The Struggle - Misconceptions of Islam
The very sound of the word jihad to the western ear connotes an idea of fervent, sadistic hatred towards the non-Muslim world by the Muslim world. An idea that evokes images of violent, suicidal terrorists perpetrating some of the most heinous acts against humanity. Acts whose devastating repercussions have been perennially imprinted onto our memories. We recall the feelings of utter disbelief when we turned on the news or opened the paper that morning of September 11, 2001. The fear, the sadness, the emptiness, and the vengefulness that we felt while watching such an overwhelmingly disconcerting, unfamiliar act of terror being committed against a monumental symbol of our nation and so many innocent lives. The effects of which reached countless numbers of people; those who made it out alive, those who witnessed from afar, residents of Manhattan, family and friends of the victims, citizens of America, and the world at large. The residual anger still imminent after all these years, and only perpetuated by the more recent actions of extremist groups like ISIS, is entirely justifiable but unfortunately, much of the time, largely misdirected. I have witnessed, on numerous occasions, Americans making disparaging and bigoted remarks against Muslims under the common misconception that terrorism, jihad and Islam are causally related. This is just not the case. People who believe that Islam has an intrinsically violent nature, that jihad cultivates terrorism, and that Muslims are inherently evil are formulating these grandiose beliefs from plain ignorance and misdirection. Islam is not a hateful religion, it is peaceful. Jihad is not a call to violence, but a sanction to defend the good. Muslims are not murderous savages; they are very much like us. People generally have a sufficient understanding of their own culture and religion but often have misguided or false preconceptions about other cultures and religions. It does not help the case when prejudice is involved, as this exacerbates the misapprehension and compounds the problem. It is imperative that people seek to conscientiously acquire truth. The sources responsible for informing and educating the public on all things novel, foreign or unfamiliar must do so meticulously. As important a job as news outlets and journalists have, some exhibit a proclivity to want to be the first to break the story instead of having the most accurate story. Others may be politically motivated and inclined to present the story in a certain light that aligns with their agenda. In addition, the general public has the tendency to unquestioningly believe what our news publications tell us. The point here is that things do not always turn out to be how we presume them to be, and despite ostensible good intentions, we are not always given the full picture by the people we entrust with informing us. Therefore, we should not be reluctant to revise our understanding of things when better knowledge presents itself to us. It seems that after 9/11 happened, many of us prematurely painted a picture of what words like Islam, Muslim and jihad mean to us while having unsubstantial information to accurately do so. In an effort to elucidate the truth and gain a better understanding of the notion of jihad, let us take a closer look at its origins.
The term jihad is literally defined as “a struggle”. This struggle sometimes refers to the external struggles faced by Muslims, such as tyranny or unjust warfare, but more often it refers to the internal struggle faced by the individual Muslim, such as conflicting beliefs and temptations. “While Muslims use the term lesser jihad to refer to what Christians call a ‘just war,’ the term greater jihad refers to the psychological war we wage within ourselves to establish the kingdom of God in our behavior and to build a lifestyle that reflects God’s commandments, both in our individual life and in our collective communal lives. Jihad is about building what Western philosophers would call the good society.” (Rauf 135). Outsiders often misunderstand the notion of lesser jihad to be an exhortation by God for Muslims to wage war against non-Muslims, but this is not the case. Take the following Quranic verse as an example of the type of defensive retaliation permitted by God to Muslims. “Permission is given to those against whom war is wrongfully waged, and have been oppressed—and God is indeed able to aid them—those who have been unjustly expelled from their homes for no other cause than they say “our Lord is God.” And had God not repelled some people by others, it is certain that cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques, in which God’s name is much extolled, would have been destroyed.” (Quran 22:39-40). Clearly there is no authorization in this passage for unprovoked violence or antagonistic action. It simply sanctions defensive and protective measures to those being treated unfairly. Does that sound evil? Furthermore, this passage alludes to Islam’s acceptance of the other contemporaneous religions of its time, Judaism and Christianity, wherein their synagogues and churches were saved from destruction thanks to God’s intervention. In