What is Jihad
By Daniel Pipes
December 31, 2002
What does the Arabic word "jihad" mean?
One answer came last week, when Saddam Hussein had his Islamic
leaders appeal to Muslims worldwide to join his jihad to defeat
the "wicked Americans" should they attack Iraq; then
he himself threatened the United States with jihad.
As this suggests, jihad is "holy war." Or, more precisely:
It means the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the
territories ruled by Muslims at the expense of territories ruled
by non-Muslims.
The purpose of jihad, in other words, is not directly to spread
the Islamic faith but to extend sovereign Muslim power (faith,
of course, often follows the flag). Jihad is thus unabashedly
offensive in nature, with the eventual goal of achieving Muslim
dominion over the entire globe.
Jihad did have two variant meanings through the centuries, one
more radical, one less so. The first holds that Muslims who interpret
their faith differently are infidels and therefore legitimate
targets of jihad. (This is why Algerians, Egyptians and Afghans
have found themselves, like Americans and Israelis, so often the
victims of jihadist aggression.) The second meaning, associated
with mystics, rejects the legal definition of jihad as armed conflict
and tells Muslims to withdraw from the worldly concerns to achieve
spiritual depth.
Jihad in the sense of territorial expansion has always been a
central aspect of Muslim life. That's how Muslims came to rule
much of the Arabian Peninsula by the time of the Prophet Muhammad's
death in 632. It's how, a century later, Muslims had conquered
a region from Afghanistan to Spain. Subsequently, jihad spurred
and justified Muslim conquests of such territories as India, Sudan,
Anatolia, and the Balkans.
Today, jihad is the world's foremost source of terrorism, inspiring
a worldwide campaign of violence by self-proclaimed jihadist groups:
* The International Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews
and Crusaders: Osama bin Laden's organization;
* Laskar Jihad: responsible for the murder of more than 10,000
Christians in Indonesia;
* Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami: a leading cause of violence in Kashmir;
* Palestinian Islamic Jihad: the most vicious anti-Israel terrorist
group of them all;
* Egyptian Islamic Jihad: killed Anwar El-Sadat in 1981, many
others since, and
* Yemeni Islamic Jihad: killed three American missionaries on
Monday.
But jihad's most ghastly present reality is in Sudan, where until
recently the ruling party bore the slogan "Jihad, Victory
and Martyrdom." For two decades, under government auspices,
jihadists there have physically attacked non-Muslims, looted their
belongings and killed their males.
Jihadists then enslaved tens of thousands of females and children,
forced them to convert to Islam, sent them on forced marches,
beat them and set them to hard labor. The women and older girls
also suffered ritual gang-rape, genital mutilation and a life
of sexual servitude.
Sudan's state-sponsored jihad has caused about 2 million deaths
and the displacement of another 4 million - making it the greatest
humanitarian catastrophe of our era.
Despite jihad's record as a leading source of conflict for 14
centuries, causing untold human suffering, academic and Islamic
apologists claim it permits only defensive fighting, or even that
it is entirely non-violent. Three American professors of Islamic
studies colorfully make the latter point, explaining jihad as:
* An "effort against evil in the self and every manifestation
of evil in society" (Ibrahim Abu-Rabi, Hartford Seminary);
* "Resisting apartheid or working for women's rights"
(Farid Eseck, Auburn Seminary), and
* "Being a better student, a better colleague, a better
business partner. Above all, to control one's anger" (Bruce
Lawrence, Duke University).
It would be wonderful were jihad to evolve into nothing more
aggressive than controlling one's anger, but that will not happen
simply by wishing away a gruesome reality. To the contrary, the
pretense of a benign jihad obstructs serious efforts at self-criticism
and reinterpretation.
The path away from terrorism, conquest and enslavement lies in
Muslims forthrightly acknowledging jihad's historic role, followed
by apologies to jihad's victims, developing an Islamic basis for
nonviolent jihad and (the hardest part) actually ceasing to wage
violent jihad.
Unfortunately, such a process of redemption is not now under
way; violent jihad will probably continue until it is crushed
by a superior military force (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
please take note). Only when jihad is defeated will moderate Muslims
finally find their voice and truly begin the hard work of modernizing
Islam.
This article was originally published in the The
New York Post on December 31, 2002
