Response to Stevens over Jihad
Misunderstanding About Jihad
In any case, this is a part of political polemics and has been so since lone. However, when we analyze the causes due to which the reality of this Jihad is posting difficulty in understanding for the people like Stevens, we discover two major and basic misconceptions.
The first misunderstanding is that they consider Islam to be a religion in the conventional sense of the term. The second misconception is that they take Muslims a nation in the technical sense as they have read in the books of political science.
These two misunderstandings have not only mixed up the concept of Jihad, but also have changed very picture and meanings of Islam as a whole.
In everyday language, religion means nothing more than a mixture of beliefs, prayers and rituals. If this is what means by religion, it should, indeed, be a private affair then. You should be free to accept any belief and do any worship to any deity you want and wish. There is no reason why you should take up a sword? Do you wish to convert people to your faith by killing them?
Hence, I stress this point here that if you regard Islam a religion in the conventional meaning of the term and if, indeed, Islam is a religion like other religions, then there is no justification of Jihad.
In the same way, the political term nation means a homogeneous group of men who have joined themselves in a distinct entity on the basis of fundamental and shared characteristics. A group of people who attain to nationhood according to this definition, rises or can rise up to fight under two circumstances: when some other group attack them or when they themselves wishing to usurp other people’s rights launch an attack on them. There is a moral justification for taking up arms in the first case. However, launching an armed attack on the people with the purpose of snatching away their lawful rights can be justified.
That is why if Islam is religion and Muslims are a nation in conventional sense of term, Jihad becomes a useless term. But the problem is that Islam in not such a religion and the Muslims are not such a nation. Islam, in fact, is an ideology and a way of life and it seeks to change the very social order and build a new society as it did in the early part of its history. Muslims is also a title for a party that Islam builds. Here Jihad refers to the struggle waged by this party to reform the society either by peaceful means and if not possible then by force. Hence, in English Jihad can be defined as, “To exert one’s utmost endeavor in promoting a cause”. It means Jihad is just a struggle that is for a cause justified and is in accordance with the teachings of Islam. I hope it will help you in understand what Jihad actually is. Next article will detail how Stevens understood or misunderstood it.
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