The Jihad Fantasy

There is a popular fantasy among the academics that jihad is nothing more than an "individual struggle for personal moral behavior," a "struggle without arms," and many "deny that jihad has any military meaning whatsoever."

As Daniel Pipes in Commentary writes:

IT IS an intellectual scandal that, since September 11, 2001, scholars at American universities have repeatedly and all but unanimously issued public statements that avoid or whitewash the primary meaning of jihad in Islamic law and Muslim history. It is quite as if historians of medieval Europe were to deny that the word “crusade” ever had martial overtones, instead pointing to such terms as “crusade on hunger” or “crusade against drugs” to demonstrate that the term signifies an effort to improve society.

Consider some statements from the fantasists:

Roxanne Euben of Wellesley College, the author of The Road to Kandahar: A Genealogy of Jihad in Modern Islamist Political Thought, asserts that “For many Muslims, jihad means to resist temptation and become a better person.” John Parcels, a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Georgia Southern University, defines jihad as a struggle “over the appetites and your own will.” For Ned Rinalducci, a professor of sociology at Armstrong Atlantic State University, the goals of jihad are: “Internally, to be a good Muslim. Externally, to create a just society.” And Farid Eseck, professor of Islamic studies at Auburn Seminary in New York City, memorably describes jihad as “resisting apartheid or working for women’s rights.”

But, of course:

THE TROUBLE with this accumulated wisdom of the scholars is simple to state. It suggests that Osama bin Laden had no idea what he was saying when he declared jihad on the United States several years ago and then repeatedly murdered Americans in Somalia, at the U.S. embassies in East Africa, in the port of Aden, and then on September 11, 2001. It implies that organizations with the word “jihad” in their titles, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad and bin Laden’s own “International Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusade[rs],” are grossly misnamed. And what about all the Muslims waging violent and aggressive jihads, under that very name and at this very moment, in Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao, Ambon, and other places around the world? Have they not heard that jihad is a matter of controlling one’s anger?

But of course it is bin Laden, Islamic Jihad, and the jihadists worldwide who define the term, not a covey of academic apologists. More importantly, the way the jihadists understand the term is in keeping with its usage through fourteen centuries of Islamic history.

In premodern times, jihad meant mainly one thing among Sunni Muslims, then as now the Islamic majority.* It meant the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims (known in Arabic as dar al-Islam) at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims (dar al-harb). In this prevailing conception, the purpose of jihad is political, not religious. It aims not so much to spread the Islamic faith as to extend sovereign Muslim power (though the former has often followed the latter). The goal is boldly offensive, and its ultimate intent is nothing less than to achieve Muslim dominion over the entire world.