesting that all Muslims experienced colonialism or the current phase of neoimperialism in a uniform way. In fact, the Muslims’ colonial experience differed tremendously in various regions even when they were colonized by the same colonial power. But in tracing the root of a generalized Muslim response to what is perceived as a gener- alized West, a certain degree of strategic universalizing is necessary for my argument, especially when dealing with the universalist tendencies of Islamic theological vocabularies. In my discussion of particular instances of literary and cultural practices, I do focus on specific texts within the histor- ical framework of their authors’ lived experiences. This essay elaborates the idea of reactive mujahid subjectivity in a two- pronged approach: I first provide the theoretical and theological explanations of jihad itself and then trace its mythic usage in the works of Muhammad Iqbal, one of the leading Indian Muslim philosopher-poets of the early twen- tieth century. Toward the end I focus primarily on Pakistan and attempt to explain the rise of Islamic fundamentalism within the context of the Soviet- Afghan war and the rise of the neoliberal market economy system. I must, however, point out at the very outset that this essay is not driven by the established practices of Islamic systems of exegesis. A literary critic by train- ing, my approach to this complex subject is guided by a liberal humanist per- spective and, therefore, I discuss jihad in humanistic terms, which, although 48 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 48 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com informed by the concept’s religious explanation, does not necessarily take religious explanations as naturally axiomatic. Similarly, my approach to his- tory is guided purely by a secular textual analysis. Although I am duly respectful of the theological explanations of Islamic history, my approach to that history is that of a secular humanist. Texts and Identities: Ummah-Nation The role of literary and cultural texts in defining collective and social identi- ties is undeniable and has been amply explained by many scholars. For exam- ple, while explaining the rise of European nation-states, Timothy Brennan5 suggests that “the rise of the modern nation-state in Europe in the late eigh- teenth and early nineteenth centuries is inseparable from the forms and sub- jects of imaginative literature.”6 He also suggests that in the post-Second World War literature of the Third World, “the fictional uses of ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ are most pronounced”7 and are refracted through what he calls the “myths of the nation.”8 This articulation of a common identity usually involves an act of historical retrieval from a supranational past, especially by the communities threatened by “minoritization.”9 Most Muslim communities (Indian Muslims under the British Raj being one example) under colonial dominance employ their own myths of the nation to invoke the history of a glorious past in order to make the present more endurable. As the stimulus for this historical retrieval is the agony and humiliation of defeat by European powers, the subject of retrieval is inherently resistant, heroic, and warrior- like. It is not just resurrected from the colony’s immediate history, but also from the Muslim ummah’s deep and wide history. The concept of ummah, or the Muslim supranation, therefore, is the most enduring mythical trope in Muslim literary production. Of course, I am not suggesting that this concept is pure myth; after all, it did exist as a polit- ical entity and is taken as an axiom in the theological explanations of Muslim political life. I am using the terms mythic and mythical in a strictly theoretical sense as a signifier mobilized by Muslim scholars in response to the Islamic world’s division into nation-states. The terms ummat al- Muslimin or the ummah designated the group of “people who migrated from Makkah to Madinah with the Prophet Muhammad, which later came to sig- nify the global community of Muslims united by Islamic law.”10 Just as the Europeans, as per Brennan, used the myths of a collective past to define their modern nation-states, so the Muslims, in their various political cultures, also articulated their particular identities through various Raja: Jihad in Islam 49 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 49 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com imaginative acts of retrieval from a supranational Muslim past of the Muslim ummah. The mujahid subjectivity is inextricably linked with the concept of ummah and a precise articulation of this useable Muslim past11 – a useable past that can invoke two major dimensions of the Islamic sacred: the spatial and temporal. Hence, all major articulations of a pure Muslim identity rely on this twofold spatio-temporal model. Accordingly, the true locus of an ideal Muslim type, the mujahid, can be traced in spatial terms to the Hijaz12 and in temporal terms to the time of Prophet Muhammad and his immediate successors, the beginning of ummah. Most Indian Mus- lim reform movements, for example, drew on the symbolic value of the Hijaz and the times of the Prophet to suggest a purely Islamic way of con- ducting modern life.13 Interestingly enough, the need to retrieve this purist resistant self is inextricably linked with Islam’s encounter with Europe in the form of the Crusades, the rise of European colonialism, and, currently, neoliberal globalization. The useable Islamic past is inherently supranational and, even in seem- ingly national literary production, the wellspring of past mythologies remains accessible despite the Islamic world’s current national divisions. This supra- national past makes it possible for Muslims to draw on a large corpus of his- torical works in order to retrieve human examples of Muslim resistance, especially within the colonial context. A study of some representative Muslim texts, mostly from India and Pakistan, could easily elucidate my point about the importance of colonialism and the neocolonial nature of postcolonial global economics in retrieving the kind of Muslim subjectivity that was privileged during the high phase of colonialism and that still finds itself centered in the current literature of Islamic resistance. The Colonial Encounter and Acts of Cultural Retrieval The colonial ascendancy not only resulted in the political subjugation of Muslim lands, but also caused an intellectual crisis. It is this dual nature of colonial enterprise, the material and the intellectual, that prompted multifari- ous responses to colonial rule. These responses to the colonial encounter and its attendant upheavals can be categorized in three distinct groups: “the neo- traditionalists, the assimilationists, and the reformists.”14 Out of the three, the neo-traditionalist “deliberately chooses secular political means for achieving traditional, religious goals.”15 This mobilization, Anthony D. Smith further suggests, uses “political means to revive one’s religious heritage and faith to 50 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 50 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com organise the faithful into a political movement” and demands “a clear con- ception of origins, laws of growth and identity of the unit whose solidarity is being sought.”16 In the Indian colonial context, the ulama (religious scholars) adopted the neo-traditionalist response to colonial dominance. In such practices, they usually attempted to explain the reasons for the Muslims’ defeat and then articulated