Principes de Stratégie Arabe (Principles of Arab Strategy)

Citation

Richardson, J. (2004), "Principes de Stratégie Arabe (Principles of Arab Strategy)", Foresight, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 57-57. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680410531543

Charnay, president of the Centre de Philosophie et de Stratégie in Paris, is one of his country's leading lights in the analysis of Arabo‐Muslim attitudes on waging war. Here the jurist‐philosopher‐sociologist has compiled an anthology of Arabo‐Islamic thought about going to war (or not), and how to do it. His time span stretches over 14 centuries, from before Mahomet until Osama bin Laden; and his new volume updates earlier works, such as his Critique de la stratégie of 1990: authoritative and respected, on general strategy and related facets pertinent to the Islamic world. This book's three major sections deal with Ethics, Practice, and Revolution.

Readers of foresight will have some knowledge of the Qur'an's (Koran's) exhortations to cultivate the virtues of the warrior as well as the after‐life rewards awaiting the faithful. But the legally‐minded Charnay adds enormously to these precepts with pertinent excerpts of Arabo‐Islamic thought from the early caliphates (regions of religious governance) to views on more recent colonial/imperial repressions of Islamic thought and action. A surprising proportion (for this reviewer) of Islam's classical texts deal also with how to cope with insurgency – rebellious efforts from within against the caliphate – and guidelines for the sacred responsibilities and duties of the imam (mosque priest). This material helps explain much of the centuries‐old tension between the Occident and Islam.

Charnay lays out these elements systematically, clarifying for the reader some of the more arcane elements of the codes that he cites. As to the present and in the cases of the First and Second Gulf wars against Saddam Hussein, it is noteworthy that the author assesses these actions as a US effort to eliminate other potential “peer competitors” for pre‐eminence in Islam‐dominated southwestern Asia, much as the Russians have sought to accomplish with the two recent wars in Chechenya (p. 40).

Charnay believes that “Western” philosophers have not tried properly to understand and interpret Islam: the belief of the Muslim in the revelations of the Qur'an, the transcendance of these in everyday life, together with the Muslim reverence emanating from this history.

Principes exists, alas, in French only. Reading this long and detailed text by Professor Charnay can be a slog but, for those requiring such background, his work is comprehensive, instructive, and indeed edifying. His interpretation leads the reader to a series of conclusions:

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  Historically, excessive and unjust oppression has violated a state of peace (dar‐es‐salaam) among the Muslims, thereby establishing the right to a “just violence” against oppressors.

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  Muslim‐Arab military forces have long faced, nevertheless, a logistical quandary: whence the required military material to do the Prophet's bidding?

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  How is Islamic strategy to be put together, let alone applied?

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  Is a common centre of decision possible among Muslim‐Arab military/paramilitary forces?

In partial response to these questions, analyst Charnay foresees peace in southwestern Asia inevitably as a dream for our time.