@ronki23 I wonder how many of the respondents on your thread are actually familiar with the intricate differences between Sunni and Shi'ite Islam concerning
jihad and
hudud. There is a major distinction in doctrine that seems to have gone unnoticed.
What I'm going to give you is the plain truth, not the bias one hears on the one hand from people with ingrained bigotry against Islam in general, (i.e. Robert Spencer and his ilk) , and on the other hand those acting as apologists for the religion.
Both camps are in error:
Shia Islam
Simply put, the main branch of Shi'ite Islam (the
Twelver) eventually dropped the idea of
offensive holy war - a staple trope of all schools of classical Islam - after the
occultation of the Twelfth Imam in 874. Only the rightly-guided, divinely appointed successor and descendant of the Prophet Muhammad was thought to have had the wisdom to decide when to launch an offensive conflict against the
Dar-al-harb (unbelieving world), which meant that until he returned (in a sort of quasi-messianic reveal) - Shi'ite Muslims were permitted to wage nothing but defensive wars. Of course, the Imam didn't return and hasn't returned which effectively means that offensive war is alien to the Shi'ite tradition.
Additionally, an intellectual current of "
political quietism" developed as a consequence of this occultation and centuries in which Shi'ites existed on the margins of vast Sunni caliphates like the
Umayyads and the Abbasids, as a persecuted minority branch of Islam (the
Fatimid caliphate and the
Safavid dynasty in 17th century Iran, notwithstanding). Without their Imam to guide them as supreme legislator and jurist, many Shi'ites simply learned to be
quiet in the face of political strife while the Shi'ite
ulama (clerics) in the seminaries became disinterested in involving themselves directly in matters of secular governance, because Islamic government under the shariah law could not be established until the return of
Imam az-Zaman. Accordingly, a major branch of Shi'ism traditionally taught that the
hudud punishments - including
stoning, crucifixion, amputation etc. - are not to be implemented in the absence of the infallible Imam and clerics are to remain far away from the reins of political power:
al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/06/islamic-punishment-iran.html
Punishments included in the Islamic penal code, such as stoning and dismemberment, were once common practice among many tribes in ancient times. Yet prior to the Islamic Revolution in Iran, such practices were banned in Shiite Islamic jurisprudence. The authority to implement such punitive measures was reserved for the infallible Shiite imams.
Islamic jurisprudence is an expansion of the Islamic code of conduct known as "sharia."...
Ayatollah Ahmad Khansari, one of Iran’s prominent religious authorities, has unequivocally stated that the implementation of such punishments during the absence of the 12th Shiite Imam is haram, or religiously forbidden. A decision that was unanimously supported by all Shia faqihs at the time...
Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, the teacher of current Grand Ayatollahs at the Qom and Najaf seminaries, as well as the most distinguished Islamic jurist of recent times, has denied the validity of the theory of rule of jurisprudence. Accordingly, he believes punishments such as stoning for adultery and sodomy, execution for apostasy and insulting the prophet, are forbidden. He believes a faqih can act as a mediator in judicial disputes, or even take on a humanitarian role and help with issues of orphan guardianship.
Nevertheless, Iran’s legal system has formally adopted the aforementioned punishments, sentencing individuals accused of adultery, sodomy and apostasy to stonings, beheadings or executions.
These punishments are carried out based on the new — as far as Shiite jurisprudence is concerned — idea of the rule of jurisprudence. According to this theory, first propounded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in his 1970 book Velayat-e Faqih, all the religious authority of the prophet and the Shiite imams is bestowed upon a supreme source of emulation.
This doctrine of political quietism was only challenged and undermined in late twentieth century Iran (not Iraq, Azerbaijan and other Shi'ite countries) with the marxist-influenced militancy of Ali Shariati, a lay Shi'ite intellectual widely remembered as "
the ideologue of the Iranian Revolution of 1979", and the millenarian-theocratic
Vilayat-e Faqih theory of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. They both advocated revolutionary Islam - as Shariati often said, “
Every day is Ashoura, every place is Karbala" (referring to the martyrdom of
Imam al Husain as a model not just for piety but social upheaval) - and argued that a good society would conform to Islamic values: explicitly rejecting the quietist tendencies of most Shia
ulama of their time by claiming clerics should play a leadership role in guiding society.
Khomeini's revolution transformed Shi'ite theology by contending that a ruling
faqih (jurist - Khomeini himself as Supreme Leader) could issue hudud and essentially act like the Imam in his absence.
Today, Ayatollah Sistani and the other grand ayatollahs of Najaf in Iraq - Muhammad Ishaq al Fayyad, Bashir al-Najafi al-Pakistani, and Saidal-Hakim - adhere to the traditional quietism, and are in theological friction with the cadre of ruling mullahs in Iran.
