Jihad — misconceptions about Islamic teaching

Meanings of the word jihad

The subject of jihad is so thoroughly misunderstood both by European scholars and by the bulk of Muhammadans themselves, that it will be well to point out what really constitutes jihad. In order to do so, it is necessary to analyse the word and to show when and how it was first used.

Etymologically the root is jahd, “he exerted himself”, and the substantival infinitive that is formed from it means “utmost exertion”. Its first use amongst Arabic authors refers to that particular exertion which takes place under great difficulties, and, when applied to religious matters, it means an exertion under religious difficulties on behalf of the true religion.

Keeping in mind the strictly logical, philosophical, historical and ethnographical applications of each Arabic root, it will be seen at once how a word of this kind would be subject to interpretations according to circumstances. Taking into consideration the surrounding life of an Arab, we are confronted first and foremost with his domestic and natural relations. We then follow him out of his tent, and we see him deal with his camel or his horse; we follow him on predatory expeditions, and we see him in the lonely desert as he complains of the disdain of his beloved, of the arrogance of a neighbouring tribe, of the melancholy prospects of his country, and of the perversity of his heart in not finding full solace in community with God. Here are all obstacles to be overcome, and if he forces his camel or horse to take a desperate ride through the night so as to surprise the violators of his peace before the early morn, it is jihad; if he appeals to his kinsmen to shake off their lethargy and to rally round the tribal standard or to spread the opinions of the true faith, it is jihad; and if he abstains alike from worldly cares and amusements in order to find that peace which meditation alone can give in spite of an obdurate heart, it is jihad. Nor can the student’s jihad in poring over his books, the merchant’s jihad in amassing money, the ploughman’s jihad in winning food from an obstinate soil, be forgotten.

So that when people say that jihad means the duty of the Muhammadans to wage war against a non-Muhammadan government or country and call this jihad (although it is possible to conceive that under certain circumstances this use of the word might be legitimate), they really talk nonsense, and cast an undeserved libel on a religion with which they are not acquainted.

It would be more just to deduce sanguinary precepts from the Old Testament, or to find an encouragement to slavery in the Epistle of St Paul which enjoins Onesimus, the runaway Christian slave, to return to his heathen master. If Christian theologians, bearing in mind the nature of the mission of our Saviour, find a voluntary sacrifice for the salvation of mankind in him, who on the cross complained that God had forsaken him, we might as well pause before we explain jihad as meaning in its entirety what it might mean in the mouths of Muhammadan warriors. If it is the duty of the Christian soldier to fight for his government, irrespective of the cause in which he is engaged, it would clearly seem that it was not less his duty to fight for that government when engaged in a crusade against the unbeliever or against the oppressors of the Christian community. Similarly, if the Muhammadan warrior is engaged in a Crescentade against those who do not allow their Mussulman subjects to perform the commonest of religious duties, who expel them from their homes and confiscate their property, simply and solely because they are Mussulmans, if such oppression is committed as a breach of treaty, if even a single Mussulman cannot live undisturbed by the infidel, it does not seem to be an unrighteous cause for him to exert himself in an effort of jihad which will then assume a peculiar sense. Inter arma silent leges, to which we may add et religio, though not necessarily every form of pietas, and we may still have our pious warriors, who died in the Holy Land, and the Saracens may also have their pious martyrs, or shahidin, who perished fighting on infidel soil.

Gross misinterpretation

After this lengthy, but not unnecessary, preliminary observation on the meaning of the word jihad, I will now examine the causes which have led to its present gross misinterpretation, and I shall then quote the passages bearing on the sacred war and on the conditions under which alone it can be waged. This inquiry will not only be of academical interest, but will also perhaps be of some political importance, because it is immediately connected with the question of the Khalifa and of the Imam, as understood by the two great sects, the Sunni and the Shi‘ahs respectively, and by the Sunni sub-sects of Muhammadan subjects. The matter is still veiled in considerable obscurity, in spite, if not in consequence, of the explanations that have been given from interested standpoints. We shall then be able to understand the precise authority of the Sultan of Turkey on the Muhammadan Sunni world, we shall then discover whether and how far the Mahdi was right in opposing Egyptian encroachment and the invasion of the foreigner, and, if he was right, whether this fact has, or can have, the faintest influence on the attitude of Muhammadans under Christian rule, whatever their condition or treatment. I shall show that it has not, and cannot have, the faintest influence on the attitude of Muhammadans under Christian rule, whatever their condition or treatment. I shall show that it has not, and cannot have, such an influence from a religious point of view, and I shall go further and prove that the most suspected class in the Muhammadan community, the so-called Wahabi, is the one that, under all circumstances, is the foremost in deprecating resistance to constituted authority, however obtained and by whomsoever exercised.

