{"id":205,"date":"2011-03-22T06:54:16","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T06:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/03\/libya-and-jihad.html"},"modified":"2011-03-22T06:54:16","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T06:54:16","slug":"libya-and-jihad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/03\/libya-and-jihad.html","title":{"rendered":"Libya and Jihad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whether the attack on Libya proves to be a successful exercise in  humanitarian war-making a la Bosnia or another incursion into Middle  Eastern quicksand, it raises an interesting question for the theology of  jihad. Unlike our wars to overthrow regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq,  and in contrast to the largely peaceful protests taking place in other  Muslim countries, here the intervention has come in the midst of a civil  war, in which many Libyans took up arms to overthrow their dictatorial  ruler&#8211;a man who in recent years has claimed to be a great opponent of  Islamism. After the tide of battle turned, and they were threatened with  imminent defeat, they called on the West for help. And so did the Arab  League. And help has now arrived.<\/p>\n<p>So where does this leave those  who believe that jihad&#8211;armed struggle&#8211;must be be waged against  non-Muslims when they attack Muslims in Muslim lands? This would seem to  be a great opportunity for Yasir Qadhi, the sometime Salafi <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/03\/20\/magazine\/mag-20Salafis-t.html?_r=1&amp;scp=1&amp;sq=Yasir%20Qadhi&amp;st=cse\">profiled<\/a> by Andrea Elliott in a fascinating piece in last Sunday&#8217;s <em>New York Times Magazine<\/em> entitled, &#8220;Why Yasir Qadhi Wants to Talk About Jihad.&#8221; But so far, at least on his website, <a href=\"http:\/\/muslimmatters.org\/\">Muslim Matters<\/a>, Qadhi&#8217;s had nothing to say (other than to <a href=\"http:\/\/muslimmatters.org\/2011\/03\/21\/my-reflections-on-the-new-york-times-article\/\">express the wish<\/a> that the article had focused on something else). In that, he <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2011\/mar\/20\/libya-arab-view\">parallels<\/a> the rest of the Arab world. Maybe they&#8217;re trying to think this one through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whether the attack on Libya proves to be a successful exercise in humanitarian war-making a la Bosnia or another incursion into Middle Eastern quicksand, it raises an interesting question for the theology of jihad. Unlike our wars to overthrow regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in contrast to the largely peaceful protests taking place in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3,2,1],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-jihad","tag-libya","tag-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Libya and Jihad - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/03\/libya-and-jihad.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Libya and Jihad - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Whether the attack on Libya proves to be a successful exercise in humanitarian war-making a la Bosnia or another incursion into Middle Eastern quicksand, it raises an interesting question for the theology of jihad. 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Unlike our wars to overthrow regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in contrast to the largely peaceful protests taking place in&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/03\/libya-and-jihad.html","og_site_name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2011-03-22T06:54:16+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/03\/libya-and-jihad.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/03\/libya-and-jihad.html","name":"Libya and Jihad - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-03-22T06:54:16+00:00","dateModified":"2011-03-22T06:54:16+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/03\/libya-and-jihad.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/03\/libya-and-jihad.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/03\/libya-and-jihad.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Libya and Jihad"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}