1. WHAT IS JIHAD? UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS DOES ISLAM SANCTION THE USE OF VIOLENCE? WHAT WOULD YOU TELL SUICIDE BOMBERS WHO INVOKE ISLAM TO JUSTIFY THEIR ACTIONS?

In the name of God, the Compassionate and Merciful

Jihad is an Arabic word meaning ‘struggle’ or ‘effort’. In religious teaching, it denotes any struggle against the lower, selfish tendencies of the ego. One dimension of this may be to struggle against one’s own selfishness and cowardice in order to defend one’s people. One form of this was indicated by the Blessed Prophet when he said: ‘the best form of jihad is to speak a true word to a tyrannical ruler’. In doing so one risks one’s life, but is serving the weak and the oppressed; the Prophet therefore describes it as a form of jihad.

While non-retaliation against a personal injury is frequently a virtue (see the Holy Qur'an, chapter 41 verse 34), Islam believes that human communities have the right to collective self-defense, since non-resistance to aggression would result in a world dominated by tyrants (see Holy Qur’an, 22:40). Under some circumstances, Muslim scholars will allow oppressed peoples to rebel against their oppressors. They might, therefore, classify the American War of Independence as a form of jihad, broadly understood. When Bosnia was faced with ethnic cleansing in 1992, the Muslim authorities there authorized the use of force to defend the country’s Muslim minority. The alternative would have been mass murder and mass rape, and therefore jihad was lawful. Furthermore, some Muslim scholars will permit a non-defensive ‘idealist’ war to establish justice and freedom in a neighboring country. This is analogous, perhaps, to the decision of the United Kingdom to declare war on Germany on September 3, 1939, in response to the German invasion of Poland. There are more recent analogies as well, including very recent instances in which Western powers have used force to overthrow tyrants such as Saddam Hussein.

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