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| Volume XIV, Fall 2007, Number 3 |
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BOOK REVIEW
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The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims
by Andrew
G. Bostom. Foreword by Ibn Warraq. Prometheus Books, 2005. 759 pages, including
index. $ 28.00, hardcover.
Wolfgang G. Schwanitz
Adjunct faculty, Burlington County College, New Jersey.
Professor of medicine Andrew G. Bostom has compiled in The Legacy of Jihad primary and
secondary sources on jihad and non-Muslims (ahl adh-dhimma) under Islamic rule. Ibn Warraq (a
pseudonym) says in his foreword that the author translated from Arabic the works of commentators on
Islamic manuscripts. Ibn Warraq stresses that dealing with jihad could turn out to be hard for reasons
of political correctness, fear of playing into the hands of racists to the detriment of the West's Muslim
minorities, commercial motives, feelings of postcolonial guilt, just plain fear and intellectual terrorism.
Bostom oversaw the translations on jihad of secondary sources from French, and he has included
Shiite and Sunni, classical and modern works. And Ibn Warraq raises the question why Middle East
historians didn't do this job of compiling jihad sources from all periods.
Historians of the Middle East have often researched the doctrine of jihad. Bernard Lewis worked
the topic several times. He devoted a chapter in his source book, A Middle East Mosaic (Random
House, 2000), to "war." Rudolf Peters added a chapter about it to his pioneering Jihad in Classical and
Modern Islam (Wiener, 1996, 2005). Germans have dealt with the topic often. And this is the problem
with Bostom's work: it does not reflect the complex history of the subject.
Bostom includes in his book a document from World War I (p. 221), a "1915 Ottoman Fatwa." He
says this text is believed to be an excerpt from a fatwa by Shaikh Shawish, titled al-jihad, and that the
English translation was provided by the "American Agency and Consulate, Cairo, Egypt, March 10,
1915." Bostom explains that the Jewish community of Alexandria was worried about this pamphlet and
handed it over to the Americans in Egypt.
The Shaikh of Islam issued his jihad fatwa on November 11, 1914, in Istanbul. There was no
previous fatwa of similar ranking. The text in Bostom's book is a commentary circulated by Abd al-Aziz
ash-Shawish in March 1915. It is not a "1915 Ottoman Fatwa." A fatwa would have been written in
typical question-and-answer style. Shawish, although educated at al-Azhar University and Dar al-Ulum
in Cairo, was in no position to issue an Ottoman fatwa. But he was in the inner circle of the Ottoman
war minister, Enver Pasha. Shawish lived until 1914 in Istanbul, then in Berlin, where he worked in the
propaganda department of the Foreign Office, which had been founded for one reason only: to incite
jihad against the British, French and Russians in their colonial hinterland. What appears in Bostom's
book as Islamic jihad text was made in Berlin and Istanbul.
Henry I. Morgenthau (Doubleday, 1918) remembers a similar Arabic document. It was circulated around
the same time that the Shaikh of Islam issued his jihad fatwa, after the Ottoman sultan-caliph himself declared
jihad in Istanbul on November 11, 1914. Morgenthau's document is broader, but the hard core is the same,
especially regarding the little and great jihad, war "by mouth and heart" (hatred of the infidel), and how to
wage holy war by three methods: personal deeds with cutting instruments, collective bands to slay infidels
(for the Ottomans, this included local Greeks, Armenians and Jews) and jointly by army campaigns.
Berlin had enlisted a dozen foreign nationals like Shawish to spread millions of jihad pamphlets
in the languages of Islam throughout Africa and Asia, where they were to be read to Muslims in
mosques. Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador in Istanbul from 1913 to 1916, reported that a pamphlet,
printed in Arabic and distributed secretly, instructed Muslims on how to carry out the 1914
Ottoman fatwa.
In Bostom's case, the interpreter was not familiar with jihad doctrine. He translated the
concepts of al-jihad al-asghar and al-jihad al-akbar, which the Prophet Muhammad used, according
to tradition, as "lesser war" and "greater war," respectively. Originally, little jihad generally meant
the duty to spread Islam by use of arms and the killing of enemies. The great jihad refers to an
individual's spiritual struggle with his own soul to overcome base instincts. However, we find in
both pamphlets a Turkish redefinition. Now the great jihad is a holy war for the Ottoman Empire,
and the little jihad is a holy war in a single country beyond it.
The pamphlet in Bostom's book is also directed against the Egyptian rulers acting on the
advice of the infidel English. Cairo had declared itself neutral in the Sinoussi jihad against the
Italians in Tripoli. "This shall never be forgiven them. However," the text continues, "our Egyptian
brethren have helped us to a certain degree financially and morally in the last two wars, and in spite
of their unbelieving rulers, forwarded their collections on our behalf to the Capital of the Caliphate."
This indicates an Ottoman author in Enver Pasha's circle such as Shawish.
A few words on the context of Bostom's document. If one considers Berlin's switch from a
peacetime to a wartime policy against the British, French and Russians and their Islamic lands, one
sees a jihad made in Germany. It was a concerted German-Ottoman action in five stages: Max von
Oppenheim's design to revolutionize Islamic lands; agitation for jihad by the Foreign Office's
apparatus in Berlin and Istanbul; the Ottoman fatwa; Shaikh Salih's commentary on the fatwa; and
jihad by armies, sending envoys to Islamic lands and distributing pamphlets. It was a new weapon
to globalize an ideology of hatred. Let us look briefly into the five elements of the German-designed
jihad.
