Mohammad Hassan Khalil - Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism

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Mohammad Hassan Khalil 2018

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First published 2018

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To my teachers

I was fortunate to have studied under two of the authorities I cite in this book, my former doctoral advisor and mentor Sherman A. Jackson and my former masters advisor Michael Bonner. It is with these and other exceptional educators in mind that I have chosen to dedicate this book to my teachers.

All mistakes in this book are my own. That said, I am grateful to Valerie Turner, Mairaj Syed, my father Hassan Khalil, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback on earlier drafts of this book. For their helpful suggestions and, in many cases, for providing me with useful resources I must thank and recognize the following scholars: Ahmed Al-Dawoody, Asma Afsaruddin, Muhammad Afifi al-Akiti, Mohammed Ayoob, Jonathan A. C. Brown, Amy DeRogatis, Mohammed Fadel, Chris Frilingos, Ramon Harvey, Sohail Hashmi, Jon Hoover, Deborah Margolis, Younus Mirza, Yasir Qadhi, Linda Racioppi, Mohammed Rustom, Omid Safi, Michael Sayegh, Laury Silvers, Jessica Stern, Arthur Versluis, and Corri Zoli. I must also express my heartfelt appreciation for my wonderful colleagues, coworkers, and students in the Michigan State University Department of Religious Studies, Muslim Studies Program, and College of Law. For obvious reasons, I am greatly indebted to Beatrice Rehl of Cambridge University Press and her outstanding staff and production team.

For their indefatigable support, I am especially grateful to my loving family. Here I must single out my awe-inspiring parents Amina and Hassan, my brilliant siblings Omar and Yousuf, and my better half, my wife Suzanne, and our incredible daughters Maryam and Aya. (In response to one of your favorite questions, Aya, I am now done with the book.)

In the midst of a lively televised exchange between journalist Fareed Zakaria and author Sam Harris on the topic of jihad, Zakaria declared, The problem is you and Osama bin Laden agree ... after all, youre saying ... his interpretation of Islam is correct.

Well, Harris responded, his interpretation ... this is the problem. His interpretation of Islam is very straightforward and honest and you really have to split hairs and do some interpretive acrobatics in order to get it ... to look non-canonical.

Muslims generally understand jihad to be a noble struggle or striving for the sake of God. It comprises various actions, from fighting on the battlefield to endeavoring to attain inner peace in the prayer hall. It is, therefore, simplistic to define it as many writers do as holy war. It is also problematic to insist as many apologists do that it has nothing to do with warfare. In fact, in the specific context of Islamic law, jihad typically denotes an armed struggle against outsiders.

The purpose of this book is to offer a succinct, accessible examination of the ways in which bellicose Muslim radicals such as bin Laden and New Atheists such as Harris and Ali have conceptualized the purpose and boundaries of armed jihad. As one might deduce, here I use the term radicals to denote those seeking extreme changes, and my focus is strictly violent radicals, specifically those who sponsor or engage in terrorism in the name of Islam. My intention is not to offer an exhaustive analysis of jihad, violent radicalism, or the New Atheism; rather, I am interested in the intersection of the three. Nor is it my intention to explore (at least not thoroughly) other contentious aspects of Islamic law that often appear in the writings of radicals and New Atheists, including gender norms and punishments for adultery, apostasy, blasphemy, and treason topics nonetheless worthy of scholarly consideration and engagement.

I have chosen to focus on the New Atheists largely because of their unique and ostensibly significant influence on Western and to some And for those working to combat the very real problem of Muslim terrorism, it is critical to scrutinize influential discourses on the root causes of and potential solutions to this problem.

). Readers will notice that I quote extensively from the individuals I examine, be they Muslim radicals or New Atheists. These extensive quotations are not intended to privilege their particular claims but rather to convey each individuals manner of thinking and tone (in some cases, through the filter of translation).