John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam: An Appreciation and a Few Propositions

Bassam Tibi Over the past two decades, for a number of reasons, there has been a decline in the quality of scholarship on Islam in the West, be it in the United States or in Europe. In the United States I have failed to see books of the caliber of Mashall Hodgsons The Venture of Islam. In France no single scholar has credentials comparable with the greatness of Maxime Rodinson or Jacques Berque, and in the German language no single work was published in the recent past that emulates Ignaz Goldzihers Muhammadanische Studien. It is not my intention to flatter John Kelsay, but his remarkable book Arguing the Just War in Islam 1 is an exception. The background for this praise of Kelsays book is the following: Since 9/11 it has become a lucrative business in the United States to write nonsense about jihad and jihadism. In contrast to the many obscure books
BASSAM TIBI (PhD, University of Frankfurt/Main; Dr. Habil., University of Hamburg) is a descendant of a Kadi-Mufti ashraf-family of the Muslim aristocracy of Damascus. He lives in exile in Europe and is professor emeritus of international relations, Georg-August-University, Goettingen, Germany, and is the A. D. White Professor-at-Large, Cornell University. He is author of twenty-eight books in German and nine in English, translated in sixteen languages, including Islam between Culture and Politics, Political Islam, World Politics and Europe, Islams Predicament with Modernity, and The Challenge of Fundamentalism. His articles have appeared in Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Telos, the Journal of Democracy, Human Rights Quarterly, and Theory, Culture & Society. He was decorated by the president of Germany with the Cross of Merits (First Class) for mediation between Islam and the West. Special interests include religion and world politics, culture and development, religionization of politics, and religious fundamentalism. 1. John Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). All page numbers referenced within the text refer to this book.
Journal of Church and State vol. 53 no. 1, pages 4 26; doi:10.1093/jcs/csq147 Advance Access publication March 22, 2011 # The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam published on this subject, established U.S. scholars of Islamic studies have chosen to refrain from addressing the critical issues about Islam and war and instead confine themselves to criticizing the questionable book production on jihad as an expression of Orientalism. It is unfortunate that these studies rarely go beyond the assignments of blame. Moreover, most scholars in the field are content to fool themselves with the notion that jihad means in Islam only peaceful self-exertion with the inference that radical Muslims have nothing to do with true Islam. Despite this unfortunate state of scholarship, I see light at the end of the tunnel, because Kelsay enriches the discourse with a sober analysis of jihad that avoids the flaws of these two extremes in contemporary studies of Islam and war. The errors of Orientalism cannot be contested effectively by using the methods of reverse-Orientalism. Kelsays analysis is free from the aforementioned ills and the distortions.

Introduction
Kelsay places the concept of jihad in the larger framework identified as Sharia reasoning in Islam. In his view this reasoning has developed throughout the history of the civilization of Islam. Kelsay rightly dismisses all of the simplifications presented by Islamopobic and Islamophile authors. On the one hand, he states that jihad in Islam is not equivalent to terrorism, but rather a type of honorable combat based on established precedents and subjected to strict rules of fighting, including the limiting of military targets. However, Kelsay not only engages in making such subtle differentiations, but he also insists on more closely examining the Islamist jihadists of al-Qaida: he does not deny their status as Muslims just because they engage in indiscriminate fighting and override the rules of classic jihad. Even though they overturn wellestablished precedents of fighting jihad ( p. 150), the jihadists remain Muslim believers. Kelsays book acknowledges the Islamic sources that in one way or another legitimate the stance which is basic to all Sharia reasoning. This is the foundation on which the topic of war ( p. 101) is addressed. Jihad is not only about individual self-exertion, it is also, and primarily, about the legitimation of the use of force for the spread of Islam. This is the thesis of Arguing the Just War in Islam. No serious analyst can afford to overlook this insight in the study of the jihad doctrine; if so, he or she risks falling into the trap of self-deceit. In the following I shall substantiate this appreciation expressed for Kelsays work by placing his analysis in a larger context. Hereafter, I aim to present some critical propositions that would 5

Journal of Church and State supplement and enrich Kelsays analysis. Disagreement and critical debate make the substance of scholarship; these are virtues seemingly forgotten today. There is no contradiction between the high ranking I attribute to Kelsays book and the critical propositions I raise in this article. I propose to nuance, to revise, and even to correct some points in this valuable analysis, while acknowledging that I am commenting on a ground-breaking contribution to the field of Islamic studies. I begin with a reference to the book Usul al-Sharia 2 by the former judge of the Egyptian Supreme Court, Mohammed Said al-Ashmawi, in which he reminds us of this fact: the notion of Sharia not only occurs literally only one time in the text of the Quran (sura al-Jathiya 45, verse 18), but also means no more than ethnical guidance. With this in mind, I ask the pivotal question: If the Quran mentions Sharia only once, so why does all Islamic thinking all times revolves around Sharia reasoning? Kelsay maintains the centrality of Sharia reasoning in Islam and he is, with some few exceptions, correct. The question is why is it so? What is the answer, and what can Muslims and non-Muslims do about this in an age of structural globalization accompanied by cultural fragmentation?

The Place of Kelsays Study in the Field

In the West, the notions of jihad and Sharia are no longer unfamiliar to people with media exposure. However, there are only a few who really understand the substance of what these concepts mean. Earlier, in the times of Khomeinism, another Islamic term featured regularly in Western media was wrongly translated as death sentence. That term was fatwa. Today, and since 9/11, the media features even more regularly the Muslim term of jihad in association with the pictures of bearded men who are engaged in acts of terrorism. Jihad and Sharia are also linked to one another in a binary of good and evil. Under these conditions, it has become very difficult to address these issues in a sober manner. Scholarly studies provide little help, because they are typically highly politicized. Instead of using the circumstances as an opportunity for learning, one finds students of Islam hurling at one another the accusation of Orientalism, and no one is safe from this painful defamation. (Even though I was born to a family of Qadis and Muftis in the Muslim nobility [ashraf ] of Damascus and raised in this environment, I have not been exempted from the accusation of bashing Islam, and, in my case, of self-Orientalization. The reason for this
2. Mohammed Said al-Ashmawi, Usul al-Sharia (Cairo: Madbuli, 1983).