With the utter submission of private interests and feelings to a usurper we have no sympathy, as being opposed alike to common-sense and the natural feelings of mankind, but we have no hesitation in asserting that it is impossible for any modern Christian government to commit those acts which would alone give a colour of justification to a jihad by its Muhammadan subjects, even with the prospects of success and the temptations held out by a victorious neighbouring Muhammadan power among the least patient of our Muhammadan fellow-subjects.

An Islamic Confederation, therefore, as suggested in the last number of the Ittila, a Persian newspaper published in Tehran, under the presumed direction of the Government of the Shah, may be an interesting and perhaps even a politically important suggestion. To consider for a moment that a Shi‘ah interpretation of jihad will have an effect on Sunnis, or that a Shi‘ah explanation of jihad is consistent with their religion if it implies an attack on non-Muhammadan governments, especially by their own subjects, who are assumed to be under a tacit treaty of allegiance with it, would be far indeed from truth. We ourselves entirely sympathise with every effort to cement the feeling of brotherhood among the various Muhammadan sects, but we are equally convinced that, in proportion as it rests on a religious basis and as that basis is understood, the result will be the deepening of the loyalty of our Muhammadan fellow-subjects.

Assuming the translation of the Ittila article given by the Globe to be correct, I find nothing in it that is an appeal to passion or prejudice. There is nothing in the passages quoted from the Koran which can be construed as an incitement to rebellion. The hand of God would be over their (the believers’) hands… (48:10); superior worth would belong unto God, His apostle, and the true believers, and the unbelievers would be smitten with vileness and afflicted with poverty, are evidently passages capable of another interpretation than that of waging war with unbelievers. If the religion of the Gospel and of universal brotherhood says that it has not come to bring peace to the world but strife, or if it enjoins “to give Caesar what belongs unto Caesar, and to God what belongs unto God,” it may be inferred that it would be unlawful to give to Caesar what belongs to God, or to say there is peace when there is no peace. No doubt, the Ittila refers to the doctrine of jihad, just as an oppressed Christian community would, in the words of Milton, call on the Deity to avenge His slaughtered “saints”, but from such a reference to the main object of the article there is indeed a great distance; this object is distinctly defined as being that of a defensive alliance. The passage is as follows:

True connotation of jihad

 “If all Mussulman nations were to form a confederation for the sake of defending themselves against attacks from without, they would acquire power and strength, and be able to overcome all other nations, just as they did in former times. Let all dissension which now separates the different Mussulman nations be put aside; let the nations form a defensive alliance; and, should any power attack any one of the Mussulman nations, let none remain neutral, but let all co-operate in repelling the enemy; let them combine their wealth and property for the support of all - and then no aggressor would have a chance of success. If Prussia had fought single-handed against France, she would have been defeated, and would never have acquired her present glory. Why was she victorious, and how was it that, from being at best only a second-rate Power, she has become one of the great Powers, and how is it that the fame of her mightiness has pervaded all the world? Simply because she had formed a confederation of all the German States. Mussulman states should follow Prussia’s example, and not forget that union gives strength. We wish to see all Islam united in a defensive alliance only; no state should interfere with the internal affairs of any other state, and the confederation should exist only for joint action against an aggressor. Other nations would then not dare to attack, the Mussulman states would be able to protect their liberty, independence, and nationality, and defend their property and country with glory and fame against all aggressors. Now that Islam is not united, protection and defence are impossible, as every state singly is too weak.

Whoever aids in this cause will make himself a glorious reputation in both worlds, and his name will be mentioned in the history of Islam till the end of the world, and never be effaced from the pages of time. Is such a confederation impossible? No, certainly not. We have now shown the result of dissension and that of union, and unless Islam forms a confederation it will neither be safe from attacks from without nor be able to return to its ancient power and its glory of former days. All intelligent men are advocates of a Mussulman confederation, and are of our opinion. It is the duty of every true believer to exert himself to the utmost to attain this end; any neglect would ensure terrible and fatal consequences.”

