On the Left and among apologists for Islam, there's the meme that "Jihad" means "spiritual struggle". It's about improving yourself, lerning a language, going back to school; it's about being a good citizen. There was even a Tw***er campaign a while ago on this theme, "My Jihad is...."
The reality is that Jihad does mean spiritual struggle, but it also means, and more often in the Islamic canon does mean, "to fight a holy war against unbelievers". To deny this is to deny reality. It's to deny the motivating factor for Islamic terrorism. From somewhere, I forget where, but all true, believe me:...
The reality is that Jihad does mean spiritual struggle, but it also means, and more often in the Islamic canon does mean, "to fight a holy war against unbelievers". To deny this is to deny reality. It's to deny the motivating factor for Islamic terrorism. From somewhere, I forget where, but all true, believe me:...
The Shafi’i legal manual (the Shafi’is are a school of Islamic jurisprudence) ‘Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller), which has been certified by al-Azhar, the foremost authority in Sunni Islam, as conforming to the “practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community,” devotes one paragraph to jihad as spiritual struggle and seven pages to jihad as warfare. It makes it quite clear that jihad is warfare against non-Muslims:
Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word ‘mujahada’, signifying warfare to establish the religion. And it is the lesser jihad. As for the greater jihad, it is spiritual warfare against the lower self (nafs), which is why the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said as he was returning from jihad,
“We have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad.”
