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Article: Jihad in Islam (part three)

From these examples, it is quite clear that Islam is not talking about the minor jihad for the sake of aggression; rather it is allowing the Muslims to physically defend their lives, properties, and lands against any aggression, and also to fight for ending tyranny against the oppressed men, women and children.

The verses regarding the idol-worshippers of Mecca are very specific and related to that time period. Let us again look at Chapter 22, verses 39-40:

"Permission (to fight) is granted to those who are fighting because they have been oppressed, and most surely God is well able to assist them. Those who have been expelled from their homes without a just cause except that they say, 'Our Lord is Allah.' (Surah al-Hajj, 22:39)

"Had there not been God's repelling some people by others, certainly the monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which God's name is mentioned would have been demolished. And surely God will help him who helps His cause; most surely Allah is Strong, Mighty." (Surah al-Hajj, 22:40)

Islam deals with the realistic human society and not with the idealistic society.

In the words of Dr. Sayyid Hussain Nasr, "Muslims view the Christian ethics as being too sublime for ordinary human beings to follow; it seems that the injunction to turn the other cheek was being meant only for saints. Christian people over the centuries have not shown any more restraint in war than have non-Christians. The ideal preached and the practice followed have often little to do with each other."2

Let us conclude with the chapter 109 of the Qur'an:

"Say: O those who do not believe! I do not worship what you worship. Nor do you worship what I worship. Nor am I going to worship what you worship. Nor are you going to worship what I worship. You shall have your religion, and I shall have my religion." (Surah al-Kafiroon, 109:1-6)

Misuse of "Jihad"

Just because the term "jihad" is misused by some Muslims for their political agenda, Muslims don't have to abandon this noble concept of their faith. While talking about jihad, I have heard many Muslims describing only the major (spiritual) jihad and shying away from the minor jihad in the sense of armed struggle for defense. As Muslims, we stand by our teachings and don't need to apologize for it even if some misguided souls hijack the terms of our faith for their own political ends.

It is not only the likes of Bin Laden who hijack and misuse the noble terms of Islam; we have even seen the government of the United States of America promoting the concept of minor jihad when it suited its own geopolitical interests.

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 80's, the U.S. Agency for International Development spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan school children with textbooks filled with violent images and "militant Islamic" teachings. Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, these textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Centre for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university's education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.

The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Unlike the children in the rest of the world whose math textbooks have pictures of apples and oranges, the Afghan children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines.3

And so when it suited its strategic interests, the United States of America promoted the culture of jihad among the Afghan children in the 80's and President Reagan even welcomed the Afghan "mujahideen" in the While House. (Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamental code.) Now that that culture of violence has come to haunt it, the US administration is absolutely against the idea of jihad and expects Muslims to abandon that concept in totality.

Muslims cannot be expected to change their views on the noble concept of jihad just because of some misguided Muslims or some world powers' misuse of that term. Muslims should strongly condemn the misuse of jihad and confidently affirm the concept of jihad as explained in the Qur'an and the noble examples of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)

Media & Stereotyping the Muslims

In light of what we have said above, there is no justification in linking 9/11 to the concept of the minor jihad in Islam.

However, we are deeply saddened to see that certain segments of the media, especially the radio talk shows, are still fuelling the hatred against the Muslims, the Arabs, and the great monotheistic faith of Islam. This is in spite of the fact that Muslims have universally condemned the act of terror of September 11th in which innocent lives were lost.

Targeting the Muslims or the Arabs based on guilt-by-association is absolutely wrong. The double standard in the media is really appalling. Just think for a moment:

When a bomb exploded in early days of September 2001 in Northern Ireland near a Catholic school in a Protestant neighbourhood, no one in the media blamed the entire Protestant community as "terrorists and murderers". When the IRA committed acts of terror in Northern Ireland or United Kingdom, no one in the western media labeled the Catholic faith "as the religion of terrorism".

When Dr. Goldstein, a Jewish settler in Israel, entered the mosque in Hebron few years ago and gunned down Palestinian worshippers, no one said that all Jewish people are "terrorists". When Serbians brutally massacred Muslims in Bosnia, the media never blamed the Serbian Orthodox Church for it even though some priests of that church used to bless the Serbian militia before they embarked on executing the Muslim prisoners. YET we see that when a few Arabs or Muslims commit acts of terror, all the Muslims and all the Arabs are automatically branded as "terrorists and murderers." As Muslims, we ask the media for fairness, and nothing more.

The media should realize that the hijackers who used those planes as weapons did not only hijack the planes and kill thousands of innocent people in United of States of America; they also victimized a billion Muslims who are now being labeled as "murderers and terrorists".

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1. Hurr al-'Ãmili, Wasã'ilu 'sh-Sh¢'a, vol. 11, p. 43.
2. See in Hans Kung & Jurgen Moltmann, eds., Christianity Among World Religions (Edinburgh: Clark, 1986) p. 7.
3. Information on US financed "jihãdi culture" is based on the article of Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, "From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad" in Washington Post, March 23, 2002, page A01.
      The so-called "jihãdi culture" (which should be rightly named as "kalashnikov culture" of Afghanistan) not only came to haunt US itself; it also breed militancy in the sectarian Sunni group of Pakistan like Sipah-e Sahaba and now shows its ugly face, through the vehicle of al-Qaeda, in Iraq also.

Reference:
http://www.al-islam.org/articles/peace-and-jihad-islam-sayyid-muhammad-rizvi