jihad

jihad, in Islam, a meritorious struggle or effort. The exact meaning of the term jihād depends on context; it has often been erroneously translated in the West as “holy war.” Jihad, particularly in the religious and ethical realm, primarily refers to the human struggle to promote what is right and to prevent what is wrong.

In the Qurʾān, jihād is a term with multiple meanings. During the Meccan period (c. 610–622 ce), when the Prophet Muhammad received revelations of the Qurʾān at Mecca, the emphasis was on the internal dimension of jihad, termed ṣabr, which refers to the practice of “patient forbearance” by Muslims in the face of life’s vicissitudes and toward those who wish them harm. The Qurʾān also speaks of carrying out jihad by means of the Qurʾān against the pagan Meccans during the Meccan period (25:52), implying a verbal and discursive struggle against those who reject the message of Islam. In the Medinan period (622–632), during which Muhammad received Qurʾānic revelations at Medina, a new dimension of jihad emerged: fighting in self-defense against the aggression of the Meccan persecutors, termed qitāl. In the later literature—comprising Hadith, the record of the sayings and actions of the Prophet; mystical commentaries on the Qurʾān; and more general mystical and edifying writings—these two main dimensions of jihad, ṣabr and qitāl, were renamed jihād al-nafs (the internal, spiritual struggle against the lower self) and jihād al-sayf (the physical combat with the sword), respectively. They were also respectively called al-jihād al-akbar (the greater jihad) and al-jihād al-aṣghar (the lesser jihad).

In these kinds of extra-Qurʾānic literature, the different ways of promoting what is good and preventing what is wrong are included under the broad rubric of al-jihād fī sabīl Allāh, “striving in the path of God.” A well-known Hadith therefore refers to four primary ways in which jihad can be carried out: by the heart, the tongue, the hand (physical action short of armed combat), and the sword.

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In their articulation of international law, classical Muslim jurists were primarily concerned with issues of state security and military defense of Islamic realms, and, accordingly, they focused primarily on jihad as a military duty, which became the predominant meaning in legal and official literature. It should be noted that the Qurʾān (2:190) explicitly forbids the initiation of war and permits fighting only against actual aggressors (60:7–8; 4:90). Submitting to political realism, however, many premodern Muslim jurists went on to permit wars of expansion in order to extend Muslim rule over non-Muslim realms. Some even came to regard the refusal of non-Muslims to accept Islam as an act of aggression in itself, which could invite military retaliation on the part of the Muslim ruler. The jurists gave special consideration to those who professed belief in a divine revelation—Christians and Jews in particular, who are described as “People of the Book” in the Qurʾān and are therefore regarded as communities to be protected by the Muslim ruler. They could either embrace Islam or at least submit themselves to Islamic rule and pay a special tax (jizyah). If both options were rejected, they were to be fought, unless there were treaties between such communities and Muslim authorities. Over time, other religious groups, including Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists, also came to be considered “protected communities” and were given rights similar to those of Christians and Jews. The military jihad could be proclaimed only by the legitimate leader of the Muslim polity, usually the caliph. Furthermore, the jurists forbade attacks on civilians and destruction of property, citing statements by the Prophet Muhammad.

Throughout Islamic history, wars against non-Muslims, even when motivated by political and secular concerns, were termed jihads to grant them religious legitimacy. This was a trend that started during the Umayyad period (661–750 ce). In modern times this was also true of the 18th and 19th centuries in Muslim Africa south of the Sahara, where religio-political conquests were seen as jihads, most notably the jihad of Usman dan Fodio, which established the Sokoto caliphate (1804) in what is now northern Nigeria. The Afghan wars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries (see Afghan War; Afghanistan War) were also viewed by many participants as jihads, first against the Soviet Union and Afghanistan’s Marxist government and later against the United States. During and since that time, Islamist extremists have used the rubric of jihad to justify violent attacks against Muslims whom they accuse of apostasy. In contrast to such extremists, a number of modern and contemporary Muslim thinkers insist on a holistic reading of the Qurʾān, assigning great importance to the Qurʾān’s restriction of military activity to self-defense in response to external aggression. This reading further leads them to discount many classical rulings on warfare by premodern Muslim jurists as historically contingent and inapplicable in the modern period.