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Document created: 1 September 2008
Air & Space Power Journal - Fall 2008
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Col Thomas E. Snodgrass, USAF, Retired*
Col William Darley’s article “Strategic Imperative: The Necessity for Values Operations as Opposed to Information Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan” (Spring 2007) exactly frames in a historic context our war arising from the terrorism perpetrated by jihadists in the name of Islam. In laying out the historical framework for war as a contest between cultures, Colonel Darley accurately describes the context of imperial warfare waged by Rome, Spain, Britain, Czarist Russia, Manifest Destiny America, post–Meiji Revolution Japan, Nazi Germany, the Stalinist Soviet Union, and now Islam, to cite the author’s examples.
Of course, imperial warfare, which pits cultures in conflict, must be differentiated from the landgrab border wars that plagued Europe for centuries, the objective of which was certainly not to replace the attacked nation’s royal culture of kingship and aristocracy. In contrast to the European wars between kings to settle limited and specific territorial or political issues, Darley describes imperial warfare in terms of imposing a foreign “civil religion” on the country/population under siege. In this context of imperialist warfare, civil religion is an amalgamation of “selectively remembered and embellished events, myths of origin, heroic stories, and proclaimed values” that provide a society with an “imagined community.”1 The task for imperialists is to impose their version of civil religion by spreading their imagined community to the conquered in order to seal the victory and preclude a renewed outbreak of war. Darley’s description of imposing a civil religion on an unreceptive but subdued society fits the practice of Islamic jihad as it has been waged for approximately 1,400 years.
However, in “We Are at War with Terrorists, Not Muslims”(Spring 2008), Lt Col Michael McGee takes issue with Colonel Darley’s analysis that the war with a Sharia-driven Islam (I refuse to use the term war on terror because it is so inadequate and misleading) is a cultural struggle. McGee denies that the jihadist terrorism the world experiences daily is born of the religion, arguing instead that it is only the work of “criminals.”2 Unfortunately, McGee provides no further explanation for the motivation of these Islamic criminals but simply cites a facile statement in the US National Security Strategy for 2006: “While the War on Terror is a battle of ideas, it is not a battle of religions.”3 But further pursuit of the question of terrorist justification in this document reveals that the bottom-line “explanation” remains unsubstantiated by fact. The Bush administration and, by extension, McGee rest the case for criminal motivation on the following reference to terrorist ideology: “An ideology that justifies murder. Terrorism ultimately depends upon the appeal of an ideology that excuses or even glorifies the deliberate killing of innocents. A proud religion—the religion of Islam—has been twisted and made to serve an evil end, as in other times and places other religions have been similarly abused.”4
If we are to accept President Bush’s justification, it means that the terrorists are motivated just by murder for the sake of murder, while Islam is only an excuse for their mindless killing. It stretches credulity to believe that Osama bin Laden has taken to Neanderthal cave living because he is a crazed, homicidal maniac.
Astonishingly, this explanation of terrorist motivation ignores the words regarding jihad contained in Sharia, a theo-political-legal doctrine based on the Koran (the exact words of Allah as revealed to Muhammad), the Sunna (“the way of the prophet” as contained in Hadith and Sira, collections of experiences and sayings of Muhammad), Ijima (the consensus of Islamic scholars), Qiya (Islamic scholarly reasoning by analogy), and centuries of clerical debate, interpretation, and precedent. The Bush explanation also ignores the statements of the jihadists themselves, who have made clear their total commitment to implementation of Sharia worldwide.
Sharia encompasses the totality of religious, political, social, domestic, and Muslim private life. Although primarily meant for Muslims, it also applies to people living within a Muslim society as conquered, second-class citizens called dhiminis (in Darley’s paradigm, the targets of acculturation by Islamic civil religion).
The authority of Sharia is established in Koranic sura (chapter) 45:17: “Then We [Allah refers to himself in the plural when instructing Muhammad] gave you a Sharia [divine law] in religion, follow it, and follow not the wishes of those who have no knowledge.” What Shariahas to say about jihad is simple and direct: “The sacred injunction concerning war . . . is established as a divine ordinance, by the word of God, who has said, in the Koran, ‘slay the infidels,’ and also by a saying of the prophet, ‘war is permanently established until the day of judgment.’ ”5 Sample quotations from the Koran (followed by parenthetical commentary in italics) unquestionably illustrate the authority for this Sharia injunction:
• Sura 9:5 – “And when the sacred months are passed, kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay wait for them with every kind of ambush: but if they shall convert, and observe prayer, and pay the obligatory alms, then let them go their way, for God is Gracious, Merciful.” (Kill those who do not receive Islam as their faith, but spare those who convert to Islam.)
• Sura 9:29–31 – “Make war upon such of those to whom the Scriptures have been given as believe not in God, or in the last day, and who forbid not that which God and His Apostle have forbidden, and who profess not the profession of the truth, until they pay tribute out of hand, and they be humbled.” (Fight unbelievers until they are destroyed or submit and pay tax to Islamic officials.)
