Struggles Behind Words: Shariah, Sunnism, and Jihad

As linguists can attest, connotation is as important in defining meaning as denotation. The same term can mean different things for different people. Contrary to the saying, words can hurt more than sticks and stones. The diverse usage and interpretations of three Arabic terms--shariah, Sunnism, and jihad--are more than a matter of linguistics. They reveal a conflict that has consumed the Muslim world for the last five hundred years. To understand the words is to understand the conflict, and this requires tracing the historic construction of their meanings.

For over a thousand years, the Islamic civilization was the beacon of scientific and human genius and the cradle of freedom and liberty. Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Qairawan, and Cordoba were centers of science, medicine, culture, philosophy, and the arts. Muslims, Christians, and Jews coexisted relatively peacefully in the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Spain. The arrival of the Crusader armies in 1095 was the first palpitation into the Muslim world by the Christian West--a West that would overpower it by the nineteenth century. Beginning around 1500 A.D., Muslims began to feel the pressure of the over-powering Christian West (the Crusades in the Middle Ages and the European colonization of many Muslim countries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). Muslim theologians, scholars, and thinkers felt besieged by Western powers and culture and were concerned that Muslims were going to lose their religion and identity. They decreed that Muslims must reject everything from the West and hold on to their unique faith and beliefs. When the body is threatened, the mind cannot distinguish between the good and the bad. Unfortunately, this bunker mentality has persisted even after Muslim countries gained their independence in the twentieth century. Muslims are still afraid of the West, and many continue to reject it as an enemy of Islam and as an imperialist power out to destroy Muslim countries and Muslim identity.

Through the twentieth century, Muslim thinkers such as Jamal eddine al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, Racheed Reda, and Khayreddine al-Tunisi have attempted to revive and modernize Islamic thought, but they planted their seeds in ground made sterile by colonization and dictatorship. Many of the political elite in the Muslim world today were trained and educated in the West. They believe that secularism, the separation of religion from the state, is the best way to modernize their societies. However, since secularism was rejected by the religious establishment and ulamas (scholars), modern rulers have resorted to jail, imprisonment, and torture to silence the Islamic opposition.

The conflict between secularists and Islamists began with the century and turned violent and ugly in the eighties and nineties. This deadlock between the secularists and the Islamists (there are moderates and extremists in both camps) continues today in most Muslim countries. Shariah, sunnism, and jihad are three arrows in their quivers.

Shariah

Like the Old Testament, the Holy Quran contains several commandments that Muslims must follow and apply in their daily life. These commandments do not simply address purely religious issues, such as praying and fasting, but also political, economic, and social matters like inheritance, interest, economic justice, and legal punishments for certain crimes like theft, adultery, and drinking alcohol. These Quranic teachings are complemented by the tradition (sunna) of the Prophet Muhammad and by the interpretations and opinions of the scholars. Throughout history, Muslim jurists and scholars had different and diverging opinions about many of these issues, and the process of ijtihad (innovation and reform) has been essential to adapting Islamic jurisprudence (shariah) to changing needs and realities.

Islamists believe that Muslims must "rule" according to the teachings of Allah and his prophet and do not have the option of implementing certain verses and not implementing others. They insist that the legal punishments (hudud) mentioned in the Quran (for stealing and adultery, for instance) must be applied literally, for example by cutting off the hand of the thief, to obey God's commandments. Secularists argue that those teachings...