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After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, much public attention has been focused on the issue of
global terrorism associated with Islamic fundamentalism. By merely glancing over the apparent connection
between the core teachings of Islam and the acts of terror committed by organizations such as Al-Qaeda, it is often
easy to mistakenly equate the Islamic faith with unwarranted acts of violence. This unfortunate ignorance of Islam
has led to an unfortunate climate of discrimination against Muslims, especially in the United States. This paper
seeks to provide an in-depth look into the actual links between the rationale of such terrorist organizations and
Islamic dogma as found in the Qur’an and in the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. In order to accurately study
this connection, I analyzed the essays of several theological and Muslim scholars and attempted to identify Islamic
teachings that terrorist leaders such as Osama bin-Laden have chosen to distort or ignore to suit the goals and
rationale of their organizations. After weeks of study, I have concluded that terrorist organizations stray from
Islamic teaching on jihad in three main areas: the proper authority to declare a jihad, the classification of
legitimate targets during a jihad, and the criteria for declaring a valid jihad. Only by understanding the true
disparities that exist between Islamic fundamentalist rationale for terrorist acts and the core teachings of
mainstream Islam can citizens of the world hope to heal the wounds created by terrorism and to reverse the
misconceptions of Islam as a violent religion that encourages warfare and acts of terror.
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Varying Interpretations of Jihad and Modern Islam
Although terrorism associated with radical Islam has existed since the early 1990’s, the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center certainly have increased global
awareness to the threat it poses to modern Western society. However, many people tend to
question whether the actions of Islamic fundamentalists and radicals like Osama bin Laden and
the Taliban can be associated with mainstream Islam. While the beliefs of Al-Qaeda and similar
terrorist organizations do stem from the core beliefs held by mainstream Muslims, these groups
hold vastly different interpretations of the Qur’an and of the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings. I
would contend that Islamic fundamentalist groups like Al-Qaeda stray from mainstream Islamic
teachings regarding jihad sin their differing interpretations of three main areas of Islamic belief:
who has the authority to declare such a jihad, the question of who can be classified as a
legitimate target during a jihad, and what constitutes a valid jihad.
Before discussing the specific views of fundamentalists such as Osama bin-Laden,
however, one must gain at least a basic understanding of what exactly is meant by the term
“jihad” and how both mainstream and fundamentalist Islam apply the concept. James Turner
Johnson, a professor of Religion at Rutgers University specializing in Just War Theory and
religious ethics, explains that when found in the context of the Qur’an, a “jihad” refers to “a
believer’s inner struggle for righteousness” (12). However, this concept of jihad as a personal
quest for holiness differs from a second, more modern interpretation of jihad that references an
actual fight against infidels. Closely tied to this second notion of a jihad against infidels is the
concept that the world is split into two distinct realms- the dar al-Islam (abode of Islam) and the
dar al-harb (abode of war). Muslims believe that the dar al-Islam has existed since its creation
by the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad and his successors were the supreme authorities on
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both the religious and political matters within the dar al-Islam. Due to its unity under Islam and
its rule under a successor to the Holy Prophet, the dar al-Islam differs from the rest of the world
because it is without conflict. Muslims affirm a lasting, universal peace is impossible unless the
dar al-Islam absorbs the dar al-harb and the world is united under Islam. They also believe that
until this peace is established, the two realms will be in a state of constant warfare. According to
Islamic teaching, the peace Muslims seek to establish can be achieved through the practice of
jihad (J. Johnson 12).
Johnson notes that during a period of warfare, Muslims believe two forms of jihad may
be implemented (this time in the aforementioned war-related contexts) to create universal peace.
In one form, a caliph (in Sunni tradition) or imam (in Shiite tradition) who leads the dar al-Islam
may call for a jihad in which all Muslims collectively participate in a defensive war against the
general threat of the dar al-harb (12). While this form of jihad is permissible both under modern
international law and under the “just-war theory,” it is actually no longer employed because
modern Islam is not unified under a central caliph or imam as it once was hundreds of years ago.
