PSYCHOLOGY OF REVENGE IN ISLAM

My mistake. This was the first article in Outlook Online.

 It is claimed that the horrific recent bombings in Paris had been in revenge for the role of France in bombing ISIS fighters in Syria. The cycle of revenge goes on and on but few people know the significance of revenge to Islamic fanatics. Few know that revenge is an old Arab custom that has unfortunately become a part of the Muslim tradition worldwide. It had been a necessary survival custom in the precarious times when small tribes of Arab Bedouins had to protect themselves from bigger or more powerful tribes who, without the fear of revenge, could loot or molest them. Life in the desert was always very tenuous and there was fierce competition over the scarce sources of food or water. Individuals could not survive except with the protection of the bonds of blood within their tribes. This was expressed in the Arab ideology of Muruwah that not only meant manliness, pride and courage but endurance in suffering, avenging each and every injustice  and unflinchingly defying stronger enemies regardless of the consequences. This philosophy also glorified the most generous hospitality to friends and equally intense hatred to enemies.

Oppressors had to therefore be very careful for this well established tribal code made it certain that any injustice would be avenged at some future date. Regardless of power and position no one could ever be absolutely safe from attack and had to tolerate lesser tribes and be very careful not to incite serious animosity. The American cowboy glorification of revenge also arose out of similar compulsions among numerous isolated ranchers who, far from legal remedies, had to protect themselves from their bigger oppressors. This revenge philosophy has plagued Islam from its earliest days. The early Khalifs Umar and Uthman as well as the prophet’s own son in law Ali were all assassinated by vengeful factions. The predominantly Bedouin Kharajite faction, who were unhappy that Ali had not avenged the assassination of Uthman, mainly caused the split into Sunni and Shia sects that was to cause so much bloodshed over the centuries. These Kharajites, or Salafis, had a very narrow and extremist view of the words of the prophet. Their successors especially the Wahhabis after the late 18^th century were to gain great importance when the Al Saud family captured Medina and Mecca in 1924 and then gained the huge power of oil riches in 1938 to export their extreme brand of Islam that was later an intrinsic part of Taliban thinking.

Actually, many Wahhabi ideas were a heresy to the words and actions of the prophet. Few know that his conquest of Mecca had been achieved without shedding a drop of blood through a year long, almost Gandhian, campaign of patience and moral principles. Muhammad preached peace, except in times of actual combat. The word Jihad is rarely found in the Quran but is referred to 199 times in the Hadith that was written two centuries after the death of The Prophet. The Wahhabis interpreted Jihad to mean a holy war even though there were two Jihads according to Muhammad. The greater Jihad meant a struggle against one’s own weakness while a lesser Jihad was to fight against injustice. Both enjoined adherents to struggle on regardless of the odds with the certain faith that Allah would come to the aid of the sincere devotee. But there were strict rules and Jihad could not be declared by anybody but only by an authority of widely accepted repute.

The Quran very clearly says that killing in the name of Islam was the opposite of Jihad and had expressly forbidden harm or the killing of women and children. It was also forbidden to take hostages or to torture or kill prisoners. Even suicide was forbidden. Muhammad had also said that anyone who sets another… even an ant… on fire commits the greatest sin and is destined to the fires of hell.

There was no need for such a philosophy of revenge in more affluent pastoral or urban communities and was thus unknown in the philosophies of China, India, Europe or in many other societies. In fact mature cultures understood that accommodation was much preferable to violence. This was so well enunciated by Buddha who had preached that hatred can never be appeased by hatred but only by love and that the only lasting victories were the conquest of the heart because victories in the battlefield only caused the defeated to lie down in sorrow and wait for revenge making future peace impossible.   

The seemingly endless cycle of violence will only end when people learn that violence is the childish recourse of the weak and immature and that lasting peace can only be achieved by finding `win-win’ solutions where the fears and concerns of all the opposing factions can be accommodated. Muslim clerics should understand that the philosophy of revenge has made Muslim communities viewed with great suspicion worldwide. They should lead their followers to go back to the words of their prophet instead of following the words of the many revisionists who have hijacked the faith.

Bedouins and cowboys had little claim to wisdom and their philosophy of revenge is unsuited to mature societies. The Muruwah spirit will ensure that Islamic terrorism will not surrender to brute military force. But it can be eroded when the terrorists believe that, far from serving their religion, they a disobeying the sacred words of their prophet and will go to hell instead of the promised paradise. Evil things are never committed with such enthusiasm, pride and joy as when they are done out of revenge and especially if they are done in the name of religion.

HOW ISLAM BECAME HIJACKED BY REVISIONISTS

This article was published in the e-edition of Outlook magazine

The brutal killing of over 130 innocent people in Paris is another example of the mindlessness of Islamic terrorism. Few people however realize that terrorism had never been endorsed by the prophet Muhammad nor sanctioned in the Quran. Like all religions the traditions of Islam were however frequently changed over time and many passionate clerics moved Islamic Sharia from the mostly gentle words of Muhammad to the angry rhetoric of the Taliban or ISIS. The Quran clearly says that killing in the name of Islam is the opposite of Jihad and expressly forbids an attack on anyone who had offered no offence. It is forbidden to harm or to kill women and children, take hostages or to torture or kill prisoners and commit suicide. 

