Jihad

Without further ado, I would like to introduce to you the speaker for our seminar on war and warfare in the Middle East and North Africa in historical perspective.

Our speaker today is Professor Sherman Jackson, who is professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies and Islamic law. He actually has a position also in at law school and teaches a course there on Islamic law he will be teaching it next semester.

As well as other courses related to Islamic law and Islamic theology.

Professor Sherman Jackson obtained his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania from the Department of Oriental Studies in 1990. Since that time, he has been teaching at various institutions

in Bloomington, University of Indiana in Bloomington until he came to the to, to the University of Michigan, to the Department of Near Eastern Studies, and that was in 2097 97 or 90 So, and he's been teaching and researching with us since that time.

Professor Jackson has a very long list of publications and owner reappointments for instance, he holds an honorary appointment as a thorough, thorough no professor of the mayo recent studies, which is a honorary title awarded to the best teachers and researchers on the campus and Professor Sherman Jackson is one of them definitely recognized by the university by the Provost Office and the College of Literature, Science and the art.

He I, if I just start in numerating, his awards and own honor repositions on various boards, it will take the rest of the lecture. Therefore, I just will mention the books that he has published. His first book appeared in 1997. It's a it was entitled Islamic law and the state, the constitutional jurisprudence of Shahabad Deen al Quraishi.

He later into southern to he published the boundaries of theological tolerance in Islam, Abu Hamid Al Ghazali, is Feisal of Africa banal Islam was Zonda.

Then he published in 2005, another major monograph, Islam and the black American looking looking towards the third resurrection.

And his most recent book has just come out fresh from the

printing press Islam and the problem of black suffering published by Oxford University Press.

The topic of presentation is general today, but he will Professor Jackson will specify it's about jihad.

Welcome, Professor Jackson to the victim.

Thank you very much, Professor Kenisha. for that very generous introduction. I was actually sitting there asking myself, What would possess me to come before you and give a recorded lecture on jihad.

But But But here, I say what I really want to talk to and that you will take that into consideration as I try to compress what I hope to be very useful thoughts into that very limited space of time, or what I like to do is to discuss the issue of jihad in two distinct modern contexts. The first is what I would call the domestic context, that is to say jihad, as it is thought about, and engaged in, in the context of the domestic politics of certain Middle East and slash Muslim states. So we're dealing with jihad in sort of the domestic context.

And that, to me, in some ways, is one of the more interesting contexts because it's one of the contexts in which some of the most interesting developments have taken a shape of, of recent in recent years. From there, depending on how much time we have, I'm going to move on to jihad and the more international global context and look at some of the intellectual developments in terms of how jihad is thought about among prominent Muslim, jurists, thinkers and activists in the modern Muslim world.

So let me begin with jihad in the sort of domestic context.

And I think that one of the reasons that this becomes an important topic is that there is a sense in which modernity, in and of itself

brings forth a state of mind in which religion and religious fundamentalism are looked upon sort of as almost natural reactions to, to modernity. That is certainly the case when we think in terms of Protestant Christian fundamentalism. And I think that the tendency is, by analogy, to extend that same sort of mode of analysis to modern Islam. That is to say that Islam not unlike Protestant Christianity experiences a certain degree of maladjustment to some of the developments that sort of constitute modernity. And one of the natural reactions in that context is a sort of religious fundamentalism, ie Muslim fundamentalism, of which jihad is a leading, if not the leading

constituent.

Now, this for me raises a question. And the question is,

is Muslim fundamentalism, and I'm placing fundamentalism between inverted commas for reasons which I hope will become clearer in just a bit, but is Muslim fundamentalism, an inextricable product of Islam as a religion?