John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam is my engagement in the study of what Islamists themselves label global jihad/al-jihad al-alami.)3 Among many other things, Arguing the Just War in Islam corrects the misconception of jihad as terrorism, for just war in Islam is not to be confused with terror. Nevertheless, Kelsay makes it clear that those who, in the polarization between friends and enemies of Islam, claim that jihadists of al-Qaida and other militant groups have nothing to do with Islam will be disappointed by reading his book. He writes that such people will, find no comfort here ( p. 3). The purpose of the book is to provide a systematic description of the religious perspective . . . (of ) the attacks of 9/11 ( p. 3). Kelsay is of the view that Sharia reasoning in Islam is the core issue and the key to understanding how Muslim militants today seek to legitimate or justify a course of action in terms associated with Islamic jurisprudence ( p. 3). Kelsays interpretation is based on the assumption of a close relation between militants and Islamic tradition. Therefore, he dismisses the apologetics that Islam has nothing to do with violence of this type ( p. 4). The contribution of John Kelsay is that he goes beyond Islamic apologetics and the methods of Western Orientalism; he is free of both Islamophobic as well as Islamophile sentiments and is committed to providing a solid analysis of Sharia reasoning in Islam. Since the late Edward Said belittled 9/11s jihadists as a crazed gang, it has become common in Islamic studies to discard the reference to jihad as an expression of Orientalism. The other extreme are those such as Franklin Graham who view Islam altogether as evil and a very wicked religion. At issue is the Islamic way of arguing about justice and war. For sure, there is a great diversity in this reasoning, but also basic commonalities as well. In my view, Kelsays work suffers to the extent that it presents the entire history of Islamic thought as a process driven by Sharia reasoning. He is correct in his overall assertion that Sharia matters, but there is a need for some nuance and modification of his argument. Therefore, I propose to call attention to some differences, in particular a distinction between the fiqh-orthodoxy and the falsafa-rationalism in the past, as well as between secularists of all types, reforms Muslims and Islamists at present. I argue that the falsafa-rationalists of medieval Islam (e.g. Farabi and Averroes) were not guided by Sharia reasoning, nor were the secularists (liberals, nationalists, socialists) of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries affected by any pattern of Sharia reasoning. It was not invoked in their texts. The generalization that Islamic history reflects various efforts at
3. Bassam Tibi, Political Islam, World Politics and Europe. Democratic Peace and Euro-Islam vs. Global Jihad (New York: Routledge, 2008).

Journal of Church and State Sharia reasoning is correct, but Islamic intellectual history is not solely the history of Sharia reasoning (p. 97). Here, there is a point of disagreement. Intellectual history of Islam includes more schools of thought, as shall be later argued. Kelsay is right in stating that in the past and in the present Sharia reasoning determined the course of Islamic history. After all, those Muslims who engaged in the stated alternatives failed (see note 24), both in the past and in the present. Nevertheless it is important to talk about their offerings.

The Appreciation: Jihad as Just War

In agreement with John Kelsays view that Islam is the religion of jihad ( p. 41), he and I are aware of those negative connotations that are spread by the media and that prevail in popular writings. Jihad is wrongly associated with terror. Kelsay makes clear that for Muslims war takes place in the pursuit of the spread of Islam, i.e., that violence is legitimate in its association with a God-ordained cause. Historically this violence has not been terrorism, because it serves for Muslims as a means, not as an end in itself. In addition, the use of force is circumscribed by strict rules of honorable fighting. Islamic expansion in the past was bound to the Sharia reasoning that viewed this expansion as act of divine providence ( p. 38). The topic of war is central to Sharia reasoning ( p. 101). Unlike contemporary jihadism, classic jihad, as based on the classical Sharia reasoning, involved a military realism that justifies the action of Muslim troops . . . engaged in a legitimate war ( p. 106). The goal was to globalize Islam. Given that this happened in the past, what does it mean at the present? Why has jihad become jihadism in the sense of irregular warfare or terrorism? It is not an expression of Orientalism to speak of an aql Arabi/ Arab reason that subjects all thinking, including the Sharia reasoning to the authority of the text in the search for a precedent. These quoted ideas not only reflect existing facts, but have also been coined by contemporary prominent Muslim thinkers.4 For instance, the inclination of contemporary jihadists to justify their actions by quoting the medieval scholar Ibn Taymiyya makes clear how they legitimate their resort to violence by a reference to a text-based precedent. In the current citations of medieval texts by most Islamists, the line is blurred between past and present. Medieval theology is used to legitimate contemporary political decisions.5 In this
4. Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, Takwin al-aql al-Arabi (Beirut: Dar al-Talia, 1984); and Abdulahi Abdul-Rahman, Sultat al-nas (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqafi, 1993). 5. Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam sense, it is correct that Kelsay stresses the view that Sharia reasoning revolves around the search for a historical precedent. This is not only a major argument, but also the underlying concern in the reference to the text. Thus the citation of texts . . . involves a search for a fit between history and the present ( p. 125). This interpretation explains wonderfully the preoccupation of contemporary Muslims with the authority of the text. Today, texts by Ibn Taymiyya rank highly in this process. Kelsays thesis is concerned with how Muslims argue for just war, but his book reads like a general introduction to Islam as well as a concise intellectual history of it. Nevertheless, it is written as a special monograph, a function which the book completely fulfills. The combination of an introduction and specialized research that covers fifteen centuries is an asset. It also the source of some weakness. It is worth noting that Kelsay has a comprehensive knowledge about Islam in the past and present. This enables him to draw long lines and to engage in fruitful comparisons of long historical periods, as is done in historical sociology. In this line of reasoning, he places convincingly almost every assumption and every statement in a long standing context both of history of ideas and facts. At first, the book makes clear that jihad is more than war, as Sharia is much more than just a type of law. I am most sympathetic to the way Kelsay begins his book on jihad as a just war legitimated by Sharia reasoning. One considers the meaning of both terms. Kelsay deems it appropriate to ask the question: What is Islam? and to then devote a full chapter to answering it. The introduction to Islam is at the same time a sketch of a history of ideas of early and medieval Islam. Islam is for Kelsay (1) a religious movement, (2) a religion that lays the claim to be the natural religion of humanity and last, (3) a civilization. This character of Islam led to a severe conflict in the land of its birth. At that time, Arabia was a place of tribes fighting one another. Therefore, the birth of Islam is associated with a declaration of war on these tribes, subdue them, and to unite them in one umma; W. C. Watt once qualified the umma as supertribe or federation of tribes.6 Was the unity of the umma a lasting one? No, it was not, and this remains true.7 Kelsays book could be more precise in terms of describing the difference between the ideal Islamic community and the historical community of Islam, and the problem with pluralism that has
6. On Islam and the tribes see: W.C. Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 78, 144, and 149. 7. Bassam Tibi, The Simultaneity of the Unsimultaneous. Old Tribes and Imposed Nation-States, in Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, ed. Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 127 52.

