Full Description
From its earliest times, Islam has had an ambivalent relationship with violence. For many early Muslim authors, violence was a simple fact of life. In the Qur'an and in the later Muslim tradition, some forms of violence are condemned, while some, including the waging of holy warfare, are extolled as morally good.
What is clear from the early Islamic period is that there is no single Muslim attitude towards violence. Instead, there were many different portrayals and evaluations of violence in theology, law, poetry and prose. In this collection, you will find out how they processed violence as a social fact, and how they interpreted its role in the life of the early Muslim community. This background is essential to understanding current Muslim thinking about when violence is, and is not, justified.
Examines the portrayal of violence in a variety of different intellectual contexts Takes a broad understanding of violence - from warfare between Muslims (and between Muslims and others) to individual acts of violence Enables a better informed debate about the nature of violence in early Islam Includes contributions from leading international experts including Andrew Rippin, Christopher Melchert, Michael Cooperson, Geert Jan van Gelder and Maribel FierroFROM APF _ JULY 2014
main description:
This volume brings together some of the leading researchers on early Islamic history and thought to study the legitimacy of violence. How was violence justified in early Islam? What role did violent actions play in the formation and maintenance of the Muslim political order? How did Muslim thinkers view the origins and acceptability of violence? These questions are explored through both general accounts of types of violence and detailed case studies of violent acts drawn from the early Islamic sources. Violence is understood widely, to include jihad, state repressions and rebellions, and also more personally directed violence against victims (women, animals, children, slaves) and criminals. From these, the diverse interpretations of violence and its role in Muslim society can be delineated and we can understand better the origins of legitimate and illegitimate violence in Islamic thought.
short description:
How was violence justified in early Islam? What role did violent actions play in the formation and maintenance of the Muslim political order? How did Muslim thinkers view the origins and acceptability of violence? These questions are addressed in this book by an international range of eminent authors. By examining not only who perpetrates violence, but also the victims, the studies describe different arena and contexts where violence takes place, and how this is incorporated into Muslim thinking in the first 5 centuries of Islam. By understanding the early development of Muslim thinking around violence, our understanding of subsequent trends in Islamic thought, during the medieval period and up to the modern day, become clearer.
Contents
1. Violence, Our Inherent Heritage: Introduction, Istvan T. Kristo-Nagy and Robert Gleave
Section I. Jihaad and Conquest: Attitudes to Violence against the External Enemies of the Muslim Community
2. The Question of Divine Help in the Jihad, Dominique Urvoy3. Reading the Qur'an on jihad: two early exegetical texts, Andrew Rippin4. Ibn al-Mubarak's Kitab al-Jihad and early renunciant literature, Christopher Melchert5. Shaping Memory of the Conquests: The Case of Tustar, Sarah Bowen Savant
Section II. The Challenged Establishment: Attitudes to Violence against the State and in its Defence within the Muslim Community
6. Who Instigated Violence: A Rebelling Devil or a Vengeful God?, Istvan T. Kristo-Nagy7. Attitudes to the use of fire in executions in late antiquity and early Islam: the burning of heretics and rebels in late Umayyad Iraq, Andrew Marsham8. 'Abbasid State Violence and the Execution of Ibn 'A'isha, John A. Nawas9. The Sultan and the Defiant Prince in Hunting Competition: Questions of legitimacy in hunting episodes of Ṭabaristan, Miklos Sarkozy
Section III. Lust and Flesh: Attitudes to Violence against the Defenceless, Intra-Communitarian Violence by Non-State Actors
10. Violence against Women in Andalusi Historical Sources (third/ninth-seventh/thirteenth centuries), Maribel Fierro11. Sexual Violence in Verse: The Case of Ji'thin, al-Farazdaq's sister, Geert Jan van Gelder12. Bandits, Michael Cooperson13. Eating People Is Wrong: Some Eyewitness Accounts of Cannibalism in Arabic Sources, Zoltan Szombathy14. Animals Would Follow Shafi'ism: Legitimate and illegitimate violence to animals in Medieval Islamic Thought, Sarra Tlili
BibliographyIndex