a way out by reaching back into the myths of a collective and often supranational Muslim past. For example, the Indian Muslim reformer Abul A’ala Maududi (1903-79),17 while explaining the intellectual and mate- rial forms of colonial power,18 suggests: The intellectual form of dominance happens when a nation is so advanced in its thought that other nations take its concepts as axiomatic and then absorb them as the only true form of knowledge. ... The material form of dominance occurs when one nation becomes politically and materially so powerful that the other nations fail to maintain their freedom against its power and dominance.19 The colonial experience cannot just be analyzed in terms of its material impact on the Islamic world, for one must also account for the affective value of this experience. As Maududi states above, the colonial encounter is both material – in the shape of political dominance – and intellectual. A resistance strategy, therefore, must safeguard against both of these influ- ences: Muslims must face the colonizers in the material as well as the intel- lectual domain. Maududi suggests that [t]he Qur’an should be granted its original role as a guide, the Hadith should be accorded the same respect as during the time of the prophet himself, and the opinions of the scholars should be graded as they were graded and accepted by their contemporaries.20 Clearly, his approach is based in tajdid (renewal) and not mere taqlid (following). This tajdid, however, seeks to retrieve the purist and most unsullied idea of a Muslim life. His return to the Qur’an and the Hadith as two leading sources was also meant to reduce the sectarian tensions in Indian Islam that were caused by strict adherence to the particular interpre- tation of competing madhahib (schools of interpretation). It is also impor- tant to note that this strategy of retrieval was articulated as a remedy to the problem of Muslim defeatism and uncritical following of the West. Hence, it was being offered not in a vacuum but rather as a direct response to the colonialist West. Raja: Jihad in Islam 51 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 51 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com This strategy of retrieval, then, clearly suggests a particular gradation of the sources of interpretation in Islam: the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the early scholarly explanations. The importance accorded to the first two sources thus takes Islam to its most enduring spatio-temporal ideal of the Hijaz, where the Qur’an was revealed during the time of the Prophet. Hence, this neo-traditionalist approach to the West makes it imperative for Muslims to define their identities as closely as possible to the ideal role model. To clearly articulate the modes of resistance to the West’s intellec- tual onslaught, the neo-traditionalist Muslim scholars, then, go deeper into Islamic history to retrieve the ideal resistant subject: a mujahid, the resistant agent of jihad. Jihad: The Concept with Varied Connotations Jihad is one of the most misunderstood terms within western academic cir- cles as well as the western media. I will attempt to unpack its literal mean- ing and then move on to a brief discussion of its importance within Islamic modernity as well as Islam’s interactions with the pre-Second World War European colonial powers and the United States’ current unipolar domi- nance. Provided below is a brief lexical explanation as gleaned from Edward William Lane’s Arabic English Lexicon: 3. Jihad,21 inf. n. of jahad, properly signifies The Using, or exerting, one’s utmost power, efforts, endeavours, or ability, in contending with an object of disapprobation; and this is of three kinds, namely, a visible enemy, the devil, and one’s self; all of which are included in the term as used in the Kur xxii. 77.22 [...] and hence Jahid came to be used by the Muslims to signify generally he fought, warred, or waged war, against unbeliev- ers and the like. (mgh.) You say also, Jahid fi sabil-allah inf. N. jihad ... and mujahadah.23 It is important to note that Lane comes to this particular meaning of jihad under section three of this entry. The term is listed under the root verb jahada, which he translates as “he strove, laboured, or toiled.”24 Reading his preface to the first volume, we also learn that Lane “drew most of the con- tents of ... lexicon”25 from “Taaj el-Aroos,” “a compilation from the best and most copious Arabic lexicons.”26 This bit of information allows us to surmise that perhaps jihad, as a lexical term, still carried the same multiple meanings at the time of the lexicon’s compilation (1863), according to which “struggle/ 52 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 52 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com striving” and not “fighting” were the privileged meanings of the term. Yet despite the word’s obvious polysemy, the meaning “to strive” has come to be the most significant way of defining jihad. As Lane clarifies, in general usage it has therefore come to signify fighting and “warring” against the “unbelievers.” The consequences of privileging one meaning over the other are enor- mous, as jihad fi sabil Allah can mean both striving and fighting in God’s way. In fact, the term is used interchangeably in the Qur’an, the Hadith, and in the classical fiqhi books. But this second definition becomes the more pre- ferred interpretation during the resistance phase of anticolonial movements as well as in the current climate of global capital and neoliberal globaliza- tion. The term’s modern usage is inextricably linked with the idea of a dom- inant “other” against whom the Muslim mujahid must fight or strive for the glory of God, seek justice, or liberate one’s people from oppression. This “other,” I suggest, was concretized in the shape of the colonialist West and currently the United States, as “American Imperialism has now displaced”27 both Britain and France, the two dominant colonial powers before the Second World War.28 Within the colonial regime, as the Maududi excerpt provided above sug- gests, the rise of western political power initiated some serious questions about Muslim life under a colonial mandate. In this nuanced and complex negotiation with the West, the myth of the resistant and striving Muslim was retrieved and articulated, thereby privileging a certain action-oriented response to the colonial political mandate. As a direct response to the rise of colonial power, neo-traditionalist Muslim scholars and leaders attempted to retrieve a revised individual and group identity. This retrieval, I suggest, was not only based on factual material experiences, but also invoked and created new mythologies, retrieved from the past, in order to mobilize a specific resistant identity in the present. There are certain main requirements for cre- ating a sense of group identity, whether national or supranational, that Paul Brass defines as follows: Every group which seeks to build a sense of consciousness, however, at some point creates a myth of its origin and destiny which is designed to instill pride among its members in its past [and] to create confidence in its ability to mold its own future. An oppressed group, whose contemporary condition contrasts unfavorably with its golden past and its hoped-for future, may also add a myth to explain the causes of its decline which attrib- utes its contemporary decadence to the intervention of one alien group or another.29 Raja: Jihad in Islam 53 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 53 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com