I consider this appeal to be neither unnatural nor impractical; on the contrary, it is one of the best signs of the times. Already at Lahore, Lucknow, and other places, Sunnis and Shi‘ahs in India are prepared to sink their differences for the common social and political good of their fellow-Muhammadans; nor does this concession imply any disloyalty to Government. It rather implies the growth of a common citizenship cemented by the same allegiance to the same Empress, and as regards the Muhammadan states unconnected with India, it would indeed be well if they formed an alliance for defensive purposes under the aegis of Great Britain, instead of that of Russia, and the former is now prepared to assume that protectorate.

Concept of jihad in the Bible

 “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it thou wast taken; for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. iii. 19).

The nature of the ground, to the cultivation of which the first man was addressed, is sufficiently indicated in the verses preceding the above quotation, which describes it as “cursed”, and as yielding “thorns also and thistles”, except what great labour might win from an obdurate soil for the sorrowing worker. This labour might be accompanied by prayer, but it was itself a punishment, and it was reserved to Christianity and to modern civilisation to impress that laborare est orare.

In Arabic and in the Muhammadan religion, which it is idle to discuss without knowledge of the sacred language in which it is written, the Biblical passages which we have quoted might be rendered as follows:

“In jihad shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the jihadat” (stony and sterile soil).

As for the remaining part of the quotation, although it is admitted by Muhammadans that we are dust and return unto it, the more common exhortation refers to the breath or living soul which God ‘breathed into the nostrils of man’, whom He formed of dust, or rather clay. We belong to God and unto Him shall we return, is the refrain to numerous verses of the Koran.

As for the mortal coil, the Arab was formed of red clay, which is what the word “Arab” means; and the coasts and bottom of the Red Sea, at the entrance to which he places Eden, and which, according to Professor Haekel and others, now flows over Limuria, the ancient seat of primeval man in his transition from the monkey, who ate the fruits of Paradise where we enjoy cakes, ever attract the notice of the traveller by their red colour. EDOM, or Adam, or Idumea, whence the rugged Mount Sair reddens in the sun from the reflection of the waters, means “red”.

Adam, too, was named and formed from Adama or “red soil”, so that if we are to find our prototype and his lineal descendant, we find him in the Arab, whilst if any language can be “the first” in the present cycle of mankind’s development during the last 6000 years, it is Arabic. The reference to the soil and to the sexual relations of most of the words is, at any rate, suggestive of its early historic origin. Their subsequent application to custom, religion, and other motive powers of mankind, is instructive as the history of the Arabs and that of human thought. But jihad is the one word into whose primary meaning sex does not enter; it is simply that labour which Muhammadan religion has rendered identical with prayer. Nor can we leave this interesting philological inquiry without remarking that, in our opinion, great as are the disciplinary uses of Idio-Germanic studies, the logic and lessons of the Shemitic Branch are unparalleled. We would direct the attention of students of languages to that application of Arabic words with their hundred (in one instance 500) meanings to those groups of associations connected with the life of that people which, once understood, will create grand trunk roads through the jungle of its linguistic wealth, and will establish principles which, sublime in their simplicity and sense, will not only enable us to learn with ease the, by far, most difficult of all developed languages, but will also solve many problems in human history and thought, with special reference to the physiology, ethnology, and psychology of the people of the Arabian Peninsula.

Different meanings of the word jihad

 We then assert that, like other Arabic roots, jihad has first a concrete and then an applied meaning. This applied meaning varies according to the circumstances of Arabian life and the development of Arabic literature, but never loses its original keynote of exertion against difficulties. Unlike, however, other Arabic words, it is devoid of sexual reference, and it is thus the purest Arabic word in all its concrete, allegorical, and abstract applications, as it is also the noblest duty of a pious Muhammadan.

