tibi 2011 john kelsay and “sharia reasoning” in just war in islam an appreciation and a few...

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John Kelsay and “Sharia Reasoning”in Just War in Islam: An

Appreciation and a FewPropositions

Bassam Tibi

Over the past two decades, for a number of reasons, there has been a decline in the quality of scholarship on Islam in the West, be it in

the United States or in Europe. In the United States I have failed tosee books of the caliber of Mashall Hodgson’s The Venture of Islam . In France no single scholar has credentials comparable with the greatness of Maxime Rodinson or Jacques Berque, and in theGerman language no single work was published in the recent pastthat emulates Ignaz Goldziher’s Muhammadanische Studien . It isnot my intention to flatter John Kelsay, but his remarkable book Arguing the Just War in Islam 1 is an exception. The backgroundfor this praise of Kelsay’s book is the following: Since 9/11 it has

become a lucrative business in the United States to write nonsenseabout jihad and jihadism. In contrast to the many obscure books

BASSAM TIBI (PhD, University of Frankfurt/Main; Dr. Habil., University of Hamburg) is a descendant of a Kadi-Mufti ashraf-family of the Muslim aristoc-racy of Damascus. He lives in exile in Europe and is professor emeritus of inter-national relations, Georg-August-University, Goettingen, Germany, and is theA. D. White Professor-at-Large, Cornell University. He is author of twenty-eight

books in German and nine in English, translated in sixteen languages, includingIslam between Culture and Politics , Political Islam, World Politics and Europe ,

Islam’s Predicament with Modernity , and The Challenge of Fundamentalism .His articles have appeared in Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory,Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Telos, the Journal of Democracy,Human Rights Quarterly , and Theory, Culture & Society . He was decorated by thepresident of Germany with the Cross of Merits (First Class) for mediation

between Islam and the West. Special interests include religion and world poli-tics, culture and development, religionization of politics, and religiousfundamentalism.

Journal of Church and State vol. 53 no. 1, pages 4–26; doi:10.1093/ jcs/csq147Advance Access publication March 22, 2011# The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:

[email protected]

1. John Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). All page numbers referenced within the text refer to this book.

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published on this subject, established U.S. scholars of Islamicstudies have chosen to refrain from addressing the critical issuesabout Islam and war and instead confine themselves to criticizingthe questionable book production on jihad as an expression of “Ori-

entalism.” It is unfortunate that these studies rarely go beyond theassignments of blame. Moreover, most scholars in the field arecontent to fool themselves with the notion that “jihad means in Islam only peaceful self-exertion” with the inference that radicalMuslims have nothing to do with “true” Islam.

Despite this unfortunate state of scholarship, I see light at the endof the tunnel, because Kelsay enriches the discourse with a soberanalysis of jihad that avoids the flaws of these two extremes in contemporary studies of Islam and war. The errors of Orientalism

cannot be contested effectively by using the methods of reverse-Orientalism. Kelsay’s analysis is free from the aforemen-tioned ills and the distortions.

Introduction

Kelsay places the concept of jihad in the larger framework identi-fied as “Sharia reasoning” in Islam. In his view this reasoning hasdeveloped throughout the history of the civilization of Islam.

Kelsay rightly dismisses all of the simplifications presented by Islamopobic and Islamophile authors. On the one hand, he statesthat jihad in Islam is not equivalent to terrorism, but rather a typeof honorable combat based on established precedents and sub-

jected to strict rules of fighting, including the limiting of military targets. However, Kelsay not only engages in making such subtledifferentiations, but he also insists on more closely examining theIslamist jihadists of al-Qaida: he does not deny their status as“Muslims” just because they engage in indiscriminate fighting and

override the rules of classic jihad. Even though they overturn well-established precedents of fighting jihad (p. 150), the jihadistsremain Muslim believers. Kelsay’s book acknowledges the Islamicsources that in one way or another legitimate the stance which is“basic to all Sharia reasoning.” This is the foundation on which “the topic of war” ( p. 101) is addressed. Jihad is not only about indi-vidual self-exertion, it is also, and primarily, about the legitimation of the use of force for the spread of Islam. This is the thesis of Arguing the Just War in Islam . No serious analyst can afford to over-

look this insight in the study of the jihad doctrine; if so, he or sherisks falling into the trap of self-deceit.

In the following I shall substantiate this appreciation expressedfor Kelsay’s work by placing his analysis in a larger context. Here-after, I aim to present some critical propositions that would

John Kelsay and “Sharia Reasoning” in Just War in Islam

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supplement and enrich Kelsay’s analysis. Disagreement and criticaldebate make the substance of scholarship; these are virtues seem-ingly forgotten today. There is no contradiction between the high ranking I attribute to Kelsay’s book and the critical propositions I

raise in this article. I propose to nuance, to revise, and even tocorrect some points in this valuable analysis, while acknowledgingthat I am commenting on a ground-breaking contribution to thefield of Islamic studies.

I begin with a reference to the book Usul al-Sharia 2 by the former judge of the Egyptian Supreme Court, Mohammed Said al-Ashmawi,in which he reminds us of this fact: the notion of Sharia not only occurs literally only one time in the text of the Quran (sura al-Jathiya45, verse 18), but also means no more than ethnical guidance. With

this in mind, I ask the pivotal question: If the Quran mentionsSharia only once, so why does all Islamic thinking all times revolvesaround “Sharia reasoning”? Kelsay maintains the centrality of Sharia reasoning in Islam and he is, with some few exceptions,correct. The question is why is it so? What is the answer, and whatcan Muslims and non-Muslims do about this in an age of structuralglobalization accompanied by cultural fragmentation?

The Place of Kelsay’s Study in the FieldIn the West, the notions of jihad and Sharia are no longer unfamiliarto people with media exposure. However, there are only a few whoreally understand the substance of what these concepts mean.Earlier, in the times of Khomeinism, another Islamic term featuredregularly in Western media was wrongly translated as “death sen-tence.” That term was fatwa . Today, and since 9/11, the media fea-tures even more regularly the Muslim term of jihad in association with the pictures of bearded men who are engaged in acts of “terror-ism.” Jihad and Sharia are also linked to one another in a binary of “good” and “evil.” Under these conditions, it has become very diffi-cult to address these issues in a sober manner. Scholarly studiesprovide little help, because they are typically highly politicized.Instead of using the circumstances as an opportunity for learning,one finds students of Islam hurling at one another the accusation of “Orientalism,” and no one is safe from this painful defamation.(Even though I was born to a family of Qadis and Muftis in the Muslim nobility [ashraf ] of Damascus and raised in this environ-ment, I have not been exempted from the accusation of bashingIslam, and, in my case, of self-Orientalization. The reason for this