We can clearly posit the Indian Muslim colonial experience in the above- mentioned matrix of a group identity. Such group identifications also rely heavily on a glorious past and the presence of an oppressive “other.” In a situation like this, then, a defeated group must reach into the past to retrieve a liberatory and resistant mythology. Literature, in representing a cer- tain view of the past and a particular outlook of the present, serves the impor- tant function of providing a wealth of myths and sustaining narratives to a defeated culture. Most literary and political works by Indian Muslims dur- ing the phase of high colonialism employ this strategy of historical retrieval. This can be clearly seen, for example, in the works of Allama Muhammad Iqbal.30 Muhammad Iqbal and the Figure of the Mujahid As a poet, philosopher, and thinker, Iqbal was certainly a product of the British educational system, for his entire formal education was conducted in British-created institutions and his higher degrees came from Trinity College and the University of Munich. After such a deep immersion in this educa- tional system, Iqbal should have become what Macaulay hoped to create: “Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.”31 But Iqbal also was deeply immersed in Islam’s philosophical and cultural traditions, though only through informal education and self reflection. This deep understanding of his own cultural tradition enabled him to become the native writing in what Frantz Fanon calls “the fighting phase” of native cultural production, a phase that produces “a fighting literature, a revolutionary literature” that forces the native intellectual to “compose a sentence which expresses the heart of the people.”32 In fact Khalifa Abdulhakeem, one of Iqbal’s biographers, finds it quite perplexing that “even in his ghazals33 while writing about deeply philosophical and mystical issues, Iqbal does not hesitate to take a stab at the West.”34 It is, I suggest, Iqbal’s deep immersion in the Islamic tradi- tion that allows him to offer a counter-discourse to the West. In addition, it is in this particular articulation that one sees, in the Indian Muslim con- text, a clear representation of a Muslim as a mujahid, a striver, a fighter. Iqbal differentiates between two major Islamic signifying terms: the Muslim and the Momin,35 both of which the Qur’an uses as descriptive terms for followers of Islam. For him and most other Islamic scholars, anyone who believes in Islam’s basic tenets is a Muslim.36 But Momin as 54 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 54 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com a signifier is more particular and complex, for it carries a deeper cultural and political trace. Following are some references to Iqbal’s usage of the term37: The Momin’s heart is free of pride and deceit And he is unafraid against the power of kings.38 Amongst his friends, a Momin is as soft as silk In the battle of right and wrong, hard as steel He is in constant struggle with the skies For even though he’s made of clay, he is free of earth He hunts not the sparrows or the birds For the Momin seeks the heights of Gibreel and Israfeel.39 A subtle difference that becomes obvious even with these two brief ref- erences to Iqbal’s poetry is that the Muslim and the Momin are different in one distinct way: While being a Muslim can be a passive state of existence, for one is a Muslim simply by subscribing to the basic tenets of Islam, being a Momin is clearly articulated in action, in striving, in jihad. Hence jihad, in all its connotations, is a medium through which a Muslim might achieve the exalted state of existence of the Momin, for only the Momin can strive to be a part of the heavens and equal to the angels. This articulation of Momin posits Muslim subjectivity as action-oriented and retrieves its analogs from Muslim history, references to which are spread all over Iqbal’s oeuvre. In his humorous/satiric poetry, for example, he represents the difference between a true Momin and his lesser counterpart as an exchange between two con- temporary figures of early twentieth-century political Islam within the con- text of their particular colonial struggles. This exchange, expressed in one verse, represents a message from a Momin to a Muslim: And what a wonderful message has the Sanussi sent to Amir Faysal You are a hereditary Hijazi only, without a Hijazi heart.40 This reference juxtaposes two important figures of Muslim history: Al- Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanussi (1873-1933), “grandson of the founder of the Sanussi order” and leader of the Sanussi “resistance against the Italian conquerors,”41 and Faysal ibn al-Husayn ibn Ali al-Hashimi (1883-1933), the descendent of the Sharif of Makkah who was briefly installed as king of Greater Syria after the First World War by the British. This juxtaposition of two historical Muslim figures is important, both historically and symboli- cally, in the colonial context. Historically, both of these figures have a his- Raja: Jihad in Islam 55 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 55 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com tory of their particular interactions with the European colonizers: the first one fights along with the Ottomans against the Italians, whereas the latter colludes with the British to oust the Ottomans. Hence, it can be safely con- strued that while the Sanussi represents the supranational ideal of Islam – according to which the Ottoman Empire could be seen as a legitimate Muslim authority, as the caliphate42 – the latter signifies the nationalist Mus- lim trends that make Faysal a party to the destruction of the Muslim empire for the sake of national gain. But more significant is the appearance of these two historical figures as opposing metaphors of Muslimhood in the works of an Indian Muslim poet, for this practice of delving deeper in Muslim history – a supranational past – to articulate a particular Muslim resistant subject is the most important aspect of this kind of retrieval. As the world of Islam is under western dom- ination, the history of Muslim resistance against European colonizers becomes a marker of a useable Muslim past and an important signifier of modern Muslim identity. Dwelling a bit longer on the significance of the appellation îijaz in describing a true Muslim or Momin is also important, for Sanussi is implying that even though Faysal is a true Hashimite and descendent of the most noble Hijazi family – the Sherif of Makkah – he is not really a Hijazi because of his actions, politics, and political alliances. According to the spatio-temporal ideal of the Muslim sacred, one signifier alone cannot suffice. Even for the most eligible members of the Hijaz community, for whom the spatial marker is undeniable, it is his conduct in the present that makes his claim to an action- oriented Muslimhood quite suspect in the eyes of the Sanussi leader. The jux- taposition, then, is also a critique of Muslim pragmatism and nationalistic drive as opposed to the idea of the Muslim ummah and a Muslim’s duty to resist the European occupiers. Iqbal insists on retrieving a certain specific Muslim subjectivity, one connected to the two-dimensional Muslim sacred and inscribed in active resistance to western political dominance. Hence, in his poetry the Arab Muslim of the Prophet’s time is not just an early example of Muslimhood, but rather an ideal type that must be resurrected and emulated in order for the Muslims to challenge their colonizers. In another poem, entitled “To the Muslim Youth,” he