War,peace and Non-violence

Part One : Islam's View On War

In addressing the issue of universal peace, the author in this discourse begins with tackling the phenomenon of war by discussing aspects such as the causes of war, as well as the management of war and behaviour during war.

The author goes on to present some of the Islamic perspective on war and the measures needed to contain war and its causes. The following is Chapter 4 of Imam Shirazi's book The New Order for a World of Faith, Freedom, Prosperity, and Peace pp349-402. Translated by Ali Adam.

War is the worst thing known to mankind War is the worst thing known to mankind througho ut his long history. It brings about the killing and maiming o f human beings, the loss of their powers and their disfigurement. It also causes the destruction of civilisations, stirs up hatred and resentments amongst people, and passes psychological problems on to future generations.

It also causes the fighters to become prisoners of war. For these reasons, war must be avoided at all costs and if war becomes necessary - because the enemy has forced the situation - it is imp erative that war should be limited to the least degree of necessity. It is also imperative that human ity in general put an end to wars finally so that they do not occur in the future.

War is an illness

War has been a phenomenon from the earliest times. It is said that it is confirmed as a fact in the Holy Qur'an in the verse:

{And had Allah not checked one set of people by means of another, the Earth would indeed be full of corruption.} 1

Some say that war is one manifestation of the struggle for survival which is a natural attribute of all living things and which will never cease, and that it is one o f the traditio ns of human society. However, the prevention of war by finding another solution is what should be sought.

For illness and disease is also a human reality from the very beginning as is the burning of cities, houses and shops or destruction by flooding and other natural events, which can cause harm to humanity. However, all of this does not make war inevitab le, for war is not a prime reality but rather a secondary phenomenon, which happens because of the malice of certain individuals.

Hence, a group of religious scholars have said that war in itself is bad and ugly because it entails the killing of people and destruction. The Holy Qur'an supports this in the following verse:

{Fighting is prescribed upon you though ye dislike it. But it is possible that you dislike a thing that is good for you and that you 1 The Holy Qur'a n: The Heifer (2): 251.

love a thing that is bad for you. Allah knoweth and you knoweth not.} 2 On the surface, this verse shows that if fighting were a natural thing then Allah would not have said: {thoug h ye dislike it.}. Therefore, war is a social phenomenon brought about by corrupt instincts and not something natural in humanity.

War as the last resort

We find that the Prophet Muhammad (S)3 did not instigate a single war, but rather made war only in self-defence. Even then he did not resort to defensive wars until after the exhaustion of a number of alternatives: Firstly neutrality, as this was the case between the Prophet (S) and Abyssinia.

Neutrality is the first phase of non-aggression. After neutrality comes the turn of the treaty of non-aggression as practised by the Prophet (S) when he entered into a treaty with the Jews of Madinah or when he entered into a treaty with the non-believers of Makkah at Hudaib ia.

Islam through conviction

After these two possibilities co mes the role of Islam. For if the other party (the enemy) accepts Islam he will have spared his wealth and blood and there will be no enmity other than for the wrongdoers and oppressors. The acceptance of Islam is clearly not a matter for compulsion it rather consists of solid evidences, which promote the conviction of the intellect in the matters of the beginning and the resurrection, the Prophet (S) and the Sacred Law etc.

The Jizyah tax . . . finally

In the absence o f neutrality, or a treaty, or the acceptance of Islam, then the 'Jizyah' tax4 comes into play as was practised by the Prophet (S) with the Christians of Najran. The 'Jizyah' tax is of two types:

2 The Holy Qur'an: The Heifer (2): 216. 3 Sall-Allah Alayhi wa Alihi wa Sallam, meaning Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him and his infallible family. This is always stated after the mention of the name of the Prophet out of respect for the Prophet of Islam (S).

Islam's View on War

  1. The 'Jizyah' of the people of the 'Dhimma' or protectorate who live under the auspices of Islam. This tax is taken from them in the same way that the 'Khums' and 'Zakat' taxes are taken from the Muslims.

We have mentioned in our books of jurisprudence that the 'Jizyah' tax is taken solely from the unbelievers (contrary to what is widely believed). The money collected from the unbelievers who live under the province of Islam does not come under the heading of 'Khums' or 'Zakat' but rather under the heading of the 'Jizyah' tax. This applies whether the unbelievers are 'People of the Book' like J ews or Christians or Zoroastrians, or others like the Idolaters or the Polytheists.

  1. The 'Jizyah' tax collected from those unbelievers who are not under the auspices o f Islam. This is collected because of the obduracy of those to whom the truth has appeared, as the Prophet (S) did with the Christians of Najran when he discussed with their learned men the truthfulness of Islam but they dismissed it.

