What does Jihad mean?

The first time I encountered the word “jihad” was when a devout Catholic friend of my mother’s named her son Jihad. The word, she explained, means the quest to live in harmony with God, to have a pure spirit, and to make the world a better place. She hoped her newborn son would grow up to serve God and other people well, and so she named him Jihad. I have often felt sorry for that young man in the post-9/11 world.

Jihad literally means “struggle,” though “quest” is a reasonable translation too.

The concept of jihad is not prominent in the Qur’an, which uses the word rarely and always to mean fighting in self-defense. At the time when most of the Qur’an was revealed, the followers of Muhammad were in conflict with the people of Mecca and believed, with good reason, that the Meccans sought to exterminate them. The Arab peninsula in the seventh century had no government, no courts, no judges. If a group was not willing to defend itself, it would not last long. The Qur’an left no space for such self destructive pacifism:

“Permission to take up arms is hereby given to those who are attacked. … Had God not defended some people by the might of others, monasteries and churches, synagogues and mosques in which His praise is daily celebrated, would have been utterly destroyed.” (22:39-40)

Notice: Monasteries and churches, synagogues and mosques. This is not just about Islam.

The Qur’an always holds out the possibility that God will bring peace and good will to former enemies, and it tells believers that if their opponents stop fighting, they too must stop fighting. “If they incline to peace, make peace with them, and put your trust in God.” (8:61)

“It may well be that God will put good will between you and those with whom you have hitherto been at odds. God is mighty. God is forgiving and merciful.

God does not forbid you to be kind and equitable to those who have neither made war on your religion nor driven you from your homes. God loves the equitable. But He forbids you to make friends with those who have fought against you on account of your religion and driven you from your homes or abetted others to drive you out. Those that make friends with them are wrongdoers.” (60:7-9)

The Qur’an here is talking about the Meccans, who had tried to stamp out Muhammad’s movement and had eventually forced the believers to flee to Medina. It warns believers not to betray their own people by making alliances with their enemies.

Many Muslims nowadays believe that Europeans and Americans have made war on Islam and have driven Muslims from their homes. These are exactly the two criteria for a just war that are identified in the Qur’an. But the Qur’an also insists, in more than a dozen passages, that forgiveness is better than retribution and that believers must stop fighting as soon as their enemies stop fighting.

According to tradition, one day Muhammad returned from a battle and commented that his people were now turning from the lesser jihad (physical fighting) to the greater jihad (seeking to live a good life in harmony with God and each other). This perception is the starting point for fourteen centuries of reflection on the many kinds of struggles that human beings experience.

Sufis have long focused on the greater jihad, which they see as the struggle to subordinate one’s own ego in the love of God. Some medieval clerics recognized four meanings of jihad – jihad of the heart, hand, mouth, and sword. There’s a long and rich tradition here, with substantial overlaps with Christian monastic traditions, Buddhist understandings of the power of ego, and Catholic teachings about just war.

The more violent understandings of jihad have had something of a renaissance in the last few decades. Many Muslim societies have experienced colonialism, dictatorships, invasions, and other forms of domination that can make people feel like they have to fight in self-defense. Organizations such as al-Qaeda have used religious language and imagery, including but not only the idea of jihad, to exhort people to kill and allow themselves to be killed.

In many cases, people find in a religious text or a religious tradition what they are looking for. It is possible to find justifications for war in either the Qur’an or the Bible, but it is equally possible to find exhortations towards peace and forgiveness.

It is therefore misleading to claim, as some Muslims and non-Muslims do, that the modern violent understanding of jihad has always been core to Muslim life. Through the centuries, most Muslims have thought of jihad primarily as the greater jihad – the life-long struggle to love God, curb the selfishness of the human ego, and create good families and a decent society.

For more information about jihad and its history, I recommend Sumbul Ali-Karamali’s very readable and informative The Muslim Next Door: The Qur’an, the Media, and that Veil Thing.