addresses them as follows: Have you ever pondered, O young Muslim Of what great sky are you a small part? You were raised in the lap of a nation43 That crushed the crown of Darius. What should I tell you of those desert-dwellers: 56 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 56 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com Royal owners, protectors, and designers of the world? You can claim no link to your ancestors For you are talk, they action, You are static and they movement.44 Obviously, in this poem Iqbal has a transhistorical, supranational view of a truly action-oriented Muslim identity. Note that the poem’s addressee is the Muslim youth of India, but that the heritage invoked is clearly the supra- national past of the Muslim ummah and placed in the particularity of the Muslim ethos of Hijaz and the time of the Prophet. Unlike their ancestors – the Arab Muslims of the desert – who humbled empires, the Indian Muslim youths, according to Iqbal, are a group of lost sheep with no idea of their own illustrious history. Certainly, the importance accorded to history is to create a specific kind of awareness of the past, a glorious past, a connection to which can be the only source of creating a resistant subjectivity. These references to Islamic history are meant to awaken these youths so they can rise and realize their own destiny. And since the poem is written within the colonial context, such a reinvigorated subjectivity is necessary to challenge the colonial power structures. The modern Muslim identity, then, is inextricably linked with the experiential aspects of a colonized life. Iqbal’s Momin in this sense is an action-driven life force, the mujahid who follows his predecessors both in terms of his conduct in peace as well as in war. Jihad thus encompasses both the daily struggles of a Muslim life – the striving – and the fight against a real enemy, jihad with the meaning of war. Hence despite the term’s polysemy, within the colonial context jihad becomes a sig- nifier for active struggle against the colonizers. The Mujahid and the West in Iqbal’s Persian Poetry Iqbal’s Persian verse is even more strident in its efforts to encourage Muslims to action. At the end of his book-length poem What Should Then Be Done People of the East, Iqbal composes the following prayer: Say: Get up by my order and quicken. Revive in his heart the cry: Allah is He We are all under the spell of Western culture And are martyrs at the altar of the Franks.45 From that nation whose cup is now broken, Produce a single man who is God-intoxicated so that the Muslim should learn to see himself again and look upon himself as the cream of the whole world.46 Raja: Jihad in Islam 57 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 57 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com The masnavi47 Pas Che Bayad Kard was published in 1936. In the trans- lation’s preface, translator B. A. Dar informs us that the immediate histori- cal context of the time had a deep impact on the poem’s composition. In Dar’s words, “[c]louds of war were thickening. It seemed a world conflagra- tion was on the corner. ... it was due to these reasons that Iqbal decides to appeal to the people of the East to rise ... and arrest the fast approaching danger of destruction.”48 The last prayer, cited above, is especially instruc- tive, for Iqbal uses them to finally implore God to intervene and provide the fallen Muslims a working role model. But first I must touch upon my slight difference with the translation cited above, especially lines three and four, for I think a more precise trans- lation of theses two lines is important to capture the deep anguish of the prayer itself. The two lines (Ma huma afsunie tehzib-e-Gharb / Kushtae Afrangian be harbo zarb) can also be translated as: “We are all enchanted by Western civilization / And Have been conquered by the West without a fight.” What these two lines imply is that the Muslims have not been defeated in war, but have been seduced by the “magic” of the West. The word afsunie, derived from its Persian root afsun, can be translated as “magic, sychophancy, deception, cunning, and fraud.”49 The word afsun, therefore, suggests in all its connotations that the Muslims lost to Europe because of non-martial and seductive modes of conquest, of which the seduction of western material and intellectual modes of production can be considered the most important tools. The prayer to provide a single role model in whom the Muslims could see their true self thus presupposes that such a person – yak banda-e-Allah mast – would also be a true mujahid, for only then would Muslims be able to undo the West’s magical power. More importantly, Iqbal is also attempt- ing to retrieve the Muslim resistant subject, the mujahid, as the striver and not just the fighter, even though in his entire oeuvre the historical examples employed are those of Islam’s martial heroes. Iqbal sums up the main message of the poem in the following words: O you unaware of the deeds of the present age, see the skillfulness of the people of Europe. They weave out of your wool and silk and then offer them to you for sale. Your eyes are taken in by their appearances; their colour and glamour turn your head. Alas for the river whose waves did not fret, and which bought its own pearls from the divers!50 58 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 58 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com In this culminating message in one of his last works, published three years before his death, Iqbal exhorts the Muslims and the rest of the East’s people to learn of their own exploitation at the hands of colonial powers and then strive to change the status quo. Important to note here is that for the Muslims to affect any change, two absolute preconditions must be met: an awareness of their own exploitation and a return to the ideal model of resist- ance, the mard-e-mujahid, the striving man. This mujahid subjectivity is that of an action-oriented hero whose “other,” or oppressor, within the con- text of Iqbal’s poetry is invariably always the colonial West. Important also to note here is that his mujahid is not necessarily a warrior or a fighter, but rather a “striver,” a usage that privileges jihad with the meaning of striving instead of fighting. Iqbal’s work is important to the Muslims of India and Pakistan not only for its intrinsic value within its immediate context, but also because of its residual impact on Muslim cultural production in post- colonial times as well. In addition, his symbolic importance is enhanced by the establishment of Iqbaliat, a complete field of Iqbal studies offered by most major Pakistani universities. Jihad and Qital While Iqbal’s mujahid is clearly articulated as a striving subject, the mujahid as a warrior is also an important cultural trope with its importance clearly linked to the final, culminating phase of jihad. In the Qur’an jihad is usually struggle and war, whereas qital always implies war. The root verb for qital, which roughly means the act of killing, is qatala, which means to kill. Surat al-Tawba is the chapter about qital, the culminating phase of a long struggle or jihad. This surah is important in tracing the shift from jihad, which is poly- semous, to the final stage of conflict, qital, during Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime. It is also important to note that out of all the Qur’an’s 114 surahs, this particular one starts without the traditional exordium: “In the name of Allah the Most Gracious, Most Merciful.” There is a consensus among Islamic scholars