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About a seminar at the University of Virginia purporting to clear up the meaning of jihad, Robert Spencer recently wrote: "Note that in all this, at least as reported here, no one actually says that the jihadists' use of the term is incorrect -- just 'incorrect in the sense that it is not the primary meaning of jihad.' They just say the word has other meanings as well."
Robert, you are being too kind. They are not only saying that the word "jihad" has "other meanings" -- that can be granted -- but would have us, unwary Infidels, believe that the primary meaning of Jihad is something other than that "struggle" or "Jihad" to spread Islam, to make sure that in the end all obstacles to the spread of Islam maintained by Infidels are torn down, so that everywhere "Islam dominates and is not to be dominated."
Possibly the inimitable Karen Armstrong is not so inimitable after all. For it is she who quotes that hadith, the one about Muhammad returning home from war, and saying that he is returning from the "Lesser Jihad" of war to the "Greater Jihad” of domestic life and, presumably, working to stay on the path of Allah. But what Armstrong fails to tell readers is that this Hadith is not in either of the most respected and authoritative collections of Hadith, and even in the lesser ones in which it appears, it is not assigned the highest rank of authenticity. So it has little value. I assume that Karen Armstrong, who knows so little, simply has no idea how the Hadith have been gathered, collated, their isnad-chains studied, they themselves assigned different levels of plausibility and then gathered into certain collections and not into others. And in Onward Muslim Soldiers, you, Robert, observed that Hassan Al-Banna, Abdullah Azzam and others know well that this is a weak hadith, and used that fact as a point of recruitment, to win Muslims over to their uncompromising vision of jihad as warfare.
But what about the University of Virginia professor behind this -- Gianotti? Does he know this? Is he simply trying to placate his Muslim colleagues and go along with the farce -- for every Muslim knows perfectly well what the word "Jihad" is taken to mean by Muslims, in time and in space, from Spain to the East Indies, and over 1350 years? That a handful of people in the last two centuries tried, somehow, to endow it with another meaning is a detail or a footnote. Some of them did this because, during the years of perceived Muslim weakness and Western strength, they saw no other way out to attain the kind of accommodation that they realized would be necessary, in such circumstances, for Muslims to make.
The primary, the commonly-accepted and for almost all of the history of Islam virtually its only meaning of jihad was that which all of the Qur'anic scholars, the leaders of the various legal schools, the theologian Ghazali, the historian Ibn Khaldun, the caliphs and military men, gave it. And that is the same as the meaning given to it today not only by Osama bin Laden, but by Al-Qaradawi, and the Sheikh al-Azhar, and all of the Saudi imams, and of course the most learned Shi'a theologians as well -- including that well-trained man, Ayatollah Khomeini, and his many admirers.
One has only to spend even a half-hour looking through Andrew Bostom's The Legacy of Jihad to find many dozens of excerpts from virtually every major figure in the history of Qur'anic scholarship by Muslims, and another half-hour to discover the works by the learned Western scholars of Islam, with the fruits of their immense learning, based on many decades of study -- and there was not even room for all of them. But such names as Joseph Schacht and Arthur Jeffery and Samuel Zwemer and St. Clair Tisdall and Emile Fagnan and K. S. Lal and David Margoliouth and Henri Lammens and Sir William Muir and so many others -- well, are you going to believe me, says the likes of Timothy Gianotti, or what your lying eyes tell you when you read C. Snouck Hurgronje, or Joseph Schacht?
I think, in this as in so many other cases, you had better believe your "lying eyes."
Posted by Hugh at March 22, 2007 11:20 AM
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Jihad is 97% war; 3% inner struggle.
"All of Western logic is based upon the law of contradiction—if two things contradict, then at least one of them is false. But Islamic logic is dualistic; two things can contradict each other and both are true.
"No dualistic system may be measured by one answer. This is the reason that the arguments about what constitutes the “real” Islam go on and on and are never resolved. A single right answer does not exist.
"Dualistic systems can only be measured by statistics. It is futile to argue one side of the dualism is true. As an analogy, quantum mechanics always gives a statistical answer to all questions.
