Warfare in the Qur’an

This book written by a scholar of military strategy and ethics for a general audience in an endeavour to demonstrate that the world’s second largest religion (only Christianity has more adherents) includes at its core a set of scriptures that contains a clear and very ethical framework for understanding war and guiding the behaviour of warriors. That framework only supports warfare when it is based on redressing substantial material grievances (especially attack or serious direct persecution), when it occurs after other means of addressing the grievances have been attempted, and when it includes the cessation of hostilities and the restoration of peace as soon as a resolution has been attained. It demands of warriors that they uphold the concepts of proportionality (doing no
more harm than is necessary) and discrimination (directing violence only at combatants whilst minimising harm
to civilians and their possessions and infrastructure). That framework is very compatible with the Western Just War
philosophy that, for example, gave a moral underpinning to the United Kingdom’s war against Argentinean troops
occupying the Falkland Islands in 1982.
If the Qur’an condemns any violence that exceeds or sits outside of the framework for justice revealed within its verses, how can we explain the barbarous 9/11 attacks, the home-grown 7/7 attacks and other suicide bombing attempts within our country and the murder of civilians by terrorists in other parts of the world who claim to act in the name of Islam? British scholar Karen Armstrong answered this question, she wrote: “the militant form of piety often known as fundamentalism erupted in every major religion as a rebellion against modernity.” Every minority fundamentalist movement “is convinced that liberal, secular society is determined to wipe out religion. Fighting,
as they imagine, a battle for survival, fundamentalists often feel justified in ignoring the more compassionate principles of their faith. But in amplifying the more aggressive passages that exist in all our scriptures, they distort the tradition.”

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Warfare in the Qur’an

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