Sadr's Mahdi Army, Hamas and the Cease Fire under the Islamic Law
I find quite ironic the manner in which terms in the shari'a can come to mean so many different things in the Western media, some good, and some bad, based on fashionable political currents of the day. One of the great ones from the 1980's was how the term mujahideen, or those who conduct jihad,was viewed quite positively in the US because it tended to refer to the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union. But the term jihad itself meant holy war and terrorism, associated with all the bad regimes hostile to the US. It took a few years, but eventually it became clear that mujahideen can not so easily be separated from jihad.
Now we have another shari'a term meaning different things, arising from the decision of Moqtada al Sadr, one of Shi'i Iraq's most popular, and most militant figures, to extend his "freeze" of his fearsome Mahdi army today. The term he uses for this freeze is well known in the shari'a, it is هدنة hudna. He is praised fulsomely even in a statement issued by the US military, which makes references to the "honor of the movement", the same movement that at one point was at open war with the US. The same statement calls his decision a "pledge of honor to halt attacks." Cease fire, freeze, suspension, pledge of honor to stop, hudna, it's all the sort of same thing. Laying down weapons and entering more peaceful means of addressing societal problems is the idea that is being conveyed. So we all like a hudna then.
The term hudna, however, we have seen before. When Hamas was being directed to recognize Israel, they refused, but offered something else, a hudna. It would be a long term one, they said, a "pledge of honor" not to attack Israel for some period of years, perhaps even decades, but there would be no recognition.
In as would be expected rejecting soundly the Hamas overture, the US provided a different understanding of what hudna meant. It is not a laying down of arms, but a cease fire. It is not an agreement to carry the disputes from the military to the civilian, it is an opportunity to regroup, it is nothing but a strategic and tactical wait, and to accept a hudna gets us nowhere in the direction of Middle East peace.
Same word, offered by Hamas for decades, offered by Sadr for six months, and in the latter context it becomes a pledge of honor and in the former context it's a weaselly plan to plot Israel's eventual destruction. Now of course one can see why the US uses this characterization--its position vis a vis Sadr is quite weak, militarily of course he's no match but he controls millions in Iraq and if he decides to unleash hell on fellow Shi'a (the unrest with fellow Shi'a militias was the cause of the hudna, NOT the US, which he had more or less left alone for some time before that) or on the US, the US is in very serious trouble that they can't get out of by killing him. But Israel vis a vis Hamas is not nearly so weak, so with one we'll take any hudna we can get and with the other, well it's not so simple.
Less clear is why American media keeps falling for this game, good mujahideen and bad jihads, peaceful hudnas and sneaky hudnas, without remarking on the irony. Don't you people have anyone who knows anything about this region?
But the real question is, which definition of hudna is the right one? Is it a path to peaceful coexistence, or a prelude to more war? The answer,as might be expected, is a little bit of both.
The classical jurists started to use it at some point because, in their formulations, the House of Islam was supposed to be always at war with the House of War (which is anybody not in the House of Islam). Now of course it's just silly to assume open, active hostility all the time, and so we had hudnas, or way stations on the way, in the classical world, to Muslim dominance. (Some people get mad when I describe shari'a as working this way in the classical world, or use it to prove how peaceful Christianity is relative to Islam. One request--compare classical Islam to its contemporary Christian counterpart. Not modern Christians to classical Muslim jurists, and I think you'll get what I'm trying to portray, not an evil Muslim empire by any means at all, only a faithful rendition of how another era worked, among Christians and Muslims, in the East and the West).
Anyway, that type of hudna seems pretty clearly to be more of the ceasefire while we prepare for more war, and certainly that appears to be the rhetoric. But Muslim empires were not always strong, and as they weakened,and the notion of attacking the stronger enemy became a little silly, the hudna more or less de facto developed into an informal recognition of the states in the House of War. The notion of fighting them was gone, and relations were engaged in that were peaceful, ambassadors, trade, what have you,all basically relationships of peace, sanctioned by the fiction of the hudna.
In the modern world, this polarized division into Houses of War and Islam doesn't exist, nobody really claims to be engaged in aggressive jihad (even Bin Laden says he is resisting aggression, read his own words if you don't believe me), but the sort of duality of hudna remains. It's a cease fire, plain and simple, but as to whether it's a permanent state of affairs or a temporary one, to buy time, is anyone's guess. No doubt even the movements themsleves aren't sure what meaning to attach, Sadr seemingly being genuinely torn between participating in the government, where he has a significant chunk of Parliament, and controlling the streets through arms. In any event, he and Hamas as well are no less capable of evolving their own definitions and calling on historical precedent to justify their readings, than anyone else. As circumstances evolve, we'll see what the hudna starts to mean to them.