2. Mohammed Said al-Ashmawi, Usul al-Sharia (Cairo: Madbuli, 1983).

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is my engagement in the study of what Islamists themselves label“global jihad/al-jihad al-alami.”)3

Among many other things, Arguing the Just War in Islam correctsthe misconception of jihad as terrorism, for just war in Islam is not

to be confused with terror. Nevertheless, Kelsay makes it clear thatthose who, in the polarization between “friends and enemies of Islam,” claim that jihadists of “al-Qaida and other militantgroups” have “nothing to do with Islam” will be disappointed by reading his book. He writes that such people will, “find nocomfort here” (p. 3). The purpose of the book is “to provide a sys-tematic description of the religious perspective . . . (of) the attacksof 9/11” (p. 3). Kelsay is of the view that “Sharia reasoning” in Islam is the core issue and the key to understanding how Muslim

militants today seek “to legitimate or justify a course of action in terms associated with Islamic jurisprudence” (p. 3). Kelsay’s inter-pretation is based on the assumption of a “close relation between militants and Islamic tradition.” Therefore, he dismisses the apolo-getics “that Islam has nothing to do with violence of this type” ( p. 4).

The contribution of John Kelsay is that he goes beyond Islamicapologetics and the methods of Western Orientalism; he is free of

both Islamophobic as well as Islamophile sentiments and is com-mitted to providing a solid analysis of Sharia reasoning in Islam.

Since the late Edward Said belittled 9/11’s jihadists as a “crazedgang,” it has become common in Islamic studies to discard thereference to jihad as an expression of “Orientalism.” The otherextreme are those such as Franklin Graham who view Islam alto-gether as “evil and a very wicked religion.” At issue is the Islamicway of arguing about justice and war. For sure, there is a great diver-sity in this reasoning, but also basic commonalities as well.

In my view, Kelsay’s work suffers to the extent that it presentsthe entire history of Islamic thought as a process driven by Sharia rea-

soning. He is correct in his overall assertion that Sharia matters, butthere is a need for some nuance and modification of his argument.Therefore, I propose to call attention to some differences, in particulara distinction between the fiqh -orthodoxy and the falsafa -rationalism in the past, as well as between secularists of all types, reformsMuslims and Islamists at present. I argue that the falsafa -rationalistsof medieval Islam (e.g. Farabi and Averroes) were not guided by Sharia reasoning, nor were the secularists (liberals, nationalists,socialists) of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries affected by

any pattern of Sharia reasoning. It was not invoked in their texts.The generalization that Islamic history reflects various efforts at

3. Bassam Tibi, Political Islam, World Politics and Europe. Democratic Peace and Euro-Islam vs. Global Jihad (New York: Routledge, 2008).


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Sharia reasoning is correct, but Islamic intellectual history is notsolely “the history of Sharia reasoning” (p. 97). Here, there is a pointof disagreement. Intellectual history of Islam includes more schoolsof thought, as shall be later argued. Kelsay is right in stating that in

the past and in the present Sharia reasoning determined the courseof Islamic history. After all, those Muslims who engaged in thestated alternatives failed (see note 24), both in the past and in thepresent. Nevertheless it is important to talk about their offerings.

The Appreciation: Jihad as Just War

In agreement with John Kelsay’s view that “Islam is the religion of

jihad” (p. 41), he and I are aware of those negative connotationsthat are spread by the media and that prevail in popular writings.Jihad is wrongly associated with terror. Kelsay makes clear thatfor Muslims war takes place in the pursuit of the spread of Islam,i.e., that violence is legitimate in its association with a God-ordainedcause. Historically this violence has not been terrorism, because itserves for Muslims as a means, not as an end in itself. In addition,the use of force is circumscribed by strict rules of “honorable fight-ing.” Islamic expansion in the past was bound to the Sharia reason-

ing that viewed this expansion as “act of divine providence” (p. 38).The topic of war is central to Sharia reasoning (p. 101). Unlike con-temporary jihadism, classic jihad, as based on the classical Sharia reasoning, involved a “military realism” that justifies the action of “Muslim troops . . . engaged in a legitimate war” (p. 106). The goalwas to globalize Islam. Given that this happened in the past, whatdoes it mean at the present? Why has jihad become jihadism in the sense of irregular warfare or terrorism?

It is not an expression of Orientalism to speak of an “aql Arabi /

Arab reason” that subjects all thinking, including the Sharia reason-ing to the “authority of the text” in the search for a precedent. Thesequoted ideas not only reflect existing facts, but have also been coined by contemporary prominent Muslim thinkers.4 For instance,the inclination of contemporary jihadists to justify their actions by quoting the medieval scholar Ibn Taymiyya makes clear how they legitimate their resort to violence by a reference to a text-basedprecedent. In the current citations of medieval texts by most Islam-ists, the line is blurred between past and present. Medieval theology

is used to legitimate contemporary political decisions.5

In this

4. Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, Takwin al-aql al-Arabi (Beirut: Dar al-Talia, 1984);and Abdulahi Abdul-Rahman, Sultat al-nas (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqafi, 1993).5. Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1985).


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sense, it is correct that Kelsay stresses the view that Sharia reason-ing revolves around the search for a historical precedent. This is notonly a major argument, but also the underlying concern in the refer-ence to the text. Thus “the citation of texts . . . involves a search for a

fit between history and the present” (p. 125). This interpretation explains wonderfully the preoccupation of contemporary Muslimswith “the authority of the text.” Today, texts by Ibn Taymiyya rank highly in this process.

Kelsay’s thesis is concerned with how Muslims argue for just war, but his book reads like a general introduction to Islam as well as aconcise intellectual history of it. Nevertheless, it is written as aspecial monograph, a function which the book completely fulfills.The combination of an introduction and specialized research that

covers fifteen centuries is an asset. It also the source of some weak-ness. It is worth noting that Kelsay has a comprehensive knowledgeabout Islam in the past and present. This enables him to draw longlines and to engage in fruitful comparisons of long historicalperiods, as is done in historical sociology. In this line of reasoning,he places convincingly almost every assumption and every state-ment in a long standing context both of history of ideas and facts.

