The Latest Hudna

Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 6:03:07 pm PST

Tashbih Sayyed offers some hard-won words of wisdom about The Cease-fire. (Hat tip: EE.)

The latest flare-up in a 59 years long war to wipe the Jewish state off the map of the world is fast approaching its expected closure. Israel is once again being forced to leave the job of eliminating the Islamist threat unfinished. The world’s powers, blinded by their anti-Semitism, politico-commercial considerations, and regional agendas, want Israel to stop pursuing its legitimate campaign to secure itself by eradicating the Islamist threat from its door steps: they want an immediate cease-fire.

They are not ready to accept that in the case of political Islam, cease-fires are nothing but tactical pauses which are used as tools to gain time in order to recoup losses, re-arm forces, and rebuild terrorist infrastructure. For example, the world thought that the Oslo Accord was a step in the right direction - peace. But for Yasser Arafat who signed it on September 13, 1993, it was just a tactical cease-fire “Hudna” that could be broken at any time.

Political Islam finds a number of examples in the life of Prophet Muhammad that sanction the use of treaties as a tactical necessity. In explaining why he signed the Oslo Accord, Yasser Arafat cited a truce signed by Prophet Muhammad with the Meccan tribe Quraish at Hudaybiyah in 628 C.E. According to the PLO leader, Prophet Muhammad had signed the truce when he was not strong enough to win a war and it was to last for ten years. But when, within two years of the signing, the Muslims felt that they have gained enough strength to defeat the Quraish, they broke the truce, attacked the Quraish and captured Mecca.

A prominent Saudi sheikh, ’Abd Al-Muhsin Al-’Obikan, also referred to the same treaty while condemning Hezbollah’s actions in Lebanon. He issued the edict against Hezbollah’s actions not because he considered them wrong but because in his view Muslims, at the moment, are not strong enough to defeat Israel. He said that since the Muslims have no chance of winning this campaign against the Jews, a temporary solution is necessary - a truce similar to the temporary truce of Hudaybiyya.

According to the Saudi Sheikh, Islamic laws (Shari’a) also “place preconditions and constraints on the declaring of jihad, which must be considered in order to ensure the greatest gain for the nation and spare it loss - [that is,] in order to ensure the minimum possible damage and avoid greater damage.

One of the preconditions regarding jihad [states] that the [the jihad fighters] must have [sufficient] capability to inflict harm on the enemy and to repulse its evil, so as to ensure the lives, the property, and the honor of the Muslims and to safeguard them from aggression or harm, that is, [from] destruction of property, from violation of honor, and from bloodshed.”

Those who understand the Islamist ethos know that for political Islam, disengagement, a cease-fire, or a pull back on the part of the “enemy” is a sign of its weakness. No one has more experience with this treacherous mindset than the Israelis. It was Israel’s unwillingness to escalate a raid into a full scale battle in 1968 that helped the Palestinian terrorists to win the support of the masses.