Guerre sainte, jihad, croisade: Violence et religion dans le christianisme et l'islam (review)

In this timely and useful survey, Professor Flori offers a comparative study of the character and development of the idea of holy war in Christianity and Islam from the foundation of these religions. In their earliest days, they provide a study in contrasts; by the late eleventh century and with the First Crusade, the two religions reached similar stages in the sacralization of warfare. This assimilation, substantial but not complete, forms the conclusion of this study, though Flori rightly hints at its current relevance: his final observation is that we have perhaps not yet ceased to pay the price of the fateful and harmful convergence of ideas of holy war and jihad. This book is not only for medievalists but also for those who would understand in depth the world in which we now live.

Flori tellingly sets out the contrast between the attitudes of the founders of the two religions to the use of violence with Jesus entirely rejecting and Mohammed necessarily accepting it; this was a consequence of the insistence of Jesus that his kingdom was not of this world, while Mohammed was at once head of religion, of state, and of war in a society strictly ruled by religious laws. Flori well explains the ambiguities and complexities of the notion of jihad in the Koran and in Islamic tradition, but he powerfully argues that in its essential aspects, including the concept of martyrdom and its rewards, it was present from the beginning. The ninth century saw its full elaboration, although it might still mean different things to different people in changing circumstances. By contrast, the changes and developments in Christian attitudes to violence were gradual and slow; only with the eleventh-century reform papacy, with its claims to spiritual and temporal authority, was there such an effective complex of leadership as Mohammed had evidenced and which could bring to a head such a thoroughgoing sacralization of violence as had always been possible in Islam.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Flori devotes about twice as many pages to the Christian development as to the Islamic. In both, he shows what evidence historians are currently mainly using and what interpretations they are placing on it, frequently adding insights of his own. Almost always he carries conviction, though more might, perhaps, be said about Augustine and the use of coercion within Christendom against the Donatists and his anti-Marcionite recognition of the Old Testament God of battles. A valuable feature of the book is the appendix of thirty-one documents in French translation, some of them unfamiliar or not easily accessible, such as the appeal of the Muslim rulers of al-Andalus in c. 1085 to the Almoravid ruler of the Maghreb to wage holy war in Spain, and the remarkable address on the jihad with which the Damascus preacher as-Sulami in 1105 responded to the success of the First Crusade.