The four schools of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence are clear about jihad:
Shafi'i school: A Shafi'i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, stipulates about jihad that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians...until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh ‘Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)...while remaining in their ancestral religions.” ('Umdat al-Salik, o9.8).
Of course, there is no caliph today, and hence the oft-repeated claim that Osama et al are waging jihad illegitimately, as no state authority has authorized their jihad. But they explain their actions in terms of defensive jihad, which needs no state authority to call it, and becomes "obligatory for everyone" ('Umdat al-Salik, o9.3) if a Muslim land is attacked. The end of the defensive jihad, however, is not peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims as equals: 'Umdat al-Salik specifies that the warfare against non-Muslims must continue until "the final descent of Jesus." After that, "nothing but Islam will be accepted from them, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus' descent" (o9.8).
Hanafi school: A Hanafi manual of Islamic law repeats the same injunctions. It insists that people must be called to embrace Islam before being fought, “because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith.” It emphasizes that jihad must not be waged for economic gain, but solely for religious reasons: from the call to Islam “the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war.”
However, “if the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax [jizya], it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.” (Al-Hidayah, II.140)
Maliki school: Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a pioneering historian and philosopher, was also a Maliki legal theorist. In his renowned Muqaddimah, the first work of historical theory, he notes that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with “power politics,” because Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations.”
Hanbali school: The great medieval theorist of what is commonly known today as radical or fundamentalist Islam, Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, 1263-1328), was a Hanbali jurist. He directed that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”
Majid Khadduri was an Iraqi scholar of Islamic law of international renown. In his book War and Peace in the Law of Islam, which was published in 1955 and remains one of the most lucid and illuminating works on the subject, Khadduri says this about jihad:
The state which is regarded as the instrument for universalizing a certain religion must perforce be an ever expanding state. The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God's law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world....The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state. (P. 51)
Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari'ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad. In his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad, he quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: "Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book...is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah." Nyazee concludes: "This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation" of non-Muslims.
"Jihad is ‘getting to a better place,’ says CAIR campaign," by Neil Munro in the Daily Caller, December 14:
An Islamic-advocacy group linked to terrorism is launching a public-relations campaign to argue that jihad doesn’t mean Islamic holy war, but instead a “concerted effort … with the purpose of getting to a better place.”...“It is [public] education about what we believe,” said Ahmed Rehab, who serves as the founder of the project, head of CAIR’s Chicago affiliate and CAIR’s strategic communications chief....
“This is a whitewash,” charged Robert Spencer, the author of several books about orthodox Islam.
Jihad, Spencer said, in Islamic texts “as well as in Islamic law, has always borne the primary meaning of warfare against unbelievers in order to affect their subjugation under Sharia.”...
Rehab’s campaign “is an attempt to … lull Americans into even greater complacency about the Islamic supremacist program,” Spencer said.
It “reminiscent of the ad campaigns of old that suggested that smoking was good for you: ‘More Doctors Smoke Camels than any other Cigarette,’” he added.
Rehab dismissed Spencer’s criticism, saying that Spencer cherry-picks alarming quotes from Islamic texts and advocates. “Most Muslims believe what I’m saying,” he insisted.
“My view of jihad comes entirely from what orthodox, mainstream Islamic authorities say ‘jihad’ means,” Spencer said.
Rehab acknowledged the widespread view of jihad as war in the Arab world....
Rehab’s parent group, CAIR, also has problems. Several of its employees have been jailed or deported for terror offenses, and FBI officials refuse to meet with CAIR’s founders because of their entanglement in a Texas scheme to raise money for the Iranian-backed Hamas terror group based in the Gaza enclave near Israel....
“There are definitely problematic individuals and groups in the Muslim world that make me shiver,” said Rehab. “They’re going to be a threat to their home countries, to my home country of Egypt.”
“But guess what? They’re being confronted, they’re being pushed back,” he claimed.
By whom? Where? When? Certainly not by Hamas-linked CAIR and the duplicitous Rehab.
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Jihad and terrorism are becoming cool.
hamas is cool. I saw this at a local rally in support of Hamas.
Hamas is cool and Israel is not cool.
The kids are intolerant of any other view.
Frightening.