At first, the book makes clear that jihad is more than war, asSharia is much more than just a type of law. I am most sympathetic

to the way Kelsay begins his book on jihad as a just war legitimated by Sharia reasoning. One considers the meaning of both terms.Kelsay deems it appropriate to ask the question: “What is Islam?”and to then devote a full chapter to answering it. The introduction to Islam is at the same time a sketch of a history of ideas of early and medieval Islam. Islam is for Kelsay (1) a religious movement,(2) a religion that lays the claim to be “the natural religion of human-ity” and last, (3) a civilization. This character of Islam led to a severeconflict in the land of its birth. At that time, Arabia was a place of

tribes fighting one another. Therefore, the birth of Islam is associ-ated with a declaration of war on these tribes, subdue them, andto unite them in one umma ; W. C. Watt once qualified the ummaas “supertribe” or federation of tribes.6 Was the unity of theumma a lasting one? No, it was not, and this remains true.7

Kelsay’s book could be more precise in terms of describing the dif-ference between the ideal Islamic community and the historicalcommunity of Islam, and the problem with pluralism that has

6. On Islam and the tribes see: W.C. Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1977), 78, 144, and 149.7. Bassam Tibi, “The Simultaneity of the Unsimultaneous. Old Tribes andImposed Nation-States,” in Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East , ed.Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (Berkeley: University of California Press,1990), 127–52.


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plagued Islam since its beginning. The war against the tribes was an internal war in Arabia that was combined with an external war forthe spread of Islam throughout the world. This is the combination of the local and global throughout the history of Islam. Sharia rea-

soning is embedded in this specific overall context. Kelsay accountsfor this, but does not provide an analysis of the repercussions of theventure undertaken to subdue the tribes. Islam’s drive to establish one umma was a claim; in historical reality this claim was not suc-cessfully realized. Even though the Quran in sura al-hujarat acknowledges diversity, the ideal of one Islamic umma establishesa binary of dar al-Islam , as house of belief, and the abode of the non-Muslim rest of the world despised by the characterization of jahi- liyya (ignorance). This binary is a burden for today’s Muslims in

that it bifurcates their worldview.Of course, there has been always in reality a plural Muslim world,

but not in the Islamic doctrine, or in its worldview. To date, thisnotion of one umma continues to dismiss pluralism. There is only one religion that proclaims to be “the natural religion of humanity”(p. 27). This religion is Islam and it claims superiority. This religion also makes provisions to use jihad against any deviation “to correcterror by hand . . . the tongue . . . and the heart” (p. 35). Islam is ready to incorporate those who do not accept its mission, but only on the

grounds that they “enter into a tributary relationship. . .

(and)acknowledge the supremacy of Islam . . . as the true religion”(p. 37). In my research on Southeast Asia, I referred to thisMuslim worldview and qualified it as source of a dilemma. Theclaim to supremacy prevents Muslims from accepting a pluralism of cultures and religions (see note 47). Kelsay avoids getting intothis most sensitive issue, but the implications are inherent in hisanalysis.

Even though I follow Kelsay and endorse his detailed analysis of

Islam and of the Arab tribal culture, I wonder, nevertheless, why he does not question Islam’s “claim that this (tribal) culture has

been transformed by the movement of Islam” (p. 17). In his multi-volume history of early Islam, the distinguished German scholarJoseph van Ess documents that in the aftermath of the death of the prophet 632 almost each tribe had its own mosque. No onewas willing to pray behind an imam who was not the shaykh of his own tribe.8 Add to this sentiment the requirement that thecaliph has to descend from the tribe of Quraysh. This was a provi-

sion maintained and practiced both by Umayyad and Abbasidcaliphates. The conclusion is that the umma was never more than

8. Joseph van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert.Hidschra , 6 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991), 1: 4.


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an ideal that faltered on the bedrock of realities in a tribal society.The classical problem of the tribes continues to burden thepresent. The introduction of the modern nation-state (also con-noted in Arabic by the term umma, despite the different meaning)

into the world of Islam never succeeded in subduing what Kelsay rightly calls “tribal culture.” It is not only Kelsay, but Muslims them-selves who do not distinguish between the claim of an ideal and of reality. This weakness does not affect the fact that Muslims in history successfully fought jihad in line with Sharia reasoning. Tothem it “was an act of divine providence” (p. 38) to expand theIslamicate of the umma and its “natural religion of humanity” formapping the entire world into the house of Islam. Islamic history documents both: fragmentation (tribes, ethnic groups, and sects9)

and unity (the expansionist umma).All in all, Kelsay does a great job in reconstructing the Muslim

view of the world (Weltbild ) in terms of Sharia judgments that legit-imate jihad (as war) for the global spread of Islam. At issue is an envisioned remaking of the world as consistent with the provisionsof Islam as the natural and final religion of humanity. This efforttakes place in a process in which the civilization of Islam (dar al-Islam ) is expected to map the entire globe. The ideal was and con-tinues to be to make the civilization of Islam identical with the civ-

ilization of the entire humanity.10

This analysis of Kelsay is accurate and valid, despite some correc-tions that need to be made. Now, everything is changeable and Islam is no exception. Even though the described Muslim worldview with-stood change throughout the past centuries, it is challenged in modern times. How do Muslims come to terms with tensions

between images and reality? And how does John Kelsay approach this issue?

Islamic Jihad-Sharia Doctrine Exposed to the Realitiesof the Modern World

Even though Kelsay keeps the focus on the classical doctrine andtends to see the interpretation of it prevail up through thepresent, his work takes notice of modern changes and challenges.His succinct phrase is: “the power of Europe . . . challenged theassumption of Muslim hegemony” ( p. 126). In dealing with

9. Fuad Khuri, Imams and Emirs. State, Religion and Sects in Islam (London: SaqiBooks, 1990).10. William McNeill, The Rise of the West (Chicago: Chicago University Press,1963). Any reader of the historian McNeill is familiar with a comparablereading of history that equates Western civilization with “civilization” in general.


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changes that have been taking place, Muslims continue to employ Sharia reasoning. Muslims seek for “precedents/sabiqah ” in theclassical doctrine that could offer guidance in the context of uncer-tainty. Kelsay is right in arguing that this pattern of reasoning

explains the topicality of Sharia also for contemporary Islam.Unfortunately, Kelsay avoids the distinction between Islam andIslamism (and also: jihad and jihadism, as well), but he is rightin speaking about the role of precedent. Based on my research,I share with Kelsay the reference to Ibn Taymiyya as a majorsource in the search for a precedent, but I limit the importance of this figure to Islamism (political Islam). There are Muslims whoare not Islamists and also seek other sources and they do notconfine themselves to Sharia reasoning. Kelsay knows the World

Islamic Front and its “Declaration on Armed Struggled againstJews and Crusaders.” This reference makes clear that Kelsay means jihadist Islamism when he addresses this issue, even though he evades the term. Still, the problem that most Muslimsface in the exposition of their image of the self—internalized in aprocess of Islamic socialization—to existing realities is that theirimagery does not hold. As a schoolboy in Damascus I had to learn that we are still “khair umma /the foremost community” (Quran 3/110). Every time that I articulated my doubts in the class, I

never received from any of my teachers a convincing explanation for the gap between promise and reality.