Jihad, therefore, in the first form of that root, is applied to exertion, and in the third, sixth, and eighth forms to the unsparing exertion in speech or action, or in order to arrive at a correct opinion in spite of difficulties. Thus, an examiner in dealing with a candidate and a physician in treating a patient have tasks before them which tax their power; and so has a petitioner who wishes to extract a favour from an official. The general result of these efforts is that jahad is one who is harassed, fatigued, and grieved, and, above all, when a famine befalls the land and the agriculturists are sorely distressed, both their condition and their efforts are “jahad”. Indeed, if we are told of a people simply that they jahad, it means that they are afflicted with drought and dryness of the earth. No doubt, that, similarly, a soldier’s fatigue party, the wearied wayfarer, and the jaded beast plied beyond its power of marching, all are aptly described as jahad. To deprive milk of its butter, or to churn it, so as to render it pleasant, or to dilute it with water; the desire of food of a hungry being or eating plentifully of it, whether it be human food or pasture, is jihad. In the third form, which adds the notion of causation to that of the original meaning, the object which causes exertion is obviously put into the foreground, and as resistance is greater, so efforts must be increased; therefore, as jihad is really the infinitive of this form, it is equivalent to the Latin fortia pectora opponere adversis rebus. These adverse things are generally objects of disapprobation. As with the Christian, the Mussulman has to wage war with “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” and so jihad is of three kinds, namely, against a visible enemy, against the devil, and against one’s self; and all these three opponents are included in the term jihad, as used in the twenty-second chapter of the Koran, verse twenty-seven. Thus, to fight an enemy under conditions of great difficulty and opposition, the enemy doing the same, is jihad, it being remembered that the earliest enemies with whom Muhammadanism had to fight for its very existence were non-Muhammadans desirous of suppressing a hated religion. It was only natural that when reference was made to a “jihad in the path of God” the word should have come to mean a fight in the cause of religion, and that, finally, when the words “in the path of God” were dropped in ordinary conversation, or writing, it should assume the meaning of a “religious war”, which it has kept to the present day.

Various forms of jihad

The other forms of jihad continue the general meaning of the original form as modified by the super-added value of the derived form. Thus, to the labourer it becomes in the fourth form the entering upon land, such as is termed “jihad, a desert, a plain”, or “open, barren country,” whilst in dealing with affairs that form adds “the necessity of prudence, precaution, and sound judgement.” The physical result of this is the old man’s hoariness and the appearance of white hair in the dark beard, but exertions steadfastly prosecuted have the effect of both concrete and abstract difficulties being removed, and, therefore, ajhad means that “the earth, the road, or the truth become open to him who takes trouble,” and finally ajhad means that “the matter in hand becomes within one’s reach.”

We now, passing over the sixth form as being very much the same in meaning as the first, approach the eighth, which has had such an importance in the theological government of the Shi‘ah community in which the mujtahids are the scholastic witnesses, commentators, and guides of the faith, whose words, whether it be at Lahore, at Lucknow, or at Tehran, the faithful of the Shi‘ah sect find it impossible to resist. Indeed, the Shah’s government is an absolute government tempered by the advice or resistance of the Mujtahid-Ijtihad. Mujtahid as a conventional term means “a lawyer exerting the faculty of the mind to the utmost for the purpose of forming a right opinion in a case of law respecting a doubtful and difficult point by means of reasoning and comparison,” and, similarly, ijtihad means “the referring a case proposed to the judge respecting a doubtful and difficult point from the method of analogy to the Koran and the Sunnah.” If ever a Mussulman rising were to become formidable among Shi‘ahs, the influence of the mujtahids would have to be conciliated.

The simple noun, jahd, therefore, obviously means power, ability, labour, effort, a stringent oath, or else the difficulty, affliction, or fatigue with which the above-named qualities have to contend. Physiologically, of course, disease is jahd. The trouble of a large family combined with poverty, or the difficulty of a poor man in paying exorbitant taxes, are all jahd. Applied to land, jihad has already been explained to be the land, in which there is herbage, or level and rugged land, sterile and ungrateful, though it is also applied to land of which the herbage is much eaten by cattle in the form jahid. Mujhid, if referred to a friend, shows that he is a sincere and careful adviser; if applied to oneself, denotes an embarrassed condition, and if to one’s beast, one that is weak by reason of fatigue. The passive participle of jahd similarly refers to the distressed condition of affairs, of disease, of dearth, or drought; but we think we have said enough to prove that none of the meanings in any of the forms necessarily implies the fighting of a man because he is of a different religion, or the opposition to a non-Muhammadan government, and that it even does not go so far as the word crusade, as animating a community in an attempt to oust the unbeliever from foreign land in order to obtain the guardianship of the Holy Sepulchre, or to simply wrest land from the Muhammadans for the glory of a most Christian king.

