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every believer who performs the five basic duties, but none of them would enable
him t o gain paradise as surely as part ic ipat ion in t he jihād.^30
The Jihād as Permanent War
War, however, was not introduc ed into Arabia by Islam. It was already in
existence among the Arabs; but it was essentially a tribal war. Its nature was
pec uliar t o t he exist ing soc ial order and it s rules and proc edure were thoroughly
integrated as part of the sunna. Sinc e the tribe (in c ertain instanc es the c lan) was
t he basic polit ic al unit , wars t ook t he form of raids; mainly for robbery or vendet t a
(tha'r). This state of affairs had, as observed by Ibn Khaldūn, developed among the
Arabs a spirit of self-relianc e, c ourage, and c o-operation among the members of
the single tribe. But these very traits intensified the character of warfare and rivalry
among the tribes and created a state of instability and unrest.
T h e imp o rtanc e of the jihād in Islam lay in shifting the foc us of attention of the
t ribes from t heir int ert ribal warfare t o t he out side world; Islam out lawed all forms
of war except the jihād, that is, the war in Allah's path. It would, indeed, have been
very diffic ult for t he Islamic state to survive had it not been for the doctrine of the
jihād, replacing tribal raids, and directing that enormous energy of the tribes from
an inevitable internal c onflic t to unite and fight against the outside world in the
name of the new faith.
The jihād as suc h was not a c asual phenomenon of violenc e; it was rather a
product of complex factors while Islam worked out its jural-doc t rinal c harac t er.
Some writers have emphasized the ec onomic c hanges within Arabia whic h produc ed
dissat isfac t ion and unrest and inevitably led the Arabs to seek more fertile lands
outside Arabia. Yet this theory – plausible as it is in explaining t he out burst of t he
Arabs from within their peninsula – is not enough to interpret the c harac ter of a
war permanently declared against the unbelievers even after the Muslims had
established themselves outside Arabia. There were other factors which created in
t he minds of t he Muslims a polit ic o-religious mission and c ondit ioned t heir at t it ude
as a c onquering nation.
T o begin wit h, there is the universal element in Islam, whic h made it the duty
of every able-bodied Muslim t o c ont ribut e t o it s spread. In t his Islam c ombined
elements from Judaism and Christianity to c reate something whic h was not in
either: a divine nomoc rat ic st at e on an imperialist ic basis. Judaism was not a
missionary religion, for the Jews were God's chosen people; a holy war was,
ac c ordingly, for t he defense of t heir religion, not for it s spread. Christ ianit y on t he
other hand was a redemptive and, at the outset, a non-st at e religion. Even when it
was associated with politics, the Church and state remained apart. Islam was
radic ally different from bot h. It c ombined t he dualism of a universal religion and a
universal state. It resorted to peaceful as well as violent means for ac hieving that
ult imat e objec t ive. T he universalit y of Islam provided a unifying element for all
believers, wit hin t he world of Islam and it s defensive-offensive character produced
a state of warfare permanently declared against the outside world, the world of
war.
(^30) Shaybānī, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 20; and He rma n Theodorus Obbink, De Heilige Oorlog
Volgen den Koran (Leiden, 1901), pp. 110- 1