A Comparative Analysis of Jihad from Ethical Perspectives

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Recommended: Ethics, and international factors

Introduction

From the very beginning of history, humans have searched for justification for their actions as a result of their nature. Correspondingly, all the groups from democratic governments to tyrannical administrations and even terrorist organizations have all sought for the same in an effort to satisfy moral values and ethical reasoning. As a form of international relations, wars, which have been located at the crossroads of history or have directly amended the course of history, could not elude the need for moral and ethical justifications in spite of the contrasting views differentiating international relations from human relations. As Amstutz puts it , ethical reactions to the wars oscillated from “pacifism” to “amoral realism”. Whereas the pacifism approach prohibits the use of force and assumes that wars as a showcase of violence can never be morally legitimate, the latter perspective, amoral realism, holds that wars are legitimate instruments of policy and cannot be constrained morally.

Following the September 11th terrorists attacks to the United States in 2001, Jihad has been the talk of the town especially in the form of distorted interpretations by the influence of increased media coverage. In his effort of categorization which I cannot totally agree with, Amstutz also locates Jihad within the boundaries of amoral realism together with “cynical” and religious war understanding which includes holy wars and crusades.

Upon expressing the disagreement with the aforementioned position of Jihad perception, in this work, along with the original meaning of jihad, I will try to relocate the position of Jihad in an intermediary situation just like “Just War” conception. To that purpose, initially the literal mean...

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...ition-921

Amjad-Ali, Op.cit, p.239

Graham, Op.cit., pp.62-63

Jeff McMahan, “Just Cause for War”, pp.13-17

Graham, Op.cit., p.63

James Turner Johnson, Jihad and Just War, Opinion, p.12

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divisions_of_the_world_in_Islam, accessed on Dec 7th ,2013

Aktan, Op.cit., pp.27-28

Amstutz, Op.cit., p.115

Johnson, Jihad and Just War, Opinion, p.12

Aktan, Op.cit, p.37

Romeijn-Stout, Op.cit., p.37

Amstutz, Op.cit., p.115

Romeijn-Stout, Op.cit, p.41

Ahmet Gunes, “Views on the Rules of War in Islamic Law”, Terror and Suicide Attacks:An Islamic Perspective, ed. By Ergun Capan, 2004, p.129

Ibid, p.128

Frances V. Harbour, “The Just War Tradition and the Use of Nonlethal Chemical Weapons during the Vietnam War”, Ethics in International Affairs, ed by Andrew Valls (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), p.54

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