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Comparing Jewish and Islamic laws of war

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Indian Journal of International Law

Abstract

Religion as a code of human conduct lends certain legal norms and rules to initiate and regulate war among humans. The deduction and interpretation of these rules from the scriptural sources remains a challenge. It is common understanding that scriptural sources evade a certain interpretation. This study seeks to compare the laws of war enshrined inside the Jewish and Islamic scriptures. Such a comparison underscores the point that the lawgiver remains cognizant of the real world threat perception scenarios and transmits commands in response to them. Accordingly, religious laws step closer to the positivistic understanding of laws. A contextual analyses of the both the scriptural sources remain the main methodological focus of this research enquiry. Such a methodological intervention, on the one hand, shall help in understanding certain socio-political realities. On the other hand, it will be useful in exploring and explaining the specific scope and importance of laws relevant to the waging of war in Islam and Judaism. Primary focus of this study remains jus ad bellum rather than jus in bello.

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Notes

  1. FC Porter, Judaism in New Testament Times, 8 (1) The Journal of Religion (January 1928) 39.

  2. RB Howes, Jewish Law, 42 The South African Law Journal (1925) 5–6.

  3. HH Cohn, Spinoza’s Concept of Jewish Law, 3 Tel Aviv University Studies in Law (1977) 30.

  4. A Berlin (ed) The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, 2nd edn (Oxford University Press, New York, 2011) 132.

  5. JA Fitzmyer, Historical Interpretation: Its Role in Biblical Interpretation and Church Life, 50 (2) Theological Studies (1989) 257.

  6. M Campanini, The Qur’an: Modern Muslim Interpretations, Caroline Higgitt, trans (Routledge, London and New York, 2011) 63. For further details, also see in JD McAuliffe (ed) The Cambridge Companion to Qur’an (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 2006); and A Saeed, Interpreting the Qur’an: Towards a contemporary Approach (Routledge, London and New York, 2006).

  7. J Barton and J Muddiman (eds) The Oxford Bible Commentary (Oxford University Press, New York, 2001) 28; J Blenkinsopp, Wisdom and Law in the Old Testament (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995) 84; and FC Porter, Judaism in New Testament Times, 8 (1) The Journal of Religion (January 1928) 38.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid. 36.

  10. M Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles, Vol. 1, Bernard Auerbach and Melvin Sykes, trans (The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia and Jerusalem, 1994) 233.

  11. Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH). This is a expression of sacredness used for the prophets.

  12. JM Zane, The Story of Law (Ives Washburn, Washington, 1927) 94; HS Maine, Ancient Law, 10th edn (Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1908) 133; and CF Kent, A Tentative Codification of Old Testament Laws, 15 Yale Law Journal (1905–1906) 285.

  13. Elon, supra note 7, at 130.

  14. Ibid. 190–94

  15. Ibid. 240–41.

  16. JD Bleich and AJ Jacobson, Jewish Law and Contemporary Issues (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2015) 4–5 (emphasis in original).

  17. Ibid. 238–39.

  18. Ibid. 233.

  19. Ibid. 4–5.

  20. For details, see in MJ Broyde, A Jewish Law View of World Law, 54 Emory Law Journal (2005) 82–84.

  21. Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH). This is an expression of sacredness used for the prophets.

  22. NJ Coulson, A History of Islamic Law (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1964) 5.

  23. M Khadduri, The Islamic Conception of Justice (The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1984) 3.

  24. EJ Jurji, Islamic Law in Operation, 57 (1) American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures (January 1940) 36.

  25. For details, see in M Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (The John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1955) 202–22; WB Hallaq, A History of Islamic Legal Theories (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997) 1; and J Burton, The Sources of Islamic Law (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1990).

  26. Exodus 15:3. Translations of Old Testament were accessed at <http://bible.oremus.org/>.

  27. HE von Waldow, The Concept of War in the Old Testament, 6 Horizons in Biblical Theology (1984) 36.

  28. G von Rad, Holy War in Ancient Israel, Marva J. Dawn, trans. and ed. (William B. Berdmans Publishing Company, Michigan, 1991) 3–4.