Journal of Church and State plagued Islam since its beginning. The war against the tribes was an internal war in Arabia that was combined with an external war for the spread of Islam throughout the world. This is the combination of the local and global throughout the history of Islam. Sharia reasoning is embedded in this specific overall context. Kelsay accounts for this, but does not provide an analysis of the repercussions of the venture undertaken to subdue the tribes. Islams drive to establish one umma was a claim; in historical reality this claim was not successfully realized. Even though the Quran in sura al-hujarat acknowledges diversity, the ideal of one Islamic umma establishes a binary of dar al-Islam, as house of belief, and the abode of the nonMuslim rest of the world despised by the characterization of jahiliyya (ignorance). This binary is a burden for todays Muslims in that it bifurcates their worldview. Of course, there has been always in reality a plural Muslim world, but not in the Islamic doctrine, or in its worldview. To date, this notion of one umma continues to dismiss pluralism. There is only one religion that proclaims to be the natural religion of humanity ( p. 27). This religion is Islam and it claims superiority. This religion also makes provisions to use jihad against any deviation to correct error by hand . . . the tongue . . . and the heart ( p. 35). Islam is ready to incorporate those who do not accept its mission, but only on the grounds that they enter into a tributary relationship . . . (and) acknowledge the supremacy of Islam . . . as the true religion ( p. 37). In my research on Southeast Asia, I referred to this Muslim worldview and qualified it as source of a dilemma. The claim to supremacy prevents Muslims from accepting a pluralism of cultures and religions (see note 47). Kelsay avoids getting into this most sensitive issue, but the implications are inherent in his analysis. Even though I follow Kelsay and endorse his detailed analysis of Islam and of the Arab tribal culture, I wonder, nevertheless, why he does not question Islams claim that this (tribal) culture has been transformed by the movement of Islam ( p. 17). In his multivolume history of early Islam, the distinguished German scholar Joseph van Ess documents that in the aftermath of the death of the prophet 632 almost each tribe had its own mosque. No one was willing to pray behind an imam who was not the shaykh of his own tribe.8 Add to this sentiment the requirement that the caliph has to descend from the tribe of Quraysh. This was a provision maintained and practiced both by Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates. The conclusion is that the umma was never more than
8. Joseph van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert. Hidschra, 6 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991), 1: 4.

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John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam an ideal that faltered on the bedrock of realities in a tribal society. The classical problem of the tribes continues to burden the present. The introduction of the modern nation-state (also connoted in Arabic by the term umma, despite the different meaning) into the world of Islam never succeeded in subduing what Kelsay rightly calls tribal culture. It is not only Kelsay, but Muslims themselves who do not distinguish between the claim of an ideal and of reality. This weakness does not affect the fact that Muslims in history successfully fought jihad in line with Sharia reasoning. To them it was an act of divine providence ( p. 38) to expand the Islamicate of the umma and its natural religion of humanity for mapping the entire world into the house of Islam. Islamic history documents both: fragmentation (tribes, ethnic groups, and sects9) and unity (the expansionist umma). All in all, Kelsay does a great job in reconstructing the Muslim view of the world (Weltbild) in terms of Sharia judgments that legitimate jihad (as war) for the global spread of Islam. At issue is an envisioned remaking of the world as consistent with the provisions of Islam as the natural and final religion of humanity. This effort takes place in a process in which the civilization of Islam (dar al-Islam) is expected to map the entire globe. The ideal was and continues to be to make the civilization of Islam identical with the civilization of the entire humanity.10 This analysis of Kelsay is accurate and valid, despite some corrections that need to be made. Now, everything is changeable and Islam is no exception. Even though the described Muslim worldview withstood change throughout the past centuries, it is challenged in modern times. How do Muslims come to terms with tensions between images and reality? And how does John Kelsay approach this issue?

Islamic Jihad-Sharia Doctrine Exposed to the Realities of the Modern World

Even though Kelsay keeps the focus on the classical doctrine and tends to see the interpretation of it prevail up through the present, his work takes notice of modern changes and challenges. His succinct phrase is: the power of Europe . . . challenged the assumption of Muslim hegemony ( p. 126). In dealing with
9. Fuad Khuri, Imams and Emirs. State, Religion and Sects in Islam (London: Saqi Books, 1990). 10. William McNeill, The Rise of the West (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1963). Any reader of the historian McNeill is familiar with a comparable reading of history that equates Western civilization with civilization in general.

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Journal of Church and State changes that have been taking place, Muslims continue to employ Sharia reasoning. Muslims seek for precedents/sabiqah in the classical doctrine that could offer guidance in the context of uncertainty. Kelsay is right in arguing that this pattern of reasoning explains the topicality of Sharia also for contemporary Islam. Unfortunately, Kelsay avoids the distinction between Islam and Islamism (and also: jihad and jihadism, as well), but he is right in speaking about the role of precedent. Based on my research, I share with Kelsay the reference to Ibn Taymiyya as a major source in the search for a precedent, but I limit the importance of this figure to Islamism ( political Islam). There are Muslims who are not Islamists and also seek other sources and they do not confine themselves to Sharia reasoning. Kelsay knows the World Islamic Front and its Declaration on Armed Struggled against Jews and Crusaders. This reference makes clear that Kelsay means jihadist Islamism when he addresses this issue, even though he evades the term. Still, the problem that most Muslims face in the exposition of their image of the selfinternalized in a process of Islamic socializationto existing realities is that their imagery does not hold. As a schoolboy in Damascus I had to learn that we are still khair umma/the foremost community (Quran 3/110). Every time that I articulated my doubts in the class, I never received from any of my teachers a convincing explanation for the gap between promise and reality. Under conditions of globalization in the nineteenth century, Muslim ulema-scribes were poised to engage in a type of Sharia reasoning named conformism, i.e., an effort to reinterpret Sharia anew to establish a fit between its claims and the new changed conditions. These scribes were, however, not willing to rethink the received doctrine. Kelsay delves into this part of history to see how these ulema invoked Sharia in the new setting and then asks the vexing question, how do Muslim thinkers respond to the challenge of modernity within the frame of reference determined by Sharia reasoning? He states three patterns of response: (1) The radical response that legitimates armed struggle for which Kelsay focuses on the example of al-Qaida ( p. 126, pp. 142 43). Kelsay consistently speaks of jihad, but I prefer to use the term jihadism, because an invention of tradition is at issue, to be covered best by a new term. (2) The moderate religious establishment ( pp. 141 42) that criticizes the overriding of the rules of traditional jihad. This establishment stops short of distancing Islam from the resort to violence completely. The jihadists practices are questioned, but not their goals. 12

