Discussion:
Islamic Peace Treaties
(too old to reply)
Robert Houghton
2008-04-09 00:56:53 UTC
Permalink
Peace, for orthodox Muslims, is just an interlude in the war which will make
all the world Dar al-Islam: it is only under Dar al-Islam that there can be
permanent peace. The peace that the word "Islam" is said to stand for is the
peace that will ensue when the world has submitted (submission being the
meaning of "Islam") to be Dar al-Islam.

The making of a temporary (maximum ten years) peace with the infidel is just
another move in the war:

"Peace, moreover, is war in effect where the interest of the Mussulmans
requires it, since the design of war is the removal of evil and this is
obtained by means of peace." ("The Hedaya" Vol 2, book 9, ch 3, p.150).

When I have, on this forum, said that Muslims are not bound by their
treaties I have been contradicted, it being pointed out that the Koran is
strict about keeping to the agreed terms: "... break not your oaths after
you have confirmed them": (16:91). But a hadith, which records Muhammad's
instruction to army commanders, gives another impression, there being
different levels of promise:

"When you lay siege to a fort and the besieged appeal to you for protection
in the name of Allah and his Prophet, do not accord to them the guarantee of
Allah and his Prophet, but accord to them your own guarantee and the
guarantee of your companions, for it is a lesser sin that the security be
given by you or your companions be disregarded than that the security
granted in the name of Allah and his Prophet be violated ..." Sahih Muslim
Book 19, Number 4294.

According to Sheikh Abdul Rahman Abdul Khaliq, peace treaties with Jews are
made only to be broken. In regard to these he writes:

"The first duty is to firmly believe in their invalidity and that because
they contain invalid conditions they were born dead the very day they were
given birth to..."

"The second duty of the Muslim is to believe that these treaties do not bind
him and that it is not lawful for him to give effect to any of their
contents except under compulsion and necessity.."

"The third duty is to work towards overthrowing these treaties..." (Khaliq,
"Verdict on the Treaties of Compromise and Peace with the Jews"
islaam.com/articles/treaty/htm)
Zuiko Azumazi
2008-04-20 02:44:57 UTC
Permalink
"Robert Houghton" <***@f2s.com> wrote in message news:000701c897f2$8f3a1f90$***@houghtona6bc7e...

<snip> ...
Post by Robert Houghton
Peace, for orthodox Muslims, is just an interlude in the war which will make
all the world Dar al-Islam: ...
<snip> ...

Comment:-
Which just goes to prove that Patricia Crone was correct when she rightly
said:-

<Quote> ...
Jihad is a subject that non-Muslims find difficult to understand. In fact,
there is nothing particularly outlandish about it. All one has to remember
is that holy war is not the opposite of pacifism, but rather of secular
war - fighting in pursuit of aims lying outside religion. Whether people are
militant or not in its pursuit is another matter. [Patricia Crone]
<Unquote> ...

But intelligent readers should read Patricia Crone's illuminating article in
full before making up their minds about the spurious and question begging
"Peace, for orthodox Muslims" proposition, concerning "the abode of war" and
"abode of Islam" (see link below), to discover the plausible but false
nature of this deceitful "peace treaty" spin.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-europe_islam/jihad_4579.jsp#three

What comparative distinctions and fallacies do discerning readers discover
between Patricia Crone assessment and the thinly-veiled plagiarisation,
lifted from Patrick Sookhdeo's latest book, that's being artfully posted to
this forum as anti-Muslimism spin by its author?

<snip> ...
Post by Robert Houghton
"Peace, moreover, is war in effect where the interest of the Mussulmans
requires it, since the design of war is the removal of evil and this is
obtained by means of peace." ("The Hedaya" Vol 2, book 9, ch 3, p.150).
<snip> ...

Comment:-
What is the present day relevance of "The Hedaya" (al-Hidaya), an
"Anglo-Muhammadan Law" manual, by Charles Hamilton in 1791 (can you
believe), for colonial administrative use by the British Raj in India? Is
this an accurate and reliable depiction of "Mussalmans" ideas on war and
peace? Is this 'highly selective' source, "The Hedaya", being used as an
'authority' to bamboozle unaware readers about "Islamic Peace treaties"?
Note the: "Their inadequacies and blatant errors have been partially
recorded in court cases and commentaries, but sustained research on the
ideological biases of their rendering remains to be pursued. Even a basic
text on the usul al-fiqh, or roots of jurisprudence, that would be basic to
any detailed understanding of Islamic law, did not appear until 1911.",
contained in the learned SOAS paper cited below.