that this traditional exordium is absent because God, in this partic- ular surah, is the God of wrath, and hence the traditional exordium of a gra- cious and merciful God is omitted to accentuate the importance of the surah’s specific subject. Also important to note, as a brief discussion of the surah will suggest, is that this surah explains the rules of engagement for Muslims in response to treaty violations by pagan tribes, hence suggesting that qital can be conducted only after all possibilities of a peaceful settle- Raja: Jihad in Islam 59 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 59 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com ment have been exhausted. The editors of Al-Qur’an al-Karim opine as fol- lows about the time of recording and historical context of the surah: We pass on in this sura to deal with the question: what is to be done if the enemy breaks faith and is guilty of treachery? No nation can go on with a treaty if the other party violates it at will; but it is laid down that a period of four months should be allowed by way of notice after denunciation of the treaty. ... And that if all there fail, and war must be undertaken, it must be pushed with utmost vigour. ...This is the only sura to which the usual for- mula of Bismillah is not prefixed. It was among the last of the suras to be revealed.51 This brief excerpt clarifies the chronology of this surah’s revelation, toward the end of the Prophet’s career, and its context, the culmination of the struggle between the Muslims of Madinah and their Makkan opponents. The verses inscribe qital as the last possible response to a foe after all else has failed, thereby making it a reaction to the enemy’s behavior. Thus the surah is deeply steeped in its historical context and contains instructions about what to do if the enemy violates a treaty. Following is the most cited verse from this surah in the works of the neoconservative American scholars52: But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans, wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war).53 As I stated earlier, this surah, like all of the others, is highly contextual and can in no way be read as a normative mode of treating non-Muslims. By far, then, Islam’s approach to war is gradual, and jihad can be transformed into qital only if all necessary requirements have been met and if the Mus- lims in a particular situation have reached a climactic point in their conflict with their opponents and oppressors. This implies that for jihad to transition into its qital phase, the enemy must be clearly defined and recognized in the light of Islamic teachings, for unless a grievance can be proven beyond doubt, individual or collective action cannot be mobilized. Maududi explains these relative and contextual aspects of jihad and qital in his major work Jihad fil Islam: When certain groups become violent, their actions are not restricted to just a few areas. Such groups have several kinds of Satans and Satanic influences that give rise to a wide array of problems: some such groups are greedy for wealth and attempt to rob the poor nations of their wealth, trade, and industry; some are so driven by self interest that they act like 60 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 60 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com gods and attempt to enslave others, replace the good people with the bad ones, hence destroying the character of various nations. ... Under such a threat by the powerful groups, war is not even an apt option but rather an obligation. In such circumstances, it is a great service to humanity to rid the world of such cruel transgressors.54 Maududi terms this responsibility to fight against oppression after all else has failed a moral duty for all Muslims. Hence qital cannot be a start- ing point; rather, it is the final point reached when all else has failed and it becomes imperative for Muslims as a collectivity to stop oppression, cru- elty, and injustice. The above-cited paragraph is important because it clearly suggests that even in the works of Maududi, the so-called spiritual fountain of modern Islamic radicalism, jihad cannot simply be conducted for the sake of war alone; some material circumstances must exist to suggest that a cer- tain threshold has been crossed and that the time has come to move into the qital phase of jihad. This process makes jihad and qital absolutely relative to the kinds of material and ideological threats perceived by Muslims both collectively and as individuals. The philosophy of jihad is therefore not static, but one that changes in response to changing material realities and the nature of conflict. In the postcolonial scenario, changing economic imperatives and the subservient nature of the postcolonial nation-state to the North Atlantic powers give rise to a new identity crisis and thus a new mode of resistance to the West. Jihad and Neoliberalism While the articulation of resistance in the colonial era was a reaction to the direct administrative and intellectual imperatives of colonial powers, the postcolonial Muslim reaction to the West is deeply responsive to the impo- sition of the neoliberal economic system and, in the case of postcolonial Pakistan, the Soviet-Afghan war of the eighties. I use the term neoliberalism specifically as theorized and expounded by John Rapley, who describes the neoliberal regime as follows: Neoliberalism can be taken to be a fusion of neoclassical economic theory with neoclassical liberal political thought. ... Among the tenets of neoclas- sical economic theory are the beliefs that markets are efficient and clear; that individuals are rational utility maximizers; that the price mechanism offers the best means of distilling all information available in an economy; that a stable macroeconomic environment–characterized by low inflation, Raja: Jihad in Islam 61 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 61 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com secure property rights, and restrained government–will attract private investment and lead to growth. ... that an unfettered market will eventually disperse the fruits of growth to all its participants.55 It is obvious from the above that under a neoliberal regime, the state’s functions are diminished and the market is allowed to take over even its redemptive functions. Rapley also explains that under the neoliberal regime the “governments cut into their spending and ... threw more and more peo- ple outside the distributional networks of the state, [while] the citizens were forced to rely on their own wherewithal for their well-being.”56 This liberal- ization of the economy and the roll back of the state’s redemptive functions also rob the postcolonial nation-state of the primary mode of its own legiti- mation: creating civic national loyalty through good works, achieved only through a socialistic state. Hence, while the nation-state loses its primary mode of legitimation and as the welfare of the poor and the weak is priva- tized, Islamic organizations become the main forces of redemption in the Pakistani public sphere. The very imperial nature of the neoliberal regime, whose “central func- tions are disproportionately concentrated in the national territories of the highly developed countries”57 of the North Atlantic, also forces Pakistan’s privatized public sphere to seek an active mode of resistance through a neo- traditionalist return to the Islamic emphasis on the state’s duty as an insti- tution for a just economic policy. As a result, religion and religious insti- tutions come to play a larger