It is a or is a byproduct of modernity, as a specific intellectual, and most specifically, political context, that is to say, is what we generally identify as Muslim fundamentalism, a product of certain inherent aspects, a certain interpretive dictates of Islam as a religion

with which Muslims experienced difficulty, or from which Muslims experienced difficulty extricating themselves in modern times, or is it not so much Islam as a religion, but a particular intellectual, and as I said, especially political context that seems to bring about this maladjustment between Islam and the modern world. Now, I'm going to put forth a thesis, which in a sense, will both confirm and challenge some of our most deeply held and least examined presumptions about this topic. And I'm going to say that Islam is in fact, now adjusted to a particular feature of modernity. And that particular feature is the nation state.

It is primarily, if not exclusively, in its effort to come to terms with particular aspects of this maladjustment that produces the phenomenon that we generally recognize as Muslim fundamentalism. Now, let me try and

clarify what I mean by that. First, when we think of Muslim fundamentalism, one of the first things we have to do is dispense with the demonstrably false connection between literalism as a mode of scriptural interpretation, and Muslim fundamentalism, as a mode of collective religiosity. In point of fact, what we generally recognize as Muslim fundamentalism has little to nothing to do with any particular modality of scriptural exegesis. And it is certainly not grounded in any commitment to what we would generally understand to be literalism. In point of fact, slam in terms of its religious heritage, never did really produce a literalist canon. That constituted a leading mood of

scriptural interpretation.

This is I realized, this is very counterintuitive, especially given the analog to Christian fundamentalism, in which case, literalism was the very foundation of everything that flowed from that, but that is not the case with with Islam. In fact, even those groups who have been traditionally are recognized as being literalist in Islamic history, I think should not be deemed. So, if you look at for example, the valid eye movement or the Zaha right movement, if you smiling ties your vase and Arabic, the far right movement, which is usually translated as the literalist movement. The LA riots were in fact, not literalist at all. They presumed that a literal

interpretation or a plain sense interpretation was the default mode of interpretation. But they did not deny the possibility of going beyond the literal or plain sense to more figurative or allegorical interpretations. They did not deny that at all. In fact, the chief representative,

a Spaniard by the name, well, he's the chief representative of whom we know his works are the works that are still extent and they constitute the foundation upon which we base everything that we know about Lawhead ism today basically, at any rate, this Spaniard a man by the name of Edmund hasm, even has them says explicitly, no one believes that mercy has wings.

No one believes that humility has wings. And this is therefore a non literal, figurative interpretation. In fact, even the

paragon of sort of strict

again, what we have tended to refer to as sort of strict literalism, the leader of the Humboldt school, who yes, I've met him in humble believed that there were no justifications for

interpreting Quranic references to God's hand, figuratively, but that is not because he did not recognize figurative interpretation as a mode of interpretation. There are references in the Quran, in which I've met him and humble is explicit that these are figurative references. So for example, in the chapter entitled, The Star, that chapter begins by saying,

the star when it descends, in hand, humble says explicitly, that this verse means the court and when it is handed down,

and that it does not mean the star literally when it descends. But my point here being that scriptural interpretation, per se, is not the sort of foundation of what we generally come to look upon in the form of Muslim fundamentalism. And it is, therefore not primarily a script or an interpretation that promotes these tendencies toward a violent attempt to seize power, and to establish an an Islamic order. That's the first point we want to want to make. Second, and this is related, and hopefully will deliver us into an ability to understand what the true nature of any Muslim fundamentalism actually is, is that we must appreciate the magnitude of the fundamental

difference between the basic presumption underlying the modern nation state, and that underlying the pre modern and what I would call the Muslim state. And here, again, I'm being very deliberate and explicit, and not referring to the pre modern Muslim state as an Islamic state. In point of fact, what I'm going to argue is that the Islamic State is the beginning of the problem, because the Islamic State is essentially a modern nation state in which the attempt is made to Slama size it. And that brings about a degree of dislocation, as we'll see in just a minute. Now, what are some of these fundamental presumptions underlying the modern nation state?

Well, there are many. But I want to focus for our purposes upon two.