"For an example of using statistics, look at the question: what is the real jihad, the jihad of inner, spiritual struggle or the jihad of war? Let’s turn to Bukhari (the Hadith) for the answer, as he repeatedly speaks of jihad. In Bukhari 97% of the references to jihad are about war and 3% are about the inner struggle. So the statistical answer is that jihad is 97% war and 3% inner struggle. Is jihad war? Yes—97%. Is jihad inner struggle? Yes—3%. So if you are writing an article, you can make a case for either. But in truth, almost every argument about Islam can be answered by: “all of the above.” Both sides of the duality are right.
From Bill Warner, Center for the Study of Political Islam
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=5794&sec_id=5794
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at March 22, 2007 11:27 AM
When Jihad is used to refer to 'inner struggle' it is used metaphorically. This even extends to Rumi and the Sufis. They consciously and openly use it as metaphor not as an 'actual meaning' of Jihad. Attempts to esoterize Quranic texts (even by Rumi) are far-fetched and unsatisfying - the Quran is brutal, literal and spiritually ignorant.
Posted by: poetcomic1
at March 22, 2007 11:48 AM
that "struggle" or "Jihad" to spread Islam, to make sure that in the end all obstacles to the spread of Islam maintained by Infidels are torn down, so that everywhere "Islam dominates and is not to be dominated."
When western Muslims speak of jihad as an inner struggle they may outwardly speak of battling one's own sins and demons, but their meaning is basically exactly as delineated above.
What we in the west need to understand is that, while violent Jihad is real, and a dominant meaning of the term "Jihad", the nonviolent part is generally NOT any less threatening. The Jihad, in the Islamic mindset, is a great struggle against the Kafir. They are quite right in saying that sometimes it is carried out violently and sometimes not. In fact, most jihadists in the west are carrying out their jihad in a nonviolent fashion.
CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, MAS, MSA are quite clear on this point: they are doing jihad, and they are doing it without suicide bombers, guns or bombs. They hope to win a bloodless (at least as much so as possible) battle and unfurl the flag of Islam over all western nations.
Whether they actually believe they can restrain the violent jihadists, I don't know. I suspect they don't really care whether some carry it out violently, as long as Dar Al-Islam spreads -- it's all good, and it's all wonderful, glorious jihad! But they realise that they are smarter than a lot of the violent jihad guys, and while the "nonviolent" jihadists here are are busy providing material support and smokescreens for bombing Israeli children and beheading Indonesian schoolgirls, they are more than a bit irritated that some of these violent guys occasionally get overzealous and come to the west to carry out an attack, which really interferes with their political jihad agenda by shedding a bit too much light on their motives and associations.
Thus the Fiqh council's declaration against Terrorism: Killing innocents is ok as long as they are far enough away that they don't interfere with political jihad in the west, but if you fly planes into buildings full of innocents here we find it harder to sell to the media as retribution against attacks on islam. Hold onto your bombs (for now) and just give Peace(ful jihad) a chance...
Posted by: Archimedes2 at March 22, 2007 12:53 PM
Quite a number of "we in the west" know exactly what they mean by jihad.
Posted by: Rowane at March 22, 2007 1:10 PM
When a Western leader uses the word "Crusade" there can only be one meaning; the one which is Islamophobic. Strange how that does not apply to "jihad".
It seems to be a case of "we decide what we mean / we decide what you mean".
Posted by: Saul Wall at March 22, 2007 5:42 PM
Hold onto your bombs (for now) and just give Peace(ful jihad) a chance...
Posted by: Archimedes2
Arch.. that was FUNNY!
at March 22, 2007 6:32 PM
Archimedes2 wrote:
Hold onto your bombs (for now) and just give Peace(ful jihad) a chance...
*****
So when we see the stealth jihadists strutting in their expensive suits with their sacks of money going into Congress to buy off the Democrats or the Republicans, we know that they are waging the bloodless, peaceful jihad, as you put it?
Your slogan brought to mind that Beatles' lyric, "All we are saying...is give peace a chance, All we are saying is give peace a chance. Sixties radicals potted out and planted on their couches watching the six o'clock news think that just because these jihadis didn't blow up anything that day, the jihad has been subdued.
The bloodless jihad, as you put it, is just as dangerous, if not more insidious, because most peace-loving Americans do not understand that influencing our courts and our legislators is just as corrosive to our freedoms.
Posted by: BurkasforHitlery at March 22, 2007 7:04 PM
Will you people please stop it. Of course jihad refers to the inner struggle. The inner struggle to overcome the natural revulsion within each of us toward murdering innocent people, that is.
Posted by: sheik yer booty at March 22, 2007 10:42 PM
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