Some thoughts on Jihad

Jihad has been wrongly interpreted.  One could say that the Crusades were a type of jihad -- in that same perverted sense of the term that some are using it today.  Jihad originally meant the holy war that each individual must fight with himself, within himself.  It referred to battle each person must have in order to surmount his lower, selfish, nature.  It meant to make yourself holy.  The inner and the outer wars have become confused.  Today, it is used by those who would use Islam to promote a world view of exclusivity, and yes this is not any different than the fanaticism we find within any religion.  For more information you can find many articles on the web.  See this: http://watsongregory.homestead.com/files/RenderAssistanceToGod.htm   Here is another: http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/default.asp?url=imams-jihad.htm

If most Muslims believed the perverted interpretation of jihad that some of the more extreme Muslim clerics today are inciting, then most of us in the West would already be dead.  Obviously most Muslims clerics (Imams, etc.) are not promoting this view, and it is certainly contrary to the mainstream interpretation of the Islamic holy book -- both Sunnis and Shi'ahs.
 

Many years ago I tried to sort some of this out in a paper I wrote during undergraduate school.  You can find it on the web at http://watsongregory.homestead.com/files/Islamic_Civilization.html  Perhaps it is still useful.

Below is another article I found on the web today that might also help us to better understand the subject:

Jihad and Compulsion of Religion.

The Qur'an says, "Let there be no compulsion in religion." (2:256) "What! wilt thou compel men to become believers? No soul can believe but by the permission of God..." (10:99-100).

The belief that the Arabs swept out of the peninsula on some fanatical religious mission, a mission embodied in the term jihad, has been substantially refuted by historians of the era. The concept of jihad, which is customarily but erroneously translated "holy war," inspires a collective fear of Islam even today. Muslim leaders contribute to that fear with demagogic talk of jihad in freeing Jerusalem from Israeli occupation, ousting the Communists from Afghanistan, punishing the United States for supporting the Shah of Iran, liberating oppressed Muslims in the Philippines, and other unlikely missions. But there has been no effective call to jihad for centuries, and even if there were such a call, it would not necessarily mean armed subjugation of non-Muslims.

Jihad must be the most overused and ill-understood word in contemporary Islam. Muhammad is recorded in the hadith as saying, "Shall I not tell you of the peak of the matter, its pillar and topmost part? The peak of the matter is Islam; the pillar is prayer; and its topmost part is jihad." The translators of the edition from which that quotation is taken, both Muslims, append this note: "Though the Arabic 'jihad' is generally rendered 'holy war,' its meaning is wider than this and includes any effort made in furtherance of the cause of Islam."

Literally, the word means "utmost effort" in promotion and defense of Islam, which might or might not include armed conflict with unbelievers. Early in 1981, the leaders of most Islamic nations met in conference in Taif, Saudi Arabia (the inhabitants of Taif drove Muhammad away with stones when he sought to convert them). The conference issued a predictable call for jihad against Israel, and Western newspapers just as predictably reported that the conferees had resolved to wage "holy war." Neither Egypt, which is at peace with Israel, nor Iran, which was at war with Iraq, participated in the conference, and without them any such appeal could be only rhetorical.

Even those who took part recognized that their call to jihad was a political statement, not a military commitment: When speaking English, they did not translate jihad as "holy war." King Hussein of Jordan, for example, who lost much of his country when he went to war against Israel in 1967, said that the term jihad as used by the conference was a "very comprehensive term that is difficult to specify." In the true spirit of jihad, the conference reinforced Islamic opposition to the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, but it did not result in any direct action against Israel.

In the words of Khalil Abdel Alim, Washington leader of the American Muslim Mission, "Jihad does not mean fighting a war; it means to struggle for what is required of one in obedience to God." Getting out of bed for dawn prayer, he said, is jihad. The Koran's promise that those who die in conflict with unbelievers will find Paradise, however, is not to be dismissed as a motivating force in political and military action by Muslims. It is important in understanding the willingness of religiously motivated revolutionaries, such as the Sudanese of the Mahdist revolt in the nineteenth century, the students in Iran and the anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan, to accept death.

But the Koran does not unequivocally command believers to seek out conflict. When the faith is challenged, they are obliged to respond, but not all the Koran's commands are martial. The Medinese suras, revealed during the years when the Muslims were skirmishing with the Quraish, stress that a higher place in God's favor is accorded to those who fight than to those who stay at home: "The believers who stay at home -- apart from those that suffer from a grave impediment -- are not equal to those who fight for the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah has given those that fight with their goods and their persons a higher rank than those who stay at home. He has promised all a good reward; but far richer is the recompense of those who fight for Him." (4:95)

Those who enter the fight are assured that God is with them: "Prophet, rouse the faithful to arms. If there are twenty steadfast men among you, they shall vanquish two hundred; and if there are a hundred, they shall rout a thousand unbelievers, for they are devoid of understanding" (8:65) just as happened at Badr and in the Valley of the Yarmouk.

Jews and Christians who spurn God's message are mentioned specifically as a target of the struggle: "Fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe neither in Allah nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what Allah and His apostle have forbidden, and do not embrace the true faith until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued." (9:29) The Jews and Christians knew the truth, but "they worship their rabbis and their monks, and the Messiah the son of Mary, as gods besides Allah; though they were ordered to serve one God only. There is no god but Him." (9:31)

These and a score of similar verses could hardly be clearer in the duty they imposed on the Prophet's followers to join the battle against the infidels who spurned Islam and persecuted the believers. That duty to defend the faith is embodied in the word jihad, translated by Yustaf Ali as "striving."

The Koran is less clear on the circumstances in which believers are obliged to undertake the struggle and upon what provocation. The tone of the Koran is martial, but it is also flexible. It calls for war on the infidels and for courteous treatment of them; it calls for ruthlessness and for tolerance; it brands the unbelievers as doomed infidels, yet teaches that whoever believes in God and lives virtuously, whether Moslem or not, will be admitted to Paradise.

Contemporary Muslim writers often cite two verses of Sura 2 to argue that the command to fight and the call to crush the infidel were purely defensive. One is the verse already quoted, "There shall be no compulsion in religion."

The other is this: "Fight for the sake of Allah those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. Allah does not love the aggressors." (2:190)

It is possible to use those admonitions to support the argument that the early wars were not wars of religious conversion, especially since the Arabs generally imposed their political rule but not their creed upon the peoples they conquered. But it is disingenuous to argue, as some apologists do, that the early campaigns of Muhammad against the

Meccans and the wars of the Arabs against their neighbors were purely defensive. The Muslims in Medina raided caravans for booty; the Arabs attacked their neighbors because they were zealous and warlike and their neighbors were weak. Even if it is conceded that the community in Medina was on the defensive against the Quraish, it is not possible to argue that Amr ibn al-As was on the defensive when he invaded Egypt. The important point is not that the Muslims were unwarlike or that they did not march against their rivals; the point is that the Arabians, in marching against their neighbors, did not do so primarily to force conversion to Islam.

(Source: Lipmann, "Understanding Islam," page 113-115)