Boreal

FADE TO BLACK

Triumph of the Irrational

Incentivizing the Irrational - Redemption

The concept of jihad and the promise of a “great reward” for killing and dying for God have fascinated Islamic scholars and writers from the earliest military conquests carried out during Muhammad’s life, and after his death, to this day.

4:74 So let those who sell the present for the life to come fight in the Way of Allah. Whoever fights in the Way of Allah and is killed or conquers, We shall accord him a great reward.

The earliest known writer on jihad, according to Cook, is Abdallah b. al-Mubarak [726-797] author of the Kitab al-Jihad (Book of Holy War). Mubarak summarized the redemptive value of killing and dying in the name of God as follows:

The slain [in jihad] are three [types of] men. A believer, who struggles with himself and his possessions in the path of God, such that when he meets the enemy [in battle] he fights them until he is killed. This martyr (shahid) is tested, [and is] in the camp of God under His throne; the prophets do not exceed him [in merit] except by the level of prophecy.

[Then] a believer, committing offences and sins against himself, who struggles with himself and his possessions in the path of God; such that when he meets the enemy [in battle] he fights until he is killed. This cleansing wipes away his offences and his sins – behold the sword wipes [away] sins! – and he will be let into heaven by whatever gate he wishes. …

[Then] a hypocrite who struggles with himself and his possessions in the path of God; such that when he meets the enemy [in battle] he fights until he is killed. This [man] is in hell since the sword does not wipe away hypocrisy.

David Cook, cf. Ibn al-Mubarak Understanding Jihad, p.14.

Later writings would expand on his concept that killing and being killed “in the path of Allah” has two redeeming features: atonement for your sins and rank in heaven. In the Christian gospels, Jesus of Nazareth shed his blood to redeem the sins of mankind; in the Islamic variation, it is the shedding of one’s own blood while killing the enemies of God that wipes away sins, the exception being one who dies in “the path of Allah” but whose loyalty was not always constant—the hypocrite.

There is a man who fights in the path of Allah and does not want to kill or be killed, but is struck by an arrow. The first drop of blood from him is atonement for every sin he has committed; for every drop he sheds he gains levels in paradise.

The second type of man is one who fights desiring to kill but not to be killed, and is struck by an arrow. The first drop of blood from him is for every sin; for every drop he sheds he gains a level in paradise until he bumps Abraham’s knee.

The third type of man is one who fights in the path of Allah desiring to kill and be killed and is struck by an arrow. The first drop of blood from him is atonement for every sin; he will come to the Day of Resurrection with a drawn sword [able to] intercede.

David Cook, cf. Ibn al-Mubarak Understanding Jihad, p.15.

A killer in his own cause would, under normal circumstances, burn in Hell for an eternity. However, if he commits a murder in Allah’s Cause, and is killed in the process, all previous self-serving homicides are forgiven and he gets to join a grateful god in Paradise. 

Narrated Abu Huraira:

Allah's Apostle said, "Allah welcomes two men with a smile; one of whom kills the other and both of them enter Paradise. One fights in Allah's Cause and gets killed. Later on Allah forgives the killer who also get martyred (In Allah's Cause)."

Bukhari 52.80

You can add this belief in the atonement properties of killing and dying in Allah’s Cause—that also avoids life in the grave—and the way you died having an influence on your ranking in heaven to the promise of boundless post-mortem sex with female facsimiles as a further, not insignificant, incentive to kill and die to bring about the triumph of the irrational.  

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Abdallah b. al-Mubarak’s book on the conduct of holy wars, along with the Koran, is the strongest evidence we have that the concept of such conflicts originated with Islam, not Christianity. The Koran, the definitive text, was revealed in the 7th century and al-Mubarak’s Book of Holy War written in the 8th, 400 and 300 years respectively before the first Crusade.

It seems to me that a politically correct mythology is replacing history on many of these topics. Consider the Crusades. The Christians are often depicted as barbarian aggressors and the Muslims as their highly cultured victims. But the Crusades were primarily a response to 300 years of jihad (whether the crusaders were aware of the Islamic doctrine or not). They were a reaction to Muslim incursions in Europe, the persecution of Eastern Christians, and the desecration of Christian holy sites. And few people seem to remember that the crusaders lost all but the first of those wars.

Although the Crusades were undoubtedly an expression of religious tribalism, the idea of holy war is a late, peripheral, and in many ways self-contradictory development within Christianity—and one that has almost no connection to the life and teachings of Jesus. One can’t say the same about the status of jihad under Islam...

The reality of martyrdom and the sanctity of armed jihad are about as controversial under Islam as is the resurrection of Jesus under Christianity. It is not an accident that millions of Muslims recite the shahadah or make pilgrimage to Mecca. Neither is it an accident that in the year 2015, horrific footage of infidels and apostates being decapitated has become a popular form of pornography throughout the Muslim World. All these practices, including this ghastly method of murder, find explicit support in scriptures.

Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance, Harvard University Press, 2015