Posted on 04/02/2009 10:21:27 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Abd el-Kader put greater jihad first. Muslims and non-Muslims alike should emulate his lifelong jihad for personal righteousness and control over destructive passions.
Jihad. The word inspires fear in Western minds. Jihad means extremist Muslims blowing themselves up in crowded markets in order to kill as many infidels as possible. Jihad means attacks like 9/11, USS Cole, Madrid, London, Beirut, and so many more. Jihad means grainy videos of masked men beheading journalists followed by even grainier videos of bearded men in dirty white robes reading demands and calling America the devil. Jihad cannot possibly be something good, right? Wrong.
Do not let the extremists fool you. What they are doing has very little connection with right Islam or true jihad. First and foremost, greater jihad is about a personal and life-long struggle for righteousness and to become a worthy servant of God (Jihad an-nafs: Jihad against oneself). Only a distant second to this idea of personal struggle is the lesser jihad of waging war to defend the faith (Jihad bil-sayf: Jihad by the sword). In cases where this physical defense becomes necessary, the Qur'an lays out very clear rules about how to engage in warfare. No harming of innocents, women, children, or the elderly. No mistreatment of prisoners. Not even the use of fire to destroy nature. In short, a very intentional, limited warfare. True jihad must be conducted in a godly manner.
Islamic scholars the world over have condemned the violent, extremist acts committed in the name of Islam, yet the negative connotation of "jihad" will not go away.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.washingtonpost.com ...
Marked.
do these people actually believe this garbage...sorry i refuse to live in a 9/10 fairyland world...
Really? They've been awfully quiet about it. He says it, as if he means it, but you could have fooled me. I haven't seen any evidence of anything other than imams screaming for blood, and madrassahs cburning out new cannon fodder for the jihad. No one in the muslim world condemns them publicly, or rather, the numbers who do you can count on one hand.
Now, that doesn't mean that there are no muslims on our side, on the contrary, there are many who fight at our side in Iraq, and in Afghanistan. But the "islamic scholars" are mute with rare and I mean rare exception.
jihad is about a personal and life-long struggle for righteousness
Well, good for them. They aren't the ones we're fighting. We're fighting against the other kind of jihadist, and they know who they are.
“... yet the negative connotation of jihad will not go away.”
Wonder why? From another thread:
A 13-year old boy was murdered yesterday and a seven-year old boy lightly injured when an ax-wielding terrorist attacked them in the settlement of Bat Ayin in Gush Etzion yesterday.
A local man fought the terrorist and managed to pry the ax away from him, but the assailant managed to escape.
The murdered youth, Shlomo Nativ, was laid to rest at the regional cemetery of Gush Etzion, not far from Kfar Etzion. The funeral procession, attended by hundreds of people, was relatively quiet.
“We are all like one big family here,” Avi, a friend said. “We are all in shock and mourning.”
The injured boy, Yair Gamliel, is the son of Ofer Gamliel, who is serving a prison sentence for his role in the Jewish Underground.
“Someone jumped behind me and hit me hard on the head,” was how his mother Michal described Yair recalling the attack. “I fell on the ground and I saw the Arab chasing the other boy.”
There’s your “jihad” right there: some benighted, ignorant, homicidal thug sneaks up on women and children. There’s your “jihad.”
- the first glance interpretation makes more sense.
“Islamic scholars the world over have condemned the violent, extremist acts committed in the name of Islam”
O RLY?
Which “Islamic Scholars”, and why can’t any other article author find these “scholarly” writings?
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