The Theory of War and Peace in the Islamic Law
By Anwar Mahmoud Zanati
Faculty of Education, Ein Shams University
nabialrahma.com
Many thinkers see that war is an old social phenomenon, which accompanied man since his beginnings on earth. Desire in war for some primitive nations was dominant over the desire in peace, because these nations lived worried from an expected attack from their enemies, so they kept lurking and ready, in order not to be attacked unexpectedly. With the dawn of human civilization, humanity was plagued by the war epidemic. Along with war, man's appetite for possessing power increased. With consecration of violence and anti-violence, wars spread all over the world. Man has rarely used his wisdom, pure nature and human sound mind!
Wars are considered the most effective human phenomena on the human morals, because they are the reason behind losing lives of humans and societies, in the way that man becomes valueless. This requires the need of humanity to overcome this phenomenon, and control its rules in the way that takes care of the immortal human principles.
Humanity has passed by elevations, obstacles and roles that are nearly opposing what the Creator, may He be Glorified and Exalted, has revealed in all Divine Religions, because they involved various kinds of injustice, tyranny, dominance and occupation, to ensure the private interests on the expense of the public interests. Rulers, kings and emperors oppressed by their tyranny. They did not rule according to what Allah, Glory be to Him, ordered. They exceeded His Limits, so they spread wars, conflicts, killing, spoliation and harming.
Consequently, wars became causes of pains, tragedies and disasters for societies. They demolished cities and cells and removed all forms of progress, architecture and civilization. Each time the society moved one step forward, wars pulled it several steps back.
War is what you knew and suffered
It speaks about itself so listen
As ugly as the hell when it breaks
And hot as the fire when it burns
The years of war in the history of humanity are longer than the years of peace. Over 5,000 years, 14,555 wars took place and resulted in killing approximately 25 billion people. Over the last 3,400 years, humanity has not enjoyed but only 250 years of peace.
Another statistic tells us that humanity witnessed 213 continual years of wars against a single year of peace over 185 generations. Only 10 generations enjoyed temporary peace. Since World War I in the 20th century, the world witnessed about 250 international and domestic armed conflicts with a total of 170 million casualties, which means one armed conflict nearly each 5 months with losses in humans, properties and equipments.
In his introductory book, Ibn Khaldun says, "war is existent in the creation since Allah created it. The motives were tribalism, jealousy, competition, aggression, angry for the sake of Allah and His Religion, or angry for obtaining power and paving for the rule.
Many modern thinkers regard that the logic of conflict and war was dominant in the international ideology throughout all times, and that war is an old human phenomenon, as old as the human community itself. Thus, we find that Voltaire considers "peace as a Utopian concept"
With the emergence of European thinkers and scientists in the end of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century, they crystallized the concept of conflict and established their theories, either in the field of pure sciences or humanities.
Over the years, philosophers and thinkers sought the interpretation of humans' aggressiveness on the basis of interpreting the human nature. In the 17th century, in his book Leviathan, the English philosopher, Thomas Hobis "1588-1679 A.D." described the living conditions under natural state as war that each human wages against his fellow human and those humans are busy with their own selves. They are selfish, greedy. They don't care about anything but satisfying their own desires.
Augusts also noted superior capacity of man to harm others and assault them. He ascribed that to the eternal fault, which has something to do with the aggressive nature of man.
In the 17th century, the Dutch philosopher, Spinoza, had an opinion that there is a huge conflict inside man between powers of whims and powers of wisdom. Unfortunately, whims often win this battle over wisdom. Psychologists noticed that fighting and war satisfy deeply-rooted needs inside individuals and societies. They noticed also that these needs are supposed to be natural in humans, and that this aggressive tendency cannot be suppressed. However, it can be tamed, redirected and shifted towards more peaceful activities.
Sigmund Freud also believed that aggressive behavior in humans rises from unconscious deeply-rooted tendencies inside the human self. He thinks that aggression needs not only to be released in one way or another, but to let man obtain some satisfaction from this release as well. In other words, man needs to satisfy these aggressive motives!
Montgomery considered war as one of the main factors of history, which are linked to life essentials such as food and drinks. The realistic schools holds a supportive view for this consideration when it concludes that international conflict is the historical basis that controls international relations, unlike stability and peace, which represent the accidental phenomenon in the human history.
Thus, we found that many eastern and western thinkers consider conflict as a natural phenomenon in man's life as well as the life of all communities, starting by family, throughout tribes, states and nations level, till humanity level. The rule of conflict is the real controller of all these communities.
However, Islam had another uppermost view that was crystallized by the rise of the dawn of Islam and peace.
Anwar Mahmoud Zanati