In the second form, which is commonly used now by groups such as Al-Qaeda to justify acts of
terror against Western civilization, the dar al-Islam carries out an emergency form of jihad to
counteract a direct attack from the dar al-harb. In this case, an acute emergency is assumed and
all religiously and socially prescribed relationships and norms are erased. In addition, all
Muslims are individually called to fight the aggression of the dar al-harb in whatever way
possible (J. Johnson 13).
The new interpretation of jihad currently used by Islamic fundamentalists and terrorist
organizations stems from the “emergency” form mentioned above. One can trace its roots back
to the Islamic African insurrections against Western colonialism during the early 1900’s (J.
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Johnson 13). This interpretation makes several critical assumptions not found in the traditional
interpretation of mainstream Islam, such as regarding any nation not belonging to the dar alIslam as an aggressor and hostile member of the dar al-harb. This interpretation defines
“aggressors” as those who support non-Islamic states or non-Islamic presences in the dar alIslam; therefore, the lines between civilians and actual military operatives are erased. This, in
effect, makes all individuals who are not Muslim aggressors and all nations that are not part of
the dar al-Islam aggressor nations. Another assumption supporting this interpretation of jihad is
that because of its “emergency status,” there are no limits to methods of warfare that can be used.
Because of this, jihadists may carry out suicide bomb attacks intended to kill innocent civilians,
including women, children, and the elderly. In addition, all Muslims are called to participate in
this form of jihad, whether they are males or females of any age (J. Johnson 13-14).
In 1998, Osama bin Laden and four other key members of the World Islamic Front for
Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders issued a fatwa (a religious statement of opinion in Islam)
calling for a jihad against the “crusader-Zionist alliance” ("Declaration Concerning Armed
Struggle Against Jews and Crusaders") between the Western world and the Jewish state of Israel.
According to John Kelsay, an expert in the field of Islamic and Christian ethics and the Richard
L. Rubenstein Professor of Religion at Florida State University, the fatwa serves as both a
fundamental statement of his reasoning for a campaign against America and the rest of Western
society and as a justification for not only the yet-to-occur 9/11 terrorist attacks but also the 1998
bombings of two American embassies in Africa and of the U.S.S. Cole off the coast of Yemen.
This 1998 fatwa reflects an acceptance of all the aforementioned assumptions related to the more
radical interpretation of jihad (“Arguments concerning Resistance in Contemporary Islam" 4-5).
For example, bin Laden regards the U.S. as an aggressor because of American troops positioned
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in Saudi Arabia since the first Gulf War. He claims the American “occupation” of the Arabian
peninsula indicates that the Muslim community faces a dire emergency that must be combated by
a jihad against foreign influence in the dar al-Islam. Bin Laden also views the American
“protracted blockade against Iraq” ("Declaration Concerning Armed Struggle Against Jews and
Crusaders") as a hostile and aggressive attack on the Iraqi people and the cause of their suffering.
Because bin Laden is not a caliph or imam with the authority to wage war against the U.S., he
uses the guise of a defensive jihad against the aggression of America and the Western world as
justification for acts of terror (Kelsay, “Interpreting Islamic Tradition: Bin Laden’s Reasons”
26).
While there is some basis to bin Laden’s reasoning towards jihad, there are at least three
main issues with his interpretation of this form of “emergency” jihad. First, neither Osama bin
Laden nor any of the fellow signers of the 1998 fatwa have the proper authority under Shari’a
reasoning to issue a fatwa. Shari’a refers to the sacred law of Islam derived from two sources:
the revelations of the Qur’an and the example set forth by the Holy Prophet Muhammad (T.
Johnson). According to Islamic tradition, only members of the educated class known as alulama may release a fatwa. These educated Muslim scholars have completed long courses of
study in grammar, philology, history, and logic, and therefore are considered educated enough to
have legitimate authority in matters of Islamic policy (Kelsay, "Interpreting Islamic Tradition:
Bin Laden's Reasons" 27-28). Because neither he nor any of the other World Islamic Front
signers can issue a legitimate fatwa calling for a jihad, it seems bin Laden has used the present
“emergency” situation as authorization to ignore this and many other guidelines concerning
related to jihad.