And the first of these is that the modern nation state assumes a monopoly on law, all law that is to be recognized as law, that is to say, as carrying actionable sanctions are laws that are both produced and adjudicated by the state. Outside the state, there are no repositories of law, no one can produce laws. There are no repositories for binding legal legal interpretations of laws, and the state exercises an absolute monopoly in terms of the implementation of the law. So a monopoly on the law

is one of the first aspects of the theory underlying underlying the modern nation state. The second is that Justice slash equality in the context of the modern nation state is manifested via

In a uniform regime of law applied equally to all citizens across the board. That is to say that the state on the one hand, exercises a monopoly over law. On the other hand, the state in an effort to exercise its power, justly, and equally erect a single regime of rules, and seeks to apply that equally across the board to all citizens without discrimination. Therefore, not only is law the preserve the exclusive preserve of the state, but the modern state presumes what I would call and other legal anthropologists have referred to it as well as legal monism. There is one and one only regime of rules that is applied equally and uniformly across the board. Now, this contrasts in some

very meaningful ways, with the pre modern Muslim state. In the pre modern Muslim state, the state exercised no monopoly on the promulgation of law.

In point of fact, Islamic law was seen as standing above the state or outside the state, it was certainly not the product of the state. And in point of fact,

two very appreciable extent, Islamic law developed in conscious opposition to the state. In other words, it was in part, an effort to prevent the state from acquiring and exercising a monopoly over the promulgation and the interpretation of law, as a result of which sub state actors, private citizens, acting on their own set out to produce interpretations of the Quran, and the legacy of the Prophet. And these interpretations succeeded in gaining the assent of the community at large, again, as part of an effort to keep this business out of the hands of the state. Let me try and give you an example of what I'm well demonstrate what I'm talking about here, to this day in Islamic law. And by

the way, my entire presentation here today, is based on an examination of Sunni Islam. Shiite Islam has a very different reality. Perhaps we could talk about aspects of that during the question and answer period. But for Sunni Islam, to this day, there are four recognized schools of law,

the Hanafi school, the Maliki school, the chef, a school and the humbly school. All right, two things about the schools. All of these schools are founded by sub state actors, private individuals, not a single School of Law is named after a state official.

That's one thing to

even as the various and sundry Muslim states

came into an out of existence. So you have the Umayyad state that is established, it goes out of existence. It's followed by the best state, it comes into existence lasts for some time, it is chopped up into various and sundry salts in it, you get various Sultanate. Blueway had salt in it, Seljuk, Sultanate, Ayyubid, Sultanate, Mamluk Sultanate, they come and they go, and these are just a few of them that come and they go, the history of a state formation. And the state apparatus is a very bumpy, rocky history. And yet, before schools of law throughout all of this tumult continue to exist, and Buzz along almost as if they're unaffected by this, again, that gives us the extent to

which law as an enterprise was seen as being separate from the state apparatus. The jurists wanted to be those who promulgated and interpreted the law, and they wanted to limit the state to a purely executive function, that you will apply the law as we have interpreted it on the basis of the Holy Scriptures, or in the Quran, and the legacy of the Prophet.

Now

in this context, giving the very decentralized, decentralized sub state provenance of Islamic law

Legal pluralism, that is to say, different regimes of rules applying to different groups in society was actually the norm. And not only was it the norm, but unlike

the situation with the modern nation state, legal pluralism was not looked upon as a threat to state sovereignty at all. And let me just give you a couple of examples of what I'm talking about here. And this actually applies both to Muslim

citizens, as well as non Muslim citizens. Give an example of the Muslim citizen. My first book, which Professor conditio kindly assigned, it

was about a Maliki jurist in Mamluk, Egypt.

In the 13th century,

the mannequin School of Law was a recognized school of law. But at that particular time, it was a minority school.

On the majority school, that is the favorite school of the Mamluk state was actually the Shafi school.

Under the ages of the chef at a school, the Mamluks state sought to impose certain rules and policies that were consistent with the Shafi school, but that were inconsistent with the Maliki school.

