Aspects of Islam III

The Lesser and Greater Jihad

By Abdullah Qutbuddin

"Believers! Make war on the infidels who dwell around you and be severe with them. Know that Allah is with the vigilant" (Qur'an, IX, 123). War is under no stigma in Islam. Indeed, it is enjoined in the Qur'an in a number of places. Nor is it necessarily defensive. The small Muslim community of Medina was naturally on the defensive at first, but after overcoming the Meccan idolaters, the Muslims, still in the lifetime of Mohammad and in obedience to him, proceeded to subjugate the rest of Arabia and to equip an expedition for the invasion of Syria. Indeed, fighting was an obligation and those who shrank from it were rebuked as sternly as Arjuna was by Krishna: "If you do not go to battle He will punish you severely and will replace you by others"(Qur'an, IX, 39). Those who died in battle acquired the proud title of shaheed. This is translated as 'martyr', but it is from the same root as shahada, the 'testimony' or 'witness' that there is no god but God and that Mohammad is his Prophet. It implies that they died as witnesses to the truth of Islam and earned paradise by so doing.

This militancy can be explained in terms of the distinction that Arthur Osborne has shrewdly pointed out in his Buddhism and Christianity in the Light of Hinduism* between a world-renouncing and a world-sanctifying religion. Since Christians were enjoined to renounce the world and render unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's, they could live as well in a pagan as a Christian country. Indeed, the persecution or at least discrimination that they were likely to suffer would serve to keep their faith screwed up to pitch and weed out the smug, the worldly and the weaklings. Islam, on the other hand, was not only a faith but a way of life with its code of civil and criminal law and its injunctions governing trade, marriage, inheritance, etc. Muslims were not enjoined to renounce the world but to mould it to a harmonious and divinely sanctioned pattern of life. And this could only be done if they were the rulers.
______________________________
* - Published by Rider & Co., London.

This does not mean that no other religion was to be tolerated. There is a cryptic saying in the Qur'an: "No compulsion in religion" - cryptic because it can be taken as a statement to mean that compulsion is impossible in matters of faith or as an injunction to mean that no compulsion is to be used. The latter seems the more plausible reading. Other monotheists, such as Jews and Christians, termed 'People of the Book' since they also had a revealed scripture, were not to be exterminated, or forcibly converted, but after conquest, to be taxed and protected. "Out of those who have been given a Book, make war on such as do not believe in Allah and the last day and forbid what Allah and His Prophet have forbidden and follow the religion of truth, (and do so) until they are subjugated and pay taxes and recognise your supremacy" (Qur'an, IX, 29. 1). Muslims did not always keep to this. For instance, on the conquest of Persia Zoroastrianism was practically extirpated, although a monotheistic religion, surviving only among those few of its followers who escaped to the hospitable shores of India to found the Parsi community. But then, in what religion have men lived up to their scriptures? And what rulers of subject peoples have resisted the intoxicating presumption of superiority?

For idolatry toleration was not obligatory, since Mohammad himself set the example of smashing the idols at Mecca and banning their worship. Perhaps that accounts for the savage persecution that so many Muslim rulers indulged in India. Sufis may have perceived the beauty and profundity behind the idol-worship, a Kabir or a Nanak may have proclaimed that one could call alike on Ram or Rahim, even a Mogul prince like Dara Shikoh may have welcomed 'The Meeting of the Two Seas ' - and been put to death for it by his fanatical brother Aurangzebe; but in general Muslim ruling classes lacked the will to understand.

Islam, then, does not condemn war; but does any religion? Christ declared that he was come to bring not peace but a sword and that even members of the same family would take up arms against each other for his sake. And so it has been. His prediction has been simply fulfilled. In the Bhagavad Gita Arjuna falls into a pacifist mood and is convinced by Krishna that he should do his duty as a Kshatriya by fighting.

What then of the ahimsa that Gandhi proclaimed and that is so widely honoured, at least in theory, today? In ancient India ahimsa, non-violence, was an obligation upon the sadhu, the world-renouncer. Having renounced worldly ends, he naturally had to renounce worldly means also. But it was never expected that a ruler should abjure warfare and none of the scriptures enjoin ahimsa as a general obligation; it would be a denial of the very conception of a Kshatriya caste to do so. Whether Gandhi himself meant ahimsa to imply renunciation of war by sovereign states is hard to say, because the one statement he held to quite consistently was the statement of his own inconsistency. Certain it is that he encouraged Indians to join the British army in the first world war and that at the very end of his life he did nothing to dissuade the government of independent India from sending troops to defend Kashmir.

War is a horrible thing and always has been, but the feeling of revulsion against it is quite recent. In fact it dates from the time when total nuclear destruction became a danger to be reckoned with. Fear of such destruction is sensible and well grounded and efforts should certainly be made to prevent at least major wars from breaking out; but these efforts should be recognised for what they are - the outcome of fear - and not dressed up in idealistic phraseology to make it appear that man has suddenly become better than he ever was before: because that is hypocrisy. One thing is definite in Gandhi's teaching; that is that he distinguished between ahimsa based on idealism and non-violence based on fear and hated to see the latter parading as the former.

Although war is horrible in itself, it has an important symbolism. There is an inner as well as an outer war. It is recorded that when Mohammad returned to Medina with his followers after one of their battles he said: "Now we have come back from the lesser jihad to the greater" - from the war against outer enemies to each man's war against the enemies within himself. Islam is by no means alone in stressing this symbolism: the Bhagavad Gita is interpreted by many commentators as implying the need for inner strife, while the Christian Church on earth is entitled the 'Church Militant'.