John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam (3) Islamic democrats who address the issue, more or less, in its broad scope ( p. 166 97). These are not only a minority, but also highly inconsistent in their thought (e.g., A. An-Naim) and tend to have little impact on their communities. There are great problems with all three directions within Islam. Kelsay is to be admired for his frankness when he refers to the limited criticism of al-Qaidas resort to terror as put forward by the religious establishment. In reality, this establishment has something in common with the radicals: In its broad confines, the militant vision articulated by al-Zawahiri is also the vision of his critics (p. 165). This contention is made clear in this statement: the establishment critics of jihadist violence qualify the means of terror as wrong or counterproductive, or both. But they do not dissent from the judgment that . . . the cure for the ills . . . involves the establishment of Islamic governance ( p. 16566). Kelsay then adds: The problem of militancy is not simply a matter of objectionable tactics. The problem is the very notion of Islamic governance (p. 166). When it comes to the third group, the Muslim democrats, one cannot avoid stating that these people have very limited impact. Kelsay knows that their arguments . . . are not widely distributed ( p. 167). This is in addition to the great lack of consistency in Islamic democratic thought. One clearly finds this in the writings of some Muslim democrats, in particular in those of Abdulaziz Sachedina.11 One of these democrats, Abdullahi An-Naim (with whom I earlier shared the concern of introducing individual human rights to our civilization) recently took a big step backwards (see note 12). Because Kelsay devotes a number of pages and references to the work of An-Naim, it is worth mentioning that this Muslim thinker recently shifted course. In a book published one year after the book by Kelsay discussed here, An-Naim abandons his earlier position without any further explanation. In his first highly promising book, published in 1990 on Islamic Reformation, An-Naim puts the choice courageouslyso is the phrasing of KelsayMuslims must either do away with or revise historical Sharia ( p. 177). In his 2008 book An-Naim becomes quite apologetic about Sharia and states his new confession Sharia should be . . . a source of liberation and self-realization.12 These references demonstrate the lack of
11. For a criticism on Sachedina see Bassam Tibi, The Predicament of Islam with Democratic Pluralism, in Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft 7, no. 1 (2006): 83 117. 12. See Abdullahi An-Naim, Islam and the Secular State. Negotiating the Future of Sharia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 290. In 1988 90, An-Naim was a different scholar. He and I worked at the Wilson Center on a

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Journal of Church and State consistency, and therefore a loss of credibility. To pay lip-service to democracy and to pluralism without embracing the related civic culture and without detailing a program of religious reforms is not enough to make this Muslim democratic position tenable. One of the central problems is that An-Naim wants a secular state without the secularization of society. In terms of representation, the Muslims in Kelsays categories one and two are more important, because they are more powerful. While reading Kelsays book I thought of the multi-volume work of the nineteenth-century Moroccan Ahmed al-Nasiri, who would have been highly supportive. Kelsay bypasses al-Nasiris work in which a balance is sought between inherited Sharia and a reasoningmostly in regard to the changed realities of the nineteenth century. (The significance of al-Nasiri lies also in his role as an advisor to the Moraccan Sultan, to whom he recommended the suspension of jihad given the fact that Islam was deprived of its power to establish hegemony.)13 This position is also presented today by al-Azhars Bayan lil-Nas.14 At this point I recommend to Kelsay to reconsider his putting of Sheykh al-Azhar and of Qaradawi on equal footing ( p. 142). There is a great distinction between them: al-Qaradawi15 is a Muslim Brother and the heir of Sayyid Qutb, i.e., an Islamist, while the Shaykh al-Azhar is simply a representative of the Salafi Muslim of tradition of fiqh-orthodoxy.

Sharia Reasoning and the Other Muslim Ways I: The Past: Islamic Falsafa-Rationalism
A flashpoint in Sharia reasoning involves the question: Who leads the umma of the Muslims? Between 1985 and 1995 I studied the
project on human rights. The findings were published in the book, edited by Abdullahi An-Naim and Francis Deng, Human Rights in Africa (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1990). My chapter 5 on Islam and human rights is on pp. 104 32. In view of this earlier cooperation, as well as the earlier congeniality between us as critical minded Muslims. It was shocking for me to read An-Naim (2008) and see the U-turn his new book includes. The U-turn in the assessment of Sharia by An-Naim is beyond my comprehension. 13. Ahmed bin Khalid al-Nasiri, al-Istiqsa fi Akhbar Duwal al-Maghreb, (9 vols), published in a reprint by Dar al-Kitab, Casablanca 1955; on al-Nasiri, see the monograph devoted to al-Nasiris work by Abdullatif Husni, al-Islam wa al-alaqat al-duwaliyya (Casablanca: Ifriqiya al-Sharq, 1991). 14. Jadulhaq Ali Jadulhaq on behalf of al-Azhar, Bayan lil nas, 2 vols. (Cairo: al-Azhar, 1984, 1988). 15. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, al-Hall al-Islami, 3 vols. (exists numerous reprints, published in Cairo and Beirut).

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John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam history of this question in Islam for the completion of a monograph. In this research, I came across a deep-seated conflict between fiqh and falsafa.16 The Islamic falsafa-rationalism which I am inclined to identify as providing seeds for an Islamic version of a secular enlightenment was a new and forward-looking direction in Islam. Unlike the European Enlightenment philosophers (e.g., Voltaire), Muslim philosophers (e.g., Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd) never polarized fiqh-orthodoxy. They were willing to establish bridges, even though they were not willing to participate in Sharia reasoning. Some of them paid lip-service to Sharia (e.g., Ibn Khaldun). In the light of this contention, I think Kelsay is wrong when he follows Wael Hallaq in the characterization of the work of falsafa. For instance, Hallaq states Ibn Rushd and other ulema in the course of Sharia reasoning among Sunni Muslims ( p. 70). In fact, Ibn Rushd was a rationalist and did not belong to the ulema scribes. In contrast to these Muslim philosophers, the fiqh scribes draw clear lines against rationalism. As Mawardi puts it, every Muslim is exposed in his thinking to the alternative: bi al-aql aw bi al-Wahi, i.e., either reason or revelation.17 There is no middle in this binary. The Muslims who are inclined to accept the primacy of reason run the risk of being demonized as heretics. This is not to affirm al-aql as one of the sources of Sharia reasoning ( p. 72) as Kelsay contends, but is rather a crude scripturalism committed to a binary separating al-aql from the wahi (revelation). Muslim rationalists were fearful of this exposure. The last great philosopher in Islam, Ibn Khaldun (died 1406) was a rationalist, but distanced himself verbally from philosophy and paid lip-service to Sharia in order to protect his deeply rational work of a reason-based philosophy of history. The reader of Ibn Khalduns Muqaddima will not find any Sharia reasoning in his work. Ibn Khaldun states that religion is not a primary source of asabiyya/esprit de corps. In my intellectual history of Islam, in which I discovered this opposition between fiqh and falsafa, I argue that there was a competitor with Sharia reasoning in Islamic history. In short, the philosophy of al-Madina al-fadila of
16. Although I am a professor of international relations (since 1973), however, a political philosopher by training, I engaged in this research for the study of medieval philosophy in Islam. The results were first published in a big chapter in: Piper Handbook of Political Ideas, vol. II, ed. Iring Fetscher (Mu nchen: Piper Verlag, 1993), 87 174, followed by a monograph on intellectual history of Islam, being my major book. The reference is: Der wahre Imam (Munich: Piper, 1996), reprinted many times. In both publications, the focus is on tensions between the Sharia reasoning of the fiqh orthodoxy and falsafa rationalism in Islam. 17. On the formula bi al-aql aw al-wahi and the related competition between Fiqh-orthodoxy and rationalism in Islam see my monograph referenced in note 16.