The Prophet (S) then disputed further with them but they still resisted. After that there was nothing left but their obstinacy. The obstinate person should become less obstinate in the face of what should return him gradually to the truth.

Allah states in the Qur'an regarding the Christians of Najran: {The similitude of Jesus in the sight of Allah is as that of Adam, He created him from pure earth then said to him 'Be', and so he was. This is the truth from your Lord so do not be amongst the doubters.

And if anyone disputes with you in this matter after knowledge has come to you, say: 'Come let us gather together our sons and your sons, our wives and your wives, ourselves and yourselves, then let us earnestly pray and invoke the curse of Allah upon the liars.' This is the true account: there is no god but Allah, and Allah is indeed The Exalted in Power, The Wise. But if they turn back, Allah has full knowledge of those who cause mischief. Say: ' O People of the Book!

Come to a common parlance between us and you: that we wo rship none but Alla h and we associate no partners with Him and we take no lords from amongst ourselves instead of Allah. But if they turn back then say: Bear witness that we are Muslims.} 5 4 The Jizyah tax is paid by the non-Muslims, as opposed to the Khums and Za kat taxes paid by the Muslims. 5 The Holy Qur'a n: The Family of 'Emran (3): 59-64.

The Prophet's wars were fought in self defence

When all these aforementioned ways and means have been exhausted, then comes the turn of the defensive war. All the wars of the Prophet (S) were of this nature. For example, the first clash of the Muslims with the Qureish occurred when the raiding party of 'Abdullah ibn Jahsh came up against the caravans of the Qureish which were coming from al-Sham (Syria) led by Abu Sufyan.

This was a retort to the aggression of the Polytheists against the Prophet (S) and his companions, which had gone on for ten years. They had killed some of them, banished some to Abyssinia and some to Madinah, and tortured another group of them and destroyed the honour of others as in the account of Sumayyaha the mother of 'Ammar.

They confiscated their houses and their wealth in Makkah. And if this was not enough, they approached the other Arabian tribes, which surrounded Madinah and bribed them not to let the Prophet's caravans pass through their lands. This threatened the Muslims with death by starvation.

The defensive economic blockade is one legal method used in wars, and what the Muslims wanted from this raiding party and what followed it (like the battle of Badr) was to place an economic blockade on the people of Makkah who were at war with the Prophet in the same way that they had placed a blockade upon him.

As for the rest of the Prophet's raids, wars and assaults, they resulted from either a breaking of the treaty by the other side as did the Jews of the clan of Qainaqa' in Madinah, and the Polytheists of the Qureish in breaking the peace treaty of Hudaibia, or they were to repel the enemy as in the battles of Uhud and al-Khandaq. Otherwise they were for defensive purposes as in the story of Mu'ta when the Persians and the Romans had engaged in aggression towards the Islamic state and Islam was surrounded by enemies who only sought the worst for Islam.

They began to try to attack Islam and tear it out by the roots and kill the Prophet (S) and exterminate the Muslims. They indeed began to do this. Hercules, the leader of the Romans killed a group of his subjects who had become Muslims in Syria. All of this gave the Prophet (S) the religious, common law, and legal right to defence. Likewise with the Persians, Khosrau their leader ordered his governor in Yemen to send some of his henchmen to bring him the blessed head of the Prophet.

However the messengers who came to Madinah refused when they saw the Muslims thronging around the Prophet who reasoned with them in a story much mentioned in the chronicles.

The least amount of casualties

The Prophet (S) used to strive to keep the amount of killing and prisoners in his wars to a bare minimum in a way that the world has not witnessed either prior to or after the advent of Islam. For example, one writer mentions that the number of people killed on both sides (Muslims and Polytheists) in all the battles in which the Prophet fought did not exceed much more than one thousand and this in more than eighty wars.

Another mentions that the number killed in all the wars was 1 018 people. A third mentions that the number of Infidels and Muslims killed in all the wars was no more than 1400 this being the largest number mentioned in this regard. Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah in his book 'Muhammad' mentions that the Prophet Muhammad (S),

although he gained control of more than one million square miles of territory which is equal to all of Europe excluding Russia, and although millions of people lived in this area, only one-hundred and fifty Muslims were killed in all of his wars. He adds that this number amounts to approximately one death per month. This is only due to the respect that Islam has for blood and its avoidance of killing wherever possible.

Excess of killing and torturing

In contrast to the government of the Prophet (S) we find that most other governments went to excesses in blood spilling. Historians say that the Assyrians were cruel and heartless. They would destroy cities, which they conquered after besieging them, and would go to great lengths in killing, torture, and mutilations.

They would reward the army for every severed head brought from the battlefield. They would set about killing all the prisoners of war on the battlefield when they were great in number so that they would not consume food and drink, or be a danger to the rear of the army. The kings and leaders would lead the carnage and would begin it by putting out the eyes and cutting the throats of prisoners.

