Editorial Two
Arabic word ‘Jihad,’ must be the most mistranslated word nowadays.
If you open a modern Oxford English dictionary, you would probably find its definition as a “Holy War undertaken by Muslims against non-believers.”
This is a very poor definition. That is, the Western media seem to take the word unambiguously to mean no more than ‘Holy War.’
For instance, an Associated Press article printed in New Zealand Herald (January 11, 2015) reads, “For Islamic State group militants, it is a welcome ‘success’ in global Jihad, or Holy War.”
This is also the definitional equivalent used by the United States Department of Justice, which “has used its own ad hoc definitions of Jihad in indictments of individuals involved in terrorist activities: ‘As used in this First Superseding Indictment, ‘Jihad’ is the Arabic word meaning ‘Holy War.’
Misused term
In this context, ‘Jihad’ refers to the use of violence, including paramilitary action against persons, governments deemed enemies of the fundamentalist version of Islam.
It is clearly a term misused by people on all sides.
‘Jihad’ is a loaded term and a concept that illustrates a deep gulf of miscommunication between Islam and the West. There are people in each community who see ‘Jihad’ as a clash of civilisations and act on those beliefs.
This led Egyptian-born American Muslim leader Dr Maher Hathout (who died on January 3, 2015) to write a book ‘Jihad vs Terrorism,’ to set the record straight for two reasons.
“Number one was the discovery that everyone is defining us except us, everyone is explaining ‘Jihad’ except for Muslims. Second, I noticed that some Muslims needed to brush up, to review the issue on their own for clarity and understanding of their own religion. This is why I made the book textual. I tried to use verses from the Holy Quran, from the Prophet … It includes personal opinion of course, but the backbone is textual.”
Arabic meaning
The meaning of the Arabic noun ‘Jihad,’ which comes from the verb ‘Juhud,’ is “striving, struggling, determined effort.”
In this literal sense, all Muslims are Jihadists, because they are commanded to strive in the way of Allah. In this sense, to “declare Jihad” is meaningless; ‘Jihad’ is a struggle that you perform, not something you declare.
While fighting may be included in this definition, it is clearly not a major part: “There are other words in Arabic that more unambiguously refer to the act of making war, such as ‘Qital’ or ‘Harb.’
A number of websites on the internet try to do what this article is trying to do, namely explain the concept of Jihad, and in particular, that it is not equivalent to Holy War.
Editor’s Note: The above is a brief extract of an editorial that appeared in ‘Rocket Science,’ monthly Newsletter of Mt Albert Islamic Centre, Auckland. We picked the above to explain the oft-misunderstood concept of Jihad.