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Another issue with the World Islamic Front’s fatwa lies in the question of who can be
considered a legitimate target during a jihad. While this particular fatwa calls for fighting
against both civilians and soldiers without discretion, traditional Shari’a reasoning reflects the
supposed teachings of Muhammad in a hadith that states, “Struggle in the path of God. Do not
cheat or commit adultery. Do not mutilate or kill women, children, or old men…” (Khadduri 7677). John Kelsay notes that throughout history, crisis situations facing Muslims have never been
acceptable grounds to justify the targeting of civilians in jihad. He continues that under Shari’a
law, the intentional and direct targeting of civilians is considered murder and a serious war
crime. Therefore, Kelsay finds it irrational that Muslim terrorist groups could ever attempt to
justify a violation of central Islamic law, regardless of emergency circumstances ("Interpreting
Islamic Tradition: Bin Laden's Reasons" 29).
A third problem presented by a radical interpretation of jihad is a question of the scope of
the legitimacy of fighting under Shari’a reasoning. Traditional Islamic interpretation of the
Qur’an calls for fighting invading forces of the dar al-harb when they assault the dar al-Islam.
However in modern examples of jihad against the Western world, Islamic extremists launch
offensive assaults against Western targets outside of the territory designated the dar al-Islam. It
can be implied from statements issued by reputable Muslim scholars like Yusuf al-Qaradhawi that
this type of offensive assault on targets outside of the dar al-harb does not fall within the context
for jihad permitted by the Qur’an and the teachings of Muhammad. Al-Qaradhawi, an Egyptian
Islamic scholar known for his occasionally controversial opinions on terrorism, and several other
renowned Muslim scholars have shown support for the use of suicide bombing against what they
deem to be Israeli oppression of Palestine. Al-Qaradhawi explains, “Israeli society is militaristic
in nature. Both men and women serve in the army and can be drafted at any moment...If a child
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or an elderly person is killed in this type of operation, he or she is not killed on purpose, but by
mistake, and as a result of military necessity. Necessity makes the forbidden things permitted,”
(Kelsay, "Arguments concerning Resistance in Contemporary Islam" 31-32).
Interestingly however, although al-Qaradhawi may advocate these methods of jihad
against Israeli men and women (excluding children and the elderly), he does not show any
support whatsoever for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and for the
9/11 terrorist attacks. In fact, both al-Qaradhawi and the Egyptian Shaykh al-Azhar issued
statements condemning the attacks as grave sins and violations of Shari’a law for their failure to
distinguish between civilian and military targets. This noteworthy difference in opinion
concerning the legitimacy of jihad against Israel when compared to terrorist attacks on the
United States and other Western nations seems to imply al-Qaradhawi and likeminded Islamic
scholars regard the presence of non-Islamic military forces in the dar al-harb to pose a greater
threat to Islamic society than targets located outside of the boundaries of the dar al-Islam. This
inference appears to be further supported by al-Qaradhawi’s lack of condemnation towards the
bombings of the U.S.S. Cole and U.S. military barracks in the Middle East. According to alQaradhawi, since both of these bombings were targeted at military personnel viewed as invaders
to the dar al-Islam, the attacks are justified under Shari’a reasoning (Kelsay, "Arguments
concerning Resistance in Contemporary Islam" 32-33). I contend it can be reasonably argued
that statements issued by al-Qaradhawi and the Shaykh al-Azhar, both members of the al-ulama
class, should be regarded as more theologically sound than the 1998 fatwa issued by the World
Islamic Front.
The form of jihad advocated by bin Laden and the other members of the World Islamic
Front also seems to disregard a crucial step that traditionally precedes an actual jihad against the
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dar al-harb. According to the teachings of Muhammad in a hadith, Muslims may only engage in
attacking the dar al-harb after a declaration of intent to fight (in this case, the 1998 fatwa),
followed by an invitation to acknowledge the dominance of Islam. Nations of the dar al-harb
may recognize the primacy of Islam by either (1) converting to Islam or (2) paying a jizya (tax)
which places the nation under the rule of Islam and designates it as a part of Islamic territory.