The leaders and nobles amongst the prisoners would be tortured before being killed. Their ears and no ses would be amputated, their tongues cut out and their hands and feet severed or they would be skinned alive or roasted over fire or thrown from high towers. The king who ascended the throne of Assyria in the year 745 B.C. used to crucify priso ners on posts while archers would kill them with arrows. In certain wars he would use prisoners to pull carriages laden with wood instead of beasts of burden.

Frightening scenes of the brutality of the Moguls

In the book 'Prisoners of War' in the story of the Moguls the writer says: "The Moguls were known for cruelty, brutality and bloodshed. Genghis Khan the founder of their empire was famous for violence, killing, and his love of destruction and annihilation.

Amongst their wars they became embroiled with the Kharazm Shah 'Ala al-Din. The Moguls burned the city of Bukhara and plundered its wealth and raped the women. The prisoners were marched to the city of Samarqand. When they could not keep up with the horsemen Genghis Khan ordered that anyone who lagged b ehind be killed and Bukhara was razed to the ground.

Samarqand met with the same fate when the city was plundered and the inhabitants killed and 30,000 skilled craftsmen were taken p risoner. Genghis Khan sent them to his sons in the north. A great number were forcibly enlisted into the army and used for military operations and transport.

In Kho rasan, the Moguls gathered the citizens in a wide space and ordered them to manacle one another. They then began to slaughter them killing more than 70,000. When they occupied Merv, they distributed its occupants amongst the Mongol warriors each of whom got a share.

They only spared 400 people who fulfilled the needs of the army and some individuals were taken as slaves. The rest of the cities met with the same fate. When the Moguls heard that some citizens were sleeping amongst the corpses of those killed the order was given that every head should be severed from its body, an order that they carried out in all future battles.

They would pursue tho se who fled like hunters pursuing their prey. They would use all kinds of devices to bring people out from their hiding places. For example they forced a muezzin from amongst the prisoners to give the call to prayer so the Muslims came out from concealment believing that the raiders had left but they were ambushed and wiped out. Before they left the cities they would burn produce and crops so that those who were hiding or had fled would die of hunger.

The policy of Genghis Khan in his wars was to slaughter all of the soldiers in the garrisons and the inhabitants of the cities and to p lunder and pillage and drown the prisoners. If a city resisted the Moguls they would do even worse to it. The city of Nisapur resisted for a few days and its reward was the wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children.

The Moguls did in Russia what they did in the state of Kharazm, destroying and burning. They took a number of Russian leaders prisoners through deception and betrayal and put them in chains. Then carpets were put over them and the Mongol leaders sat upon them to eat the victory banquet while the Russian leaders were dying of suffocation.

The Moguls then returned to Mongolia and destroyed the city of Bulghar, and pillaged all the cities of Bazan and razed their buildings to the ground and burned Mosco w and besieged Tlotir. When the noblemen cut their hair and hid in churches and wore the robes of monks, the Moguls ordered that the church and the city be burnt and all perished. Hulagu continued the advance in western Asia until he reached Tabriz and turned towards Baghdad the seat of the 'Abbasid leadership.

They laid siege to Baghdad for forty days and set up mangonels around all the castles and fortresses. Then they pelted them with rocks and flaming torches making a large breach in the walls and setting fire to houses.

When the Caliph saw that there was no way out except through peace he requested peace and showed his readiness to surrender on condition that his life and the lives of the citizens be spared. He went out to meet Hulagu with three thousand judges, aides and nobles. But Hulagu betrayed the agreement and double- crossed them and destroyed the city. He ordered that the city be pillaged and the population slaughtered.

The bodies of those pleading for help fell under the hooves of the horses and the women were raped. The blood flowed in the streets for three days until the waters of the Tigris were red for a number of miles. The city became a free for all for six weeks. They slaughtered the population, violated sacred sites, burned houses, palaces were levelled, and mosques and tombs were ruined by fire or pickaxes.

The patients in the hospitals were slaughtered, students and professors were killed in the schools. The shrines of saints and Imams were desecrated and the corpses burnt. The bloodbath went on fo r a number of days until Baghd ad became a wasteland of rubble. More than a million and a half citizens had perished.

The Moguls then crossed the Euphrates heading towards the Arabian Peninsula in pursuit of the populace. They killed and pillaged and destroyed all the population of al-Raha, Jaran, and Nasibayn and butchered in Aleppo fifty thousand and abused ten thousand women and children.

They did the same thing in all the lands of Islam. For example when Tamburlaine heard of the killing of a number o f his men and soldiers in Isfahan he became angry and ordered his army to invade the city and that each soldier was to return with the head of one of the citizens who had been killed which the army duly did.