And she handled the little karate, whom I wrote, my first book on, was a Maliki scholar, who wrote an entire book decrying this attempt on the part of the Mamluks gate state to impose Shafi rules on him as a Maliki. So for example, he would say,

according to the Shafi school,

to inaugurate the beginning of the month of Ramadan, in which all Muslims are

obliged to fast, assuming you don't have certain excuses, pregnancy, illness, etc, you're traveling.

But almost sums are required to fast and if you are caught fasting, you could be subject to certain sanctions.

Well, according to the Shafi school,

all the audits required to inaugurate the beginning of that month is the testimony of a single witness, who testifies that the crescent, marking the beginning of the new month has actually been cited. One individual goes to the Chief Justice and says, I saw that the crescent, the month of Ramadan has begun, everyone must first, according to the Maliki school, however, you needed at least two witnesses, because they saw this as being the equivalent of testimony in court, in which case, you would have to have corroborating evidence. What else cut off you argued is that I don't care what the Chief Justice says, I'm not fasting tomorrow, and no one's going to do anything to me,

because according to the Maliki school, we require two witnesses, they only have one. And it is my right, as a member of the Maliki school to abide by that rule. And it is not the right of the Sultan, to Ford eyes, the rules of Islamic law to make them uniform, and apply them across the board, even to those with whom that rule or for whom that rule is a violation of their interpretation of the sacred law. All right, second example this one involving non Muslims.

There was a question that arose regarding the permissibility of certain institutions, non Muslim institutions in Muslim society. Now, this was a Muslim society, where in Muslims were the majority and Muslims were empowered. You're talking about a Muslim state. The Sultan is a Muslim, all the ministers are Muslims. The army is Muslim is a Muslim state.

And there are religious minorities in the state, among them being the Zoroastrian community. Now, the Zoroastrian community presented a particularly acute problem for some Muslim jurists, they have an institution that they're called self marriage, according to which a man could marry his mother

or his sister, or his daughter.

Now, personally, when I first read this, I read this in a Muslim a book on the rights of minorities under a slight our under a Muslim state. This is a medieval book, and I read this and I said, Wow, this looks a little bit polemical.

I mean marrying their mothers marrying their daughters. So I went to our colleague, Professor Gordon Winford. And the Department of Near Eastern Studies, who's an expert on Zoroastrianism. And he smiled at me. And he said, not only did the Zoroastrian priests allow this, they actually encouraged it as a means of trying to protect the Zoroastrian community from assimilation into the sea of Islam. All right, so we we've established that this was not simply a polemic on this Muslim jurists part, but this was his actual, actual description of what was going on. And from there, he's asked the question, what do we, as a Muslim state do about this business? They're marrying their mothers,

their marry their daughters? What do we do about this?

And this individual, and by the way, this is an entitlement, Joe Zia, the star pupil, of a man by the name of Ibn Taymiyyah.

If any of you read The New York Times or other news, Oregon's may have read him as being credited as sort of the the founder of modern Muslim fundamentalism. immunochemical, Josie is his star pupil, and this is what he says.

If the Zoroastrian community

does not seek adjudication from us, or either Muslim, state, Muslim courts

regarding any of the issues relating to their institution of self marriage, then we do not do anything

at their business. If, on the other hand, they seek adjudication from us, they come to a Muslim judge, a Muslim court seeking adjudication with regard to some element in South marriage, then we adjudicate that case, not on the basis of Islamic law, but on the basis of Zoroastrian law.

This is Emily and Josie. My point being that for the pre modern Muslim state, that kind of legal pluralism was not perceived to be a threat to state sovereignty, even claiming Josie did not see this as being any kind of a violation of the integrity of a normatively functioning Muslim state.

Because the Muslim state was a state that acted essentially, as bailiff. All right, for the various and sundry regimes of rules that were produced by society as communal constituencies, not as individuals as communal constituencies at large. Now, in all of this, of course, Islamic law was presumed to be supreme. There's no question about that. But there are three points that I want to make here. One, that Islamic law, as I said, was not monolithic. There were various

recognized interpretations of Islamic law, too.

