War or peace in Israel? The Bin Baz–Qaradawi debate

*This paper is dedicated to Professor Sherman A. Jackson. Would it be permissible (halal) for Palestinian Muslims to sign a peace treaty with Israel? In the mid-1990s, with Oslo Accords in the background, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Bin Baz (1910–99), issued a fatwa affirming the permissibility and indeed desirability of such a treaty. In response, the ever-prominent Egyptian jurist Yusuf al-Qaradawi (1926–) issued a counter-fatwa in which he asserted that making peace with Israel would be impermissible (haram) and detrimental to the Palestinians. By the second round of this debate, the Bin Baz–Qaradawi dispute had captured the attention of the Arab and Muslim world. The present paper will examine each scholar's specific arguments and assessment of the facts on the ground. It will also situate this discourse in relation to classical and modern conceptions of jihad, including those advanced by contemporary scholars of Islam, particularly Sherman A. Jackson (in his article “Jihad and the Modern World”). It is argued that while Bin Baz might have been the peacemaker of the two in this particular case, his jihad doctrine – as presented in this very public scholarly debate – goes further in promoting a premodern, conquest-driven formulation of aggressive jihad and the Abode of Islam/Abode of War worldview that undergirds it. It is also maintained that Qaradawi's dismissal of the peace process was primarily the result of his particular reading of the facts on the ground; in fact, leaving aside the actual position of his fatwa, his theoretical framework could be utilized to some extent to support a robust jus ad bellum doctrine, one that accounts for modern institutions and developments.