Just War Theory vs. Jihad Theory

The Pope has said that he thinks the war on/with Iran is unjust. Fr. Gerald Murray disagrees and offers an argument in favor of the war being just according to Just War Theory.

Wretchard, or Richard Fernandez, says that he thinks you can't properly understand the discussion within the context of Just War Theory alone: you have to engage also the theory of Jihad, which is Iran's rather than ours. 

Inevitably it requires us to consider not only what Christians believe but what the Islamic equivalent to Just War -- the doctrine of Jihad -- actually teaches. In many ways the two are as different as chalk and cheese. In the first place Christianity is a nonstate religion while Islam aims to be a “universal religion and a universal state”. From this arises a host of differences.

In Just War, the core intention of hostilities is the “righting of wrongs.” Bellum has an earthly origin. Heads of states do not  to go to war with the intention of pleasing God but to do particular things. This is not the case with the Jihad, which clearly states that the core intention to wage war must be to please Allah. Just War is a human creation while Jihad is a divine one. 

Wretchard is one of my favorite thinkers on the subject of national and international security, so it will not surprise you that I think he has a very valid point that is not being adequately considered elsewhere. 

Except here, perhaps; it comes up here and from time to time. So, there are two reasons to suspect myself of confirmation bias here: I already think that Wretchard is very much smarter than most people commenting on these matters, and I already agree with the particular assertion he's making.

For example, the 'jihadist' ideology taught by the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) can be contested, but it has to be conceptually severed from the protected freedom of religion, including the practice of Islam. Yet the conceptual roots of 'jihadism' are in the faith, and will come to be known to anyone who studies it closely; and anyone who studies the great scholars of Islam will find much support for the idea. Avicenna, that great philosopher, describes jihad as a kind of double good in his Metaphysics of the Healing, because it brings one closer to God's will while also providing you access to practical goods like slaves captured in the war. The philosopher Averroes, in a reflection on Plato's Republic, agrees with Plato that the best kind of women should be admitted to a kind of equality with the best kind of men, and that this equality means that they should be allowed to join in jihad and the taking of slaves and wealth. The Reliance of the Traveler, one of the great medieval works of Islamic jurisprudence, is a favorite example of Andy McCarthy's (who came to know it while prosecuting the World Trade Center bomber, an earlier example of mass killings by bomb).

Apart from not suppressing Islam, you can't suppress (and ought to encourage) the study of Avicenna, especially. In any case, the 'road map' certainly can't be suppressed without trying to drive Islam out of the world. The best you can do is to acknowledge it, and work with those within the community of Muslims who oppose people pursuing violent jihad to try to convince as many people as possible that it's not a legitimate path. Ultimately, though, some will be convinced, and in part because the other side probably has a better case to make about what Muhammad and his companions really meant; certainly about what the great philosophers of his tradition meant. 

Just War Theory is a Western tradition, originally a kind of gift that the Catholic Church gave to a warring Europe. It grew out of the Peace and Truce of God movements, which were attempts to restrain the brutal warfare of the Medieval period first against the Church itself, and then against noncombatants within the broader society. It invokes religion, and takes authority from Jesus' own words on the subject of peacemakers being blessed. Traditionally, it also accepts that secular lords are likely to war upon each other for many reasons, and tries to set limits on when new wars can be started.

I don't see how a war against a regime that murders its own citizens by the tens of thousands can ever be unjust, myself. But within the tradition it always comes down to who the aggressor is (jus ad bellum); and that is never resolvable because it always turns on differential claims from history. I thus don't find the tradition useful as a pragmatic approach to ethics.

(Another bias of mine: In general, the only thing our government does that I really approve of is overthrowing other, even-worse governments. Any government that violates the natural rights of its citizens is righteously overthrown according to the principles of the Declaration of Independence; I see nothing wrong with giving a helping hand to citizens who can't quite manage it themselves, as the French did for us once upon a time.)

If you are advocating for Iran being aggressed-against, you have to ignore the constant violence they have engaged in against us since 1979. Yet if you want to argue that Israel is the aggressor in the current war in Gaza, you argue that Israel is the aggressor in spite of the October 7th attacks because of a longstanding tradition of war and oppression and imperialism etc. The Iran aggression is measured from Trump's first act, excluding everything that came before; Israel's, from the very beginning of it or even earlier during the British Mandate. Very often the same people make both arguments on the same day, and at the same time. We never get to a resolution that provides anything pragmatically useful. 

It is perfectly possible to make either argument under JWT, as well, which is another weakness of it as a pragmatic mechanism. The gift the Church keeps giving by continuing to raise it is not that it provides a pragmatically-useful ethical standard. It is, as it was from the beginning, that it provides a brake on the warlike impulses of the powerful secular lords of the world.

What it has never done is provide even a brake on governments like the Revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran. It's not even fair to judge them by it; it was never a standard to which they even aspired. They have a standard of their own. It has been very clearly articulated and defended by them for four decades. There is little excuse for refusing to acknowledge and engage with it in trying to understand the moral structure of this conflict. To exclude it as a consideration is folly: perhaps self-centeredness, perhaps simply a refusal to take seriously their ideas in spite of their manifest willingness to live by and die for them (coupled with our own leadership's unwillingness to live or die by any standards, only to talk about them as if the things really mattered). 

So: perhaps all of this is an exercise in confirmation bias by me, and it is fair to consider that. Still, for whatever it's worth, I think Wretchard has a good point here.