role in shaping and mobilizing the popular perception of the West as imperial and their own national government as nothing but a puppet regime in the hands of their foreign puppet masters. The madrassas and other religious organizations that provide sanctuar- ies to the poor also become training grounds for those who must change the world of their lived experience into a more just world in which every one has access to state resources. Muslim politics are further radicalized when the West’s economic policies are offered as a remedy for their ills and when- ever they are mandated from the West or through western institutions. Thus the neoliberal economic model, in a sense, unleashes conservative trends in all societies, including the Islamic world. Also important to note is the extreme poverty of neoliberalism in offer- ing a revolutionary philosophy for change. Hence global economic impera- tives and local Muslim responses to them go hand in hand to create a politics of resistance aimed at upsetting the current socio-political order and replac- ing it with an idealized form of government symbolically connected to the 62 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 62 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com idea of the Islamic spatio-temporal sacred. Under such circumstances, jihad becomes the revolutionary philosophy to challenge western mandates all over the world and to overthrow local so-called apostate governments in order to create a more just socio-political order in which Muslims can live their lives without compromising their core values and important beliefs. The imperial nature of neoliberal economic policies and their social costs in terms of human suffering is a well recorded fact. Despite the prom- ises of progress for all its participants, the global distribution of wealth and resources is profoundly lopsided. While discussing the North Atlantic region, Saskia Sassen provides the following details: At the turn of the millennium this region accounted for 66 percent of worldwide stock market capitalization, 60 percent of inward foreign investment stock and 76 percent of worldwide sales in mergers.58 This economic power easily translates into this region’s political power, which it uses to force its economic model on all other nation-states, even when the policies are not in the best interest of the target nations. Even when investment does come to the Third World national space, multinational firms have the power to dictate their own terms. In addition, while their capital can move freely across national borders and is truly global in nature, the conse- quences of their environmental and financial decisions are faced by the local population alone, especially those on the lower rungs of the social ladder who do not have the freedom to move.59 Thus it is no wonder that in coun- tries like Pakistan, the so-called “Wretched of the Earth” can only find any hope of change in the promises and the strategies of the radical Islamic movements. The Afghan Jihad, the United States, and Pakistan There is no doubt that the Soviet-Afghan war of the eighties, also called the Afghan jihad, became the root cause for the rise of militant Islam in the Pak- istani context. In fact, the Afghan jihad provided the first chance in the post- Second World War world for mujahideen from all over the Islamic world to gather in Pakistan in order to fight the Soviets, a common enemy. Needless to say, the war was financed by Saudi and American money, and “from the US perspective” the mujahideen were “useful in harrassing the [Commu- nist Afghan] regime and drawing the Soviet Union further into a ‘Vietnam- like situation.”60 It is also a well known fact that during the war, while the Raja: Jihad in Islam 63 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 63 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com Afghans became the proxy army, the operations and logistics were coordi- nated by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), and the ISI mostly favored the fundamentalist Muslim groups61 as its aid recipients, a practice that continues during the civil war phase of the Afghan jihad through the ISI’s support for the Taliban. During the jihad, volunteers came from all over the Islamic world. All that the volunteer mujahideen needed to enter Pakistan was a commitment to fight the Soviets, while all visa restrictions were waived. For the first time in modern history, all willing Muslim mujahideen were able to par- ticipate in a jihad against a common enemy, in a war secretly supported and escalated by the United States. The jihad provided the Pakistani dicta- tor at that time, General Zia-ul-Haq, two obvious political advantages: at the national level his support for the jihad provided a deeply religious legit- imizing strategy, and internationally it provided him the American stamp of approval. Rise of the Taliban During the Afghan war the polysemous meaning of jihad was flattened; after the war, jihad came to mean only “fighting in the way of God.” I am not suggesting that it lacked these meanings before, but that the Afghan jihad concretized this particular meaning for a generation of Islamic fight- ers. During the jihad, the mujahideen also formed transnational alliances that were eventually used against the other so-called enemies of the Islamic world, including the United States. By far the most disturbing outcome of the Afghan war was the rise of the Taliban,62 who rose to power not simply because of their purist and simplistic approach to Islam, but also because of the politics of the Afghan jihad itself. According to Ahmad Rashid, while the ISI worked through the Jama’at-e-Islami to reach the Afghan fighters during the jihad, its rival Islamist party, Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUI) was excluded from this process. But while its rivals were busy supporting the Afghan jihad, the JUI used this period to set up hundreds of madrassas along the Pashtun belt in the NWFP and Baluchistan where it offered young Pakistanis and Afghan refugees the chance of a free education, food, shelter, and military train- ing. These madrassas were to train a new generation of Afghans [Taliban] for the post-Soviet period.63 64 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 64 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com The number of madrassas increased drastically under Zia. Thus just as the new economic model was causing the national education system to fail, by the end of Zia regime they “were educating over half a million students” and had become “the only venue for boys from poor families to receive the semblance of an education.”64 Hence a large number of war orphans, a failed national education system, and a state incapable of providing any meaning- ful relief to the poor became the perfect recipe for creating the region’s most literalist, militant, and uncompromising Islamist fighting force. Importantly, the early rise of the Taliban in Kandahar was inextricably linked with the idea of social justice. Rashid recounts the following incident about the beginning of the movement there: There is now an entire factory of myths and stories to explain how Omar mobilized a small group of Taliban against the rapacious Kandahar war- lords. The most credible story, told repeatedly, is that in the spring of 1994 Singesar65 came to tell him that a commander had abducted two teenage girls, their heads had been shaved and they had been taken to a military camp and repeatedly raped. Omar enlisted some thirty Talibs ... and attacked the base, freeing the girls and hanging the