For an interesting digest on this colonial subject, discerning readers might
want to spend a little of their valuable time in studying this unbiased
article "Islamic Law and the Colonial Encounter in British India" by Michael
R. Anderson. Published in Arnold, David and Peter Robb (Eds.). "Institutions
and Ideologies: A SOAS South Asia Reader."; (London: Curzon Press Ltd.)
1993, pp. 165-185. Full article can be found at this freely available link:-

http://www.wluml.org/english/pubs/pdf/occpaper/OCP-07.pdf

<Quote> ...
Since the formidable amount of legal scholarship that accumulated under
British rule was produced in an explicit complicity with colonialism,
questions of its bias and validily are bound to be asked. What role did
Anglo-Muhammadan scholarship assume in defining and mobilising colonial
power? By what techniques was this scholarship created? How did the process
of creating the Anglo-Muhammadan law affect its substantive content and
application? In
which ways did the substantive content mesh with understandings of identity
and social order among the colonised peoples? ...

I. Indigenous law and the early colonial state

The imperatives of the Company's account-books required that administrators
remain mindful of two broad goals first, to extract economic surplus, in the
form of revenue, from the agrarian economy, and second, to maintain
effective political control with minimal military involvement. For the most
part, the various administrators of the East India Company (and later, the
British Crown), followed the path of least resistance, relying upon co-opted
indigenous intermediaries as well as military and police power to secure
control. Throughout the subcontinent, the British exercised power by
adapting themselves to the contours of pre-colonial political systems,
including law. The result was that in many of its structural features, as
well as its substantive policies, the colonial state sustained what were
essentially pre-colonial political
forms until well into the nineteenth century. Although lacking in military
and financial power, the edifice of the Mughal empire provided a source of
de jure authority long after its de facto demise. Mughal administrative
ranks, honours, rituals, and terminology persisted in muted although
significant form even after Crown had supplanted Durbar in 1858. Yet while
recent historiography has emphasised the continuities between the ancien
régime and the early colonial state, it is clear that colonial rule brought
a host of entirely new political
institutions, and that when indigenous mechanisms were adapted to
colonial purposes, they were incorporated within new institutional fora. ...

Translations

Given the assumed centrality of legal text, and a persistent distrust of
native law officers, it followed that legal administrators were eager to
have Islamic texts in English translation so that indigenous laws could be
applied directly by British judges. Sir William Jones, the great polymath of
early Orientalism, proposed that Hastings should endeavour to compile 'a
complete Digest of Hindu and Muhammad laws after the model of Justinian's
inestimable Pandects'. The model of the Roman legal system lent credence to
the emphasis on a rule-based legality. At the insistence of Hastings,
al-Hidaya, the influential compilation of Hanafi opinion, was translated by
three maulavis from Arabic to Persian, and then into English by Charles
Hamilton in 1791. But al-Hidaya lacked any treatment of inheritance,
regarded by the British as the most intractable and politically important of
Muhammadan law subjects. Accordingly, in 1792, al-Sirajiyya, a treatise on
inheritance, was translated direct from the Arabic by Jones personally.

The courts continued to rely upon advice from indigenous legal specialists
for some time, so the translations made little impact on colonial
administration until the early nineteenth century. Their primary
significance lay in the understandings they engendered of an essentialist,
static Islam incapable of change from within. They established, in the
crucible of colonial rule, that a proper knowledge of India - and of the
Orient more generally - could be had only through a detailed study of the
classical legal texts.

The translations had greater legal effect as judges began to rely upon them
more directly. Although produced in haste, and with imperfect language
skills, the unrevised eighteenth-century translations remained
authoritative. A number of translating errors were discovered in Al-Hidaya
but corrections were made only to the Persian version in 1807. The English
version remains uncorrected. The project of translating a broader range of
texts, including non-Hanafi texts, never reached fruition, and was cancelled
due to financial constraints in 1808. The nineteenth century saw only one
additional major translation - an
abbreviated version of the fatwa Alamgiri and a portion of an Itna 'Ashariya
(Shi'a) text - translated by Neil Baillie and published in 1865 under the
title of A Digest of Mohummudan Law.

Together, these three translations formed the textual basis of
Anglo-Muhammadan law. Their inadequacies and blatant errors have been
partially recorded in court cases and commentaries, but sustained research
on the ideological biases of their rendering remains to be pursued. Even a
basic text on the usul al-fiqh, or roots of jurisprudence, that would be
basic to any detailed understanding of Islamic law, did not appear until
1911. It is not surprising that those few texts which were translated came
to be treated as authoritative codes rather than as discrete statements
within a larger spectrum of scholarly debate.
<Unquote> ...

Further reading see: "Framed, Blamed and Renamed: The Recasting of Islamic
Jurisprudence in Colonial South Asia" by Scott Alan Klugle.

<snip> ...
Post by Robert Houghton
When I have, on this forum, said that Muslims are not bound by their
treaties I have been contradicted, ...
<snip> ...