Under conditions of globalization in the nineteenth century,Muslim ulema -scribes were poised to engage in a type of Sharia rea-soning named conformism, i.e., an effort to reinterpret Sharia anewto establish a fit between its claims and the new changed condi-tions. These scribes were, however, not willing to rethink thereceived doctrine. Kelsay delves into this part of history to seehow these ulema invoked Sharia in the new setting and then asks

the vexing question, how do Muslim thinkers respond to the chal-lenge of modernity within the frame of reference determined by Sharia reasoning? He states three patterns of response:

(1) The radical response that legitimates armed struggle forwhich Kelsay focuses on the example of al-Qaida (p. 126,pp. 142– 43). Kelsay consistently speaks of jihad, butI prefer to use the term jihadism, because an invention of tra-dition is at issue, to be covered best by a new term.

(2) The moderate religious establishment ( pp. 141 – 42) thatcriticizes the overriding of the rules of traditional jihad.This establishment stops short of distancing Islam from theresort to violence completely. The jihadists’ practices arequestioned, but not their goals.


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(3) Islamic democrats who address the issue, more or less, in its broad scope (p. 166– 97). These are not only a minority, butalso highly inconsistent in their thought (e.g., A. An-Na’im)and tend to have little impact on their communities.

There are great problems with all three directions within Islam.Kelsay is to be admired for his frankness when he refers to thelimited criticism of al-Qaida’s resort to terror as put forward by thereligious establishment. In reality, this establishment has somethingin common with the radicals: “In its broad confines, the militantvision articulated by al-Zawahiri is also the vision of his critics”(p. 165). This contention is made clear in this statement: the establish-ment critics of jihadist violence qualify the means of terror as “wrong

or counterproductive, or both. But they do not dissent from the judg-ment that . . . the cure for the ills . . . involves the establishment of Islamic governance” (p. 165–66). Kelsay then adds: “The problem of militancy is not simply a matter of objectionable tactics. Theproblem is the very notion of Islamic governance” (p. 166).

When it comes to the third group, the Muslim democrats, onecannot avoid stating that these people have very limited impact.Kelsay knows that their “arguments . . . are not widely distributed”(p. 167). This is in addition to the great lack of consistency in

Islamic democratic thought. One clearly finds this in the writingsof some Muslim democrats, in particular in those of AbdulazizSachedina.11 One of these democrats, Abdullahi An-Na’im (with whom I earlier shared the concern of introducing individualhuman rights to our civilization) recently took a big step back-wards (see note 12). Because Kelsay devotes a number of pagesand references to the work of An-Na’im, it is worth mentioningthat this Muslim thinker recently shifted course. In a book pub-lished one year after the book by Kelsay discussed here,An-Na’im abandons his earlier position without any furtherexplanation. In his first highly promising book, published in 1990 on “Islamic Reformation,” An-Na’im puts the choice coura-geously—so is the phrasing of Kelsay—“Muslims must either doaway with or revise historical Sharia ” (p. 177). In his 2008 book An-Na’im becomes quite apologetic about Sharia and states hisnew confession “Sharia should be . . . a source of liberation andself-realization.”12 These references demonstrate the lack of

11. For a criticism on Sachedina see Bassam Tibi, “The Predicament of Islam with Democratic Pluralism,” in Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft 7, no. 1 (2006): 83–117.12. See Abdullahi An-Na’im, Islam and the Secular State. Negotiating the Future of Sharia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 290. In 1988– 90,An-Na’im was a different scholar. He and I worked at the Wilson Center on a


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consistency, and therefore a loss of credibility. To pay lip-serviceto democracy and to pluralism without embracing the relatedcivic culture and without detailing a program of religiousreforms is not enough to make this Muslim democratic position

tenable. One of the central problems is that An-Na’im wants asecular state without the secularization of society.

In terms of representation, the Muslims in Kelsay’s categoriesone and two are more important, because they are more powerful.While reading Kelsay’s book I thought of the multi-volume work of the nineteenth-century Moroccan Ahmed al-Nasiri, who wouldhave been highly supportive. Kelsay bypasses al-Nasiri’s work—in which a balance is sought between inherited Sharia and a rea-soning—mostly in regard to the changed realities of the nine-

teenth century. (The significance of al-Nasiri lies also in his roleas an advisor to the Moraccan Sultan, to whom he recommendedthe suspension of jihad given the fact that Islam was deprived of its power to establish hegemony.)13 This position is also pre-sented today by al-Azhar’s Bayan lil-Nas .14 At this point I recom-mend to Kelsay to reconsider his putting of Sheykh al-Azhar andof Qaradawi on equal footing (p. 142). There is a great distinction

between them: al-Qaradawi15 is a Muslim Brother and the heir of Sayyid Qutb, i.e., an Islamist, while the Shaykh al-Azhar is

simply a representative of the Salafi Muslim of tradition of fiqh -orthodoxy.

Sharia Reasoning and the Other Muslim Ways I: ThePast: Islamic Falsafa -Rationalism

A flashpoint in Sharia reasoning involves the question: Who leadsthe umma of the Muslims? Between 1985 and 1995 I studied the

project on human rights. The findings were published in the book, edited by Abdullahi An-Na’im and Francis Deng, Human Rights in Africa (Washington:Brookings Institution, 1990). My chapter 5 on Islam and human rights is on pp. 104– 32. In view of this earlier cooperation, as well as the earlier congeniality

between us as critical minded Muslims. It was shocking for me to read An-Na’im (2008) and see the U-turn his new book includes. The U-turn in the assessmentof Sharia by An-Na’im is beyond my comprehension.13. Ahmed bin Khalid al-Nasiri, al-Istiqsa’ fi Akhbar Duwal al-Maghreb , (9 vols),published in a reprint by Dar al-Kitab, Casablanca 1955; on al-Nasiri, see the

monograph devoted to al-Nasiri’s work by Abdullatif Husni, al-Islam wa al-alaqat al-duwaliyya (Casablanca: Ifriqiya al-Sharq, 1991).14. Jadulhaq Ali Jadulhaq on behalf of al-Azhar, Bayan lil nas , 2 vols. (Cairo:al-Azhar, 1984, 1988).15. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, al-Hall al-Islami , 3 vols. (exists numerous reprints, pub-lished in Cairo and Beirut).