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Journal of Church and State al- Farabi and the epistemology of Ibn Rushd did not follow the Islamic tradition of Sharia reasoning. In so arguing along with the great philosopher Ernst Bloch in his appreciation of Avicenna/Ibn Sina against what he termed the Mufti world,18 I propose that Kelsay should differentiate between Sharia reasoning and falsafa-rationalists. In the past, Ibn Taymiyya in his al-Siyasa al-Shariyya and Mawardi in his al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya asserted the authority of fiqh against philosophy.19 Ibn Taymiyya and Mawardi were more successful than the falsafa rationalists in that medieval competition; that does not make them right. Franz Rosenthal honors falsafa-rationalism as an aspect of the heritage of Islam.20 The Islamic civilizations contribution to the birth of modern science was by no means related to Sharia reasoning. I propose that Kelsay consider these insights and to take a look at the work of Mohammed al-Jabri, who put the options in this manner: The survival of our philosophical tradition, i.e. what is likely to contribute to our time, can only be Averroist.21 To be sure, Averroist philosophy does not rest on the method or principles of Sharia reasoning. In the course of its exposure to Western civilization not only as a colonial power, but also as cultural modernity, Muslims tried to revive the Islamic heritage of Averroest rationalism, but failed. There is a most important survey on these failed efforts in the brilliant study completed by Anke von Ku gelgen.22 In modern times there was also another strand that deviated from Islamic Sharia reasoning. It is secular liberalism, and the more powerful pan-Arab secular nationalism. Kelsay does not deal with the dilemma of Muslims between Islam and the nation-state.23 This theme created the major topic in the first decade of my academic career. I acknowledge that nationalism was secular, but also that it has
18. Ernst Bloch, Avicenna und die Aristotelische Linke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1963), 30. Bloch qualifies this Islamic falsafa rationalism as a beginning medieval enlightenment ( p. 29). 19. For detailed references see chapter 4 on Farabi, chapter 5 on Mawardi and Ibn Taymiyya, and chapter 6 on Ibn Khaldun in my book Der wahre Imam (see note 16). For a recent work on this subject, see The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, ed. Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 20. Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage of Islam (London: Routledge, 1975), reprint 1992. 21. Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, Arab Islamic Philosophy (Austin: CMES-University of Texas, 1999), 124; see also note 4. 22. Anke von Ku gelgen, Averroes und die arabische Moderne (Leiden: Brill, 1994). 23. Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism. Between Islam and the Nation-State, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1997).

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John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam failed and retreated in favor of Sharia reasoning. Ahead of the resumption of Sharia reasoning around 1970 by Qaradawis al-Hall al-Islami (note 15) there was in the years 1967 1970 another most promising interval of a secular enlightenment led by Islamic thinkers such as the poet Adonis (editor of Maqawif ) and Sadik al-Azm. Medieval Islamic rationalism lasted for almost three centuries. The post 1967-war enlightenment lasted only for three years.24

Sharia Reasoning and Other Muslim Ways II. Modern Times: Liberalism and Secular Nationalism
Early Muslim liberals such as Tahtawi and Abduh acknowledged, on the grounds of their observations and experiences in nineteenthcentury France, the need for Muslims to engage in cultural borrowing from Europe.25 However, they made the bottom line clear: only adoptions are to be admitted that do not contradict or violate the rules of Sharia. Given the fact that the present essay focuses on Kelsays book and is not a study of Islamic modernism, I cannot go into more detail. There is, however, a connection: Islamic modernism failed because it aimed to establish a synthesis between Sharia reasoning and cultural modernity. This endeavor did not work. Why? Sharia reasoning is a type of religious dogmatics. The late, most distinguished German sociologist of religion and law Niklas Luhman, characterized intellectual thought bound to religious dogma as that which interprets in order to give answers. On the one hand it works with functionally unanalyzed abstractions and in this respect is unreflective. It does not thematize its social function but understands itself, its concept of dogma, in turn in a dogmatic fashion. . . . It rests, on the other hand, on the context-free availability of its materials: that is, on a distance from the connections which it interprets.26
24. On this short period, see Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament. Arab Political Thought and Practice since 1967 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), reprinted a dozen times. For a recent contribution on this subject-matter see B. Tibi, Intellektuelle als verhinderte Aufkla rer. Das Scheitern der Intellektuellen im Islam, in Die Intellektuellen und der Weltenlauf, ed. Walter Reese-Scha fer und Harald Bluhm (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2006), 97 125. The cited chapter argues that Sharia reasoning was interpreted twice: in medieval Islam and in the post-1967 developments. Of course, next to the Arabic thought in the liberal age. On the latter see Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798 1939 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). In both intervals secular Muslims failed to establish their new tradition. 25. Rifaa R. al-Tahtawi, Takhlis al-Ibriz fi talkhis Paris (Beirut: Dar Ibn Zaidun, reprint, n.d.). 26. Niklas Luhman, Funktion der Religion (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 87.

