Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
222Thus the jihād may be regarded as Islam's inst rument for c arrying out it s
ult imat e objec t ive by t urning all people int o believers, if not in t he prophet hood of
Muhammad (as in the c ase of the dhimmis), at least in the belief in God. The
Prophet Muhammad is reported to have declared "some of my people will continue
to fight vic t oriously for t he sake of t he truth unt il t he last one of t hem will c ombat
the anti-Christ .''Unt il that moment is reac hed the jihād, in one form or anot her, will
remain as a permanent obligation upon the entire Muslim c ommunit y. It follows
that the existence of a dār al-harb is ult imat ely out lawed under t he Islamic jural
order; that the dār al-Islām is permanently under jihād obligat ion unt il t he dār al-
harb is reduc ed to nonexistenc e; and that any c ommunity whic h prefers to remain
non-Islamic – in the status of a t olerat ed religious c ommunit y ac c ept ing c ert ain
disabilit ies – must submit t o Islamic rule and reside in t he dār al-Islam or be bound
as c lients to the Muslim c ommunit y. T he universalism of Islam, in it s all-embracing
creed, is imposed on the believers as a continuous process of warfare,
psyc hologic al and polit ic al if not st ric t ly milit ary.
Although the jihād was regarded as the permanent basis of Islam's relat ions
with its neighbors, it did not at all mean c ontinuous fighting. Not only c ould the
obligation be performed by nonviolent means, but relations with the enemy did not
nec essarily mean an endless or c onstant violent c onflic t with him. The jihād,
accordingly, may be stated as a doctrine of a permanent state of war, not a
c ontinuous fighting. Thus some of the jurists argued that the mere preparation for
the jihād is a fulfillment of it s obligat ion. T he st at e, however, must be prepared
milit arily not only to repel a sudden attack on Islam, but also to use its forces for
offensive purposes when the caliph deems it necessary to do so.
In practice, however, the jihād underwent c ertain c hanges in its meaning to
suit the c hanging c irc umstanc es of life. Islam often made peace with the enemy,
not always on its own terms. Thus the jurists began to reinterpret the law with a
view to justifying suspension of the jihād, even though temporarily. They seem to
have agreed about the necessity of peace and the length of its duration. When
Muslim power began t o dec line, Muslim public ist s seem t o have t ac it ly admit t ed
t hat in princ iple t he jihād as a permanent war had become obsolete; it was no
longer c ompat ible wit h Muslim int erest s. T he c onc ept of t he jihād as a state of war
underwent c ertain c hanges. This c hange, as a matter of fac t, did not imply
abandonment of the jihād duty; it only meant the entry of the obligation into a
period of suspension – it assumed a dormant status, from whic h the imām ma y
revive it at any t ime he deems necessary. In practice, however, the Muslims came
to think of this as more of a normal c ondition of life than an ac tive jihād.
The shift in the c onc eption of the jihād from ac t ive t o dormant war reflec t s a
reac tion on the part of the Muslims from further expansion. T his c oinc ided wit h t he
intellec tual and philosophic al revival of Islam at the turn of the fourth c entury of
the Muslim era (tenth c entury A.D.), when the Muslims were probably more stirred
by the controversy between orthodoxy and rationalism than by fighting Byzantine
enc roac hments on the frontiers. To c ertain Muslim thinkers, like Ibn Khaldūn
(d.1406), the relaxation of the jihād marked the c hange in the c harac ter of the
nation from the warlike to the c ivilized stage. Thus the c hange in the c onc ept of the
jihād was not merely an apologia for weakness and failure t o live up t o a doc t rine,
but a proc ess of evolut ion dic t at ed by Islam's int erest s and soc ial c ondit ions.