Jihad and Just War Theory: Dissonance and Truth |
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| Authors: | By Charles W Amjad-Ali |
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| Institution: | Charles Amjad‐Ali is the Martin Luther King, Jr., Professor of Justice and Christian Community, and Director of Islamic Studies at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. The author of numerous publications, his most recent books are Leaving the Shadows? with Professor Theo Hanf (published in Germany), and Islamophobia: Tearing the Veils of Ignorance (published in South Africa). |
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| Abstract: | Abstract : The Christian tradition of just war does not have a New Testament foundation but is a tradition that developed after the conversion of Constantine and Christianity's emergence as the state religion of the empire. In Islam, however, just war has been an issue since its foundational period, because while Christianity did not get involved in statecraft until Constantine, Islam dates its calendar literally from the establishment of the first statecraft in Medina. However, distortion of this tradition has occurred in both religions: we have a distorted justification of just war tradition in Christianity, and a distorted understanding of jihad as simply a holy war in Islam. This paper tries to deconstruct both these traditions and create a new hermeneutics for contemporary times. |
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| Keywords: | Qur'an just war tradition holy war jihad |
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