Two hundred years after the death of the prophet several pious Muslim scholars put together another sacred book called the Hadis (or Hadith) that told Muslims that they should not only follow the words of the prophet but also examples from his life. Several scholars like al Bukhari tried to reconstruct the stories of his life from the testimonies of people who claimed to be descendants of the prophet or his companions. After eight or ten generations such testimonies were very dubious. Restrictions on women like the veil only now become an Islamic requirement. Many Muslims now began to copy the prophet’s behavior as acts of piety. Even acts like putting on the left slipper first or entering a room with the right foot and every detail including his clothes, habits or behavior became acts of piety. 

The next major change came with the Abbasid Caliphate (750 – 1258). The huge Islamic empire with many diverse races needed new legal authorities like the Qazi (magistrate) to manage complex legal matters, police, taxes and the status of non-Muslim subjects. So Islamic law underwent many changes but adopted many Jewish and Persian laws and split into six schools of law. The Jewish Torah (Toraat) introducing the Jewish sins including blasphemy and heresy that now became Islamic sins. Clerics began prescribing draconian death sentences by burning, stoning, beheading and strangulation as prescribed in the Torah even though the Quran had never demanded such punishments.

Four categories of punishment in Islamic law seem to have been devised much after the Quran. These were Qisas, (retaliation) as `an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth’ that is prescribed in the Jewish Torah; Diyya, or compensation paid to the heirs of a victim in blood money or ransom; Hadud or harsh pre determined punishments for severe crimes like murder, adultery, blasphemy, intoxication, idolatry or apostasy and Tazir that were punishments given at the discretion of a Qazi. The Quran is silent about alcohol and quite mild about intoxication that became a sin according to the authors of the Hadis.

In 1256, after the bloody sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols, Ahmad ibn Tamiyya, a Muslim scholar, was driven out of Iraq and he defined a new policy to divide the Islamic world into two. `Dar ul Islam’ (abode of Islam) and `Dar ul Harb’ (abode of disbelievers). He also redefined the word Jihad to mean a `Holy War’ In 1683 the defeat of the Turkish armies outside Vienna marked the end of Islamic expansion and the rise of European powers that were to soon dominate the world and make Muslim nations react with increasingly narrow orthodoxy. The rise of Europe resulted in the impoverishment of many great Muslim empires and Muslim cultures sank from liberal scholarship to narrow minded illiteracy allowing clerics to exploit the frustration.  

Then, in the eighteenth century, Islam was completely hijacked by Mohammad Abd Al Wahhab (1703 – 1792) who started the Sunni Wahhabiya movement that accepted the authority of the Quran and Hadis but opposed all innovations, superstitions and deviances from their narrow interpretation of these in a very puritanical and legalistic manner. They considered the veneration of pirs, the intercession of Imams, religious holidays, and other devotional acts as heresies and even they desecrated the tomb of Muhammad. With the support of the ibn Saud family of Arabia they promoted an extreme form of Islam that led to formation of the Taliban and Al Qaida.

After the Balfour declaration of 1922 at the end of the First World War, Britain casually divided up the former Turkish territories they had occupied and Israel became an independent country in 1948. This immediately triggered a bitter war between Israel and its Muslim neighbors of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria leading to an unending cycle of conflict ever since.

Then American support to Pakistan for the creation of the Taliban in their covert war to oust USSR from Afghanistan was to make the Taliban a potent force. Radical Muslim clerics would target impoverished young boys who were taught the Quran in Arabic that they could not understand and fool them to believe false translations or interpretations to make them into fanatical terrorists. The American `War on Terror’ against Iraq (1991 and 2003) and Afghanistan (2001) then made most Muslims infuriated by these morally unjustified invasions.

Muslim clerics continued to give the greatest reverence to the Quran and the Hadis as their most sacred books but most of their religious pronouncements were actually dictated by the words of numerous passionate revisionists who preached long after the time of the Prophet. The Quran, for example, was unprecedented in its time for its support of women and their rights but because all the subsequent clerics were men the gentle words of the prophet were steadily eroded to make Islam the most restrictive religion concerning women. Most Muslims accept the sanctity of the words of the prophet but they need to ask themselves whether they should believe there is any sanctity in the words of all the many revisionists. They need to also ask themselves why they should be fooled to go bloody deaths by listening to the words of bigoted Mullahs and other clerics.

Islamic terrorism will not easily succumb to military action but the terrorists might submit to social pressure if the large moderate Muslim majority convinces them that their actions are absolutely against the injunctions of their prophet and will get them to the eternal fire instead of the paradise they fervently hope for.