fact, Jews and Christians were able to peacefully coexist with Muslims in the early days after Muhammad. Despite conflicts arising intermittently in the early times of Islam, Jews and Christians were considered dhimmi, or “People of the Book”, and were protected under Islamic law. The truth is that Judaism, Christianity and Islam all share the same God, albeit with a varying degree of distinctions. Here is another verse from the Quran confirming the non-offensive nature condoned by God: “Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you. But do not transgress limits: For, verily, Allah loves not aggressors.” (Quran 2:190). While history has been riddled with ages of war and territorial expansion wherein the expression of lesser jihad had more context, more universally sacred to the individual Muslim is the expression of greater jihad. “There is no church organization in Sunni Islam, no priests controlling the sacerdotal meditation by which salvation may be attained. Rather, Islam is achieved by attempting to live the pure Muslim life in the exterior material world. This requires a constant ‘struggle in the way of Allah’, involving all the believer’s assets. His body is to be well maintained, his physical energies are to be directed toward the external obligations of the faith, from daily prayers to the jah, to the support of his family and the poor. His goods are to be used for the same purposes, while his spirit is to fight against temptation and strive for the ideals of Islam that have already been enumerated, from compassion to moderation. This incessant personal struggle for goodness is the true meaning of the word jihad.” (Grieve 265). Unlike the conventional religions that Americans are more familiar with, there are no archetypal spiritual teachers or weekly mosque services within Islam. Instead, the onus is on the individual Muslim to maintain devotional practices, interpret the Quran, and apply it to their life. For the Muslim, Islam is a perpetual internal struggle, a jihad, to singlehandedly overcome the temptations and difficulties of daily life without the luxury of a spiritual guide or congregation of cohorts to aid them along, while simultaneously pursuing a peaceful and just life, glorifying God.
Historical context is often ignorantly or intentionally omitted from arguments against jihad. It is important when dealing with the hostile claims brought against Islam by flagrantly misinformed western criticism, that we compare some of the examples of warfare and violence found in the Quran, often cited by critics, against the counterexamples found in the Bible, to gain a better frame of reference. “Judeo-Christian mythology is rooted in the rewards promised by God to the Hebrews for their entirely unprovoked attacks against the Canaanites and the Philistines. Nothing in the Qur’an can match Yahweh’s bloodthirsty authorization to the Jews in the Book of Deuteronomy for the violent occupation of Palestine.” (Grieve 264). To understand the degree of hypocrisy found in much of the Christian criticism of Islam, here are several excerpts from the Old Testament demonstrating the violence permitted and sometimes perpetrated by God. “Unhappy with the wickedness of man, God killed every living thing on the planet except Noah’s family. Men, women, infants and animals drowned in unimaginable terror and agony.” (Genesis 6 & 7). “God killed the first-born in every Egyptian home that wasn’t marked with lamb’s blood.” (Exodus 12:29). “Under God’s leaderships, the Israelites utterly destroyed the men, women and children of Sihon.” (Deuteronomy 2:33-34). “According to God’s law, if an Israelite soldier was at war with an enemy, and he saw a beautiful woman that he found attractive, he could capture her to be his wife. She must then shave her head, trim her nails and discard the clothing she was wearing when captured. She could mourn her father and mother for a month. If the soldier wasn’t pleased with her for any reason, he could let her go wherever she wishes.” (Deuteronomy 28:53). “God sent a plague on Israel to punish David for sin. 70,000 people died.” (2 Samuel 24:15). While these verses conclusively reveal how diabolical and violent the God of the Old Testament can be, their purpose here serves to indicate that adherents of religions in contemporary times do not generally interpret scripture in the context of the age it was written in. All too often throughout history, however, religious and irreligious communities alike have made vast over-generalizations of religions and cultures which seem foreign to them. “The deep-rooted stereotype of Islam as a warrior religion has its origins in the papal propaganda of the Crusades, when Muslims were depicted as the soldiers of the Antichrist in blasphemous occupation of the Holy Lands (and, far more importantly, of the silk route to China).” (Aslan 106). These classical means of rhetoric and propaganda are a testament to the times in which they were promulgated. It is crucial to understand that the holy books of today’s religions were written in times of war and territorial expansion and consequently incorporate a preponderance of language and narrative related to such times.