(Kelsay, "Religion, Morality, and the Governance of War: The Case of Classical Islam" 125126).
Although occasional attempts have been made by organizations like Al-Qaeda to
diplomatically resolve disputes with Western governments, like that of the United States, it
seems as if the arguably unjust inclination towards indiscriminate violence against civilian
targets has led these governments to develop policies of refusal to negotiate with “terrorists.”
These rather rare attempts on the part of fundamentalist groups to reconcile with the West have
often included the aforementioned traditional Muslim requests for non-believers of the dar alharb to either convert to Islam or pay tribute to the dar al-Islam. However, because there is no
longer a centralized Islamic kingdom, it is impossible to pay tribute to any legitimate central
government, and Western nations will obviously not restructure their democratic governments
into theocracies based upon the Islamic faith. Because these requests are not met and American
troops are not withdrawn from the Middle East, radical groups such as Al-Qaeda insist they have
exhausted peaceful alternatives and are entitled to wage jihad against the Western world.
While modern Islamic extremists may place unrealistic demands on Western
governments to forcibly convert entire nations or simply skip this invitation to acknowledge the
superiority of Islam altogether, the practice nevertheless reflects a meaningful insight into the
concept of jihad. By requiring His followers to make such an offer, Muhammad reveals that
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Islam essentially calls for warfare as a last resort, after all other alternatives have been exhausted
(Kelsay, "Religion, Morality, and the Governance of War: The Case of Classical Islam" 126).
This disclosure of an Islamic presumption against war is actually remarkably similar to the
Christian Just-War Theory and thus reveals that fundamentally, Christian and Muslim views
towards the legitimacy of warfare are actually relatively similar.
In his paper "Arguments concerning Resistance in Contemporary Islam," John Kelsay
points out that Osama bin Laden attempts to justify the indiscriminate targeting of both civilians
and military targets in light of two considerations: the shared guilt of citizens in a democratic
state and the law of reciprocity. Bin Laden argues that since America and other Western nations
are democratic societies, citizens of these countries have the ability to express their own opinions
freely and to vote the existing government out of office in opposition to oppressive or unjust
policies. He also contends that since U.S. forces have killed countless Muslim civilians,
Muslims are in turn justified to murder U.S. civilians out of reciprocity (34).
While I would agree that in theory, Americans do have the power to vote out leaders with
whom they do not agree, I do not believe this provides any moral justification for the murder of
American civilians. Similarly, I also do not agree with his reasoning that reciprocity justifies the
murder of American civilians as retribution for the killing of Muslim civilians in the past. The
relatively scattered accounts of Muslim deaths as a result of collateral damage from U.S. military
operations can not reasonably be equated with the deliberate targeting and murder of innocent
civilians in terrorist attacks like those carried out on September 11, 2001. In addition, I would
contend that while these groups of Muslims may hold radical views in some areas of Islamic
belief, a core tenet of Islam involves belief in a loving God who sent His Holy Prophet
Muhammad to advocate peace and love as the ultimate goals of human life. This idea of a God
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who accepts retribution for murder with more murder is simply not in agreement with the view
of Allah as a loving and compassionate God.
