Jihad

General Information

In Islam, the duty of each Muslim to spread his or her religious beliefs is termed jihad. Although the word is widely understood to mean a "holy war" against nonbelievers, jihad may also be fulfilled by a personal battle against evil inclinations, the righting of wrongs, and the supporting of what is good. Jihad General Information Many polemical descriptions of Islam have focused critically on the Islamic concept of jihad. Jihad, considered the sixth pillar of Islam by some Muslims, has been understood to mean holy war in these descriptions. However, the word in Arabic means "to struggle" or "to exhaust one's effort," in order to please God. Within the faith of Islam, this effort can be individual or collective, and it can apply to leading a virtuous life; helping other Muslims through charity, education, or other means; preaching Islam; and fighting to defend Muslims. Western media of the 20th century continue to focus on the militant interpretations of the concept of jihad, whereas most Muslims do not.

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Jihad

The Dictionary of Islam defines jihad as "a religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad. It is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Qur'an and in the Traditions as a divine institution, enjoined specially for the purpose of advancing Islam and of repelling evil from Muslims."

Note

It is probably true that the vast majority of Muslims do not (yet) agree with this terrorist usage of their religion, and are troubled as much as non-Muslims by the regular calls for "Islamic Jihad", a Holy War, against Westerners, particularly Americans. Such call are made by (still) very small militant and terrorist groups, but they are very vocal and the news media have tended to publicize their activities. As a result of this publicity, they have been able to gain many more followers for their terrorist activities, and also inspire more fear than such small groups could probably cause on their own.

Again, out of the 1,000,000,000 Muslims in the world, only a few thousand are actively involved in the terrorist activities. That means that the remaining 999,950,000 Muslims are peace-loving as their religion actually teaches them. In a similar way, the vast majority of Christians are Peace-loving, as Jesus Taught, but a very few aberrant people who call themselves Christians show up in TV news, and might give the impression that all Christians are violent, which is certainly not true. Quiet, peaceful people seldom make news. Vocal, violent people do. That's a characteristic of a "free press" which free societies choose to have.

Those terrorist groups are certainly extremely dangerous, and must be controlled or eliminated, but they shouldn't necessarily tarnish the overall reputation of either Islam or Christianity.