Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

212 t CHAPTER EIGHT
enemies but members of the umma; indeed, its de facto rulers.
Might they be fought?
The question was posed to the most eminent, and notorious,
jurist of the day, the Syrian Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328). In his tensionfilled
lifetime, he had fought against both state and church and
paid for it with spells in prison; he died a prisoner in the Damascus
citadel. The issue now was the Mongols, whether a jihad might be
fought against these new, powerful, and destructive Muslim warlords.
In two fatwas, or judicial responses, and then more systematically
in his treatise Public Policy in Islamic Jurisprudence, Ibn
Taymiyya rendered a judgment that still resonates today among
fundamentalist Muslims. Profession of Islam was not enough.
Though by the criterion of the shahada they were Muslims, the
Mongols violated the broader requirements of Islam. They still
lived according to their own pagan law, which rendered them, in
effect, unbelievers. Jihad against them was not only licit but required.
The duties of Islam are both explicit, like those detailed in
the Pillars of Islam, and implicit, Ibn Taymiyya argued in his Public
Policy. The true Muslim must not marry his sister, eat impure
foods, or, significantly, “attack the lives and wealth of the Muslims.”
“Any such trespasser of the Law should be fought,” he concludes,
“provided he had a knowledge of the mission of the
Prophet. It is this knowledge that makes him responsible for obeying
the orders, the prohibitions, and the permits (of the sharia). If
he disobeys these, he should be fought.”
Despite his own problems with some of the rulers in Islam, Ibn
Taymiyya was a firm believer in the two swords of temporal and
spiritual power and responsibility, distinct but firmly linked in Islam.
The Islamic state, whose function is described in the popular
phrase “to command the good and prohibit evil,” possessed, and
was obliged to use, its coercive might to protect the integrity of the
faith and the observance of the law, while it was the function of
sharia and its guardians to maintain justice in the community.
Note: In the case of Islam, a distinction must be drawn between a
Muslim state, one in which the majority of the population is pro-