Sunni Islam
In terms of Sunni theology and jurisprudence, it is important to distinguish between
(1) offensive 'jihad' as conceived of in the military sense of a holy war against unbelieving societies not part of the House of Islam
(2) deliberate, indiscriminate acts of terror targeted towards civilians outside any military context.
The former is very much part of classical Sunni theology, because unlike the Shi'i Imam a secular military leader (caliph) can summon Muslims to fight against the kafir even if there were no acts of aggression from the unbelievers to justify it, their mere "unbelief" was viewed as sufficient for a permanent state of war between the Islamic world and the heathen world until the House of Islam prevailed (i.e. not to convert everyone to Islam but rather to establish Islamic governments everywhere worldwide, with non-believers living as dhimmis in a Muslim society or outside the borders of the caliphate paying a tribute). Indeed this was understood to be an obligation binding upon the ummah. It shouldn't be denied and Islamic scholars need to do a better job of squaring it with modern pluralism.
However, no. 2 isn't part of classical Sunni Islam. Indiscriminate acts of terror against civilians are not part of classical Islamic theology.
There was a generally held consensus on the nature of jihad from all four schools of medieval Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (i.e., Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi, and Shafi'i) to the effect that non-combatants who did not participate in fighting should not be killed in the prosecution of a holy war. Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the first Sunni Caliph, established the general code of conduct in the following address to his Islamic armies:
“I instruct you in ten matters: Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone..."
(Source: Imam Malik’s compilation of the Hadith “Kitab al-Jihad.”)
I could quote many others who reiterate the same broad doctrinal interpretation.
Consider this scholarly assessment of the laws of war from Shaikh Burhanuddin Ali of Marghinan (d. 1196), a famous medieval Hanafi jurist:
"...It does not become Muslims to break treaties or to act unfairly with respect to plunder or to disfigure people (by cutting off their ears and noses, and so forth). In the same manner it does not become Muslims to slay women or children, or men aged, bedridden, or blind, because opposition and fighting are the only occasions which make slaughter allowable (according to our doctors), and such persons are incapable of these. For the same reason also the paralytic are not to be slain, nor those who are dismembered.
Whence it is evident that mere infidelity (unbelief in Islam) is not a justifiable occasion of slaughter. The Prophet, moreover, forbade the slaying of infants or single persons, and once, when the Prophet saw a woman who was slain, he said, ‘Alas! This woman did not fight, why, therefore, was she slain?’..."
The most militant jihadists in the early Islamic community (who, much like ISIS today, regarded other Muslim sects even as 'kufar' and believed that civilians were legitimate targets during a military offensive) were rebels against the Ummayyad Caliphate, a heretical faction castigated by the orthodox ulema (clerics) as "Kharijites".
The Kharijites spread terror among the nascent Islamic communities, courtesy of their radical approach of Takfir, whereby they declared other Muslims to be unbelievers and therefore deemed them worthy of death. The historians al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir chronicle precise accounts of their intimidation, violence and terror. Under the events of 37H/657CE they detail how the sect began terrorizing the countryside around Nahrawan, Iraq, subjecting those whom they caught to an imtihan or “inquisition”. If the victims failed to satisfy their zeal for purity, or agree with their understanding of theology, then the punishment was death.
Members of the Islamic State (IS) have often been described as modern-age Kharijites. In fact, in addition to Daesh, that's the name they are often known by in Islamic countries. My point being: the theology promoted by ISIS is not really an innovation. It is not by any margin "traditional" Islam as you would have found in the 18th century Ottoman Empire but its essentials (if not the finer edges of its barbarism) have precedent in the Islamic world.
And since the nineteenth century, Islamist theologies of whatever variety - Wahabi, Deobandi, Salafi - have been proliferating. Radical Islamism as we know it today is rooted in the Salafi movement, which rejects Islamic tradition and tries to go back to an idealized early Islam. That's not to say that traditional Islam couldn't be violent as well but it had clearly defined moral limits lacking in modern day ISIS or the early Kharijites.
But while classical Sunni Islam did not advocate acts of terror against civilians it did permit and indeed obligate offensive jihad against unbelieving countries, in a permanent state of war except (according to more moderate interpretations) if the unbelieving society paid tribute and signed a nonaggression treaty for a defined period, whereas Shi'ia Islam essentially abandoned offensive jihad following the occulation of the Twelfth Imam.
Modern Sunni extremists draw upon this "offensive jihad" strain in classical Islam and the heretical Kharijites - filtered through Salafism - to justify indiscriminate slaughter of civilians.
I hope you found this overview helpful.