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Journal of Church and State In the age of Muslim liberal thought, there were other secular liberals (secular and not committed to Sharia), but they failed as much as did their Muslim peers, the modernists. This failure paved the way for secular nationalism which has nothing at all to do with Sharia reasoning. The connection is that they encouraged the delegitimation of secular ideologies after the Arab defeat in 1967 contributed to the rise of political Islam with its agenda of Shariatization. To conclude this section, Kelsays valuable analysis is lacking with respect to modern Islamic history. Kelsay mentions in passing Jamal Abd al-Nasser ( p. 92), who was the major figure and hero of secular pan-Arab nationalism. Kelsay also refers to Nassers short interaction with the Movement of the Muslim Brothers, but does not go into any further detail. It has to suffice at this point to mention that the political thought of secular pan-Arab nationalism determined not only politics in the Arab world, but also had an impact far beyond this core region of Islamic civilization. True, political Islam and its Sharia reasoning existed between 1928 and the mid-1960s, but it was mostly on the fringe. The turning point was the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967. This watershed allowed a short interval of an Arab enlightenment (note 24), but in the end determined the return of Sharia reasoning to the fore throughout the world of Islam. The process started first in the Sunni-Arab part of Islamic civilization.27 The Islamic Revolution in Iran (1978 1979) followed as a late-comer.

The Reinvention of Sharia, as State Law in the Shariatization of Islam by Islamism: The Return of Sharia Reasoning
For a variety of reasons, secularism failed to take root in the world of Islam in a fashion similar to the earlier Islamic falsafa rationalism. Nevertheless, both periods document an interval in Sharia reasoning that ended with the return of the sacred. In this understanding, political Islam returns Sharia reasoning to the fore. Today, even the foremost secular republic of the world of Islam, Turkey, is affected by this process. The AKP Islamists rule that country in an authoritarian style as in any one party-regime. Parallel to this Islamist ascendancy, secularists are in retreat. Though the Republic of Turkey enshrines secularism in its constitution, the AKP Islamists are in charge, because they disguise
27. Bassam Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, updated edition 2002), chapter 8 on Sharia.

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John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam themselves as Islamic conservatives to avoid being banned.28 In fact, Sharia reasoning determines the mindset and the worldview of Turkish AKP-Islamists. The victory of the AKP is a victory of Sharia reasoning in Turkey. In stating that Sharia is today the most distinctive feature of political Islam, I acknowledge the centrality of the form of reasoning superbly analyzed by Kelsay. However, one has to add this: it is no longer the classical Sharia Kelsay is dealing with. There has been an invention of tradition that results in a Shariatization of state and society. The scholar who coined this formula, Eric Hobsbawm, tells us that inventing traditions is . . . characterized by reference to the past . . . where a tradition is deliberately invented and constructed. . . . The difficulty is not only one of the sources, but also of the techniques . . . in symbolism and ritual.29 The new Sharia of political Islam does not simply serve as a framework for guidance, as Kelsay rightly says about the classical Sharia, but it is rather a constitution for an authoritarian state (see note 35). I have reason to identify this new setup as a totalitarian order, distinct from more traditional forms of despotic rule. I am mostly in agreement with Kelsays line of argumentation about Sharia, but I deviate in three major points, some of which are general oversights and others which are related to terminology. My criticism revolves around the following three points: First, the book misses or ignores other ways of reasoning by Muslims in the past and at present beyond the Sharia as discussed above in two sections. Second, Kelsays portrait of the Muslim Brothers as embodiment of the classical Sharia vision ( p. 92) needs a closer scrutiny in light of the idea of an invention of tradition. Third, my close reading of the essay on jihad by the founder of the Muslim Brothers, Hasan al-Banna, compels me to speak of jihadism, not of jihad. This is due to a reading by al-Banna of a new meaning into Islam determined by an invention that guides his thinking and his political activities, as well. At this juncture, I point to the distinction between Islam (tradition) and Islamism (the invention of tradition) to understand what al-Banna and also Qutb had done to the Sharia to make it the frame for establishing Hakimiyyat Allah. This is a concept that
28. For more details see Bassam Tibi, Turkeys Islamists Approach to Europe, Middle East Quarterly 16, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 47 54. 29. Eric Hobsbawm, introduction to The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (New York: Cambridge University Press, reprint 1996), 4.

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Journal of Church and State never existed in quite this form in any earlier Islamic tradition. Therefore, I speak in respect to the legacy of al-Banna and Qutb of a combined jihadization and Shariatization of Islam. This combination results from a process of an invention of tradition. If Kelsay accepts my argument of an interval in Islamic history that occurred twice (in the past: falsafa-rationalism, and in contemporary history: secularism) then we would be in agreement not only in viewing the present jihadist resumption of the Islamic discourse of Arguing the Just War as a return of Sharia reasoning, but also to see this venture taking a new shape. In short, I not only propose to consider the interval mentioned, but also suggest that the return of Sharia reasoning takes place as an invention of tradition. Therefore, I disagree with the qualification of al-Bannas thought as embodiment of tradition. Let me explain in the following what I take to be the Shariatization process to make this point clearer. While I want to distance myself from endorsing Huntingtons rhetoric of a clash of civilization, I submit in fairness that this Harvard scholar contributed, albeit in a distorted manner, to the revival of the study of civilizations. In this context, a conflict is stated in civilizational terms. To be sure, a conflict is not necessarily a clash. A conflict can be peacefully resolved, a clash cannot. With this understanding in mind, I propose to see in the course of the revival of divine law in Islamic civilization a conflict and a competition between secular and political-religious concepts of order, but dismiss the formula of a clash of civilizations for conceptualizing this conflict. It is more proper to speak of a New Cold War taking place between secularism and the return of the sacred.30 To be sure, one can employ Sharia in a new understanding for an ethical guidance of politics,31 but no more than that. Sharia is not a constitutional law itself, as Islamists in their construction claim. They abuse the text of the Quran to legitimate a new variety of Oriental despotism wearing the religious garb either of Wahhabi or of Islamist Islam. The difference between Hanbali-inspired Wahhabi orthodox Salafism and Islamism is between despotism and totalitarianism. These two ideologies engage, each in its own way, in a Sharia-based reasoning. At present, the argument for secular law and legal universality is challenged by the Shariatization of Islam. Truly, the Sharia in Islam
30. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), and Mark Juergensmeyer, A New Cold War? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 31. See Sohail H. Hashmi, ed., Islamic Political Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), the volume includes chapter 9 by Bassam Tibi on the ethics of war in Islam.