Outer pacifism is as admirable as war is horrible unless it means putting up with what the Hindus call adharma - disharmony, wrong, injustice - out of fear, for then it is craven. But in modern times there is an inner pacifism also, and this is wholly to be condemned. Among the ever growing groups and circles of people who understand that there is a higher reality, are many who hold that it is sufficient to understand mentally or to believe in the divine verities without making effort, without taking up arms against the forces of obstruction in oneself. Such people shirk what Mohammad called 'the greater holy war'. They are like the 'hypocrites' of whom the Qur'an speaks, who professed verbal sympathy with the striving Muslims but were not prepared to face danger or make any sacrifice in the cause. "The day will surely come when you will see the true believers, men and women, with their light shining before them and on their right hand and a voice singing to them: 'Rejoice this day. You shall enter gardens watered by running streams in which you shall abide forever.' That is the supreme achievement. On that day the hypocrites, both men and women, will say to the true believers: 'Wait for us so that we can borrow some of your light.' They will be answered: 'Go back and yourselves seek a light.' Then a wall with a gate in it shall be established between them, on the inside of which shall be mercy but on the outside punishment. They will call out: 'Were we not on your side?' But the answer will be: 'Yes, but you fell into temptation and wavered, you doubted and were deluded by your own desires till the Divine pronouncement came and the Dissembler deceived you about Allah. Today no ransom shall be accepted from you or from the unbelievers; the fire is your abode and protector: an evil end!'"(Qur'an, LVII, 12-15)

The term for Realization in Islam is Fana, a word remarkably similar to Nirvana since its literal meaning is 'extinction'. it has a certain similarity to the Hindu nirvikalpa samadhi, meaning 'Realization in a state of trance'. To be perfected it must be followed by Baqa or 'stabilization', in which there is a full return to outer awareness simultaneously with inner Realization. This is the Hindu sahaja samadhi. It is the state which Western Zen writers love to refer to when, as they put it, "a tree is again a tree and a mountain a mountain."

The question which agitates seekers throughout the world today, in fact the only question of importance, is what should be done to attain Realization and what path or methods to follow. The 'inner pacifists', the 'hypocrites' as the Qur'an calls them, are those who hold that nothing need be done, no effort made, no enemy fought: "just carry on quietly and it will all come to you."

The error of this attitude can be exposed by putting the question from the opposite end: not 'what must be done to attain Realization?' but 'what prevents Realization?' The word sahaja means 'natural'; sahaja samadhi, therefore, is 'natural samadhi'. And the Maharshi never tired of reminding us that Realization is natural to us, that it is our natural state. Then what withholds us from it? The answer is fairly obvious: the ego with all its tangled roots. Can one imagine a state of permanent, natural Realization dawning on a person who is jealous lest some one else attain it before him, distracted by the thought of a beautiful woman, irritable when people disagree with him, hungry for adulation, concerned about the impression he makes? Obviously not. That means that before the ground can be cleared for Realization a whole jungle of tangled impulses and desires has to be cleared out, And how do the 'inner pacifists' propose to do that? Do they hold that it is a simple thing to do and requires no effort or technique? Spiritual Masters in all ages have warned that it is not and today psychiatrists confirm the warning. The patient won't get back to human normality without admitting the existence of complexities and need for effort; and the inner peace, the stillness, the calm expanse of mind that the spiritual aspirant must achieve in order to make the dawning of Realization possible goes far beyond anything the psychiatrist conceives of. How then can it be attained without effort?

It may be objected that the types of effort prescribed on a spiritual path are not in fact techniques for eliminating the egoistic impulses which obstruct Realization, that calling on the Name of God or being mindful of one's breathing or looking inwards to experience the reality of oneself cannot remove rancour or pride or other manifestations of egoism. But who is qualified to say that? The psychiatrist's technique also is not a direct head-on attack on complexes, and yet experts with learning and experience say that it works. And the spiritual techniques enjoined by the Masters are based on deeper learning and more profound experience going back for centuries; and many have found that they worked. Today also those who use them energetically under proper guidance as weapons in the greater holy war find them efficacious. It is the ' hypocrites', those who prefer not to fight, who complain that they would be ineffective anyway.

Soon after a person sets forth on the great enterprise it sometimes happens that an experience of overwhelming beauty comes to him, a perception of a truer, higher Reality. that he will never be able to forget till the end of his life. This is an encouragement to persevere, a foretaste of what is to be achieved. It carries its own credentials and is beyond the possibility of doubt. It can be explained as the Grace of God or Guru on the young aspirant. Or it can be explained as the newly awakened aspiration momentarily tearing aside the veil of the ego which it is not yet powerful enough to destroy forever. It will not last, and the aspirant may be dejected, feeling that he has slipped back instead of making progress; however, its memory will hold him to the quest and draw him onwards until, perhaps after long striving, it begins to be accessible to him again.

But suppose he should sit down and say "It came to me spontaneously so I will wait for it to come again spontaneously. Why should I make any effort to retrieve it?" He will be remaining inactive with all the twisted complexities and hidden or open impurities inside him which render its stabilisation impossible. He will be like the 'hypocrites' of the Qur'an who sympathised verbally but would not fight. His fate will be the same.