Although the thought-process of Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist groups such as AlQaeda stems from the basic teachings of Islam on jihad, these groups clearly have distorted some
aspects of the Islamic faith to suit their goals. Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders
appear to ignore three central points related to the legitimacy of a jihad-- authority, methods, and
scope of warfare). Without adherence to these three core Islamic beliefs, terrorist groups such as
Al-Qaeda disregard the teachings of both the Qur’an and the Holy Prophet Muhammad. Both
non-Muslim academics well-versed on the concepts of Islamic law and ethics such as John
Kelsay and James Turner Johnson and Islamic religious leaders and scholars like Yusuf alQaradhawi have skillfully proven that the World Islamic Front not only lacks the rightful
authority to call for a jihad, but also violates Shari’a law by supporting the intentional targeting
of innocent civilians and the use of jihad outside the boundaries of the dar al-Islam. Essentially,
Islamic fundamentalists and terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden and other members of the
World Islamic Front have attempted to argue that they can more accurately interpret Islamic law
than well-studied religious scholars and members of the al-ulama class itself. I contend that this
claim is both completely unfounded and arrogant. In addition, it is possible to reasonably
demonstrate that the rationale Osama bin Laden provides in support of the indiscriminate
targeting of American civilians is primarily filled with unsubstantiated assumptions like those
related to the shared guilt of citizens and the law of reciprocity. Bin Laden’s attempt to equate
acts of terror committed by Islamic fundamentalist groups to the murder of Muslims by U.S.
troops is simply unreasonable. While some casualties may arise from US military attacks on
insurgency forces, this is certainly not the goal. On the other hand, terrorist attacks like those
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that occurred on 9/11 demonstrate a deliberate and blatant disregard for basic Islamic and
Christian principles that innocent civilians should be left out of conflict.
Understanding the basic concepts of Islamic belief and moral ethics in relation to the
concept of jihad has become all the more imperative and relevant as the threat of terrorism
emerges as a prominent threat to world peace. Because of the complexity of Islamic teachings
on warfare and jihad, a debate regarding potential connections between mainstream Islam and
the interpretations of Shari’a reasoning held by Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist groups has
risen to the forefront of modern dialogue concerning Islam, especially discussion within the
Western world. As this paper has demonstrated, the interpretation of jihad in its traditional sense
actually conforms with Islamic (and many Christian) beliefs in relation to the ethics of war.
However, the methods of jihad advocated by Osama bin-Laden, Al-Qaeda, and members of the
World Islamic Front, are not and should not be regarded as representative of mainstream Islamic
belief.
As Dr. Terence W. Tilley suggested in “Traditions: Made or Given?” religious traditions
need to be simultaneously malleable and rigid if they are to survive throughout the course of
history. While sometimes changes are made to better adapt a tradition to cultural and social
changes in the surrounding environment, other times traditions are unfortunately subjected to
more radical mutations by followers who seek to adapt tradition to meet their own needs (30,
40). By ignoring principal Islamic beliefs in favor of newly created, unsupported assumptions,
the World Islamic Front has invented new lines of thought, while attempting to connect their
radical distortions to traditional Muslim principles. It is imperative that moderate Muslim
scholars continue to demonstrate the fallacies in the reasoning of these Islamic fundamentalists
so that the actions of a small fraction of religious believers do not dictate global opinion of an
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entire religion, especially one that is fundamentally based upon peace, justice, and a presumption
against war.
Works Cited
Johnson, James Turner. "Jihad and Just War." First Things. June/July (2002): 12-14. Print.
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Johnson, Toni. "Islam: Governing Under Sharia." Council on Foreign Relations.org. Council on
Foreign Relations, 10 Nov. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
<http://www.cfr.org/publication/8034/islam.html>.
Kelsay, John. "Arguments concerning Resistance in Contemporary Islam." The Ethics of War.
Burlington: Ashgate, 2006. 1-46. Print.
Kelsay, John. "Interpreting Islamic Tradition: Bin Laden's Reasons." Christian Century. 27 Feb.
2002: 26-29. Print.
Kelsay, John. "Religion, Morality, and the Governance of War: The Case of Classical Islam."
The Journal of Religious Ethics. Fall 18.2 (1990): 123-39. Print.
Khadduri, M., trans. The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybani’s Siyar. Baltimore: John Hopkins,
1966. 75-77. Print.
Tilley, Terence W. "Traditions: Made or Given?" Inventing Catholic Tradition. Maryknoll:
Orbis, 2000. 1-44. Print.
World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders. "Declaration Concerning Armed
Struggle Against Jews and Crusaders." Al-Quds Al-Arabi. London. 23 Feb. 1998: 3. Print.