Jihad

The term jihadi was not always commonly recognized in the United States. It was not until the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that the word jihad became widely known. Since the terrorist attacks, the media and the U.S. government have used the word jihad to invoke frightening images of non-Americans coming to destroy American freedoms and to define Islam. Today, scholars have begun to try to define this complex word and its multitude of meanings. When viewers tune into the news, it is sometimes difficult to unravel the layers of information that is being fed to them by the media and the U.S. government. In its most literal form, the term “jihad is an Arabic term meaning, as a noun, ‘struggle’ or, as a verb, ‘to exert effort’ toward a goal” (International Ency 1). However, in Mary Pat Fisher’s book Living Religions the chapter on Islam discusses how the definition of the term jihad is “commonly mistranslated as ‘holy war’ (Fisher 148). While the media frequently portrays jihad consistent with the idea of “struggle,” the media almost always flips the definition on its head by suggesting that this struggle is a malicious struggle between two groups of peoples, each of whom believes that righteousness, and in many cases God, is on their side and evil is on the other side. Suggesting that jihad and violence are in connection with each other has been the case since pre-modern times. In fact, Fisher suggests that the primary associations of the word jihad are religious, specifically with reference the Prophet Mohammad and to the religion of Islam, but also invoke a sense of violence or resistance against an opposing force. While violence and jihad have typically been spoken about together, as of late, the...

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...years there has been a lot of nonsense written on the subject of jihad, both by Muslims who have intentionally sought to uphold a specific type of definition of jihad and by academics who are seeking to define Islam and Islamism. The term jihad is said to have derived from the Arabic verbal root jahada, which means to “strive,” to “struggle,” or to “exert oneself,” especially in the path of God. While is it that the the Qur’an makes a distinction between the Greater Jihad, that is a struggle against unbelievers, and the Lesser Jihad, a struggle against ----, many would argue that there are also several distinct categories of jihad that take these definitions a step further. While there are multiple meanings for the word jihad, the fact remains that in all definitions, the term normally refers to an armed struggle against an opposing force. In any event, despite