The city became a human bloodbath. By the evening some 70,000 of the victims skulls had piled up so Tamburlaine ordered that towers be built from them in the streets. The same thing happened in other cities they reached, slaughtering the populace and setting fire to the cities."

Modern wars are no less brutal

We find the situation in modern wars to be the same if not worse than that. America with the atomic bomb killed more than 250,000 people in Japan in the space of hours, and burnt everything.

When the British came to Iraq, they treated the people in the worst possible ways. They would kill the wounded and be merciless towards the prisoners and would extract corpses from the graves desiring the shirts and clothes. In Sudan, the British soldiers would cut off the heads of those killed and send them to London to be made into ashtrays out of hatred for the Muslims.

In Libya, the Italians killed half the populace, which in those days reached a million. They killed half a million in the most horrible ways. They would use corpses as an example to the rest and would torture the living foully.

Likewise the French in Algeria where they killed a million out of nine million people. Some statistics say that the killed two millions. They would use corpses as an example and would torture the living cruelly in a way that has few equals.

In the war between India and East Pakistan (Bangladesh) more than three millions were killed through hunger, torture or plague. The Russians killed five million Muslims in vario us ways like burning, drowning, torturing to death and shooting in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the other Islamic lands which they took control of. They also killed more than one million in Afghanistan and filled their prisons with innocent people and tortured the people in the most disgusting ways. The Americans in Vietnam and elsewhere have killed a vast number of people counted in millions. They also used to torture people and destroy crops.

The world witnesses in the modern age the worst forms of killing, torture, and burning and the degradation of the nobility of the human being. The events of the first and second world wars are well known and to be found documented in books.

The increase of the dangers of war in the modern age

In a previous book of ours "Sociology"6 regarding the dangers of war we have written: 'It is imperative that the nations strive in all earnestness to bring about a comprehensive peace in our time, for the dangers of war have increased in a way unimaginable. This increase has b rought about a number of considerations:

The weapons of mass destruction that science has discovered and the use of these weapons in wars bring about the devastation of civilisation whether that be in limited wars or world wars, for even limited wars cause destruction on their own scale.

For example, in the Lebanese war 150,000 people were killed or injured. In the Iran-Iraq war the number of dead and injured has been estimated at more than 1,500,000 and the losses due to the war at 500 billion dollars. If, God forbid, a world war was to occur, then it is likely that civilisation would end.

A report has mentioned that it was the plan of America to destroy in a nuclear attack 85 per cent of Russia's manufacturing plants. Each of America and Russia have stockpiled enough weapons of mass destruction to destroy humanity seven times over. There are bombs, which if dropped on a city would annihilate everything in an area of 250 square miles.

There are other fearsome weapons of mass destruction which when compared with the weapons of the second world war are like the cannon and tank in comparison with primitive weapons like the sword and the spear. 6 Al-Fiqh series, volumes 109-110.

The other effects of war

War, in addition to the death and destruction has other effects: 1. It leaves behind war wounded and disabled p eople who will suffer from their complaints for the rest of their lives. The weapons of mass destruction cause many different diseases and d isfigurements in humanity, animals, and to the land itself.

There is a report that Russia bought 25 million prosthetic limbs and organs like hands, legs, and eyes for the maimed after the end of the Second World War. This in addition to the fact that atomic warfare irradiates houses and causes plants not to grow in the earth for lo ng periods of time.

  1. War eats into the economy on a great scale. States change their apparatus during time of war to the apparatus of war which gobbles up money and brings about poverty for many years. Gustav Le Bon has mentioned that Spain has not yet recovered from the Crusades against the Muslims and this is after nearly 1000 years. Another historian has said that Iraq has not recovered from its destructio n at the hands of the Moguls seven centuries ago .

America spent 7 .4% of its GNP on the cold war in the year 1953. If this were the case for the cold war what would be the case for the hot war? In addition to the warring nations, war eats into the economy of all the other nations, for these days the economy is not confined to one place on earth but the economy of all nations has become interconnected and goods are imported and exported to and from all states.

Even the nations that are nominally neutral but are not really neutral are affected economically by war. All can remember how the world fell into dire straits during the second world war in both the nations at war and those not at war.

  1. War also causes a decline in civilisation for the warring nations and those connected to them and indeed all the nations of the world. For when every nation becomes at war then cultural services, manufacturing, agriculture, and education cease on a large scale which causes the stagnation of the culture and indeed its decline.

great number of different types of scholars who are the axis of the progress of the civilisation can become taken up by the war. Certain newspapers have mentioned that Egypt lost ten thousand engineers, experts and doctors when the Israeli Bar-Levi line was destroyed.