As I said, it was not threatened by the existence of other legal regimes, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian three.

And this is a point that is often not understood in modern times. Islamic law, although it was supreme, was not fully comprehensive. That is to say, there were any number of spheres of activity that could not be adjudicated under pure Islamic law. For example, there are no indices in the Quran, that speak to speed limits.

There are no statements from the Prophet Muhammad,

on the basis of which we could develop a healthcare policy, or determine what should be required to license medical doctors.

All of these things were the domain of state policy. And so what we end up with is this.

Law over which the state does not exercise ownership or a monopoly, operate side by side with policy, over which the state does exercise, a monopoly and which the jurists themselves ceded to the state. And what we end up with is therefore, the boundaries between law on the one hand and policy on the other, always being negotiated over time with the jurists never been comfortable with wholly ceding law to the state. Right now

This,

that you've now

been patient enough to suffer through, sets the basis for an understanding of

what is going on in modern Islam with regard to what we recognize as Muslim fundamentalism. Because modernity fundamentally alters this paradigm for Muslim apologies.

From the west,

the nation state structure is adopted by the Muslim world.

In this context, law becomes the preserve of the state.

And law is made uniform, there was one single expression of the law uniformly applied across the board.

Muslim fundamentalism is essentially

an effort to Islam Assize the nation state, that is to say, to adopt the nation state structure, whereby the state exercises a monopoly over the law. And law is uniform, and simply replace the secular law of that state with Islamic law.

But still recognizing the state as the owner of law, and recognizing as well, that as state law, there can only be a single regime that is applied uniformly across the board. And so what we end up with,

is, Muslim activists coming to the conclusion, that the only way of ensuring that single code of single regime of rules that is to apply to society is actually Islamic law, is to seize control over the state. Whereas in pre modern times, jurists did not need control over the state in order to protect the sanctity of the law, as they understood it. In modern times, because the state exercises a monopoly over the law, and only the laws that the state recognizes that such will be law, the need arises, at least from the perspective of Muslim quote, unquote, fundamentalists to seize power over the state. And that is really what we are looking at. When we witness the rise of violent jihad, the

movements in the modern Muslim world, and we're speaking about the domestic situation in the modern Muslim world. These jihadi movements are not committed to any particular literalistic interpretation of Islamic law. What they are interested in is ensuring that the law that governs the modern nation state in the Muslim world is Islamic law. And this in itself raises any number of problems. And given the limitations of time, when should we?

Well, if you can give seven to eight minutes for questions and answers, and we ended up one at one.

All right.

Well put it this way. What would what would my old friend Al Qadhafi, do a modern Islamic state,

the state announces that the beginning of Ramadan, the month month of fasting starts tomorrow.

He doesn't agree with that, and not something him as an individual, but him as a member of an entire corporate unit that has been traditionally recognized as a legitimate expression of Islamic law. In the modern Islamic State, he would have no recourse.

Therefore, the modern Islamic State threatens pluralism, not only as it relates to the non Muslims, but as it relates to Muslims as well.

Clearly, under a modern Islamic State, what do you think will happen? If some Zoroastrian comes forth and says, I have a dispute with regard to my marriage to my mother?

I mean, how much recognition would that likely gain in a modern Islamic State? Again, pluralism is not a possibility there. But the point that I want to make here is that pluralism is not a possibility, not as a dictator of Islamic law, but as a dictate of the fundamental theory underlying the modern nation state.