  29. Quran 22:39. Qur’anic translations are based on the work of Marmudake Pickthall (trans) The Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an, 1930 <http://www.khayma.com/librarians/call2islaam/quran/pickthall/>.

  30. Zane, supra note 8, at 86; and TR Hobbs, A Time for War: A Study of Warfare in the Old Testament (Michael Glazier, Inc., Wilmington and Delaware, 1989) 18.

  31. T Hiebert, Yahwist’s Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel (Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1996) 7–11.

  32. Khadduri, supra note 22, at 62. Also, see in FM Donner, The Sources of Islamic Conceptions of War, in John Kelsay and James Johnson (eds) Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (Greenwood Press, New York, 1991) 34–35; FM Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London, 2010); and NA Shah, Islamic Law and the Law of Armed Conflict: The Armed Conflict in Pakistan (Routledge, New York, 2011) 31–32.

  33. Q. 42:40–43.

  34. R Bonney, Jihad: From Quran to bin Laden (Palgrave Macmillan, New York and Hampshire, 2004) 22–24.

  35. Exodus 22:1.

  36. Deuteronomy 7: 1–5. For a detailed commentary, see in Barton and Muddiman (eds) supra note 4, at 142–43.

  37. Exodus 32:25–29. To the contrary, H. Eberhard von Waldow maintains that in light of the opening chapters of the Old Testament, and overall message; there is no place for war inside the Scriptural content, even for a just war. For details, see in von Waldow, supra note 26, at 32, 33, 45.

  38. Q. 22:40.

  39. Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH).

  40. Bonney, supra note 35, at 23; and NA Shah, The Use of Force under Islamic Law, 24 (1) EJIL (2013) 346.

  41. Deuteronomy 13:5.

  42. For further details, see in Deuteronomy 13:6–11.

  43. For details, see in JT Johnson, Ideology, Reason and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts 1200–1749 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1977) 156–57.

  44. Q. 2:191.

  45. O Leamann (ed) The Qur’an: An Encyclopedia (Routledge, London and New York 2006) 690.

  46. Positive international law does not permit any kind of war in self-defence except to ward off ‘an armed attack’. For details, see in Article 51 of the UN Charter.

  47. Deuteronomy 20:10–11.

  48. MJ Broyde, Battlefield Ethics in the Jewish Tradition, 95 American Society of International Law Proceedings, (2001) 95.

  49. N Solomon, Judaism and the Ethics of War, 87 (858) International Review of the Red Cross (June 2005) 308.

  50. M Walzer, Commanded and Permitted Wars, in M Walzer (ed) Law, Politics and Morality in Judaism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2006) 159–61; MJ Broyde, Just Wars, Just Battles and Just Conduct in Jewish Law: Jewish Law is not a Suicide Pact!, in Lawrence Schiffman and Joel Wolowelsky (eds) War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition (Yeshiva University Press, New York, 2007) 13–17; and A Ravitzky, Prohibited Wars, in Walzer (ed), supra note 37, at 170.

  51. Ibid. 155.

  52. Q. 9:29

  53. NA Shah, Self-Defense in Islamic and International Law: Assessing Al-Qaeda and the Invasion of Iraq (Palgrave Macmillan, New York and Hampshire, 2008) 20.

  54. S Hashmi, Interpreting the Islamic Ethics of War and Peace in Sohail Hashmi (ed) Islamic Political Ethics, Civil Society, Pluralism and Conflict (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2002) 205. Also, see in A Sachedina, The Development of Jihad in Islamic Revelation and History, in JT Johnson and J Kelsay (ed), Cross, Crescent and Sword: The Justification and Limitation of War in Western and Islamic Traditions (Greenwood Press, Westport, 1990) 35–50; Shah, supra note 58, at 17.

  55. AE Mayer, War and Peace in the Islamic Tradition and International Law, in John Kelsay and James Johnson (eds) Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (Greenwood Press, New York, 1991) 204.

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  1. Centre for International Peace and Stability, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Imdad Ullah

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Ullah, I. Comparing Jewish and Islamic laws of war. Indian Journal of International Law 58, 453–465 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40901-019-00103-x

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