Use of offensive force in the banner of defensive jihad is not relatively new in the practice of Muslim states. Such practice can be traced back to the 13th Century CE when Ibn Taymiyya had declared offensive jihad against the Crusaders and Mongols who threatened Islam.262 Similarly, Muslim religious scholars declared jihad against the British during the Indian Sepoy Mutiny in 1857-8.263 In addition, when Sultan Abd al-Hamid (1878 – 1909), the Head of the Ottoman Empire, was declared Caliph of Islam, which entitled him to invoke jihad against European intervention or pressure, both the Sultan and rulers of the countries that were separated from the Empire after World War I, often sought to use jihad as a weapon against British and French domination in the Middle East and other Asiatic and African countries.264 Since then jihad had been invoked to support political goals, such as when the Ottoman Empire went to war against Britain and France in 1914, the Caliph declared jihad and called upon Muslims in the Middle East and India to rise up against the British and their allies.265 Sharif Husayn of the Hijaz (an ally of the British) counteracting the Caliph’s declaration, invoked
jihad as an Arab ruler.266 Similarly, jihad had been used as a weapon to propagate use of force by state authorities on regular basis when they needed extraterritorial use of force. Majid Khadduri and Edmund Ghareeb have aptly noted the following occurrence of events when jihad had been invoked by states:
262 Majid Khadduri and Edmund Ghareeb, War in the Gulf: The Iraq-Kuwait Conflict and its implications (OUP
1997) 230.
263 Aziz Ahmed, ‘Role of the Ulema in Indo-Muslim History’ XXXI Studia Islamica, 1, 10, cited in Mohammed
Talaat al-Ghunaimi, The Muslim Conception of International Law and the Western Approach (Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague, 1968) 142.
264 Majid Khadduri and Edmund Ghareeb, War in the Gulf: The Iraq-Kuwait Conflict and its implications (OUP
1997) 231.
265 A.J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, vol 1 (London 1925) 43. 266 Ibid 44.
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During the inter-war years, the Syrian leaders invoked jihad in their struggle against the French in 1920 and 1928. In 1936, the Mufti of Jerusalem invoked jihad against the British. In Iraq, nationalist opposition to the British in the revolt of 1920 and the military uprising in 1941 were legitimised by invocation of jihad in order to provide public support against foreign intervention.267
In 1980s Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary call for jihad shaped the attitude of Iranian people and their view of Iraq.268 His radical revolutionary style government in Iran had been felt as a threat by Saddam Hussain in Iraq and his Western allies.269 Conversely, Iraq’s occupation of few territories of Iran had been the focal point for propagating jihad against Iraq and its supporters.270 This call for jihad also became popular among the Shi‘a population, the Kurdish population and other secular opposition groups residing in Iraq. In addition, an Iranian- backed organisation committed to the imposition of strict Islamic rule throughout Iraq, the Supreme Assembly of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was active from 1986 in aiming for regime change in Baghdad.271
Iran had also facilitated extraterritorial use of force through jihadist group in Beirut, Lebanon against the American and French Military Personnel in October 1983 and in France in December of the same year.272 All these attacks were carried out on the basis of liberation jihad against foreign interference. This had possibly given Osama bin Laden and his followers a Platform to propagate defensive jihad in an offensive nature but from the viewpoint of a non- state actor.
In the Iraq-Kuwait war, Iraq’s invocation of jihad against foreign power (in this case the Security Council and the Western states and their allies) which intervened in the dispute between Iraq and Kuwait had resulted into division among the Muslim scholars. Saddam Hussein certainly sought to mobilize Islamic sentiment behind him, calling for jihad and placing the Islamic credo la Allah ila Allah ('there is no God but God') on the Iraqi flag.273
267 Majid Khadduri and Edmund Ghareeb, War in the Gulf: The Iraq-Kuwait Conflict and its implications (OUP
1997) 231.
268 G. Kepel, Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam (London: Tauris 2008) 109.
269 Rob Johnson, ‘Mustazafin and Taughatti’ in Nigel Ashton and Bryan Gibson (eds) The Iraq-Iran War: New
International Perspectives (Routledge 2013) 59.
270 Ibid 60. 271 Ibid 66.
272 Pierre Razoux, ‘France’s Involvement in Iraq-Iran War’ in Nigel Ashton and Bryan Gibson (eds) The Iraq-
Iran War: New International Perspectives (Routledge 2013) 220.
273 Jean-Michel Dumay, 'La "guerre sainte" comme arme ideologique', Le Monde, 20-21 January 1991 cited by
Fred Halliday, ‘The Gulf War 1990-1991 and the study of international relations’ (1994) 20 Review of international studies 109, 112.
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Some supported Iraq’s call of jihad on the ground that the foreign powers are unbelievers and their interference would deprive the Muslims of the opportunity to resolve their disputes by peaceful means in accordance with Islamic standards.274 On the other hand, others backed Kuwait’s argument that Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was the reason for foreign intervention and Iraq was solely responsible for this.275
Although Iraq’s call for jihad has been supported by few Muslim states like Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan and Yemen, Saddam Hussain’s appeal to Muslims and the declaration of jihad was considered hypocritical, intended to create dissention among the coalition powers and to extract concessions before withdrawal from Kuwait.276 This situation resembles that of World War I (stated above) when the Ottoman Sultan (ally of Germany) and the ruler of Saudi Arabia (ally of Britain) declared jihad against each other. As a result, use of force in jihad has become the subject of a popular political agenda rather than purely Islamic.