And what we have is the mixing of Islamic law with the nations

State producing this what I would consider to be in some sense, the sort of monster of the Islamic State, which is to be distinguished from the Muslim state. Right? I don't want to be understood to be one of those who argues against the state being the repository of any religiously or religious or legal authority. I'm not arguing for the complete separation between religion in the state in terms of what is actually implemented. Right. But the state exercising a monopoly over both the interpretation and the promulgation and the implementation of the law, with no possibilities for legal pluralism, that is the problem that the so called Islamic State raises. Now here, I only have

very few minutes and I wanted to just sort of lay out a context within which we may be able to understand some of what's going on and hopefully you can feel some of this and in the question and answer period to be very quick. However,

the recent developments in particularly Egypt

are moving in the direction of a subtle suspicion on the part of these formally fundamentalist movements that something is not quite right with the theory

that that something is not quite consistent with what they have come to understand to have been the traditional posture of Islam visa vie the state. Now I want us to recall here that

and assuming that you read the two articles that were handed out that the demand Islamia, and by the way, the demand Islamia or Jemaah islamiah, depending on what your Arabic is like. But the demand Islamia

was the largest

of the violent jihadi movements that appeared in the Muslim world in the late 1970s and early 80s. They were the largest.

We must recall that they are in coalition with other smaller groups, assassinated Anwar Sadat, for one primary reason that Mrs. Sadat was not ruling in accordance with Islamic law.

That Anwar Sadat, as the head of this modern Muslim nation state was not holding Islam or Islamic law to be the law of that state, as a result of which they deemed Anwar Sadat, to be an apostate ruler,

who was subjected to the death penalty for apostasy. All right, this is not simply my interpretation. All right. They have stated this explicitly, both before. And after they assassinated Sadat, and an interview I read of a condom zody Oh, must have been now 2005 Or six, don't quote me on that date. But it was recently after he got out of prison, many of them have gotten out of prison. Now they did about 25 years, and he got out of prison. And he said, We killed Anwar Sadat, because he did not apply Sharia.

Right, he was not willing to make Islamic law, the law of the state. Now, what they're beginning to come to a suspicion of, is that there's something not quite right about this. All right. In the readings, what you'll see is that they begin to understand that the central focus of reforming in Muslim society has always gone not to the state,

but to society at large. And what they've come to understand is by over emphasizing the status of the state, they're jeopardizing the welfare of society. So in their efforts to take over the state, you know, to knock off all of the miscreant rulers this, that and the other, they're actually jeopardizing the opportunity of bringing about a more Islamic society, as it were. Now, and this has led to a number of attempts on their part, to adjust their doctrine. All right, so that they can still

be seen as being fundamentally committed to establishing an Islamic order. All right, but you

doing so in a way that does not obligate them to come in into these kinds of direct clashes with the modern Egyptian state. All right, and they go through all kinds of rather interesting interpretive calisthenics in order to arrive at that conclusion. And by the way,

when I say interpretive calisthenics, I don't

that's not a veiled reference to any kind of playing with the law. Anybody who's studied constitutional law and an American Law School, which I have knows that interpretive calisthenics

are not unique to these modern Muslim radicals trying to adjust their their vision to accommodate a new reality.

Most lawyers look upon interpretive calisthenics as legal acumen, I think is what they call it. All right.

Very briefly here, though, I think, however, that what these movements have not quite made it to is a recognition that you see part of what part of what

contributed to their rethinking of their approach was the fact that while in prison, they were permitted to read books, and to have teachers who taught them the traditional classical model of Islamic law. All right, they're very explicit about this. The Egyptian government allowed for books to come in. There were any number of Ezzati,

jurists and scholars who were already themselves imprisoned. And these people got an opportunity to actually read for years. All right, the classical tradition, and they came to understand

something's not quite right here. All right. And that was the beginning toward a sort of rethinking of this whole matter. What they have not, I don't think a quite come to terms with is, again, the extent to which the problem really is the theory underlying the modern nation state, and therefore the necessity of a promulgating a new theory of state that can, on the one hand, accommodate the specificities of Islam, including its legal pluralism, and yet operate in a way that preserves all of the needed sovereignty of a modern nation state, given all that modern nation states are called upon to do.

That is, I think, the next frontier. That is where the real imaginative innovations will come. And I think that in the absence of that, all right, all you'll get is a continual moving around of the furniture.