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history of this question in Islam for the completion of a monograph.In this research, I came across a deep-seated conflict between fiqh and falsafa .16 The Islamic falsafa -rationalism which I am inclinedto identify as providing seeds for an Islamic version of a secular

enlightenment was a new and forward-looking direction in Islam.Unlike the European Enlightenment philosophers (e.g., Voltaire),Muslim philosophers (e.g., Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd) never polarizedfiqh -orthodoxy. They were willing to establish bridges, even though they were not willing to participate in “Sharia reasoning.” Some of them paid lip-service to Sharia (e.g., Ibn Khaldun). In the light of this contention, I think Kelsay is wrong when he follows WaelHallaq in the characterization of the work of falsafa . For instance,Hallaq states “Ibn Rushd and other ‘ulema’” in the course of

“Sharia reasoning among Sunni Muslims” ( p. 70). In fact, Ibn Rushd was a rationalist and did not belong to the ulema scribes.

In contrast to these Muslim philosophers, the fiqh scribes drawclear lines against rationalism. As Mawardi puts it, every Muslim isexposed in his thinking to the alternative: bi al-aql aw bi al-Wahi ,i.e., either reason or revelation.17 There is no middle in this binary.The Muslims who are inclined to accept the primacy of reason run the risk of being demonized as heretics. This is not to affirm al-aql as one of the “sources of Sharia reasoning” (p. 72) as Kelsay con-

tends, but is rather a crude scripturalism committed to a binary sep-arating al-aql from the wahi (revelation). Muslim rationalists werefearful of this exposure. The last great philosopher in Islam, Ibn Khaldun (died 1406) was a rationalist, but distanced himself verbally from philosophy and paid lip-service to Sharia in order to protect hisdeeply rational work of a reason-based philosophy of history. Thereader of Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima will not find any Sharia reason-ing in his work. Ibn Khaldun states that religion is not a primary source of asabiyya /esprit de corps. In my intellectual history of

Islam, in which I discovered this opposition between fiqh andfalsafa, I argue that there was a competitor with Sharia reasoningin Islamic history. In short, the philosophy of al-Madina al-fadila of

16. Although I am a professor of international relations (since 1973), however, apolitical philosopher by training, I engaged in this research for the study of medieval philosophy in Islam. The results were first published in a bigchapter in: Piper Handbook of Political Ideas , vol. II, ed. Iring Fetscher(Munchen: Piper Verlag, 1993), 87–174, followed by a monograph on intellec-tual history of Islam, being my major book. The reference is: Der wahre Imam

(Munich: Piper, 1996), reprinted many times. In both publications, the focus ison tensions between the Sharia reasoning of the fiqh orthodoxy and falsafa rationalism in Islam.17. On the formula bi al-aql aw al-wahi and the related competition between Fiqh-orthodoxy and rationalism in Islam see my monograph referenced in note 16.


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al- Farabi and the epistemology of Ibn Rushd did not follow theIslamic tradition of Sharia reasoning. In so arguing along with thegreat philosopher Ernst Bloch in his appreciation of Avicenna/Ibn Sina against what he termed “the Mufti world,”18 I propose that

Kelsay should differentiate between Sharia reasoning andfalsafa -rationalists. In the past, Ibn Taymiyya in his al-Siyasa al-Shar’iyya and Mawardi in his al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya assertedthe authority of fiqh against philosophy.19 Ibn Taymiyya andMawardi were more successful than the falsafa rationalists in thatmedieval competition; that does not make them right.

Franz Rosenthal honors falsafa -rationalism as an aspect of the“heritage of Islam.”20 The Islamic civilization’s contribution to the

birth of modern science was by no means related to Sharia reason-

ing. I propose that Kelsay consider these insights and to take a look at the work of Mohammed al-Jabri, who put the options in thismanner: “The survival of our philosophical tradition, i.e. what islikely to contribute to our time, can only be Averroist.”21 To besure, Averroist philosophy does not rest on the method or princi-ples of Sharia reasoning.

In the course of its exposure to Western civilization not only as acolonial power, but also as cultural modernity, Muslims tried torevive the Islamic heritage of Averroest rationalism, but failed.

There is a most important survey on these failed efforts in the bril-liant study completed by Anke von Kugelgen.22 In modern timesthere was also another strand that deviated from Islamic Sharia rea-soning. It is secular liberalism, and the more powerful pan-Arabsecular nationalism. Kelsay does not deal with the dilemma of Muslims “between Islam and the nation-state.”23 This themecreated the major topic in the first decade of my academic career. Iacknowledge that nationalism was secular, but also that it has

18. Ernst Bloch, Avicenna und die Aristotelische Linke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhr-kamp, 1963), 30. Bloch qualifies this Islamic falsafa rationalism as a “beginningmedieval enlightenment” ( p. 29).19. For detailed references see chapter 4 on Farabi, chapter 5 on Mawardi andIbn Taymiyya, and chapter 6 on Ibn Khaldun in my book Der wahre Imam (see note 16). For a recent work on this subject, see The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy , ed. Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2005).20. Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage of Islam (London: Routledge, 1975),reprint 1992.

21. Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, Arab Islamic Philosophy (Austin:CMES-University of Texas, 1999), 124; see also note 4.22. Anke von Kugelgen, Averroes und die arabische Moderne (Leiden: Brill,1994).23. Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism. Between Islam and the Nation-State , 3rd ed.(New York: Macmillan, 1997).


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failed and retreated in favor of “Sharia reasoning.” Ahead of theresumption of Sharia reasoning around 1970 by Qaradawi’s al-Hallal-Islami (note 15) there was in the years 1967–1970 another mostpromising interval of a secular enlightenment led by Islamic thinkers

such as the poet Adonis (editor of Maqawif ) and Sadik al-Azm. Medi-eval Islamic rationalism lasted for almost three centuries. The post1967-war enlightenment lasted only for three years.24

Sharia Reasoning and Other Muslim Ways II. Modern Times: Liberalism and Secular Nationalism

Early Muslim liberals such as Tahtawi and Abduh acknowledged, on

the grounds of their observations and experiences in nineteenth-century France, the need for Muslims to engage in cultural borrow-ing from Europe.25 However, they made the bottom line clear: only adoptions are to be admitted that do not contradict or violate therules of Sharia . Given the fact that the present essay focuses on Kelsay’s book and is not a study of Islamic modernism, I cannotgo into more detail. There is, however, a connection: Islamic mod-ernism failed because it aimed to establish a synthesis between Sharia reasoning and cultural modernity. This endeavor did not

work. Why? Sharia reasoning is a type of religious dogmatics. Thelate, most distinguished German sociologist of religion and lawNiklas Luhman, characterized intellectual thought bound to reli-gious dogma as that which “interprets in order to give answers.On the one hand it works with functionally unanalyzed abstractionsand in this respect is unreflective. It does not thematize its socialfunction but understands itself, its concept of dogma, in turn in adogmatic fashion. . . . It rests, on the other hand, on the context-freeavailability of its materials: that is, on a distance from the connec-

tions which it interprets.”26

24. On this short period, see Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament. Arab Political Thought and Practice since 1967 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981),reprinted a dozen times. For a recent contribution on this subject-matter seeB. Tibi, Intellektuelle als verhinderte Aufklarer. Das Scheitern der Intellektuellen im Islam, in Die Intellektuellen und der Weltenlauf , ed. Walter Reese-Schafer undHarald Bluhm (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2006), 97–125. The cited chapter arguesthat Sharia reasoning was interpreted twice: in medieval Islam and in thepost-1967 developments. Of course, next to the Arabic thought in the liberalage. On the latter see Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798 –1939

