by Staff Sgt. Amy Parr
Air Force Print News
10/10/01 - WASHINGTON -- Webster's Dictionary defines
"jihad," or holy war, as a war by Muslims against unbelievers or enemies of
Islam, carried out as a religious duty.
The word jihad sends shivers down the spines of many Westerners, bringing
to mind images of violence and oppression, said Chaplain (Capt.) Hamza Al-Mubarak
from the 81st Training Wing at Keesler Air Force Base, Miss.
However, a jihad can exist without violence, Al-Mubarak said.
"By simply looking into the sources of Islam, one is able to know that the true
meaning of jihad is to strive and make effort in the way of Allah," he said.
"Thus striving in the way of Allah can be both peaceful and physical."
Al-Mubarak said that, according to the Muslim prophet Mohammad, the best jihad
is one in which a person strives against himself; however, when a jihad requires
physical exertion against others, certain rules must be followed.
"When fighting an unjust enemy, no matter how unjust they are, it is forbidden
by Islam that their retreating forces are mutilated, tortured or slaughtered,"
he said. "In the Quran, Allah says, 'And fight in the way of Allah those who
fight you, but do not transgress the limits. Truly Allah loves not the
transgressors.'"
Transgressing the limits, Al-Mubarak said, means to kill women, children, the
elderly, the sick, monks, worshippers, hired laborers and other noncombatants.
He said it also means to recklessly kill animals, burn crops and vegetation,
pollute waters and destroy homes, monasteries, churches and synagogues. These
things are not to be done.
Although some Muslims believe that suicide bombing is part of jihad and a
virtuous act for which they will receive a reward, Al-Mubarak said this could
not be further from the truth.
"The Prophet s.a.w. said, 'those who go to extremes are destroyed,'" Al-Mubarak
said. "Suicide bombing is an extremity. In the rules of warfare, we find no
sanction for such an act.
"Once, when a man killed himself, the Prophet s.a.w. said, 'He is a dweller of
the fire.' When the people were surprised, he said, 'A person performs the deeds
which to the people appears to be the deeds befitting the dweller of paradise,
but he is in fact one of the dwellers of the fire.'"
While Islam is split into different sects, with some interpreting the Quran
differently, Muslim scholars agree that terrorism defies the rules of a jihad.
For more information on jihad, contact a local chaplain.
The Real Meaning of Jihad !!! (Part 1)
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From: Sheikh
An-Nur (Original
Message) |
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'Jihad' misused, misunderstood, scholar says
'Struggle to be good' is real meaning of term, he asserts
Sunday, September 23, 2001
By Ann Rodgers-Melnick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Dr. Jihad is no more.
Jeremiah McAuliffe, a convert to Islam who holds a doctorate in formative
spirituality from Duquesne University, adopted the name as an online persona
when he pioneered the Islamic Internet a decade ago. The songwriter from
Swissvale recorded Islamic rock music with a group called Dr. Jihad and the
Intellectual Muslim Guerrillas.
The name was meant to be light-hearted, but it also reflected his commitment
to the traditional understanding of jihad in the Koran, which is best
translated as a struggle or striving. It is an inner, spiritual struggle to
triumph over evil, to live in submission to God and service to humanity.
On Sept. 11, sick with sorrow and outrage, McAuliffe purged Dr. Jihad from
his Web site. The terrorists who used jetliners filled with innocent people
as weapons of mass destruction, and who may have justified their actions as
a jihad against enemies of Islam, have so perverted the noble word that he
cannot use it.
"Jihad is a very broad concept that includes theories of just war. But the
Koran is very clear that Muslims are only to wage defensive wars," he said.
"The more important meaning of jihad is the struggle to be good."
The Arabic term for holy war would be al-harb muhadassa, but "there is no
holy war in the Koran. There is no combination of words that means holy
war," he said.
Verses such as Koran 9:20-22 are among those that have led suicide bombers
to believe they will inherit Paradise:
Those who believe, and who have forsaken the domain of evil and have striven
[jihad] hard in God's cause with their possessions and their lives have the
highest rank in the sight of God; and it is they, they who shall triumph in
the end! Their Sustainer gives them glad tidings of the grace that flows
from Him, and of His goodly acceptance, and of the gardens which await them,
full of lasting bliss, therein to abide beyond the count of time. Verily,
with God is a mighty reward!
The terrorists have ripped such verses out of context and failed to
understand their true meaning, McAuliffe said. Passages on fighting refer to
a particular war, when enemies of Islam tried to destroy the Prophet
Muhammad and his followers. They do not give blanket permission to condemn
or kill those who hold political or religious views other than your own, he
said.
Take not life, which Allah hath made sacred, except by way of justice and
law: Thus doth he command you, that ye may learn wisdom. Koran 6:151
Ihsan Bagby, a Muslim who teaches international relations at Shaw University
in Raleigh, N.C., doesn't know how suicide bombers shut out the many verses
that extol peace, mercy, restraint and forgiveness. He suspects they
convince themselves that military jihad has always had "collateral damage"
and that, if American policy sustains injustice, they can target any
American interest.