commander from the barrel of a tank.66 This and other accounts of early Taliban actions against regional war- lords need not be absolutely true, but they nevertheless serve the important function – based in the question of social justice – of legitimizing the Taliban as an alternative movement in post-Soviet Afghanistan. Eventually, Rashid explains, Omar emerged as a “Robin Hood figure, helping the poor against the rapacious commanders. His prestige grew because he asked for no reward or credit from those helped, only demanding that they follow him to set up a just Islamic system.”67 Thus even the Taliban, the region’s most radical Islam- ist movement, sought popular support through good deeds and with a prom- ise to establish a just order. But this return to the purist form of the Shari`ah still cannot be explained without the material conditions caused by a devas- tating war perpetuated and escalated by regional as well as global powers. Furthermore, the Afghan jihad and the post-Soviet rise of the Taliban also spawned countless other jihadist movements in the Islamic world. While a strict interpretation of the Shari`ah and its harsh implementation might be their goals, the return to these literalist interpretations of Islamic law in itself only constitute a mobilizing ideology; the need to invoke and use this ideol- ogy to mobilize people cannot really be explained without incorporating the material conditions that produce a subjectivity called the Taliban. Raja: Jihad in Islam 65 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 65 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com Conclusion It is extremely important to link the rise of the Taliban and Taliban-like movements to the context of Afghan war and neoliberalism, for less than fifty years ago the same region experienced the rise of a pacifist movement amongst the urban and rural poor led by Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, also known as the “Frontier Gandhi.” The movement, the Khudai Khidmatgars, asked all the Pashtuns to “join the organization and help them in eradica- tion of social evils from Pashtoon society ... and to struggle for the libera- tion of their homeland from the foreign yoke.”68 What made it possible for Gaffar Khan to create such a movement drawing on the same demographic that now forms the rank and file of religious conservative movements in the region was the promise and possibility of bringing social change through peaceful means. Such a platform was possible to imagine in a political scenario that could promise a welfare state at the end of colonial rule. Such a possibility no longer exists, however, and thus the reliance of the poor on the revolutionary and often violent modes of resistance offered by Islamist movements. Needless to say, the number of Pakistan’s urban and rural poor has continued to rise, and hence the need for privately run madrassas. As long as the Pakistani nation-state is unable to fulfill the basic needs of its people, the poor will increasingly be radicalized because their only hope for change rests in the private realm of Islamic charities and their active military wings. And for as long as the nation-state fails in its redemp- tive and distributive functions, the number of those invested in the mujahid subjectivity and ideologies of jihad will keep on growing. In a world in which the “total income of the top 358 ‘global billionaires’ equals the combined income of 2.3 billion poorest people,”69 the poor are prone to look for alternative ideologies of resistance that, at least, promise to change the lopsided economic structures of the world. The modern jihadist movements, I suggest, gain their legitimacy through such promises of socio- economic change, and unless the nature of these unequal socioeconomic and political power structures is altered, the numbers of the latest and most liter- alist adherents of modern jihad will continue to increase. Ultimately, the problem of fundamentalism and jihadist tendencies in the Islamic world will have to be challenged from within the Islamic interpretive tradition itself and will require the willingness of the West to accommodate just Muslim griev- ances on a global scale. 66 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 66 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com Endnotes 1. Just a cursory search through the Library of Congress Catalog using jihad as a keyword provides a list of over two hundred books published in 2007 and 2008. 2. I am drawing from Roland Barthes’ explanation of mythic sign, a process in which the sign stands for something larger than the primary signification. For details, see Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972). 3. Daniel Pipes, In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 22. 4. Edward Said, Covering Islam. 1981, (New York: Vintage, 1997), 28. 5. A similar argument about the novel’s role in creating a national imaginary is also central to Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities,1983, rev. ed., (London: Verso, 1991). 6. Timothy Brennan, “The National Longing for Form,” Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha, (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 48. 7. Ibid., 46. 8. Ibid., 47. 9. Amir R. Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 11. 10. Abdullah Al-Ahsan, Ummah or Nation? (Markfield, UK: The Islamic Founda- tion, 1992), 3. 11. The idea of a useable past presupposes the privileging of a certain specific part of a national past as the most useable narrative to underwrite the nation. I bor- row this concept from David Noble, who employs the term in his analysis of American historiography and the idea of a useable national past. For details, see David Noble, Death of a Nation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 12. The Hijaz is the region in present-day Saudi Arabia where Prophet Muham- mad was born in 570 and where Islam won its first converts. The two holy Muslim cities of Makkah and Madinah are located in it. 13. In fact, the three founders of the Deoband religious school relied heavily on the symbolic value of the Hijaz, as they had all either studied there or had vis- ited the holy cities. For more details, see Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). 14. Anthony D. Smith, “The Crisis of Dual Legitimation,” Nationalism, ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 117. 15. Ibid. Raja: Jihad in Islam 67 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 67 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com 68 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 16. Ibid. 17. The two subsequent translated citations from Maududi are cited from my ear- lier work: “Abul A’ala Maududi: British India and the Politics of Popular Islamic Texts,” Literature of British India, ed. S. S. Towheed (Stuttgart, Ger- many: Ibidem, 2007), 173-91. 18. Mauduudi uses the Urdu/Persian terms isteila and ghalba, which literally mean “dominance.” I have translated both of these terms as power because he goes on to articulate the two forms of power that correspond to the Gramscian concepts of dominance and hegemony. 19. Provided in my translation from the original Urdu text. For details, see Abu’l- A’la Mawduudi, “Hamari Zehni Ghulami aur us ke Asbab,” Tanqihat: Islam aur Maghrabi Tehzeeb ka Tasadum aur us se Paida Shuda Masail per Mukh- tasar Tebsare (Pathankot, India: Maktaba Jama’at-i-Islami, 1939), 5-15. 20. Abu’l-A’la Mawdudi “Millat ki Ta’meer-e-nau ka Sahi Tariqa,” Tanqihat: Islam aur Maghrabi Tehzeeb ka Tasadum aur us se Paida Shuda Masail per Mukhtasar Tebsare (Pathankot, India: Maktaba Jama’at-i-Islami, 1939), 116- 23. 