Comment:-
And where have you done this? Can you give us the relevant link from the SRI
archives about "Islamic Peace Treaties" that you have posted? This is the
search result that I did which only came up with this current thread. Here's
the proof:-

http://groups.google.com/groups/search?hl=en&q=author%***@f2s.com+%22peace+treaties

Isn't this another prime example of your spurious; "When I have, on this
forum, said that", which has subsequently proved to be untrue, unreliable or
inaccurate?

--
Peace
--
For malice will with joy the lie receive, Report, and what it wishes true
believe. [Rev. Thomas Yalden]

Zuiko Azumazi.
***@gmail.com
DKleinecke
2008-04-20 02:59:49 UTC
Permalink
Post by Robert Houghton
According to Sheikh Abdul Rahman Abdul Khaliq, peace treaties with Jews are
"The first duty is to firmly believe in their invalidity and that because
they contain invalid conditions they were born dead the very day they were
given birth to..."
"The second duty of the Muslim is to believe that these treaties do not bind
him and that it is not lawful for him to give effect to any of their
contents except under compulsion and necessity.."
"The third duty is to work towards overthrowing these treaties..." (Khaliq,
"Verdict on the Treaties of Compromise and Peace with the Jews"
islaam.com/articles/treaty/htm)
Let us assume that the Jews are not fools.

The second duty is a large weasel (a wolverine at least). Of course,
nobody expects the Muslims to obey any treaty "except under compulsion
and necessity." Nor do they expect Jews to obey them "except under
compulsion and necessity."

The first duty is mere rationalization. If a treaty is invalid then
why waste a moment on it? Except under compulsion and necessity. As
to the third - just exactly how a treaty is "overthrown" is a mystery
to me. I can understand violations and abrogations. If "overthrow"
means "abrogate" then there is nothing stopping one except the same
old compulsion and necessity.

Maybe Abdul Khaliq's rhetoric is odd - but his advice seems good and
practical.
All these things, he says, are bad - but compulsion and necessity
makes them a requirement.

Getting along with the neighbors may be distasteful - but it is a
necessity.

Maybe his hidden agenda is religious. He is telling us that Allah does
not approve of such treaties. If Allah is opposed to such treaties all
Allah has to do is remove the compulsions and necessities. But Allah
does not. Hence these treaties are the will of Allah. In that case
what could the proposition "Allah does not approve" possibly mean? I
would have to more about Abdul Khaliq's theological preoccupations to
answer that.
Zuiko Azumazi
2008-04-25 04:25:09 UTC
Permalink
"Robert Houghton" <***@f2s.com> wrote in message news:000701c897f2$8f3a1f90$***@houghtona6bc7e...

<snip> ...
Post by Robert Houghton
Peace, for orthodox Muslims, is just an interlude in the war which will make
all the world Dar al-Islam: it is only under Dar al-Islam that there can be
permanent peace. The peace that the word "Islam" is said to stand for is the
peace that will ensue when the world has submitted (submission being the
meaning of "Islam") to be Dar al-Islam. ...
<snip> ...

Comment:-
What do you mean by an Islamic peace treaty? Isn't this simply another
mythical assertion not supported by the empirical evidence? In the real
world of today, can Islam, which is not a independent sovereign nation in
the community of nations, sign a peace treaty?

In geopolitical reality, there is no single independent Islamic state (and
never has been) or government, just a multitude of states whose majority
populations just happen to be Muslim. For example, where does Afghanistan,
Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo figure in this mythical
"Islamic peace treaty" canard? Aren't the majority of western [Christian
(sic)] states trying to bring peace (?) to these Muslim populations and
independent sovereign states? It's as though you want to persuade
intelligent readers, that this bamboozling message of yours, isn't just
another one of Sookhdeo's false ideas, gratuitously expressed in his
disreputable and one-eyed "Global Jihad" polemical essay, which you are
senselessly re-echoing in this peaceful Islamic forum as your own?

As a direct parallel, can Christianity sign a peace treaty? Is Catholicism
capable of signing a legitimate political peace treaty? If so, on what
recognized governmental basis? Surely not on the basis of Christianity's
historical missionary "Great Commission", as disingenuous cover for the
creeping "Stealth Crusade", in many parts of the peaceful third world?
Interested readers may want to visit these independent links for a reality
check and essential background into this banal "Islamic peace treaty"
fable:-

http://www.barryyeoman.com/articles/stealthcrusade.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Commission

For a thorough, up-to-date, digest of "Islam in Asia", India and elsewhere,
interested readers, can visit this illuminating overview, at this "In the
Arms of Allah - A TIME special report on the many faces of Islam in Asia"
link and these other pertinent links, in the same independent series:-

http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501030310/index.html

http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501030811/story.html

http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501030811/neighbor.html

http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/india_ayodhya/

--
Peace
--
It is not a sin to go back into history but it is a sin to stay in history.
[Dr. Mustafa Ef. Ceric - Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina]