(Jihad, to summarise the ordinary meanings as given by Arabic lexicographers, is simply as follows:

• Jahd — to exert oneself, endure fatigue, to become emaciated from disease, to examine, to extract butter from milk, to wish for food, to live in straitened circumstances.
• Jihadat — the hard ground which has no vegetation.
• Jihad — war with an enemy.
• Ijhad — the increase of white hair, the unfolding of truth, exertion, and (in special applications) to divide and to waste property.)

The Holy Prophet’s perception of holy war

When some people applied to Muhammad for permission to join in a holy war against those who were oppressing Muhammadans, he replied to them, “Your true jihad is in endeavouring to serve your parents.” The Koran, when using the word jihad, seems preferentially to use it for war with sin: Whoever wages jihad in morality We will show him the true way. Elsewhere (25:52), the Koran exhorts us to fight infidels with the “great jihad”, the sword of the spirit and the arguments of the Muhammadan Bible. In the traditions regarding the sayings and doings of the Prophet, a band of holy warriors is returning cheerfully from a victorious war with infidels to the peace of their homes and the tranquil observation of their faith. In passing the Prophet, they exclaim: “We have returned from the small jihad, the war with the aggressors on the Muhammadan faith, to the great jihad, the war with sin.” Christians should similarly, as representatives of the Church of Universal Brotherhood, which yet is called the Church Militant, and which has as often wielded the secular sword as it has that of the spirit, act on the words alike of St John and of the ancient Arabic proverb: “Take what is pure and leave what is impure,” even from religious opponents. Fas est et ab hoste docere, and although we are in a world in which, as another Arab proverb has it, “one attar (originally a seller of the ‘atar or otto — essence of roses) is of little use in an age of corruption,” we may yet hope that some reader may address himself to the important subject of jihad without the preconceptions which have hitherto prevented its investigation.

No compulsion in religion

The principal references in the Koran relating to religious war are found in the following chapters:

No violence is to be used in religious matters, although the popular impression is that this is the very essence of Muhammadanism. The second chapter of the Koran distinctly lays down, Let there be no violence in religion (2:256). This passage was particularly directed to some of Muhammad’s first proselytes, who, having sons who had been brought up in idolatry or Judaism, wished to compel them to embrace Muhammadanism. Indeed, even when the mothers of non-Muhammadan children wanted to take them away from their believing relatives, Muhammad prevented every attempt to retain them. The second chapter similarly says, Surely those who believe (viz. Muhammadans) and those who Judaise, and Christians and Sabaeans, whoever believeth in God, in the last day, and doeth that which is right, they shall have their reward of their Lord (2:62). These words are repeated in the fifth chapter, and, no doubt, several Muhammadan doctors consider it to be the doctrine of their prophet that every man may be saved in his own religion, provided he be sincere and lead a good life. However, under the pressure of the followers of Muhammad, this latitude was curtailed and was explained to mean “if he became a Moslem,” though this explanation is manifestly a faulty one, because if an idolater became a Moslem, he would be equally saved, and so there would be no difference between him and an Ahl-e Kitab (possessor of a sacred book) namely, a Christian or a Jew.

In Acts x. 35, the Apostle Peter similarly states that “in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him,” and yet we do not infer from this that any religion is sufficient to save without faith in Christ. The fact is that there is an essential difference between the chapters delivered at Mecca and those delivered at Medina. In the first case, we have the utterances of one who, as a true prophet, calls people to repentance and to a godly life apart from worldly considerations. In the chapters, however, given at Medina, we necessarily find these worldly considerations paramount, Muhammadanism struggling for its very existence, and being confronted, not only with the necessity of legislation among its own followers, but also with the organisation of war, and with the circumstances that give rise to it or the results that follow from it; so that it is obvious that instructions given to warriors or in a code of legislation must differ from appeals to salvation. It is only in bearing in mind the circumstances under which each particular instruction was given that we can come to a right conclusion as to whether war with infidels, as such, is legitimate or not.

