Let Knowledge Guide Rulers And Warriors
“Wars and different kinds of fighting have always occurred in the world since God created it” writes Muslim historian and thinker Ibn Khaldun in his Muqaddimah. In his view, war is rooted in the self’s desire for vengeance against perceived injustice.
According to al-Hasan ibn ‘Abd-Allah al-Safadi al-‘Abbasi (d. 1310), master in the science of elucidation (al-bayan) and vizier to Mameluke sultan al-Malik al-Nasir Muhammad ibn al-Qalawun, wars are accidents among the happenings of time that are likened to sicknesses of the body, opposite to peace and security that are likened to its health.
Hence, it is necessary for the government “to preserve health by means of political action, and to shun sickness by means of warlike action, and by busying one’s self with the preservation of health.”
“The wisest vizier,” says the Proof of Islam Imam al-Ghazali in his Nasihat al-Muluk (Counsel for Kings) “is one who, as long as he can, will wage war by correspondence and diplomacy, and use (every) artifice to stop war.”
War often comes at great costs and so al-Ghazali cautions rulers against casually pursuing it, maintaining that “a man still alive can be killed, whereas a man once killed cannot be made alive.”
In modern times, military–industrial complex puts deadly weapons in the wrong hands of state-sponsored terror groups and militant organisations alike, which in turn employ extreme violence – opposed to proper conduct of warfare (al-siyar) – that destroys countless innocent lives in their quest for material and territorial domination.
A 2016 report by US-based Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) showed how “War on Terror” has caused the deaths of 1.3 million people within a 10-year period.
Meanwhile, indiscriminate killing calls into question the true motives of extremists such as the Islamic State (IS), especially considering that Islam’s interests are not served and Muslims across the world still suffer from wars, persecution, and oppression.
Extremism manifests itself as the loss of adab, a quality which the great thinker of our time, Tan Sri Professor Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, defines partly in his Islam and Secularism as “the discipline that assures the recognition and acknowledgment of one’s proper place in relation to one’s self, society and Community.”
The loss of adab results in crises of leadership, governance, and accountability – by now a collectively global phenomenon.
Today’s brutal and seemingly endless conflicts mirror the Crusades during which clashes between fanatics brought about the ineffectiveness of Muslim defence against Frankish invasion of Jerusalem and the massacre of its inhabitants in 1087.
Steven Runciman relates in A History of the Crusades how an eyewitness “had to pick his way through corpses and blood that reached up to his knees.” War’s aftermath is always a humanitarian disaster.
It took the Muslims 100 years of intellectual and spiritual refinement (islah) before God granted them success in liberating the holy city through mustered effort as well as enlightened Sunni leadership in the person of Saladin.
Yet, despite all the horrors of medieval conflict there existed intermittent episodes of conviviality thanks to leaders and warriors who epitomised the virtues of manliness (futuwwah) and chivalry (furusiyyah).
Usamah ibn Munqidh, a gentleman and warrior who served under Saladin, demonstrates in his memoir Kitab al-I‘tibar how Muslim knights ought to exemplify those truly Islamic virtues: “The coward among men flees precipitately before danger facing his own mother, but the brave one protects even him whom it is not his duty to shelter.”
The intellectual framework of Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jama‘ah, whose balanced interpretation of Islam and inclusiveness have proven to ensure stability that divisive sectarian beliefs cannot offer, is indispensable in the strategy to overcome extremism.
Shafi‘i jurist and authority in Sunni theology Abu Mansur ‘Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi (d. 1037) in his work al-Farq bayn al-Firaq argues for the inclusivity of Sunnism.
Al-Baghdadi’s inclusion – in addition to theologians (mutakallimun), jurists (fuqaha’), hadith scholars, grammarians of Arabic language, exegetes of the Qur’an, and sufis – of the general populace living within Islam’s polities as well as soldiers defending their frontiers repudiates aberrant takfiri tendencies that declare Muslims at large, who by default are not inclined to extremism, as apostates therefore permissible targets.
Additionally, the comprehensive summary work on the creed of Islam al-Aqa’id al-Nasafiyyah by Imam Abu Hafs ‘Umar Najm al-Din al-Nasafi (d. 1142) implies the religious obligation of Muslim rulers to ensure peace and security through defence and maintenance of the city (madinah) where the administration of religious and worldly affairs (umur al-din wa’l-dunya) takes place.
Even so, restraining the self’s desire is paramount. It begins by recognising that our inner state is a microcosmic representation of the macrocosm; the struggle to return to its natural inclination (fitrah) is also analogous to warfare – so long as this is not given due attention, we will never be able to uphold peace and manifest a true madinah.
