Islam and violence

The use of politically and religiously-motivated violence in Islam dates back to its early history. Islam has its origins in the behavior, sayings, and rulings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, his companions, and the first caliphs in the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries CE. Mainstream Islamic law stipulates detailed regulations for the use of violence, including corporal and capital punishment, as well as regulations on how, when, and against whom to wage war.

Legal background

is the basic Islamic religious law derived from the religious precepts of Islam. The Quran and opinions of Muhammad are the primary sources of sharia. For topics and issues not directly addressed in these primary sources, sharia is derived. The derivation differs between the various sects of Islam, and various jurisprudence schools such as Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali and Jafari. The sharia in these schools is derived hierarchically using one or more of the following guidelines: Ijma, Qiyas, Istihsan and Urf. Sharia is a significant source of legislation in various Muslim countries. Some apply all or a majority of the sharia, and these include Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen and Mauritania, respectively. In these countries, sharia-prescribed punishments, such as beheading, flogging and stoning, continue to be practiced judicially or extrajudicially. The introduction of sharia is a longstanding goal for Islamist movements globally, but attempts to impose sharia have been accompanied by controversy, violence, and even warfare.
The differences between sharia and secular law have led to an ongoing controversy as to whether sharia is compatible with secular forms of government, human rights, freedom of thought, and women's rights.

Types of violence

Islam and war

The first military rulings were formulated during the first hundred years after Muhammad established an Islamic state in Medina. These rulings evolved in accordance with the interpretations of the Quran and Hadith. The key themes in these rulings were the justness of war and the injunction to jihad. The rulings do not cover feuds and armed conflicts in general. The millennium of Muslim conquests could be classified as a religious war.
Some have pointed out that the current Western view of the need for a clear separation between Church and State was only first legislated into effect after 18 centuries of Christianity in the Western world. While some majority Muslim governments such as Turkey and many of the majority Muslim former Soviet republics have officially attempted to incorporate this principle of such a separation of powers into their governments, yet, the concept somewhat remains in a state of ongoing evolution and flux within the Muslim world.
Islam has never had any officially recognized tradition of pacifism, and throughout its history, warfare has been an integral part of the Islamic theological system. Since the time of Muhammad, Islam has considered warfare to be a legitimate expression of religious faith, and has accepted its use for the defense of Islam. During approximately the first 1,000 years of its existence, the use of warfare by Muslim majority governments often resulted in the de facto propagation of Islam.
The minority Sufi movement within Islam, which includes certain pacifist elements, has often been officially "tolerated" by many Muslim majority governments. Some notable Muslim clerics, such as Abdul Ghaffar Khan, have also developed alternative non-violent Muslim theologies. Some hold that the formal juristic definition of war in Islam constitutes an irrevocable and permanent link between the political and religious justifications for war within Islam. The Quranic concept of Jihad includes aspects of both a physical and an internal struggle.