HAH
Now we have another shari'a term meaning different things, arising from the decision of Moqtada al Sadr, one of Shi'i Iraq's most popular, and most militant figures, to extend his "freeze" of his fearsome Mahdi army today. The term he uses for this freeze is well known in the shari'a, it is هدنة hudna. He is praised fulsomely even in a statement issued by the US military, which makes references to the "honor of the movement", the same movement that at one point was at open war with the US. The same statement calls his decision a "pledge of honor to halt attacks." Cease fire, freeze, suspension, pledge of honor to stop, hudna, it's all the sort of same thing. Laying down weapons and entering more peaceful means of addressing societal problems is the idea that is being conveyed. So we all like a hudna then.
The term hudna, however, we have seen before. When Hamas was being directed to recognize Israel, they refused, but offered something else, a hudna. It would be a long term one, they said, a "pledge of honor" not to attack Israel for some period of years, perhaps even decades, but there would be no recognition.
In as would be expected rejecting soundly the Hamas overture, the US provided a different understanding of what hudna meant. It is not a laying down of arms, but a cease fire. It is not an agreement to carry the disputes from the military to the civilian, it is an opportunity to regroup, it is nothing but a strategic and tactical wait, and to accept a hudna gets us nowhere in the direction of Middle East peace.
Same word, offered by Hamas for decades, offered by Sadr for six months, and in the latter context it becomes a pledge of honor and in the former context it's a weaselly plan to plot Israel's eventual destruction. Now of course one can see why the US uses this characterization--its position vis a vis Sadr is quite weak, militarily of course he's no match but he controls millions in Iraq and if he decides to unleash hell on fellow Shi'a (the unrest with fellow Shi'a militias was the cause of the hudna, NOT the US, which he had more or less left alone for some time before that) or on the US, the US is in very serious trouble that they can't get out of by killing him. But Israel vis a vis Hamas is not nearly so weak, so with one we'll take any hudna we can get and with the other, well it's not so simple.
Less clear is why American media keeps falling for this game, good mujahideen and bad jihads, peaceful hudnas and sneaky hudnas, without remarking on the irony. Don't you people have anyone who knows anything about this region?
But the real question is, which definition of hudna is the right one? Is it a path to peaceful coexistence, or a prelude to more war? The answer,as might be expected, is a little bit of both.
The classical jurists started to use it at some point because, in their formulations, the House of Islam was supposed to be always at war with the House of War (which is anybody not in the House of Islam). Now of course it's just silly to assume open, active hostility all the time, and so we had hudnas, or way stations on the way, in the classical world, to Muslim dominance. (Some people get mad when I describe shari'a as working this way in the classical world, or use it to prove how peaceful Christianity is relative to Islam. One request--compare classical Islam to its contemporary Christian counterpart. Not modern Christians to classical Muslim jurists, and I think you'll get what I'm trying to portray, not an evil Muslim empire by any means at all, only a faithful rendition of how another era worked, among Christians and Muslims, in the East and the West).
Anyway, that type of hudna seems pretty clearly to be more of the ceasefire while we prepare for more war, and certainly that appears to be the rhetoric. But Muslim empires were not always strong, and as they weakened,and the notion of attacking the stronger enemy became a little silly, the hudna more or less de facto developed into an informal recognition of the states in the House of War. The notion of fighting them was gone, and relations were engaged in that were peaceful, ambassadors, trade, what have you,all basically relationships of peace, sanctioned by the fiction of the hudna.
In the modern world, this polarized division into Houses of War and Islam doesn't exist, nobody really claims to be engaged in aggressive jihad (even Bin Laden says he is resisting aggression, read his own words if you don't believe me), but the sort of duality of hudna remains. It's a cease fire, plain and simple, but as to whether it's a permanent state of affairs or a temporary one, to buy time, is anyone's guess. No doubt even the movements themsleves aren't sure what meaning to attach, Sadr seemingly being genuinely torn between participating in the government, where he has a significant chunk of Parliament, and controlling the streets through arms. In any event, he and Hamas as well are no less capable of evolving their own definitions and calling on historical precedent to justify their readings, than anyone else. As circumstances evolve, we'll see what the hudna starts to mean to them.
HAH
Excellent article. Thanks!
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