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John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam is a pendulum swinging between ethics and politics. Ethically, the Quran prescribes piety and general rules. This guidance (hidaya) is not a legal system. The legal system of Sharia is therefore a postQuranic structure. As a tradition it is, however, confined to muamalat (civil law), cult (ibadat) and to a penal code of hudud. Islamic clerics are learned men of religion (ulema or scribes), some of them act as religious jurists or faqihs (in Arabic: fuqaha), not as theologians (mutakallimun). In medieval Islam a religious tradition of kalam (theology) unfolded. There were those Mutazilite theologians who were defenders of reason,32 but theyunlike the fuqaha never succeeded in becoming mainstream in Islamic civilization. The fiqh (Islamic sacral jurisprudence) possessed and continues to possess a monopoly over the interpretation of religious affairs in Islam. Most of these jurists did not deal with politics and they were never independent in their Sharia reasoning because they were subservient to the caliph. There was a separation between law (Sharia) and the politics (siyasa) of the state. I prefer to follow Joseph Schacht instead of Hallaq and to adopt his way of describing this separation: The sovereign pretended to apply and to complete the sacred law . . . (but) in practice [regulated] by virtually independent legislation matters of police, taxation, justice, all of which had escaped the control of the Kadi.33 This field, as Schacht continues, was later called siyasa. . . . As a result of all this, a double administration . . . one religious . . . on the basis of Sharia, the other secular exercised by political authorities on the basis of . . . sometimes arbitrariness of governmental regulations.34 In short, there existed a virtual separation between siyasa and Sharia. Today, the Shariatization of law35 related to the rise of Islamism. The invented tradition has some roots in the past, in particular in the work of Ibn Taymiyya. Kelsay rightly argues that the Sharia reasoning of Ibn Taymiyya implies on the one hand a conservative practice in the sense that it . . . follows the line of precedent ( p. 75); on the other hand, however, it seems to suggest the necessity of fighting in a kind of just revolution ( pp. 121 22). This tension between two contradictory provisions may explain the life of Ibn Taymiyya: he preached obedience to authority, but at the same time he spent most of his life, as Kelsay reminds us,
32. See the volume Defender of Reason, ed. Richard Martin (Oxford: One World, 1997). 33. Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, reprinted 1979), 54 55. 34. Ibid. 35. On Shariatization see Bassam Tibi, The Return of the Sacred to Politics. The Case of the Shariatization of Politics, in Theoria. A Journal of Social and Political Theory 55, no. 3 (2008): 91 119.

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Journal of Church and State in prison, punished for his disobedience ( p. 75). In the age of the return of the sacred with an invented Sharia law, the writings of Ibn Taymiyya are highly instructive for understanding Islamism. Islamists themselves refer to Ibn Taymiyya and claim universality for Sharia. In so doing, they not only generate an inter-civilizational conflict, but also call for disobedience (to whom?) and thus engage in the same contradiction that characterized the life and work of Ibn Taymiyya. These historical issues matter deeply to the present study of Islam. The background is full of conflict. There is a diversity of legal systems that exist parallel to the diversity of cultures and civilizations. Salafi Muslims and Islamists refuse to follow the Western notion of law, and prefer instead to refer to the Quran and view it as an Islamic constitution, in the same manner as Islamic universalism. To understand how the particular can be made universal, a reference to the Oxford jurist H. L. A. Hart is worthwhile. Hart shows how European-structured law becomes international law, binding for new states: It has never been doubted that when a new, independent state emerges into existence . . . it is bound by the general obligations of international law. . . . Here the attempt to rest the new states international obligations on a tacit or inferred consent seems wholly threadbare.36 The international system is secular and it is challenged by the return of the sacred,37 placed as a sign of the cultural turn. In this context, religion is viewed as a cultural system.38 Presently, this phenomenon is occurring in all religion-based civilizations, foremost in Islam. In the context of identity politics, cultural attitudes and law traditions are constructed along the lines of the traditional concept of sacred law. This implies the revival of Sharia law and its reasoning based on the belief that it is revealed by God, even though it is derived interpretatively from holy scripture. In modern democracies, the lawmakers are elected parliamentarians acting in legislative institutions, whereas in Islam non-elected faqihs, in their capacity as interpreters of the scripture, are not only legal scholars but also those who determine what the law is and what legitimate authority in the name of Allah is. Thus, one may contrast two competing legal traditions with one another: legislative democratic law versus interpretative authoritarian law. The contemporary Sharia reasoning reaches a peak in the process of Shariatization of law which legitimizes
36. H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 221. 37. Daniel Philpot, The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations, in World Politics, 55, no. 1 (2002): 66 95. 38. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretations of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 87 125.

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John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam de-Westernization through an Islamization of the law as a politics of cultural purification. This process is clearly imbued with antidemocratic implications. Currently, in most Islamic countries, positive law is flatly rejected in favor of the call for tatbiq al-Sharia (implementation of Sharia). The landslide electoral victory of the pro-Sharia forces in Iraq and Hamas in Palestine and the ascendancy of Islamists in general cast great doubts on the future of the world of Islam. If the new Sharia-reasoning based on a Shariatization of the state were to prevail, then there will be a situation worth despairing over. Kelsay does not use the term Shariatization, but his reference to Sharia reasoning as a history of conflict in which argument is often connected with violence ( p. 75) is most helpful for understanding what this is all about. In this context, Kelsay reminds us that it is an Islamic dutyin the understanding of Ibn Taymiyyato extend or protect the hegemony of Islamic values in what one might call geopolitical space ( p. 119). The foremost among these values are those of the Sharia. Could contemporary Muslims make this duty compatible with incorporation into a global civil society?39 Or is continued conflict inevitable?

The Pertinence of Sharia Reasoning to the Islam-Diaspora in Europe

Finally, and before moving to the conclusions, there is still a very important area that Kelsays discussion of Sharia reasoning fails to address: the pertinence of this valuable analysis for the Islamic diaspora in Europe. This diaspora has emerged in a context of global migration. Those Westerners not knowledgeable about Islamic beliefs confuse migration in Islam with migration in general and thus fail to grasp the issue and draw utterly wrong conclusions40 about integrating Islam into Europe. In contrast, Kelsay acknowledges in his earlier work this issue, but he unfortunately keeps it out of his new book. Nevertheless, he informs his readers about the different meaning of migration in Islam: The migration to Medina, al-hijra, constitutes a defining moment in the story. For the time being, the community would carry out its mission not only by means of preaching and worship, but by means of fighting and other political activity ( p. 23). Is this Sharia provision also
39. Mary Caldor, Global Civil Society. An Answer to War (Cambridge/UK: Polity, 2003). Caldor states: Both Islamic fundamentalism and the use of terror are profoundly inimical to global civil society, 148. 40. For a hopeless case, see for example Jonathan Laurence and Justin Vaisse, Integrating Islam. Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France (Washington: Brookings, 2006).