"Of course, such logic is irrational and immoral," Bagby said.
American Muslims have long urged the media not to refer to terrorists as
"Islamic" but as "Islamists," meaning those who attempt to impose Islam by
force. Few Muslims consider such tactics Islamic.
On the Web, McAuliffe challenges extremists. Their distorted theology "is
not so much a matter of which passages of the Koran they read, but which
they ignore," he said.
Few extremists would commit violence, he said. They are extreme because they
"don't take the book as a whole. They don't grasp its ethos, or see the
balance between the different passages."
The Koran is believed by Muslims to have been dictated by the Angel Gabriel
to Muhammad in the early 7 th century A.D. Lesser writings, called hadith,
are used to interpret the Koran. Hadith include the sayings and biography of
Muhammad.
Hadith makes clear that war is only for defense, that innocent civilians
must not be targeted, and that fire must not be used to kill, McAuliffe
said. In it, Muhammad declares battle the "lesser jihad" and spiritual
purification the "greater jihad."
Extremists ignore the historical and social context of hadith, and those few
who condone terrorism claim that hadith's restraints on violence are not
true sayings of Muhammad, he said.
"We don't have any kind of an official body that interprets the Koran in
light of hadith. People look to certain scholars or certain charismatic
leaders or groups, and get interpretation from them. But there is no Vatican
that can say, 'This is the official teaching. ' "
At the center of the quarrel between mainstream Muslims and extremists is
how to know when a person or a nation has become an "oppressor" or an enemy
of Islam.
In the traditional debate over how to respond to an unjust ruler, "One side
maintained that you have to fight back. The other side, which is really the
standard Sunni Muslim approach, is that you can't fight anyone unless they
prevent you from practicing your religion," he said.
But arguing with extremists is exhausting. Until Sept. 11, if some hothead
lectured fellow Muslims about America the Infidel, "People just kind of
rolled their eyes," McAuliffe said.
Extremists "don't let up. They are bullies. They seem to have an infinite
amount of time and energy and they do not listen. They will not entertain
the possibility that they might be incorrect. It's like talking to a wall."
Now, "The good people need to bring as much energy and passion to the
confrontation as the evil people do."
Most of those he chats with online share that conviction, he said.
"There is almost a feeling of helplessness that these guys have -- and I
hate to use this word -- hijacked the Islamic message," McAuliffe said.
We ordained for the Children of Israel that if anyone slew a person --
unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land -- it would be
as if he slew the whole people: And if anyone saved a life, it would be as
if he saved the life of the whole people. Koran 5:32
While extremists have monopolized media attention, respected Muslim groups
and leaders have countered extremist theology, said John O. Voll, associate
director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown
University in Washington, D.C., and co-author of "Islam and Democracy."
He cited Minaret magazine, published by the Islamic Center of Southern
California, which circulates nationwide.
"The moderate view is mainstream Islam and always has been," Voll said.
"Claiming that someone is an unbeliever and therefore has to be attacked has
long been recognized as a heretical approach."
Voll compares the usage of jihad to that of crusade, which was a military
term in 1099 when European Christian armies took back Jerusalem from Muslim
Turks who had conquered the Holy Land. Now, however, it usually means an
evangelistic meeting or a moral crusade against drugs or violence.
Medieval crusaders who slaughtered Muslim civilians, Jews and Orthodox
Christians doubtless believed they had sanction from God. But their actions
so poisoned the view of Western Christianity in Eastern Europe and Asia
that, nearly 1,000 years later, Billy Graham dropped the word "crusade" from
his overseas missions.
The consensus of mainstream Islam is that each individual has a duty to
apply his or her full intellect to understanding the Koran.
"You don't just blindly sit down and believe what some teacher has told
you," Voll said.
"That relatively blind copying of what others have said is the theological
foundation of people like Osama bin Laden and it is different from most of
the fundamentalists."
McAuliffe worries that a shortage of qualified religion teachers leaves
American Muslims vulnerable to simplistic interpretations of many issues.
Most teachers are intelligent and devout, but their education often is in
medicine or engineering, rather than religion, history, literature and
anthropology, he said.
He was struck that the suicide bombers of Sept. 11 were educated men -- but
educated in technology rather than religion.
"What is very scary is that these were not poor, desperate people whose
desire to lash out could at least be understood. You can find these educated
people in the extremist groups, but they tend to be trained in the natural
sciences."
Children of Abraham, it's time to make a stand/ against the injustice and
evil in our lands/ Believers come together and join your voice as one/ We
don't care what country you are from/ Jew, Christian, Muslim, it's time that
we grew up/ Accept each others' differences and leave the rest to God/
Compete in piety, worship and good deeds/ Give up your hatred, your guns and
your greed.
McAuliffe wrote that in response to Sept. 11. |
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