What Is Jihad?
Philadelphia
hat does the Arabic word
"jihad" mean?
One answer came last
week, when Saddam
Hussein had his Islamic leaders appeal
to Muslims worldwide to join his .
jihad to defeat the "wicked Americans"
should they attack Iraq; then he him-
self threatened the United States with
jihad.
.
As this suggests, jihad is "holy war."
Or, more precisely: It means the legal,
compulsory, communal effort to
expand the territories ruled by
Muslims at the expense of territories
ruled by non-Muslims.
The purpose of jihad, in other
words, is not directly to spread the
Islamic faith but to extend sovereign
Muslim power (faith, of course, often
follows the flag). Jihad is thus
unabashedly offensive in nature, with
the eventual goal of achieving Muslim
dominion over the entire globe.
Jihad did have two variant meanings
through the centuries, one more radi-
cal and one less so. The first holds that
Muslims who interpret their faith dif-
ferently are infidels and therefore legiti-
mate targets of jihad (which explains
why Algerians, Egyptians and Afghans
have found themselves, like Americans
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle
East Forum and author of Militant
Islam Reaches America. • His e-mail
address is Pipes@MEForum.org
other three boys were murdered by the
terrorists.
Badge Of Courage
Now, I don't know if I can explain this
to you, those of you who have never
been in a terrorist attack. Faced with
such harm, every single fiber of your
being screams to open the door and
escape. To think of others in such a
situation is remarkable. To deliberately
lock yourself in with terrorists to save
others is beyond my capacity to
understand. It takes a large soul, and
more courage than is given to any
human being.
These are the people I live amongst:
• Shlomo Harel, who pushed a sui-
cide bomber to the ground when he
and Israelis, so often the victims of
jihadist aggression). The second mean-
ing, associated with mystics, rejects the
legal definition of jihad as armed con-
flict and tells Muslims to withdraw
from the worldly concerns to achieve
spiritual depth.
Jihad in the sense of territorial
expansion has always been a central
aspect of Muslim life. That's how
Muslims came to rule much of the
Arabian Peninsula by the time of the
Prophet Muhammad's death in 632.
It's how, a century later, Muslims had
conquered a region from Afghanistan
to Spain.
Subsequently, jihad spurred and jus-
tified Muslim conquests of such terri-
tories as India, Sudan, Anatolia, and
the Balkans.
At present, jihad is the world's fore-
most source of terrorism, inspiring a
worldwide campaign of violence by
self-proclaimed jihadist organizations:
• The International Islamic Front for
the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders:
Osama bin Laden's group;
• Laskar Jihad: responsible for the
murder of over 10,000 Christians in
Indonesia;
• Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami: a,leading
cause of violence in Kashmir;
• Palestinian Islamic Jihad: the most
vicious anti-Israel terrorist group of
them all;
• Egyptian Islamic Jihad: killed
Anwar El-Sadat in 1981, many others
since; and
and every manifestation of evil
in society" (IbrahimAbu-Rabi,
Hartford Seminary);
• "resisting apartheid or
working for women's rights"
Sudanese Horror
(Farid Eseck, Auburn
But jihad's most ghastly pres-
Seminary); and
ent reality is in Sudan, where
• "being a better student, a
until recently the ruling party
better colleague, a better busi-
DAN IEL
bore the slogan "Jihad, Victory
ness partner.
PIP ES
and Martyrdom." For two
Above all, to control one's
Spe dal
decades, under government
anger"
(Bruce Lawrence, Duke
Comm entary
auspices, jihadists there have
University).
physically attacked non-
It would be wonderful were
Muslims, looted their belongings, and
jihad to evolve into nothing more
killed their males. Jihadists then
aggressive than controlling one's anger,
enslaved tens of thousands of females
but that will not happen simply by
and children, forced them to convert
wishing away a gruesome reality. To
to Islam, sent them on forced marches,
the contrary, the pretense of a benign
beat them, and set them to hard labor.
jihad obstructs serious efforts at self-
The women and older girls also suf-
criticism and reinterpretation.
fered ritual gang rape, genital mutila-
The path away from terrorism, con-
tion, and a life of sexual servitude.
quest, and enslavement lies in Muslims
Sudan's state-sponsored jihad has
forthrightly acknowledging jihad's his-
caused about 2 million deaths and the
toric role, followed by apologies to
displacement of another 4 million —
jihad's victims, developing an Islamic
making it the greatest humanitarian
basis for nonviolent jihad, and (the
catastrophe of our era.
hardest part) actually ceasing to wage
Despite jihad's record as a leading
violent jihad.
source of conflict for 14 centuries,
Unfortunately, such a process of
causing untold human suffering, aca-
redemption is not underway at present
demic and Islamic apologists claim it
and violent jihad will probably contin-
permits only defensive fighting, or
ue until it is crushed by a superior mil-
even that it is entirely non-violent.
itary force — Secretary of Defense
Three American professors of Islamic
Rumsfeld, please take note. Only when
studies colorfully make the latter point, defeated will moderate Muslims finally
calling jihad:
find their voice and truly begin the
• an "effort against evil in the self
hard work of modernizing Islam. ❑
tried to explode himself in a Jerusalem
coffee shop, pinning his arms to the
floor.
• Mikhail Sarkisov, 31, a new immi-
grant from Turkmenistan, living in a
trailer with no bathroom or refrigera-
tor, who as a guard on Tel Aviv's
beachfront Café Tayelet, armed with a
fake pistol, threw himself bodily on a
suicide bomber to prevent him from
detonating, saving dozens of lives.
• Rami Mahmoud Mahameed, 17, a
young Arab Israeli, who asked a sui-
cide bomber waiting at a bus stop for
his cell phone, and calmly called the
police, who prevented the bomber
from boarding a bus, but not from
exploding. Rami was badly injured.
• Eli Federman, who, guarding a Tel
Aviv disco, faced the speeding car of a
suicide bomber beading straight for
him, and for the club — and coolly
fired, blowing up the car before it
could enter.
• Bus driver Baruch Neuman, who
got off the bus to check a passenger
who had fallen trying to board the bus
from the back, only to find he was
wired. He and another passenger held
the bomber's hands down until the
rest of the bus passengers could flee to
safety.
Others who paid for their heroism
with their lives include Yossef Twitto,
head of the response team in Itamar,
who ran to save a family whose home
had been entered by terrorists — ter-
rorists who killed three sisters and
brothers, wounded another two,
before killing Yossef Twitto.
• Yemeni Islamic Jihad:
killed three American doctors
on Monday.
And Mordechai Tomer, 19, who
stopped a car from going into down-
town Jerusalem and was blown up.
And Tamir Matan, who helped stop a
suicide bomber in a gas station from
entering a busy cafeteria. He and two
young soldiers who helped him were
blown up.
This is the face of Israel. These are
the people I live amongst. I live
among them humbly, knowing that in
any place, or time, in a random 10-
minute period, there are heroes cruis-
ing around, ready to give their pre-
cious lives for mine.
This is our human landscape, what
the land of Israel, its values, its educa-
tion, its mothers and fathers, have
produced. This land and its people.
God bless them and keep them.
❑