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Journal of Church and State valid for the Islam diaspora in Europe emerging from the new wave of migration? Among the merits of this fantastic book is the point that Sharia in Islam is more than just a law, it is about guidance in the context of establishing what Kelsay names a precedent. The Muslims call this sabiqa. Does the migration of the Prophet to Medina 622 establish such a precedent in the Sharia reasoning for Islamic migration at present, as it did in the past? Muslim immigrants in Europe face this question and their spokesmen evade an honest answer. No doubt, Muslim immigrants can only be integrated as citizens of the heart in a secular polity. They can only do so if they can be induced to abandon the combination of hidjra with proselytization for the spread of Islam by all means.41 If, in contrast, Sharia reasoning were more binding to them than the loyalty to non-Islamic secular laws and to the constitutions in the states in which they live, then there can be no integration, but rather an Islamization. Of course, Kelsay cannot cover in his monograph all issues. In one of his earlier books, Kelsay nevertheless writes at the beginning most clearly: Given the increased presence of Muslims in Europe and North America . . . it is important to see . . . an account of an exchange, and then adds toward the end: the traditions we call Western and Islamic can no longer strictly be identified with particular geographic regions . . . The rapidity of Muslim immigration . . . suggests that we may soon be forced to speak not simply of Islam and, but of Islam in the West. What difference will this make? . . . Islamic communities form a sort of sectarian enclave in the context of a larger, Western culture . . . , but not of it.42 In two projects at Cornell and Stanford universities,43 I addressed this issue of Islamization first in the option of a misgiving of an ethnicity of fear, if the integration fails. In this context, the Sharia reasoning analyzed by Arguing the Just War in Islam is

41. On this debate see Bassam Tibi, A Migration Story. From Muslim Immigrants to European Citizens of the Heart, The Fletcher Forum of World 31 (2007): 147 68. 42. John Kelsay, Islam and War (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993). The first quote is from p. 5, the second from pp. 117 18. 43. Bassam Tibi, Europeanizing Islam or the Islamization of Europe, in Religion in an Expanding Europe, ed. Timothy Byrnes and Peter Katzenstein (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 204 24; Bassam Tibi, EuroIslamic Religious Pluralism for Europe: An Alternative to Ethnicity and to Multiculturalism of Fear, The Current/Cornell University 11, no. 1 (Fall 2007): 89 103; Bassam Tibi, The Return of Ethnicity to Europe via Islamic Migration, in Ethnic Europe, ed. Roland Hsu (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 127 56.

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John Kelsay and Sharia Reasoning in Just War in Islam highly pertinent to the Islamic diaspora in Europe. The other option is to abandon Sharia in a Europeanized Islam. Being a Muslim immigrant to Europe myself, and one who believes in the light of the heritage of falsafa rationalism that Islam and secularity (notice! not secularism) are compatible, I see the problem of the geopolitical space in relation to the validity of Islamic values.44 I also believe that Kelsays analysis is highly pertinent to understanding the European Muslim relations in the global migration crisis. One should address this issue and not leave the field uncontested to the people like Tariq Ramadan.45 This Islamist gives Europe the name of Dar al-Shahada in his Sharia reasoning committed to the obligation to the spread of Islam in an anticipation of an Islamization of Europe. The reasoning about this issue should be generated in a debate with John Kelsay in our community. In this debate one should not evade my hot-button issue, in particular the one addressed in this section.

Conclusions
My appreciation for, combined with some critical propositions about Arguing the Just War in Islam hopefully makes clear that this work is a major contribution to the field of Islamic studies. Specifically, it is a breakthrough in the study of Sharia and jihad in Islam. The turmoil in the world of Islam since the Islamic Revolution in Iran reflects a civil war that is violence within Islam that has expanded to become after 9/11 a geopolitical war, as John Brenkman suggests.46 This process has affected the study of Islam in the West in a most negative manner in that it has contributed to a damaging politicization of scholarship, and in turn generates divisions among scholars and creates an impasse in understanding Islam. Kelsays book is so balanced and well-suited to serve as a contribution that helps to bring scholars back to the issues and to engage in a serious debate on Sharia and jihad. Kelsay is right in
44. Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam, 119. 45. See Caroline Fourest, Brother Tariq. The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan (London: Encounter Books, 2008), and also the essay by Paul Berman, Whos Afraid of Tariq Ramadan. The Islamist, the Journalist and the Defense of Liberalism, in The New Republic (June 4, 2007), 37 63. Recently Berman developed this important essay into a book. See Paul Berman, The Flight of the Intellectuals (Brooklyn: Melvillehouse, 2010), a book focused on the Islamism of Tariq Ramadan. For a critique of Ramadan by a liberal Muslim, see Bassam Tibi, Euro-Islam, in The Other Muslims. Moderate and Secular, ed. Zeyno Baran (New York: Palgrave, 2010), 157 74. 46. John Brenkman, The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy. Political Thought Since September 11 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 165 77.

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Journal of Church and State stating that Sharia reasoning is the key to understanding contemporary political Islam. At issue are not only 1.6 billion Muslims living all over the world, but also the rest of humanity, defined by Muslims in Sharia-jihad terms. Thus, all humanity is affected by an Islamic worldview determined by the discussed Sharia reasoning. Religious reform in Islam and an accommodation to secular cultural modernity are thus a matter of pertinence not restricted to the people of Islamic civilization, but affect all. As a Muslim scholar who lived and worked in Europe, the Middle East, and in Southeast Asia, I learned in this cross-cultural context the need for pluralism, that is for other patterns than Sharia reasoning in order to establish peace. Today, the Islamic concept of peace is being phased out. Peace can only be established on the grounds of mutual recognition and respect between Muslims and non-Muslims. The concept for this is democratic pluralism of cultural modernity, not the Islamic concept of dhimmitude and is phased out [understanding of toleration under conditions of subjection.]47 At issue is not only to open space for Islam, but also for Muslims to create such space for non-Muslims. For this pursuit, Arguing Just War in Islam is a highly welcomed contribution to a most important debate.

47. Bassam Tibi, Islam and Cultural Modernity. In Pursuit of Democratic Pluralism, in: Islamic Legitimacy in Plural Asia, ed. Anthony Reid and Michael Gilseman (New York: Routledge, 2007), 28 52. This concept contradicts the Dhimmi and Islamic tolerance concepts analyzed by Bat Yeor, Islam and Dhimmitude (Cransbury: Associated University Presses, 2002), and Yohanan Friedman, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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