Oppenheim served as an archaeologist and diplomat in the Middle East for 20 years. He
suggested to the kaiser in 1898 the advantage to declaring jihad against German enemies via the
sultan-caliph. After World War I began, the Germans indeed requested that Enver Pasha proclaim
jihad. The kaiser also asked him to enter the war: the sultan should call for jihad in Asia, India,
Egypt and Africa. Some scholars even expected "Islamic fanatics fighting for Germany."
Oppenheim, the German "Abu Jihad," designed a 136-page master plan in October 1914:
"Revolutionizing the Islamic Territories of Our Enemies." The emperor confirmed his idea to have
the sultan-caliph incite Muslims to jihad. This was the plot: The sultan leads a jihad against the
British, French and Russians. Berlin delivers money, experts and material. Jihad fighters are
Muslims in British India, French North Africa and Russians in Asia.
The call to fight goes out in several languages according to psychological factors. Berlin
creates an Oriental News Department in the Foreign Office. Fomenting revolution among Muslims
in India is key to victory. Expeditions are to be sent to Karbala (Iraq), Iran and Afghanistan to
trigger uprisings. Germans provide intelligence to Muslims, while the Turks incite them against
their foreign masters. Islam, concluded Oppenheim, will be "one of our sharpest weapons."
Oppenheim became the head of the Oriental News Department, employing native Muslims and
establishing 75 propaganda centers in the Ottoman Empire. Some called his jihad strategy war by
revolution, but it was an asymmetrical war waged by incitement to jihad in anti-imperial uprisings. It
was a double strategy with the colonial hinterland supporting the front by uniting troops in the
wide lands of Islam. Of course, it raised questions. Was the Ottoman sultan the accepted caliph to
all Muslims? Was it then permitted to fight on the side of certain infidels against selected infidels
and "their" Muslims?
As Oppenheim had suggested, a fatwa answered this. The Shaikh of Islam affirmed this in his
jihad fatwa. To summarize: His Majesty the Padishah of Islam orders a jihad as a general mobilization
and individual duty for all Muslims according to the Quran. Since Russia, England and France
are now hostile to the Islamic caliphate, it is also incumbent upon all Muslims ruled by these
governments to proclaim jihad against them and to actually attack them. The protection of the
Ottoman Empire depends on all Muslims hastening to partake in the jihad; if some refrain, they are
committing a sin and deserve divine wrath. For Muslims of enemy countries, it is forbidden to fight
against Islamic troops, even if the enemy forces them. Otherwise they deserve hellfire for murder. It
is a great sin for Muslims under the rule of England, France, Russia, Serbia, Montenegro and their
allies to fight against Germany and Austria, which are the allies (see details in a book I edited,
Germany and the Middle East, Wiener, 2004 ).
According to this fatwa, the sultan-caliph was the sovereign of all Muslims. It was permitted to
fight with infidels against infidels and their Muslims. The latter had not only no right to fight back;
they had to turn against their foreign overlords. Enver's confident Shaikh Salih al-Sharif al-Tunisi
confirmed this new jihad doctrine. Enver asked him to travel to Berlin to popularize jihad (he did the
same with Shawish). For this purpose Shaikh Salih wrote a commentary in November 1914. His
haqiqat al-jihad (the truth of jihad) was published soon afterward in Berlin. It was a blueprint for
other pamphlets, like the one in Bostom's book. What did it mean? A coalition jihad was possible,
on the side of allied infidels or just against certain other infidels. Jihad was now even an individual
duty for all Muslims. Peace between Islam and Europe is possible if there is no foreign occupation
of Islamic lands.
In the end, the execution of the jihad was disappointing for Oppenheim, although perhaps not
for the Ottomans, who turned it against Armenians. The majority of Muslims beyond the Ottoman
Empire ignored the jihad, although Germans spent a lot of money for jihad expeditions and propaganda
such as the weekly Al-Jihad. Nevertheless, it was not by mere chance that Hasan al-Banna
founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after World War I. As Oppenheim's successor concluded,
the seeds of Islamic uprisings had been planted. One day there would be an accumulation
of people ready to turn against their rulers. It took about 60 years after World War I for the first
Islamic revolution to start. Jihad was one of its key concepts.
Returning to Bostom's book, the chain of events goes like this: Oppenheim points the kaiser to
the Ottoman jihad potential in 1898. The diplomat draws up the jihad plot in October 1914 as a
concerted, but very secret, German-Ottoman action. He works in Berlin and Istanbul and incites
jihad even beyond the Ottoman Empire. As planned, the sultan-caliph proclaims a selected jihad,
and the Shaikh of Islam legitimizes it in a fatwa in November. Shaikh Salih in his commentary
changes the doctrine as a blueprint for pamphlets by Shawish. An American diplomat in Cairo gets
a copy, as Morgenthau did in Istanbul. From there it goes to Washington's archives and enters
Bostom's book as an "Islamic" source. Here is one reason that Middle East historians rarely
arrange source material as Bostom has - history in each period is complex enough. Which scholar
feels at home in all periods? Such courage can lead to results that offer texts without context.
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