(London: Oxford University Press, 1962). In both intervals secular Muslimsfailed to establish their new tradition.25. Rifa’a R. al-Tahtawi, Takhlis al-Ibriz fi talkhis Paris (Beirut: Dar Ibn Zaidun,reprint, n.d.).26. Niklas Luhman, Funktion der Religion (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977),87.


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themselves as “Islamic conservatives” to avoid being banned.28 In fact, Sharia reasoning determines the mindset and the worldviewof Turkish AKP-Islamists. The victory of the AKP is a victory of Sharia reasoning in Turkey.

In stating that Sharia is today the most distinctive feature of polit-ical Islam, I acknowledge the centrality of the form of reasoningsuperbly analyzed by Kelsay. However, one has to add this: it isno longer the classical Sharia Kelsay is dealing with. There has

been an “invention of tradition” that results in a Shariatization of state and society. The scholar who coined this formula, Eric Hobs-

bawm, tells us that “inventing traditions is . . . characterized by reference to the past . . . where a tradition is deliberately inventedand constructed. . . . The difficulty is not only one of the sources,

but also of the techniques. . .

in symbolism and ritual.”29 The newSharia of political Islam does not simply serve as a framework forguidance, as Kelsay rightly says about the classical Sharia , but itis rather a constitution for an authoritarian state (see note 35).I have reason to identify this new setup as a totalitarian order, dis-tinct from more traditional forms of despotic rule.

I am mostly in agreement with Kelsay’s line of argumentation about Sharia , but I deviate in three major points, some of which are general oversights and others which are related to terminology.

My criticism revolves around the following three points:

† First, the book misses or ignores other ways of reasoning by Muslims in the past and at present beyond the Sharia as dis-cussed above in two sections.

† Second, Kelsay’s portrait of the Muslim Brothers as “embodi-ment of the classical Sharia vision” (p. 92) needs a closer scru-tiny in light of the idea of an invention of tradition.

† Third, my close reading of the essay on jihad by the founder of

the Muslim Brothers, Hasan al-Banna, compels me to speak of jihadism, not of jihad. This is due to a reading by al-Banna of a new meaning into Islam determined by an invention thatguides his thinking and his political activities, as well.

At this juncture, I point to the distinction between Islam (tradi-tion) and Islamism (the invention of tradition) to understand whatal-Banna and also Qutb had done to the Sharia to make it theframe for establishing Hakimiyyat Allah . This is a concept that

28. For more details see Bassam Tibi, “Turkey’s Islamists Approach to Europe,”Middle East Quarterly 16, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 47–54.29. Eric Hobsbawm, introduction to The Invention of Tradition , ed. Eric Hobs-

bawm and Terence Ranger (New York: Cambridge University Press, reprint1996), 4.


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never existed in quite this form in any earlier Islamic tradition.Therefore, I speak in respect to the legacy of al-Banna and Qutb of a combined jihadization and Shariatization of Islam. This combina-tion results from a process of an invention of tradition. If Kelsay

accepts my argument of an “interval” in Islamic history thatoccurred twice (in the past: falsafa -rationalism, and in contempo-rary history: secularism) then we would be in agreement not only in viewing the present jihadist resumption of the Islamic discourseof Arguing the Just War as a return of Sharia reasoning, but also tosee this venture taking a new shape. In short, I not only propose toconsider the “interval” mentioned, but also suggest that the return of Sharia reasoning takes place as an invention of tradition.Therefore, I disagree with the qualification of al-Banna’s thought

as “embodiment of tradition.” Let me explain in the followingwhat I take to be the Shariatization process to make this pointclearer.

While I want to distance myself from endorsing Huntington’s rhet-oric of a “clash of civilization,” I submit in fairness that this Harvardscholar contributed, albeit in a distorted manner, to the revival of the study of civilizations. In this context, a conflict is stated in civ-ilizational terms. To be sure, a conflict is not necessarily a clash.A conflict can be peacefully resolved, a clash cannot. With this

understanding in mind, I propose to see in the course of therevival of divine law in Islamic civilization a conflict and a competi-tion between “secular” and “political-religious” concepts of order,

but dismiss the formula of a “clash of civilizations” for conceptual-izing this conflict. It is more proper to speak of a “New Cold War”taking place between secularism and the return of the sacred.30

To be sure, one can employ Sharia in a new understanding for an ethical guidance of politics,31 but no more than that. Sharia is not aconstitutional law itself, as Islamists in their construction claim.

They abuse the text of the Quran to legitimate a new variety of Ori-ental despotism wearing the religious garb either of Wahhabi or of Islamist Islam. The difference between Hanbali-inspired Wahhabiorthodox Salafism and Islamism is between despotism and totali-tarianism. These two ideologies engage, each in its own way, in aSharia -based reasoning.

At present, the argument for secular law and legal universality ischallenged by the Shariatization of Islam. Truly, the Sharia in Islam

30. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), and Mark Juergensmeyer,A New Cold War? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).31. See Sohail H. Hashmi, ed., Islamic Political Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), the volume includes chapter 9 by Bassam Tibi on theethics of war in Islam.


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is a pendulum swinging between ethics and politics. Ethically, theQuran prescribes piety and general rules. This guidance (hidaya )is not a legal system. The legal system of Sharia is therefore a post-Quranic structure. As a tradition it is, however, confined to mu’ama-

lat (civil law), cult (ibadat ) and to a penal code of hudud . Islamicclerics are learned men of religion (ulema or scribes), some of them act as religious jurists or faqihs (in Arabic: fuqaha ), not as the-ologians (mutakallimun ). In medieval Islam a religious tradition of kalam (theology) unfolded. There were those Mutazilite theologianswho were “defenders of reason,”32 but they—unlike the fuqaha —never succeeded in becoming mainstream in Islamic civilization.

