Jihad
The analysis of a large survey from 2002 reveals considerable nuance in the conceptions of jihad held by Muslims around the world, ranging from righteous living and promoting peace to fighting against the opponents of Islam.
[5][8][3] The sense of jihad as armed resistance was first used in the context of persecution faced by Muslims when Muhammad was at Mecca, when the community had two choices: further emigration (hijrah) or war.
[14][15]: 46 A set of rules pertaining to jihad were developed, including prohibitions on harming those who are not engaged in combat, on killing animals such as horses, and on unnecessary destruction of enemy property.
[23] The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic defines the term as "fight, battle; jihad, holy war (against the infidels, as a religious duty)".
[25][full citation needed] In the Qur'an and in later Muslim usage, jihad is commonly followed by the expression fi sabil illah, "in the path of God.
"The belief in the veracity of this hadith was a contributing factor in the efforts by successive caliphs to subsidize translations of "Greek, Hebrew and Syriac science and philosophy texts",[59] and the saying continues to be heavily emphasised in certain Islamic traditions advocating intellectualism over violence, for example in Timbuktu,[60] where it is central to one of two key lessons in the work Tuhfat al-fudala by 16th-century Berber scholar Ahmed Baba.
According to classical Islamic scholars like Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, jihad is against four types of enemies: the lower self (nafs), Satan, the unbelievers, and the hypocrites.
[64] At least one important contemporary Twelver Shia figure, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian Revolution and the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, wrote a treatise on the "Greater Jihad" (i.e., internal/personal struggle against sin).
[10]: 117 Abu Hanifa argued that if Muslims stopped combat for fear of killing noncombatants, then such a rule would make fighting impossible, as every city had civilians.
[81] According to scholar Majid Khadduri, it was the shift in focus to the conquest and spoils collecting of non-Bedouin unbelievers and away from traditional inter-Bedouin tribal raids, that may have made it possible for Islam to expand and to avoid self-destruction.
[94]: 222–223 Classical manuals of Islamic jurisprudence often contained a section called Book of Jihad, with rules governing the conduct of war covered at great length.
This was the belief of "all jurists, with almost no exception", but did not apply to defense of the Muslim community from a sudden attack, in which case jihad was an "individual obligation" of all believers, including women and children.
"[10]: 87 Similarly, Edward J. Jurji argues that the motivations of the Arab conquests were certainly not "the propagation of Islam....Military advantage, economic desires, [and] the attempt to strengthen the hand of the state and enhance its sovereignty...are some of the determining factors.
[citation needed][102] Historian Hamilton Gibb stated, "in the historic [Muslim] Community the concept of jihad had gradually weakened and at length it had been largely reinterpreted in terms of Sufi ethics.
"[103]: 117 notes that "despite the theoretical importance of the idea of jihad in classical Islamic juristic thought", by the time of the Abbasids, the concept was no longer central to statecraft.
Citing Ibn Taymiyya, scholars including Rashid Rida, Al San'ani, and Qaradawi argued that unbelievers need not be fought unless they pose a threat to Muslims.
Thus, jihad is obligatory only as defensive warfare to respond to aggression or "perfidy" against the Muslim community, and that the "normal and desired state" between Islamic and non-Islamic territories was one of "peaceful coexistence".
[112] Between 1918 and 1919 in the Shia holy city of Najaf the League of the Islamic Awakening was established by religious scholars, tribal chiefs, and landlords who assassinated a British officer in the hopes of sparking a similar rebellion in Karbala.
They also tended to ignore the distinction between Greater and Lesser jihad because it distracted Muslims "from the development of the combative spirit they believe is required to rid the Islamic world of Western influences".
[126][127] Many Muslims, including scholars like al-Qaradawi and Sayyid Tantawi, denounced Islamic terrorist attacks against civilians, seeing them as contrary to rules of jihad that prohibit targeting noncombatants.
[130] Azzam saw Afghanistan as the beginning of jihad to repel unbelievers from many countries—the southern Soviet Republics of Central Asia, Bosnia, the Philippines, Kashmir, Somalia, Eritrea, Spain, and especially his home country of Palestine.
Whether through weeping, the composition and recitation of poetry, showing compassion and doing good to the poor or carrying arms, the Shi'i Muslim saw himself helping the Imam in his struggle against the wrong (zulm) and gaining for himself the same merit (thawab) of those who actually fought and died for him.
[142][143][144] The book has been described as rationalising "the murder of non-combatants" by Mark Towsend, citing Salah al-Ansari of Quilliam, who noted: "There is a startling lack of study and concern regarding this abhorrent and dangerous text The Jurisprudence of Blood in almost all Western and Arab scholarship".
[142] He stated: Ranging from ruminations on the merits of beheading, torturing, or burning prisoners to thoughts on assassination, siege warfare, and the use of biological weapons, Muhajir's intellectual legacy is a crucial component of the literary corpus of ISIS—and, indeed, whatever comes after it—a way to render practically anything permissible, provided, that is, it can be spun as beneficial to the jihad.
[...] neither Zarqawi nor his inheritors have looked back, liberally using Muhajir's work to normalize the use of suicide tactics in the time since, such that they have become the single most important military and terrorist method—defensive or offensive—used by ISIS today.
[142]Psychologist Chris E. Stout claimed that jihadists regard their actions as "for the greater good"; that they are in a "weakened in the earth" situation that renders terrorism a valid resort.
According to John Esposito, it can simply mean striving to live a moral and virtuous life, spreading and defending Islam as well as fighting injustice and oppression, among other things.
[78]: 165–166 Gallup stated that its surveys show that the concept of jihad among Muslims "is considerably more nuanced than the single sense in which Western commentators invariably invoke the term".
[147] Shia Muslim scholar Mahmoud M. Ayoud stated, "The goal of true jihad is to attain a harmony between Islam (submission), iman (faith), and ihsan (righteous living)."
[150] In a commentary of the hadith Sahih Muslim, entitled al-Minhaj, the medieval Islamic scholar Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi stated, "one of the collective duties of the community as a whole (fard kifaya) is to lodge a valid protest, to solve problems of religion, to have knowledge of Divine Law, to command what is right and forbid wrong conduct".
