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For the jurists, jihad fits a context of the world divided into Muslim and non-Muslim zones, Dar al-Islam (Abode of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (Abode of War) respectively. These figures formed one distinct interpretation of jihad as war and Ibn Taymiya and his followers formed another. understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense." 8 7 More broadly, Bernard Lewis finds that "the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists. In hadith collections, jihad means armed action for example, the 199 references to jihad in the most standard collection of hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari, all assume that jihad means warfare. In the Qur'an and in later Muslim usage, jihad is commonly followed by the expression fi sabil Illah, "in the path of God." 6 The description of warfare against the enemies of the Muslim community as jihad fi sabil Illah sacralized an activity that otherwise might have appeared as no more than the tribal warfare endemic in pre-Islamic Arabia.Īfter the Qur'an, the hadith (reports on the sayings and acts of the prophet) is the second most important source of Islamic law ( Shari'a). The term jihad in many contexts means "fighting" (though there are other words in Arabic that more unambiguously refer to the act of making war, such as qital or harb). Jihad is a verbal noun with the literal meaning of "striving" or "determined effort." The active participle mujahid means "someone who strives" or "a participant in jihad."
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5ĭoes jihad mean a form of moral self-improvement or war in accord with Islamic precepts? There is no simple answer to this question, for Muslims for at least a millennium have disagreed about the meaning of jihad. or fighting against tyranny or oppression." CAIR even asserts that Islam knows no such concept as "holy war." 4 In abrupt contrast, the Muslim Students Association recently distributed an item with a Kashmir dateline, "Diary of a Mujahid." The editor of this document understands jihad very much to mean armed conflict: While we dream of jihad and some deny it, while others explain it away, and yet others frown on it to hide their own weakness and reluctance towards it, here is a snapshot from the diary of a mujahid who had fulfilled his dream to be on the battlefield. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based group, flatly states that jihad "does not mean 'holy war.'" Rather, it refers to "a central and broad Islamic concept that includes the struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self-defense. This incident points to the problem with the word jihad: what exactly does it mean? Two examples from leading American Muslim organizations, both fundamentalist, show the extent of disagreement this issue inspires. Both Arafat himself 2 and his aides 3 then clarified that he was speaking about a "peaceful jihad" for Jerusalem. For example, Yasir Arafat's May 1994 call in Johannesburg for a "jihad to liberate Jerusalem" 1 was a turning point in the peace process Israelis heard him speak about using violence to gain political ends and questioned his peaceable intentions. Jihad, routinely translated as "holy war," often makes headlines. Streusand is the author of The Formation of the Mughal Empire (Oxford University Press, 1989) and The Islamic Gunpowder Empires in World History (Westview Press, forthcoming).