We have no hesitation in stating that an unbiased study of the Muhammadan scriptures will lead one to the conclusion that all those who believe in God and act righteously will be saved. Indeed, the ground is cut off from under the feet of those people who maintain that jihad is intended to propagate the Muhammadan religion by means of the sword. It is, on the country, distinctly laid down in the chapter called The Pilgrimage, that the object of jihad is to protect mosques, churches, synagogues, and monasteries from destruction (22:40), and we have yet to learn the name of the Christian crusader whose object it was to protect mosques or synagogues. Of course, when the Arabs were driven from Spain, to which they had brought their industry and learning, by Ferdinand and Isabella, and were driven into opposition to Christians, the modern meaning of jihad as hostility to Christianity was naturally accentuated. Indeed, jihad is so essentially an effort for the protection of Muhammadanism against assault, that the Muhammadan generals were distinctly commanded not to attack any place in which the Muhammadan call to prayer could be performed or in which a single Muhammadan could live unmolested as a witness to the faith.

Permission to fight against aggression

Fighting for religion is, indeed, encouraged in the second chapter, which was given under circumstances of great provocation, but even in that it is distinctly laid down: And fight for the religion of God against those that fight against you, but transgress not by attacking them first, for God loveth not the transgressors; kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out of that whereof they have dispossessed you, for temptation to idolatry is more grievous than slaughter; yet fight not against them in the holy temple until they attack you therein, and if they attack you, slay them, but if they desist, God is gracious and merciful; fight therefore against them until there be no temptation to idolatry and the religion be God’s, but if they desist, then let there be no hostility except against the ungodly (2:190-193). In other words, fight sin but not the sinner in times of peace. Again, in the third chapter, when the Lord of Hosts is invoked as being more powerful than all the confronting armies of enemies, when the Koreish endeavoured to induce the Muhammadans to return to their old idolatry as they fled in the battle of Ohud, the encouragement to fight given in that chapter has, of course, only special application: How many prophets have encountered foes who had myriad troops, and yet they desponded not in their mind for what had befallen them in fighting for the religion of God, and were not weakened (in their belief), neither behaved themselves in an abject manner … (3:145). God gave them the reward of this world and a glorious reward in the life to come (3:147). And again, We will surely cast a dread into the hearts of the unbelievers (3:150), in allusion to the Koreish repenting that they had not utterly extirpated the Muhammadans, and to their beginning to think of going back to Medina for that purpose, but being prevented by a sudden panic which fell from God.

Again, in the fourth chapter, Fight therefore for the religion of God, and oblige not any one to do what is difficult except thyself. This is in allusion to the Muhammadans refusing to follow their prophet to the lesser expedition of Bedr so that he was obliged to set out with no more than seventy men. In other words, the Prophet only was under the obligation of obeying God’s commands, however difficult. However, excite the faithful to war, perhaps God will restrain the courage of the unbelievers, for God is stronger than they and more able to punish. He who intercedeth between men with a good intercession shall have a portion thereof (4:84-85). And further on, When you are saluted with a salutation, salute the person with a better salutation (4:86). In other words, when the purely Muhammadan salutation of Salam aleikum is given by a Muhammadan, the reply should be the same with the addition, “and the mercy of God and His blessing.” Again, in the eight chapter, All true believers! When you meet the unbelievers marching in great numbers against you, turn not your backs on to them, for whoso shall turn his back on to them in that day, unless he turn aside to fight or retreateth to another party of the faithful, shall draw on himself the indignation of God (8:15-16). The fact was that on the occasion when the injunction was given, Muhammadans could not avoid fighting, and there was, therefore, a necessity for a special strong appeal; but jihad, even when explained as a righteous effort of waging war in self-defence against the grossest outrage on one’s religion, is strictly limited in the passage to which we have already alluded and which we now quote in extenso from the chapter entitled Al Hajj (The Pilgrimage):

Permission is granted unto those who take arms against the unbelievers, because they have been unjustly persecuted by them and have been turned out of their habitations injuriously and for no other reason than because they say: our Lord is God. And if God did not repel the violence of some men by others, verily monasteries and churches and synagogues and mosques, wherein the name of God is frequently commemorated, would be utterly demolished (22:39–40).