War, Peace and International Relations in Islam Muslim Scholars on Peace Accords with Israel

The book presents and analyses fatwas - rulings of Islamic law, issued by religious sages and clerics on issues of war and peace in regard to the actual or future possibility of a peace agreement between Muslim states and Israel. The analysis provides an understanding of a number of phenomena that characterize the Muslim world today: Islamic law's adaptation to changing political realities; the place of Muslim religious law in general and of the legal opinion (fatwa), regarding timely matters, in particular; the split between two major religious currents - one radical and one pragmatic, and the mechanisms for interpretation that each uses; the tensions between tradition and modernity; the relationship between religious decisions and interpretations of religious law on the one hand and ideological challenges, national and military, on the other hand; the role of the fatwa as an instrument of propaganda or publicity in an age of mass media; the gap between religious leaders (muftis) associated with the authorities and those who are independent, or between those who identify with the regime and those with the opposition.
An examination of the political fatwas sheds light on the dividing lines of ideological and religious disagreement in modern-day Muslim society and on the changing concept of relations between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world, from the classic doctrine of jihad to a pragmatic approach of adapting the legal interpretation of the sharia to the modern model of international relations.