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Early Christianity saw church and state as separate. Early Islam conceived a single 'umma under a single caliphate. It prescribed an all-embracing Shari'a. But after Constantine Christianity brought church and state together. In the Byzantine East, the emperor was assigned a divine mission. The Western church insisted on the clergy's independence. Some in the West tried to subordinate state to church, or vice versa; but the main trend was towards separation, and political thought became more secular. In Islam, the 'ulama became separate from the sultan but the relationship was not defined. Orthodox Jurists sought reintegration of religion and government. Separation between religion and politics in principle found little support. Christians, who had started as pacifists, adopted holy war and religious persecution; Muslims favoured limited toleration. There was thus both convergence and divergence between the two cultures: church and state.

Like Thomas Sherman’s Part 2, which rewrites The Pilgrim’s Progress to rid it of romantic ‘froth’, Bunyan’s Badman and The Holy War too could in no way be mistaken as mere ‘romances’. Despite being less critically acclaimed and less popular than The Pilgrim’s Progress, Badman and The Holy War are much more accomplished theological narratives. The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part II presents Bunyan’s ideal readers of The Pilgrim’s Progress and demonstrates that Bunyan’s theological and doctrinal beliefs did not mellow between the publication of The Pilgrim’s Progress and his Part II.

This chapter defines “just war,” “holy war,” and “jihad.” It traces the evolution of the just war tradition in the West and of the jihad tradition in Islam. It considers how both just war and jihad relate to holy war.

This chapter explains the difference between holy war and crusade. A key feature of the great social transformation of the eleventh century has been termed as entry into the new world. The reformed church had recognized the military profession, and Christian arm bearers found an employment pleasing to god. Holy war in its broadest sense is war conceived of as a military action directly related to religion, and it predates not only crusades but Christianity as well. Christendom was a community of powers and nations united by their shared religion. Christendom and crusade came into existence together, and Christendom began to show recognizable traits in the peace of god and truce of god endeavors. The representation of crusades as a response of Latin Christians to jihad has been rejected, and the two are strictly not comparable. As a war in the service of the church, the crusade was a theocratic rather than a theological war. Not every holy war is a crusade.

This chapter analyzes the rhetorical and discursive strategies deployed by early modern English writers in their texts on holy war and what paying attention to these strategies will tell us about how the general reader’s attitudes to holy war were shaped. This chapter juxtaposes texts that belong to very different genres—John Foxe’s martyrology, Acts and Monuments, first published in 1563; and Francis Bacon’s An Advertisement Touching a Holy War, a fictional dialogue on holy war written in 1622-23 in the scholarly humanist tradition. Both of these works address the question of holy war against the Ottoman Turks..

This book is a study of the origins of the concept and application of warring defined now as “holy war” in the earliest period of Islamic history. It examines questions such as when and under what circumstances did the concept first appear in Islam and as the result of what historical, political, religious and social factors did it mature into classical expressions. It also examines its antecedents in pre-Islamic Arabian civilization. Part I centers on Arabia, particularly in the pre-Islamic period. Part II focuses on the Qurʾān as the earliest Islamic text and transition marker from pre-Islamic Arabian civilization to the religio-cultural civilization that became Islam. Part III looks on the tradition literature of Islam in the prophetic sunna and the biographical literature of Muḥammad.

This chapter examines the preconceived notions about the various topics and subtopics to be studied and establishes the approach employed. From the conquest of Spain in the early 8th century to the siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Turks in 1683, Islam represented a threat to the existence of Christendom. Islam's achievement in all scientific and intellectual fields during its heyday in the Middle Ages caused a reaction in the West that considered Islam as cruel, evil, and uncivilized. Although holy war is defined most broadly as any religious justification for engaging in war, it does not necessarily presume a connection of military activity to religious purposes, though it is often the case. The particular expressions of holy war found in the Islamic world tend to be referred to in the West as jihād. Jihād derives from the root j.h.d, meaning to strive, exert oneself, or take extraordinary pains.

This chapter is devoted to the development of the concepts of jihad, Crusade, and reconquista. It shows that, in both Christian and Muslim territories, ideologies of holy war were often used to justify conquest of the “infidels.” These ideologies glorified war waged for the “true” religion but rarely ruled out political and military alliances with princes belonging to rival faiths. Nor did they prevent princes from setting aside a protected but subaltern place for religious minorities. Hence, although the ideology of holy war served to justify or celebrate one victory or another, the chapter argues that religion was often an a posteriori explanation for a conflict that had many other causes.