Zuiko Azumazi
***@gmail.com
Zuiko Azumazi
2008-04-26 21:53:06 UTC
Permalink
<snip> ...
Post by DKleinecke
Peace, for orthodox Muslims, is just an interlude ...
<snip> ...
Post by DKleinecke
The second duty is a large weasel (a wolverine at least). Of course,
nobody expects the Muslims to obey any treaty "except under compulsion
and necessity." Nor do they expect Jews to obey them "except under
compulsion and necessity."
The first duty is mere rationalization. If a treaty is invalid then
why waste a moment on it? Except under compulsion and necessity. As
to the third - just exactly how a treaty is "overthrown" is a mystery
to me. I can understand violations and abrogations. If "overthrow"
means "abrogate" then there is nothing stopping one except the same
old compulsion and necessity.
<snip> ...

Comment:-
Obviously this "Peace, for orthodox Muslims, is just an interlude"
generalization is a load of cobblers. Any serious reader who has any
intelligent understanding of history in the Middle East would realize that
about this "Treaties" fabrication. The certainty of the ignorant one could
successfully argue.

For example, let's look at the Ottomans in fairly modern times regarding
this "Treaties" object. According Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh:-

<Quote>
Despite the persistent efforts of a small number of Ottomanists, the general
approach to late Ottoman history has been limited to explaining it within
the context of the so-called Eastern Question, which in effect describes a
great game among the great powers of Europe who were eager to partition the
estate of a sick man. This approach finds it unnecessary to take internal
factors into consideration, since they lack the importance of a single 'note
verbale' from the foreign office of a great power. This approach is also
rather convenient: it saves the student of history from the burden of
examining the records of the "sick man," since they have no value in
understanding the great game. Thus the studies that attempt to explain what
happened in this periphery are heavily based on European sources. Although
no one would give credence to a work on modern Spanish history depending
solely on British Foreign Office papers, such works have become standard on
the late Ottoman Empire in European and American academia.

Interestingly, while many challenges to this approach by Ottomanists have
fallen on deaf ears, a challenge coming from within has caused an
unmistakable stir in the aforementioned academic circles. ... [Efraim Karsh
and Inari Karsh - "Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the
Middle East 1789-1923] ...
<Unquote> ...

This book by Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh has the merit of providing some
of the basic information about late Ottoman history that was sidelined by
traditional essays on the Eastern Question, which maintained that the main
bone of contention between the Ottomans and the European powers was
religious, stemming from Ottoman ill-treatment of their non-Muslim subjects.
The authors argue that "there was no clash of civilisations" and that Middle
Eastern political actors, including the Ottoman leadership, often sought
"infidel" support. Ottoman treaties of alliance with Christian powers, for
instance, go back as far as 1536. During the Wahhabi revolt, the Ottoman
government seriously considered soliciting the support of the Royal Navy to
defeat rebels who had gained the upper hand in the Persian Gulf.

In addition, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain emerged as autonomous regions within
the Ottoman Empire as a result of the grant of British protection to them,
and almost every sheikh sought British support against the centralization
program of the Ottomans. The so-called Idrs state in Asr also owed its
short-lived existence to Italian and later British support for Muhammad bin
Al al-Idrs.

AND :-

<Quote> ...
Macfie's chronological approach examines Great Power involvement in the Near
East from the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774 to the Treaty of Lausanne in
1923. Twelve short chapters treat such Eastern episodes as tsarist expansion
in the Black Sea area, Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, the Greek War of
Independence, Mehmet Ali and the Egyptian Question, the Crimean War, the
Eastern Crisis of 1875-1878, the Bosnian Annexation of 1908, the Balkan Wars
of 1912-1913, the Great War, and the Peace Settlement of 1918-1923. The
documents section includes clauses of landmark treaties, such as
Kutchuk-Kainardji (1774) between Russia and Ottoman Turkey; decrees by
government ministries and committees on Great Power reactions to Eastern
crises; and reports by diplomatic and consular officials on the status of
the Ottoman Empire. ... [A. L. Macfie. The Eastern Question, 1774-1923.]
<Unquote> ...

Interested readers can do their own independent historical research into,
for instance, the Treaty of Carlowitz, Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji, Treaty of
The Defensive Alliance, Treaty of Tillsit, Treaty of Bucharest, Treaty of
London, and the Congress of Vienna, to check out these "Treaty" facts for
themselves.

--
Peace
--
The opinion of the intelligent is worth more than the certitude of the
ignorant. [Arab Proverb]

Zuiko Azumazi
***@gmail.com

Loading...