Replies

Chiesa's Sandro Magister summed up the portion of the letter regarding Jihad as follows. (Link to the full text available at the bottom of the article.)

The fourth point is holy war. The 38 signatories of the letter recall that the word “jihad” properly means “struggle in the way of God,” which is not necessarily war. Even Christ used violence when he chased the merchants from the temple. They sum up in this way Islam’s three “authoritative and traditional” rules on war:

– civilians are not approved targets;
– religious creed alone cannot make a person the object of an attack;
– Muslims can and must live peacefully beside their neighbors, although the legitimacy of self-defense and the maintenance of sovereignty remain valid principles.

So if some Muslims – they write – have ignored such well-established teaching on the limits of war, preferring to this “utopian dreams where the end justifies the means, they have done so of their own accord and without the sanction of God, His Prophet, or the learned tradition.”