wat is jihad?
Jihad, literally translated into the words holy war, is constantly making news for the world. For example, Yasir Arafat's May 1994 call in Johannesburg for a "jihad to liberate Jerusalem" was a turning point in the peace process. Israelis heard him speak about using violence to gain political ends, and questioned his peaceable intentions. Both Arafat himself and his aides then clarified that he was speaking about a "peaceful jihad" for Jerusalem. The term jihad should cause little confusion, for context almost always indicates what a speaker intends. The variant interpretations are so deeply embedded in Islamic intellectual traditions that the usage of jihad is unlikely to be ambiguous. An advocate of jihad as warfar
The concept of jihad as a moral struggle touches the daily lives of many Muslims. " In abrupt contrast, the Muslim Students Association recently distributed an item with a Kashmir dateline, "Diary of a Mujahid. Jihad as warfare, though far better known, has had a narrower impact. The most systematic attempt to mobilize Muslims against the West, the Ottoman declaration of jihad against the Allies in 1914, failed entirely. " CAIR even asserts that Islam knows no such concept as "holy war. This incident points to the problem with the word jihad. With its declaration of war, the Ottoman regime simultaneously published a fatwa (ruling according to the Shari`a) calling the war a jihad that every Muslim had to participate in -- including the Muslim subjects of Russia, France, and Great Britain. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based group, flatly states that jihad "does not mean `holy war. In some cases, like the assassination of Sadat, jihad as warfare has had enormous consequences. There were many movements that arose to resist European expansion or occupation which were regional or local, tied to a specific leader, regime, or other specific circumstances. But the fatwa did not cause significant Muslim defections from the Allied cause, nor did it prevent the Arab Revolt against Muslim rule. or fighting against tyranny or oppression. '" Rather, it refers to "a central and broad Islamic concept that includes the struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self-defense . " Muslims for at least a millennium have disagreed about the meaning of jihad.
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