• Sura 5:51 – “O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he among you that turns to them for friendship is of them.” (This friendship makes any Muslim an enemy of his own people and deserving of the same fate as that of the unbeliever. In other words, Allah explicitly states that Jews and Christians are enemies of Muslims and that any Muslim who befriends them is deserving of the punishment of infidels, which is usually death.)
Of course, the suras above represent just a bare sample of thousands of jihad-related injunctions in Islamic theology about subjugating all of humanity to Islam by waging religious-cultural warfare. Throughout Sharia’s jurisprudential history, all legal schools (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’iyah, Hanabilah, Ashari, Zaydi, and Isma’ili) dating back to the earliest legal rulings on war 1,200 years ago cite these passages and declare that the Umma (the worldwide Muslim community/nation) has a solemn duty to wage war against unbelievers not prepared to convert or be subjugated.
The Sharia command to make religious-cultural war and the Koranic rules of engagement for jihad fit very well in the context of cultural, imperialist warfare to impose an alien civil religion on an unwilling population as laid out by Darley. McGee’s failure to confront Shariaand the jihad suras in the framework of a cultural struggle between Islam and all other belief systems on the earth suggests perhaps that more study is in order. I personally see no point in trying to argue and document further what is apparent from a cursory reading of the quotations above and from people such as Osama bin Laden who claim to be Sharia authorities.
However, I would like to register my disagreement with both Colonel Darley and Colonel McGee concerning the appropriate US response to the jihadists. Although their formulations are somewhat different, both officers call for a strategic response that occasions a basic change in Islamic theology. That is, Darley correctly identifies the core belief of Islam: “The Koran places the God of Islam at the center of government and asserts that His words as written in the Koran are unchangeable, especially by people, and certainly not through popular selection by majority vote.”6 But then in the next sentence he engages in a leap of hope that causes his analysis to go off the rails:
(Nevertheless, among fundamentalist Muslims of all stripes exists the practice of ceding interpretation of what the Koran means in practice to clerics and Islamic scholars.) As a result, we must realize that we can successfully establish democratic pluralism in countries that have never known it only if we broadly supplant cultural values at a grassroots level that currently makes cultural acceptance of democracy virtually impossible due to Islamic literalism.7
Even granting that clerics or contemporary Shariaauthorities are ceded the authority to reinterpret the Islamic law of jihad, Darley fails to explain why and how Islamic scholars would reverse 1,400 years of cultural tradition and totally change the basis of Islamic society’s politico-religious organizing principle. Throughout Islam’s history, attempts to “liberalize” it have never enjoyed the type of success that Darley projects. In fact, Turkey, probably the greatest success in terms of Islamic liberalization, thanks to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s brute force, is currently in the process of sliding back into the grip of Islamic fundamentalism. In other words, the hope of installing democracy as a strategy to quell jihad rests on a nonexistent historical foundation and is without realistic prospects. Quite simply, Islamic clerics are in the same position that the Soviet nomenklatura were in during the last days of the Soviet Union, in that liberalization means loss of political and cultural control; therefore, liberalization is something to be resisted, not embraced, by the society’s power brokers.
Whether McGee realizes it or not, his recommended strategy is flawed in the same manner but is more confused. On the one hand, he quotes “Ten Misconceptions about Islam,” which correctly states that “the Islamic state must derive its law from the Qur’an and Sunnah. This principle excludes certain choices from the Islamic state’s options for political and economic systems, such as pure democracy, [emphasis in original] unrestricted capitalism, communism, socialism, etc. [emphasis added]”8
However, after setting out this absolutely correct characterization of the systemic resistance to change and modernization in Islamic society, McGee inexplicably rests his strategy on changing Islam!
If we are to succeed in Iraq (and the Middle East), we cannot simply dismiss those elements of culture and civilization with which we disagree. Instead, we must acknowledge them, find means to discuss their application in new ways, and, finally, help Muslim leaders and their populations use those new methods to solve real cultural (social, economic, educational, etc.) issues throughout the Middle East. The United States should concentrate on helping to transition Muslim culture into the twenty-first century.9
In view of the fact that Islamic leadership operates based on the consensus developed by Sharia authorities over 1,200 years, to propose that we are going to “find means to discuss their application in new ways” is a flight of fantasy. Hope cannot be our strategy. Obviously, our strategic thinking needs more work.
Prescott, Arizona
*The author, who retired after 30 years in the US Air Force, including a tour in Pakistan, is currently the director, Military Intelligence and Strategy, Society of Americans for National Existence. He teaches military history at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott, Arizona.
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Notes
1. COL William M. Darley, “Strategic Imperative: The Necessity for Values Operations as Opposed to Information Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Air and Space Power Journal 21, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 34, http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj07/spr07/spr07.pdf.
2. LTC Michael R. McGee, “We Are at War with Terrorists, Not Muslims,” Air and Space Power Journal 22, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 21, http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj08/spr08/spr08.pdf.
3. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: The White House, March 2006), 9, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ nsc/nss/2006/nss2006.pdf.
4. Ibid., 10.
5. The Hedaya: Commentary on the Islamic Laws, trans. Charles Hamilton (New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1985), 2:140–41.
6. Darley, “Strategic Imperative,” 36–37.
7. Ibid., 37.
8. McGee, “We Are at War,” 22.
9. Ibid.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University
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