Dear Farzana,

You wrote, "As far as I know, there is no sanction for pre-emptive warfare or strikes in the Quran, and there seems to be a consensus of scholars on this issue. Therefore what Umar, Usman and other leaders did, constituted a violation of Quranic principles."

I am not sure if there is such a consensus but then I don't follow the Muslim scholarship scene very closely so I will take your word for it. What I am sure about is that there is no consensus on the last sentence of the above quotation. In fact, most scholars would not react kindly to the sentiment.

I find it hard to believe that what Umar, Usman and other leaders did was in violation of Quranic principles. They may have violated the Quranic principles as interpreted by someone today but they were the first audience of Quran, the Quran was in their language. Today's scholars insist that Quran should be translated and understood according to the Arabic dialect at the time it was revealed. The Umars and Usmans were living in THAT time. They had learnt the
principles directly from the prophet. They were millions of times more likely to correctly understand what Quran meant and what it didn't compared to any scholar today. If they were doing something so diagonally opposite to Quranic principles, I would expect to see at least some voices among the society raising their objections to this imperialist expansionism, if not the entire society revolting against them. Do we see any such objections recorded in history? I haven't seen any. All I see is glorification of conquerors by the society that was the first audience of Quran.

Regards,

Rafi