Fight in the Way of God 87that climaxed with the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.,
on September 11, 2001.
Of course, the attacks of September 11 were not a defensive strike
against a specific act of aggression against Islam. They were never
sanctioned by a qualified mujtahid. They made no differentiation
between combatant and noncombatant. And they indiscriminately
killed women, children, and approximately two hundred Muslims on
the ground and in the towers. In other words, they fell far short of the
regulations imposed by Muhammad for a legitimate jihadi response,
which is why, despite common perception in the West, they were so
roundly condemned by the vast majority of the world’s Muslims,
including some of Islam’s most militant and anti-American clerics
such as Shaykh Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Lebanon’s Hizbullah,
and the radical Muslim televangelist Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
The fact is that nearly one out of four people in the world are
Muslims. And while they may share bin Laden’s grievances against the
Western powers, they do not share his interpretation of jihad. Indeed,
despite the ways in which this doctrine has been manipulated to justify
either personal prejudices or political ideologies, jihad is neither a
universally recognized nor a unanimously defined concept in the
Muslim world. It is true that the struggle against injustice and tyranny
is incumbent on all Muslims. After all, if there were no one to stand up
to despots and tyrants, then, as the Quran states, our “monasteries,
churches, synagogues, and mosques—places where the name of God
is honored—would all be razed to the ground” (22:40). But it is never-
theless solely as a defensive response to oppression and injustice, and
only within the clearly outlined rules of ethical conduct in battle, that
the Quranic vision of jihad is to be understood. For if, as political the-
orist Michael Walzer claims, the determining factor of a “just war” is
the establishment of specific regulations covering both jus in bello (jus-
tice in war) and jus ad bellum ( justice of war), then there can be no bet-
ter way to describe Muhammad’s doctrine of jihad than as an ancient
Arabian “just war” theory.
Badr became the first opportunity for Muhammad to put this theory
of jihad into practice. As the days passed and the two armies steadily