All right, because you will not be able to get pluralism out of the modern state, modern nation state of theory as it exists. Very quickly, two minutes, let me move to the international jihad. I just want to say a few words about this, because

there are some really interesting and really important developments going on. And the discussion and the discourse around a jihad with regard to how the Muslim world relates to the west. Just

Just this past summer,

one of the most prominent jurists in the Muslim world, bar none whether you agree with him or disagree with him on this issue or that issue, in terms of influence, he is one of the most influential jurist in the entire modern Muslim world, shed to use of Qaradawi

produced a new to volume opus

of a 1400 pages and titled the jurisprudence of jihad.

And the main thesis that Sheikh Yusuf puts forth in this book are two main points. One, that jihad is primarily a defensive mechanism. And it is directed only at those who expressed directly or indirectly

hostile intentions that threaten the physical integrity of the Muslim community. In other words, difference of religion alone, is not a reason to engage in jihad against non Muslims. It is only non Muslims who threaten the physical integrity of the Muslim community, for whom jihad is justified as a means of beating back that aggression. Right.

And he goes through a real as I said, 1400 pay

edges to vindicate this, of this argument. And I think quite frankly, that some of his innovations or some of his

insights into legal interpretation in general, will be as far reaching as some of his conclusions about about jihad. That's the one thing. The second very important point that check Use of mix is that jihad in the sense of military confrontation is not the most important theater for Muslims to be concerned about in the modern world. What he seems to be saying is that the most that jihad as military confrontation could bring for Muslims, is the restoration of political authority. That is, they become the autonomous political determinism of their own destiny, but it cannot restore their cultural and their intellectual authority that requires very different kinds of activity. And

forsake use of that is the most important theater. So the real jihad for him is cultural, and intellectual. And what he argues is that not armies, I mean, military armies, but we need armies, of poets, of journalists, of

editors, of writers, of cultural producers of culture, and thought, all right, that can return the Muslims degree of cultural and intellectual authority, only then will they be able to carve out the kind of dignified existence that they deserve in the modern world. And it is just jihad. For him. That is the most important. This book just came out this past summer, it's being hotly debated as we speak. And I'm sure that it's bound to make a real important impact on the future discourse about jihad, and the relationship between the Muslim, the Muslim world and the West. Thank you very much.

Of questions normally.

He's an adult. Yes, he's he's originally Egyptian.

But he hasn't lived in Egypt for many years.

And he now lives in Qatar.

Yes, so that in his first rule, that, that jihad is a defensive method to, however, against those who have expressed or implied threats against the Muslim world, however, isn't that open to interpretation isn't an implied threat, just open to whatever some cultural leader says is an implied threat. So whereas the United States would never explicitly threaten the Muslim world, people might interpret things that United States actions or words do as implicit threats. But that's, that's, that's always a possibility. Anytime you have a rule, it's always subject to interpretation. But I think that what, what what's the use of is laying out is the following, that,

that those who express a desire for peace, both in word and deed, right, have to accept it at face value. All right, even the Gamal Islamia. These are the people who killed Anwar Sadat say that No, America was not the enemy of Islam as a whole. And to the extent that they have become so Osama bin Laden must bear a lot of the responsibility for that. And point of fact, America often help Muslims in their struggles with others who threaten the physical integrity of the Muslim community. So the point being that, yes, it's always going to be a matter of interpretation. And that's whether you're a Barack Obama or anybody else, leaders are always going to assess the degree of how much we are

threatened by any potential potential adversary. But what sets us up does, however, is establish the fact that the very fact that they are not Muslims alone, is not a justification for going to jihad.

There has to be some some manifestation

of a threat to the physical integrity of the Muslim community. And for him, he argues basically, that the greatest threat is not going to be the physical threat to the physical integrity. All right, it's going to be the threat that comes in the way of Muslims losing not exercising any cultural or intellectual authority, as a result of which they themselves will read liberalism or Marxism or whatever it is that comes from the west into their own religious interpretation. You don't need them taking over in order for them to do that.

Okay,

I think our time's up, many of the students have to go. So you can ask questions and formerly of Professor

Afternoon