Fight in the Way of God 85theists” and “the hypocrites,” respectively—with whom the Ummah
was locked in a terrible war.
Nevertheless, these verses have long been used by Muslims and
non-Muslims alike to suggest that Islam advocates fighting unbeliev-
ers until they convert. But this is not a view that either the Quran or
Muhammad endorsed. This view was put forth during the height of
the Crusades, and partly in response to them, by later generations of
Islamic legal scholars who developed what is now referred to as “the
classical doctrine of jihad”: a doctrine that, among other things, parti-
tioned the world into two spheres, the House of Islam (dar al-Islam)
and the House of War (dar al-Harb), with the former in constant pur-
suit of the latter.
As the Crusades drew to a close and Rome’s attention turned away
from the Muslim menace and toward the Christian reform move-
ments cropping up throughout Europe, the classical doctrine of jihad
was vigorously challenged by a new generation of Muslim scholars.
The most important of these scholars was Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328),
whose influence in shaping Muslim ideology is matched only by St.
Augustine’s influence in shaping Christianity. Ibn Taymiyya argued
that the idea of killing nonbelievers who refused to convert to Islam—
the foundation of the classical doctrine of jihad—not only defied the
example of Muhammad but also violated one of the most important
principles in the Quran: that “there can be no compulsion in religion”
(2:256). Indeed, on this point the Quran is adamant. “The truth is
from your Lord,” it says; “believe it if you like, or do not” (18:29). The
Quran also asks rhetorically, “Can you compel people to believe
against their will?” (10:100). Obviously not; the Quran therefore
commands believers to say to those who do not believe, “To you your
religion; to me mine” (109:6).
Ibn Taymiyya’s rejection of the classical doctrine of jihad fueled
the works of a number of Muslim political and religious thinkers in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In India, Sayyid Ahmed Khan
(1817–98) used Ibn Taymiyya’s argument to claim that jihad could
not be properly applied to the struggle for independence against Brit-
ish occupation because the British had not suppressed the religious
freedom of India’s Muslim community—a Quranic requirement for