Between juristic discourse and geopolitical tool : rethinking the legal reasoning of modern fatwās on Jihād

Abstract

Saudi Arabia's military intervention in the Yemeni conflict in 2015, after the seizure of the capital by the Houthis, has had a significant presence in scholarly writings, particularly among geopolitical analysts. Ultimately, the intervention was interpreted as a reaction to a perceived threat to Saudi Arabia; however, the exact nature of the threat remains debatable. Some considered physical things, while others leaned towards non-physical things. Still others regarded both physical and non-physical things as factors. In this study, I focused on the fatwā issued by the Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi Arabia on 'Operation Decisive Storm', which considers the military intervention as jihād fī sabīl al-llāh. In a juridical sense, jihād is that external military activity declared and waged against non-Muslims, whether defensively or offensively. Yet, in the case of intervention, it was applied in a civil war context, and on top of that, declared against fellow Muslims. With these in mind, this study aims to examine the transformation of the concept of jihād in contemporary times. In doing so, I am not analyzing whether or not the concept has been used politically. Rather, I examine how it was redefined and reconfigured in the context of Operation Decisive Storm. I used two methods: the textual analysis method to examine the content of the fatwā and, secondly, L. J. Austin's Speech Act Theory as a supportive method for analyzing the intention and the action that the fatwā performs. While doing so, I took into account the historical and political background that shapes the fatwā through the lens of Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The findings demonstrated that the Yemeni conflict in itself was primarily powered by domestic factors, yet the regional rivalry of Saudi Arabia and Iran transformed it into a sectarian conflict. Along with this misrepresentation, the fatwā emerged, and, hence, the Houthis were not described as they were; rather, they were created in a manner that serves Saudi Arabia's geopolitical ambitions. As a result, the concept of jihād was not just misused politically, but was redefined and molded to serve the national interests of the Saudi Arabian state. Following that, concepts such as shahāda, ribāṭ, thugūr, and others were all invoked for the same objective.