This chapter explores how questions of national identity and patriotism took center stage with the outbreak of war in 1914. For Nietzsche’s orphans, the cultural heritage upon which musical metaphysics was based became particularly problematic, leading to attempts to redefine contemporary German militarism as “Prussian” in contrast to the “German” values embodied in past cultural achievements. Russia’s salvific task in this “Holy War” (it was argued) was to save all humanity from the evils of “Prussianism”. The impact of growing exclusive nationalism is assessed in relation to all three composers, who failed to reunify society: Scriabin through his death in 1915; Rachmaninoff through his pessimistic outlook on events; and Medtner through his now unacceptable “German” identity.

This chapter examines sources used in this study and provides an outline of pre-Islamic thinking about issues related to warring in order to establish paradigms against which developing Islamic views are analyzed. The evidence suggests that in pre-Islamic Arabia, armed aggression between nomadic tribes and between nomads and settled populations was a normal part of life. The economic and social benefits of warring were reason enough for the powerful to engage in the act of war, while the weak had no alternative but to protect themselves though preemptive aggression, or alliances. In Islamic texts, the sense of the jāhiliya in reference to the pre-Islamic period tends to emphasize only the cruelty, barbarism, and anarchy that Islam wished to associate with Arabia before the coming of Muḥammad and the Qurʾān.

As the first Christians to encounter Islam, Syriac authors preserve the earliest Christian depictions of Muslims, Islam, and the conquests. Syriac writers also present the unusual circumstance of a group interpreting not their victory, but their defeat as the outcome of a holy war. This chapter examines how Syriac Christian responses to these questions developed over time and across literary genres. It investigates how early Christian communities interpreted and reinterpreted the Islamic conquests and how their writings constructed images, rhetorical strategies, and stereotypes that later Christian writers would further elaborate.

This chapter returns to the East and details the growing social, economic and military destabilisation of the Near East in the late sixth and seventh centuries. Warfare between Byzantium and Persia spiralled out of control until the Emperor Heraclius finally defeated his rival Khusro II, declaring a ‘Holy War’ against Persia to redeem the True Cross which the Persians had seized with the capture of Jerusalem. These years of warfare left the two empires vulnerable to the Arab armies of Islam that swept out of the desert in the 630s, destroying the Empire of Persia and driving the Romans into Asia Minor. The emergence and development of Islam as a religion and the Arabs as a people are examined, and these phenomena placed in a broader late antique context.

This chapter provides an introduction to the concept of holy war, beginning by highlighting the fact that peace is the central issue of power, and that holy peace was no different. At the close of the tenth century and commencement of the eleventh, the pax Dei, a peace movement carried out in the name of god, emerged in the territories that today make up central France. The pax Dei then led to the treuga Dei—the truce of god. Protection of the church and the church property, of church dignitaries, of clerics and monks, and of livestock was the primary focus of all meetings seeking to establish the peace of god. The peace movement did not ban altogether, but limited, the sphere of licit use of arms. The crusade was the consummation of the peace movement and the realization of its ideals. Holy war in its broadest sense is war conceived of as a military action directly related to religion.

This concluding chapter surveys earlier contributions to the comparative ethics of war in Western and Islamic civilizations and places the current book in the context of this literature. It considers how the chapters of this book contribute to an understanding of the evolution of the just war and jihad traditions over time, and how each relates to the idea of holy war. It also summarizes the conclusions we may draw on the mutual influences of each tradition on the other as they developed over time.

This chapter summarizes earlier findings and situates them in the historical context by linking the development of the Islamic holy war idea with changes in the social structure and the worldview of the new Muslim community. The transition from the mundane (or materially-driven) fighting in pre-Islamic Arabia to the sacred, divinely sanctioned warring of Islam occurred during a short period. It was the period following the Hijra in 622 C.E. that the sense of personal identity of Muḥammad and his followers came increasingly to be felt in religious rather than kinship affiliations. It was this transference in conjunction with the growth in solidarity engendered by a severed outside threat, particularly the history of conflict between Meccans and early Muslims, which allowed the possibility of war based on a religious kinship.

This section summarizes the research of the previous chapters and brings the historical analysis to a close. The Religious Zionist community remains tightly knit and self-reinforcing, so despite its detractors even from within, a well-organized core succeeds in sustaining what was in some ways a hermetic interpretive stance. Partly in order to remain on track in the face of opposition, frustration and anxiety, it radicalized and became even more inward-looking. While it once captured the imagination of many outside the community, its influence has since declined, but not its fervour.