If you still believe the fashionable nonsense about how jihad is solely a spiritual struggle or at most a struggle for defense of Muslim lands, don’t take it from me. Take it from Muslim Creed, a website operated by and for Muslims. (Thanks to Jeff Lastname for the link.) In a new book-length piece, “Fundamental Concepts Regarding Al Jihaad” by Sheikh Dr. Abdul-Qādir Ibn “˜Abdul-“˜Azīz, there is a clear statement of jihad as offensive warfare against unbelievers. It’s also a strong rejection, using Islamic texts, of the idea that jihad is only for defense. This is the kind of argument that moderate Muslims must refute in order to defuse the global jihad. Ibrahim Hooper? Anyone? Anyone?
“˜Jihad At-Talab” is when you seek the enemy and battle them within their state. And “˜Jihad Ad-Dafa” ” is the fighting against the enemy, which initiated the fighting with the Muslims. [1]
And the evidence for Jihād At-Talab:
The statement of Allāh, the Most High:
“¦then kill the Mushrikīn wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush. But if they repent and perform As-Salāt, and give Az-Zakāt, then leave their way free. Verily, Allāh is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. [2]
And He, the Most High, said:
Fight against those who believe not in Allāh, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allāh and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islām) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. [3]
So Al-Haqq (i.e. Allāh), the Majestic and Most High, commanded going out and fighting them and seeking them and besieging them. And these verses are from the clearest, of the last ones, which were revealed (about Jihād). And there is no abrogation for them. And the Prophet and his companions with him, and those after him, followed them, until Allāh, the Most High, opened the Earth’s East and its West to them.
And the Messenger of Allāh said, “I was commanded to fight the people until they testify that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allāh and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allāh and they establish the prayer (Salāt) and pay the poor due (Zakāt). Then if they do that, then they have protected their blood and their wealth from me, except in the rights of Islām and their reckoning is with Allāh, the Most High.” [4]
And in the Hadīth of Buraydah, which was narrated by Muslim, “That the Messenger of Allāh; whenever he would appoint a commander (Amīr) over an army, or a platoon, he would advise him privately, to fear Allāh and with those who were with him from the Muslims, with good. Then he said, “˜Battle in the Name of Allāh. Fight those who have disbelieved in Allāh. Battle, but do not misappropriate (the war booty) and do not betray and do not make examples from the polytheists (i.e. do not mutilate them). And do not kill a child. Then if you meet your enemy from the polytheists, then call them to three practices.– — the Hadīth. And these texts are clear and obvious concerning going out to fight the enemy, while intending them, within their state. And this is the Jihād At-Talab….
I say: From what has passed, you understand that the one who rejects the fact that Jihād At-Talab is from Islām, such as those who say that Islām does not fight unless it is for defense or to repel transgression, then he is a rejecter of the aforementioned verses and Hadīths and the likes of them. And He, the Most High, said:
“¦and none but the disbelievers reject Our Āyāt”¦ [9]…
A Misconception:
Some use as evidence to reject Jihād At-Talab, His, the Most High’s, statement:But if they incline to peace, you also incline to it”¦ [10]
And (they say) as long as the disbeliever is in a state of peace with the Muslims, then there is no Jihād. An they use as evidence, the statement of the Prophet, “Do not wish to meet the enemy”¦” [11]
And this is the condition of those who believe in some of the Book while disbelieving in some; those who used as evidence, one of the evidences in the matter, while leaving the remaining evidences, as I mentioned in the fourth principle from “The Principles of Holding Steadfast to the Book and the Sunnah”. And the response to this doubt is from different points:
The First: The Messenger of Allāh and his companions, who are the best of this nation, may Allāh be pleased with them, did not hold these texts upon the point, which those ones understood from it, in that they mean the leaving of the Jihād At-Talab, as the Prophet fought the Arabs and then went out to fight the Romans at Tabūk. And he fought in nineteen battles. [12] And he personally participated in fighting in eight of them. [13] As for the delegations and the platoons, which he sent out but did not go out in personally, then they numbered thirty-six in the narration of Ibn Is”hāq, and others mentioned even more than that. [14] Then the companions battled, after him, the Persians and the Romans and the Turks and the Copts and the Barbars and others from what is known. So this one who used these texts as evidence to invalidate the Jihād At-Talab; we say to him:
“This thing that you understood; is it something that the Prophet and his Companions understood, or not?” Then if he says that they did not understand it, we say to him, “You have understood that which they did not understand, therefore you have judged upon yourself with misguidance and that what you have understood was not from our religion.” This is because the religion was completed in his lifetime. Allāh, the Most High, said:
This day, I have perfected your religion for you”¦ [15]…
In other words, you can’t reject our argument, because this is how Muhammad, al-insan al-kamil, the perfect man, behaved.
There is much more. Read it all. If you are looking for sources, note that the footnotes all cite passages from the Qur’an and well-attested, generally accepted ahadith.