Since we have established that the normative meaning and expression behind the notion of jihad is not evil or pernicious, but rather just and innocuous, we must now examine the origin of the misconceptions of jihad. Misinterpretation is a fault of those of us who have made assumptions or drawn conclusions, based in ignorance, prematurely. Reinterpretation, however, is an egregious fault of extremism. Extremist groups do not just misapprehend what the Quran says, they knowingly reinterpret the meaning of the Quran to reinforce their agenda and fuel their hatred. Take, for instance, the idea of suicide bombing among terrorism and the notion that it leads to paradise for the perpetrator. Let us see how the Quran and Muslim world view this. “While we have seen that jihad, a just, defensive war, is sanctioned under Islamic law, suicide no matter to what end is expressly forbidden. The strongest prohibitions are in the Hadith, where the Prophet made explicit statements such as ‘Whosoever shall kill himself shall suffer in the fire of hell’ and ‘shall be excluded from heaven forever.’ It is also related that the Prophet refused the funeral rites to a person who committed suicide. A particularly poignant story is given by the Prophet describing an occupant of hell. This was a man who fought on the Prophet’s side, was wounded in battle, and, unable to stand the pain of his injury, fell on his sword. The Prophet remarks in a version of this Hadith that ‘a man may appear to people as performing the acts of an inhabitant of Paradise while he is [in the Hereafter] an occupant of Hell, and a man may appear to people as performing the acts of an inhabitant of Hell while he is an occupant of Paradise.” (Rauf 139). We can see from this that there really is no way to genuinely misinterpret God or the Prophet Muhammad’s stance on suicide. It would take the efforts of a severely psychologically dismantled person or group of people to reinterpret this in a way that reconciles, even promotes, concomitantly killing oneself and others for the reward of an eternity in paradise. To further unravel the logic of extremist groups, the lives being taken in acts of terrorism are innocent lives. They are not warriors waging wrongful war or tyrannical oppressors. The Quran states that, “God desires to be merciful to you, to make light of your burdens, for man is created weak. Do not kill yourselves; certainly God is ever merciful to you. And whoever commits this aggressively and unjustly, We shall cast him into the Fire; and this is easy for God.” (Quran 4:27-30). We can surmise that one of the prominent reasons why Muslim extremists have such a significant control over the global impression of Islam is due to the implementation of violence to promulgate fear. Since the actions of Islamic extremists reach such a wide and otherwise oblivious audience, many people get their first impression of Islam from these extremist groups and therefore formulate misconceptions and over-generalizations.
Over the course of this paper we have taken into consideration the many facets of Islamic life. We have looked at the origins of words like jihad and concluded that our presumptions, in many cases, turned out to be false. Jihad is not a call to violence, murder or war. It is not an authorization from God to attack innocent people. Jihad is a struggle. This struggle, in historical context, often meant an external struggle against violent oppressors or wrongfully waged wars. In this case, it would be a lesser jihad, or a “just war”. In the more common expression of jihad, it is an internal struggle, a psychological struggle with the self, with the ego, and with temptation. This extends to encompass a Muslim’s entire life as he or she presses on to overcome hardships and pursue a life worthy of Allah’s glory. This is the greater jihad. We unearthed many western misconceptions of Islam and took a rational look at how these misconceptions are arrived at and why we must put them to sleep once and for all. We compared scriptural references between the Quran and the Bible to develop a sober understanding of how unfairly we subject the Quran to scrutiny and criticism when ignoring the same brutalities found in the Bible. Lastly, we clarified the difference between Islam and Islamic extremism by bringing to light the reprehensible misinterpretations of the Quran committed by extremist groups in order to propagate fear and further their retrogressive and pernicious views. In order to extinguish extremism and inhibit further misguided and inimical conceptions of Islam, we must aspire to cultivate an atmosphere that is conducive to honest and informative discourse in an effort to properly educate people and spread understanding.