The fiqh (Islamic sacral jurisprudence) possessed and continuesto possess a monopoly over the interpretation of religious affairs

in Islam. Most of these jurists did not deal with politics and they were never independent in their Sharia reasoning because they were subservient to the caliph. There was a separation between law (Sharia ) and the politics (siyasa ) of the state. I prefer to followJoseph Schacht instead of Hallaq and to adopt his way of describingthis separation: The sovereign pretended “to apply and to completethe sacred law . . . (but) in practice [regulated] by virtually independ-ent legislation matters of police, taxation, justice, all of which hadescaped the control of the Kadi.”33 This field, as Schacht continues,

was “later called siyasa.. . .

As a result of all this, a double adminis-tration . . . one religious . . . on the basis of Sharia , the other secularexercised by political authorities on the basis of . . . —sometimes—arbitrariness of governmental regulations.”34

In short, there existed a virtual separation between siyasa andSharia . Today, the Shariatization of law35 related to the rise of Islamism. The invented tradition has some roots in the past, in par-ticular in the work of Ibn Taymiyya. Kelsay rightly argues that theSharia reasoning of Ibn Taymiyya implies on the one hand a “con-

servative practice in the sense that it. . .

follows the line of prece-dent” (p. 75); on the other hand, however, it seems “to suggest thenecessity of fighting” in a kind of “just revolution” (pp. 121–22).This tension between two contradictory provisions may explain the life of Ibn Taymiyya: he preached obedience to authority, butat the same time he spent most of his life, as Kelsay reminds us,

32. See the volume Defender of Reason , ed. Richard Martin (Oxford: One World,1997).

33. Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press,reprinted 1979), 54–55.34. Ibid.35. On Shariatization see Bassam Tibi, “The Return of the Sacred to Politics. TheCase of the Shariatization of Politics,” in Theoria. A Journal of Social and Polit- ical Theory 55, no. 3 (2008): 91– 119.


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in prison, punished for his disobedience (p. 75). In the age of thereturn of the sacred with an invented Sharia law, the writings of Ibn Taymiyya are highly instructive for understanding Islamism.Islamists themselves refer to Ibn Taymiyya and claim universality

for Sharia . In so doing, they not only generate an inter-civilizationalconflict, but also call for disobedience (to whom?) and thus engagein the same contradiction that characterized the life and work of Ibn Taymiyya.

These historical issues matter deeply to the present study of Islam. The background is full of conflict. There is a diversity of legal systems that exist parallel to the diversity of cultures and civ-ilizations. Salafi Muslims and Islamists refuse to follow the Western notion of law, and prefer instead to refer to the Quran and view it as

an Islamic constitution, in the same manner as Islamic universal-ism. To understand how the particular can be made universal, areference to the Oxford jurist H. L. A. Hart is worthwhile. Hartshows how European-structured law becomes international law,

binding for new states: “It has never been doubted that when anew, independent state emerges into existence . . . it is bound by the general obligations of international law. . . . Here the attempt torest the new state’s international obligations on a ‘tacit’ or ‘inferred’consent seems wholly threadbare.”36

The international system is secular and it is challenged by thereturn of the sacred,37 placed as a sign of the cultural turn. In thiscontext, religion is viewed as a “cultural system.”38 Presently, thisphenomenon is occurring in all religion-based civilizations, fore-most in Islam. In the context of identity politics, cultural attitudesand law traditions are constructed along the lines of the traditionalconcept of sacred law. This implies the revival of Sharia law and itsreasoning based on the belief that it is revealed by God, even though it is derived interpretatively from holy scripture. In modern democ-

racies, the lawmakers are elected parliamentarians acting in legisla-tive institutions, whereas in Islam non-elected faqihs , in theircapacity as interpreters of the scripture, are not only legal scholars

but also those who determine what the law is and what legitimateauthority in the name of Allah is.

Thus, one may contrast two competing legal traditions with one another: legislative democratic law versus interpretativeauthoritarian law. The contemporary Sharia reasoning reaches apeak in the process of Shariatization of law which legitimizes

36. H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 221.37. Daniel Philpot, “The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in Interna-tional Relations,” in World Politics , 55, no. 1 (2002): 66–95.38. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretations of Cultures (New York: Basic Books,1973), 87 –125.


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de-Westernization through an Islamization of the law as a politicsof cultural purification. This process is clearly imbued with anti-democratic implications. Currently, in most Islamic countries, pos-itive law is flatly rejected in favor of the call for tatbiq al-Sharia

(implementation of Sharia ). The landslide electoral victory of thepro-Sharia forces in Iraq and Hamas in Palestine and the ascend-ancy of Islamists in general cast great doubts on the future of theworld of Islam. If the new Sharia -reasoning based on a Shariatiza-tion of the state were to prevail, then there will be a situation worth despairing over. Kelsay does not use the term “Shariatiza-tion,” but his reference to “Sharia reasoning” as “a history of con-flict in which argument is often connected with violence” (p. 75) ismost helpful for understanding what this is all about. In this

context, Kelsay reminds us that it is an Islamic duty—in theunderstanding of Ibn Taymiyya—“to extend or protect the hegem-ony of Islamic values in what one might call geopolitical space”(p. 119). The foremost among these values are those of theSharia . Could contemporary Muslims make this duty compatiblewith incorporation into a global civil society?39 Or is continuedconflict inevitable?

The Pertinence of Sharia Reasoning to theIslam-Diaspora in Europe

Finally, and before moving to the conclusions, there is still a very important area that Kelsay’s discussion of Sharia reasoning failsto address: the pertinence of this valuable analysis for the Islamicdiaspora in Europe. This diaspora has emerged in a context of global migration. Those Westerners not knowledgeable aboutIslamic beliefs confuse migration in Islam with migration in general and thus fail to grasp the issue and draw utterly wrong con-clusions40 about integrating Islam into Europe. In contrast, Kelsay acknowledges in his earlier work this issue, but he unfortunately keeps it out of his new book. Nevertheless, he informs his readersabout the different meaning of migration in Islam: “The migration to Medina, al-hijra , constitutes a defining moment in the story.For the time being, the community would carry out its mission not only by means of preaching and worship, but by means of fight-ing and other political activity” (p. 23). Is this Sharia provision also

39. Mary Caldor, Global Civil Society. An Answer to War (Cambridge/UK: Polity,2003). Caldor states: “Both Islamic fundamentalism and the use of terror areprofoundly inimical to global civil society,” 148.40. For a hopeless case, see for example Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse,Integrating Islam. Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France (Washington: Brookings, 2006).


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valid for the Islam diaspora in Europe emerging from the new waveof migration?

