Jihad
 Jihad  (ummah, warfare)   | |
|---|---|
Jihad is an Arabic word that means "exerting", "striving", or "struggling", particularly with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it encompasses almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with God's guidance, such as an internal struggle against evil in oneself, efforts to build a good Muslim community (ummah), and struggle to defend Islam.
Ummah
Jihad is often used without any religious connotation, with a meaning more or less equivalent to the English word crusade (as in “a crusade against drugs”).
Warfare
If used in a religious context, the adjective Islamic or "holy" is added. Jihad is the only legal warfare in Islam, and it is carefully controlled in Islamic law. It must be called by a duly constituted state authority, it must be preceded by a call to Islam or treaty, noncombatants must not be attacked, and so on.
To justify the struggle against their coreligionists, extremists branded them unbelievers for their neglect in adhering to and enforcing a particular interpretation of Islam. Contemporary thinking about jihad offers a wide spectrum of views, including conservative jihadists who look to classical Islamic law on the subject and radicals who promote a violent jihad against Muslim and non-Muslim rulers.[1]
Related Quotations
| Page | Quote | Author | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| "War on Terror" | “Western governments and the financial sponsors of jihad... [W]e remain allies with those who have sponsored this terrorism for the last 30 years.” | Alain Chouet |
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:The day the media decided militant jihadism was respectable | blog post | 10 December 2024 | Jonathan Cook | Suddenly, after years of misrepresenting Hamas, western politicians and media are desperate to clarify – if only in Syria – the difference between jihadists and Islamic nationalists |