21. The terms provided in bold face are Romanized from the original Arabic terms provided in the Lexicon. 22. This is probably a reference to Qur’an 12:78,which uses jahedu, translated as striving, in the following words: “And strive in His cause as you ought to strive.” An important thing to note here is the polysemy of the term jihad and jahedu, for both these words can also be easily translated as to “fight” and “fighting.” Hence, in many Urdu translations this verse is translated as: “And fight in His cause.” This can also be partially attributed to merely the question of editorial choices of translation itself. The verb “to strive” in Urdu is expressed in a compoud word kosish karna, whereas “to fight” can be signified by one single word larna. Hence, it is common to prefer the latter over the for- mer in Urdu translations. For details on this verse see Al-Qur’an al-Karim (974). 23. Edward William Lane, An Arabic English Lexicon: Volume 1. 1865. 8 vols, (Beirut: Librairie Du Liban, 1968), 473. 24. Ibid. 25. Edward William Lane. An Arabic English Lexicon: Volume 2. 1865. 8 vols, (Beirut: Librairie Du Liban, 1968), xix. 26. Ibid., vi. 27. Edward Said, Orientalism. 1978, (New York: Vintage, 1994), 285. 28. In terms of the colonization of Muslim lands, the Soviet Union’s colonization of the Central Asian Muslims is also extremely important and must figure prominently in recording Muslim responses to colonization/occupation by out- side forces. 29. Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion, and Politics in North India. 1974, (Lincoln: iUniverse, 2005), 28-29. ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 68 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com 30. I choose not to read Iqbal’s poetry simply as poetry for two reasons: (1) there is a consensus among Iqbal scholars that his poetry is an expression of his phi- losophy and can, therefore, be read as his real views about the philosophical issues invoked in the poems and (2) it poetry is also classified as poetry of amad instead of poetry of award. In the Persian and Urdu poetical traditions, amad poetry assumes that the poet is channeling his thoughts and the resultant poetry is not crafted to perfection, which allows the poet to be more subjective in his/her writing, for amad literally means “arrival.” Award poetry is consid- ered artificial and involves a poet’s conscious effort to construct an ornate and perfect poem. Hence, Iqbal’s poetry is inherently subjective and deeply immersed in his philosophical views and feelings about various subjects. 31. Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Minute on Indian Education,” Postcolonialism, ed. Gaurav Deasai and Supriya Nair (New Burnswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 130. 32. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 223. 33. The ghazal is the most conventional and traditional form of poetry in Urdu and Persian. The poem is arranged in five, seven, eleven, or twenty-one couplets. The first two lines follow an “aa” rhyme scheme, and all of the subsequent couplets must have the “a” rhyme in the second line. Written to be read and sung, a ghazal must have a rythmic meter and must traditionally be about love. Each verse must also stand alone, connected by the theme and mood of the poem. By far the best explanation of Urdu ghazal as a poetic form can be found in Frances Pritchett’s Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 34. Khalifa Abdulhakeem, Iqbal’s Thought, 6th ed. (Lahore: Bazm-e-Iqbal, 1988), 201 (my translation). 35. Momin has been transliterated here in its Urdu/Persian pronunciation. 36. The only time a Muslim ceases to be a Muslim is when s/he commits the ulti- mate error of shirk, equating someone/something to God. 37. Provided in my translation from Urdu. 38. Muhammad Iqbal, Bang-e-Dara. 1924, Kulyat-e-Iqbal-Urdu (Lahore: Mah- mood Siddiquulah, 1972), 53. 39. Muhammad Iqbal, Zarb-e-Kalim, 1935, Kulyat-e-Iqbal-Urdu (Lahore: Mah- mood Siddiqullah, 1972), 507. 40. Muhammad Iqbal, Bang-e-Dara, 291. 41. Yaacov Simoni and Evyatar Levine, eds., Political Dictionary of the Middle East in the 20th Century (New York: The New York Times Book Co., 1972), 338. 42. This view of the Ottoman Empire as the caliphate is specific to the Indian Muslim perception of it. In fact, during the First World War the Indian Muslims organized the Khilafat Movement, led by the Jhauhar brothers, to Raja: Jihad in Islam 69 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 69 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com pressure the British against the eventual breaking up of the Ottoman Empire. 43. The word translated as “nation” is from Urdu/Persian qaum, which in this par- ticular case, signifies the suprantional Muslim identity of ummah rather than a territorial nation-state. 44. Iqbal, Bang-e-Dara, 180. 45. What the translator has chosen to translate as “Franks” is, in fact, the Urdu/ Persian word Afrangi, which must have been adopted from French. Generally, Afrangi is used as a descriptive terms for all Europeans. 46. Muhammad Iqbal, What Should Then Be Done O People of The East, 1936, Trans. B. A. Dar (Lahore: Iqbal Academy, 1977), 137. 47. Masnavi in Arabic/Persian/Urdu poetry is a narrative poem containing any number of couplets following an aa, bb, cc rhyme scheme. It is pronounced as mathnawi in Arabic. 48. B. A. Dar, “Preface,” What Should Then Be Done, vii. 49. Hasanul Lughaat [The Persian-Urdu Dictionary] (Lahore: Oriental Book Society, 1997), 55. 50. Iqbal, What Should Then Be Done, 129. 51. The Residency of Islamic Researchers, IFTA, Call and Guidance, eds. Al- Qur’an al-Karim: English Translation of the Meanings and Commentary (Madinah: The Ministry of Hajj and Endowments, 1993), 494. 52. For example, Michael Palmer (The Last Crusade [Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2007), an American neoconservative scholar, uses the translation of this verse (“and slay the idolators”) as his first chapter title. 53. Qur’an 9:5. 54. Abu’l-A’la Mawdudi, Jihad Fil Islam, 1930, (Lahore: Idara-e-Tarjumanul Qur’an, 2002), 35-6. Cited in my translation from Urdu. 55. John Rapley, Globalization and Inequality: Neoliberalism’s Downward Spiral (Boulder: Lynne Rienner: 2004), 75. 56. Ibid., 80. 57. Saskia Sassen, A Sociology of Globalization (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 65. 58. Ibid., 60. 59. Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 25-26. 60. Joe Stork, “US Involvement in Afghanistan,” MERIP Reports, no. 89 (1980), 26. 61. John Prados, “Notes on the CIA’s Secret War in Afghanistan,” The Journal of American History 89, no.2, History and September 11: A Special Issue (2002): 468. 62. The term Taliban is the pluralization of the Arabic word talib, a seeker or a stu- dent. Interesting to note here is that the pluralization is in Pashto, which over- loads the term with its Arabic as well as Pashtun cultural traces. 70 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 26:4 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 70 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com 63. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 89. 64. Ibid. 65. Mullah Omar’s village in Kandahar. 66. Rashid, Taliban, 25. 67. Ibid. 68. Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah, Ethnicity, Islam and Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 27. 69. Bauman, Globalization, 70. Raja: Jihad in Islam 71 ajiss 26-4-final-obay.qxp 6/9/2010 4:15 PM Page 71 PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com http://www.pdffactory.com