Among the merits of this fantastic book is the point that Sharia in Islam is more than just a law, it is about guidance in the context of

establishing what Kelsay names “a precedent.” The Muslims call thissabiqa . Does the migration of the Prophet to Medina 622 establish such a “precedent” in the Sharia reasoning for Islamic migration at present, as it did in the past?

Muslim immigrants in Europe face this question and their spokes-men evade an honest answer. No doubt, Muslim immigrants can only be integrated as citizens of the heart in a secular polity. They can only do so if they can be induced to abandon the combination of hidjra with proselytization for the spread of Islam by all

means.41 If, in contrast, Sharia reasoning were more binding tothem than the loyalty to non-Islamic secular laws and to the consti-tutions in the states in which they live, then there can be no integra-tion, but rather an Islamization. Of course, Kelsay cannot cover in his monograph all issues. In one of his earlier books, Kelsay never-theless writes at the beginning most clearly: “Given the increasedpresence of Muslims in Europe and North America . . . it is importantto see . . . an account of an exchange,” and then adds toward the end:“the traditions we call Western and Islamic can no longer strictly be

identified with particular geographic regions. . .

The rapidity of Muslim immigration . . . suggests that we may soon be forced tospeak not simply of Islam and , but of Islam in the West. What differ-ence will this make? . . . Islamic communities form a sort of sectarian enclave in the context of a larger, Western culture . . . , but not of it.”42

In two projects at Cornell and Stanford universities,43 I addressedthis issue of Islamization first in the option of a misgiving of an “ethnicity of fear,” if the integration fails. In this context, the

Sharia reasoning analyzed by Arguing the Just War in Islam is

41. On this debate see Bassam Tibi, “A Migration Story. From Muslim Immi-grants to European Citizens of the Heart,” The Fletcher Forum of World 31(2007): 147–68.42. John Kelsay, Islam and War (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993). The firstquote is from p. 5, the second from pp. 117–18.43. Bassam Tibi, “Europeanizing Islam or the Islamization of Europe,” in Reli- gion in an Expanding Europe , ed. Timothy Byrnes and Peter Katzenstein

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 204– 24; Bassam Tibi, “Euro-Islamic Religious Pluralism for Europe: An Alternative to Ethnicity and to Multi-culturalism of Fear,” The Current /Cornell University 11, no. 1 (Fall 2007): 89–103; Bassam Tibi, “The Return of Ethnicity to Europe via Islamic Migration,”in Ethnic Europe , ed. Roland Hsu (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010),127–56.


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highly pertinent to the Islamic diaspora in Europe. The other option is to abandon Sharia in a Europeanized Islam.

Being a Muslim immigrant to Europe myself, and one who believesin the light of the heritage of falsafa rationalism that Islam and sec-

ularity (notice! not secularism) are compatible, I see the problem of the “geopolitical space” in relation to the validity of Islamicvalues.44 I also believe that Kelsay’s analysis is highly pertinent tounderstanding the European Muslim relations in the “global migra-tion crisis.” One should address this issue and not leave the fielduncontested to the people like Tariq Ramadan.45 This Islamistgives Europe the name of Dar al-Shahada in his Sharia reasoningcommitted to the obligation to the spread of Islam in an anticipa-tion of an Islamization of Europe. The reasoning about this issue

should be generated in a debate with John Kelsay in our community.In this debate one should not evade my hot-button issue, in partic-ular the one addressed in this section.

Conclusions

My appreciation for, combined with some critical propositionsabout Arguing the Just War in Islam hopefully makes clear thatthis work is a major contribution to the field of Islamic studies. Spe-cifically, it is a breakthrough in the study of Sharia and jihad in Islam. The turmoil in the world of Islam since the Islamic Revolution in Iran reflects a “civil war” that is violence within Islam that hasexpanded to become after 9/11 a geopolitical war, as John Brenk-man suggests.46 This process has affected the study of Islam in the West in a most negative manner in that it has contributed to adamaging politicization of scholarship, and in turn generates divi-sions among scholars and creates an impasse in understandingIslam. Kelsay’s book is so balanced and well-suited to serve as a con-tribution that helps to bring scholars back to the issues and toengage in a serious debate on Sharia and jihad. Kelsay is right in

44. Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam , 119.45. See Caroline Fourest, Brother Tariq. The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan (London: Encounter Books, 2008), and also the essay by Paul Berman, “Who’sAfraid of Tariq Ramadan. The Islamist, the Journalist and the Defense of Liber-alism,” in The New Republic (June 4, 2007), 37–63. Recently Berman developedthis important essay into a book. See Paul Berman, The Flight of the Intellectuals (Brooklyn: Melvillehouse, 2010), a book focused on the Islamism of Tariq

Ramadan. For a critique of Ramadan by a liberal Muslim, see Bassam Tibi,“Euro-Islam,” in The Other Muslims. Moderate and Secular , ed. Zeyno Baran (New York: Palgrave, 2010), 157–74.46. John Brenkman, The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy. Political Thought Since September 11 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007),165–77.


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stating that Sharia reasoning is the key to understanding contempo-rary political Islam.

At issue are not only 1.6 billion Muslims living all over the world, but also the rest of humanity, defined by Muslims in Sharia -jihad

terms. Thus, all humanity is affected by an Islamic worldview deter-mined by the discussed Sharia reasoning. Religious reform in Islam and an accommodation to secular cultural modernity are thus amatter of pertinence not restricted to the people of Islamic civiliza-tion, but affect all. As a Muslim scholar who lived and worked in Europe, the Middle East, and in Southeast Asia, I learned in thiscross-cultural context the need for pluralism, that is for other pat-terns than Sharia reasoning in order to establish peace. Today,the Islamic concept of peace is being phased out. Peace can only

be established on the grounds of mutual recognition and respect between Muslims and non-Muslims. The concept for this is demo-cratic pluralism of cultural modernity, not the Islamic concept of dhimmitude and is phased out [understanding of toleration underconditions of subjection.]47 At issue is not only to open space forIslam, but also for Muslims to create such space for non-Muslims.For this pursuit, Arguing Just War in Islam is a highly welcomed con-tribution to a most important debate.

47. Bassam Tibi, “Islam and Cultural Modernity. In Pursuit of Democratic Plural-ism,” in: Islamic Legitimacy in Plural Asia , ed. Anthony Reid and Michael Gilse-man (New York: Routledge, 2007), 28–52. This concept contradicts the Dhimmiand Islamic tolerance concepts analyzed by Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude (Cransbury: Associated University Presses, 2002), and Yohanan Friedman, Toler- ance and Coercion in Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).


tibi 2011 john kelsay and “sharia reasoning” in just war in islam an appreciation and a few...

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