Jihad

is an Islamic term referring to the religious duty of Muslims to maintain the religion. In Arabic, the word jihād is a noun meaning "to strive, to apply oneself, to struggle, to persevere". A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid, the plural of which is mujahideen. The word jihad appears frequently in the Quran, often in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of God ", to refer to the act of striving to serve the purposes of God on this earth. According to the classical Sharia law manual of Shafi'i, Reliance of the Traveller, a Jihad is a war that should be waged against non-Muslims, and the word Jihad is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, a mujahada is a war which should be waged to establish the religion. Jihad is sometimes referred to as the sixth pillar of Islam, though it occupies no such official status. In Twelver Shi'a Islam, however, jihad is one of the ten Practices of the Religion.
Muslims and scholars do not all agree on its definition. Many observers—both Muslim and non-Muslim—as well as the Dictionary of Islam, talk of jihad having two meanings: an inner spiritual struggle, and an outer physical struggle against the enemies of Islam which may take a violent or non-violent form. Jihad is often translated as "Holy War", although this term is controversial. According to orientalist Bernard Lewis, "the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists", and specialists in the hadith "understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense." Javed Ahmad Ghamidi states that there is consensus among Islamic scholars that the concept of jihad will always include armed struggle against wrongdoers.
According to Jonathan Berkey, jihad in the Quran was maybe originally intended against Muhammad's local enemies, the pagans of Mecca or the Jews of Medina, but the Quranic statements supporting jihad could be redirected once new enemies appeared. The first documentation of the law of Jihad was written by 'Abd al-Rahman al-Awza'i and Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani.
The first forms of military Jihad occurred after the migration of Muhammad and his small group of followers to Medina from Mecca and the conversion of several inhabitants of the city to Islam. The first revelation concerning the struggle against the Meccans was surah 22, verses 39–40:
The main focus of Muhammad's later years was increasing the number of allies as well as the amount of territory under Muslim control.
According to Richard Edwards and Sherifa Zuhur, offensive jihad was the type of jihad practiced by the early Muslim community because their weakness meant "no defensive action would have sufficed to protect them against the allied tribal forces determined to exterminate them." Jihad as a collective duty and offensive jihad is synonymous in classical Islamic law and tradition, which also asserted that offensive jihad could only be declared by the caliph, but an "individually incumbent jihad" required only "awareness of an oppression targeting Islam or Islamic peoples."
Tina Magaard, associate professor at the Aarhus University Department of Business Development and Technology, has analyzed the texts of the ten largest religions in the world. In an interview, she stated that the basic texts of Islam call for violence and aggression against followers of other faiths to a greater extent than texts of other religions. She has also argued that they contain direct incitements to terrorism.
According to a number of sources, Shia doctrine taught that jihad can only be carried out under the leadership of the Imam. However, "struggles to defend Islam" are permissible before his return.

Caravan raids

is an Arabic term originally referring to an individual who participates in Ghazw, meaning military expeditions or raiding; after the emergence of Islam, it took on new connotations of religious warfare. The related word Ghazwa is a singulative form meaning a battle or military expedition, often one led by Muhammad.
The Caravan raids were a series of raids in which Muhammad and his companions participated. The raids were generally offensive and carried out to gather intelligence or seize the trade goods of caravans financed by the Quraysh. The raids were intended to weaken the economy of Mecca by Muhammad. His followers were also impoverished. Muhammad only attacked caravans as a response against Quraysh for confiscating the Muslims' homes and wealth back in Mecca and driving them into exile.

Quran

Islamic doctrine and teachings on matters of war and peace have become topics of heated discussion in recent years. Charles Matthews writes that there is a "large debate about what the Quran commands with regard to the 'sword verses' and the 'peace verses'". According to Matthews, "the question of the proper prioritization of these verses, and how they should be understood in relation to one another, has been a central issue for Islamic thinking about war." According to Dipak Gupta, "much of the religious justification of violence against nonbelievers by the promoters of jihad is based on the Quranic "sword verses".
The Quran contains passages that could be used to glorify or endorse violence.
On the other hand, other scholars argue that such verses of the Qur'an are interpreted out of context, Micheline R. Ishay has argued that "the Quran justifies wars for self-defense to protect Islamic communities against internal or external aggression by non-Islamic populations, and wars waged against those who 'violate their oaths' by breaking a treaty". and British orientalist Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner stated that jihad, even in self-defence, is "strictly limited".
However, according to Oliver Leaman, a number of Islamic jurists asserted the primacy of the "sword verses" over the conciliatory verses in specific historical circumstances. For example, according to Diane Morgan, Ibn Kathir asserted that the Sword Verse abrogated all peace treaties that had been promulgated between Muhammad and idolaters.
Prior to the Hijra travel, Muhammad non-violently struggled against his oppressors in Mecca. It wasn't until after the exile that the Quranic revelations began to adopt a more defensive perspective. From that point onward, those dubious about the need to go to war were typically portrayed as lazy cowards allowing their love of peace to become a fitna to them.