Major or Greater jihad (al-jihad al-akbar)

The second sense of jihad “is a struggle against the interior passions and notably against the instigator of the pain who is Satan. However this struggle is a lot more important than the first because it is of religious order.”⁶⁰⁰ This definition is sustained by a large of spiritual authors, Sunnites ⁶⁰¹ and Chi‟ites. ⁶⁰² It would be perfectly anachronistic to continue to think of the jihad in terms of violence whereas Muslim tradition developed a whole teaching insistent in the same way on struggle against bad passions. The believer must lead a bigger fight again than the minor Jihad, against his own inclinations to the evil, which is the major jihad. The modern circumstances and the cultural universe incline the believer to develop the major jihad. In it, the believer is located at the very heart of the message and the Qur'anic revelation.⁶⁰³ Weber and Reymond assert that if Islam grants so much importance to the concept of jihad, it is that on the one hand the prophet Muhammad practiced it and on the other hand, jihad takes root strongly in the Qur‟anic revelation itself.”⁶⁰⁴

If Muhammad used the major jihad, it is necessary to understand that as the leader of a new group, he had to organize a newborn community and solve the multiple problems which arose on political, economic and especially on religious level. That is why, the prophet is henceforth not only a chief of this newborn community, but he is also the political chief of the temporal entity of which it was necessary to organize the good working.⁶⁰⁵ For it, it was necessary to reinforce the too shy members and to threaten those who risked breaking the unit of the group. ⁶⁰⁶ Today the word jihad is not only misunderstood by Christians but also by many Muslims. For example

“Muslim fundamentalists has declared jihad not only on Christians and Jew but on non-fundamentalist Muslims as well.”⁶⁰⁷

600 Ibid.

601 Les sunnites constituent la majorité des musulmans, ils se conçoivent comme les représentants de l‟orthodoxie musulmane en matière de foi. (A.T. Khoury, Ibid, p. 331). Tandis que les chi‟ites viennent au deuxième rang des groupes musulmans par la taille.(A. T. Khoury, Ibid, p. 73).

602 Encyclopaedia Universalis, Ed. Encyclopaedia Universalis, Paris, A-Friedländer, 1985, p. 880.

603 A. Hampaté Ba, Colloque sur les religions, Abidjan, avril 1961, Ed. Présence Africaine, Paris, 1962, p. 161.

604 E. Weber et G. Reymond, Ibid., p. 51.

605 Ibid, p. 53.

606 Ibid, p. 54.

607 Elise Boulding, Ibid, p.20.

Most often, people retain the minor jihad instead of the major jihad which concerns the personal effort to fight against the conscience of oneself. It is important to realize that:

The Qur‟anic revelation invite believers to make war and to kill, but, it is necessary to specify the contexts and the circumstances which motivated these verses, because isolated they can appear a shocking violence. It is the duty of commentators to restore the Qur‟anic verses in order to not divert them from their real sense.⁶⁰⁸

As it is indicated, the jihad should not have any link with the war because “it designates the immense effort that a Muslim must provide against the adversity to survive and to affirm its rules of life facing to the polytheists, in a hostile environment, he must to maintain his faith and his serenity.” ⁶⁰⁹ Through the definition, we notice that jihad has already lost its original sense since it has become a way of adjusting some accounts between country brothers.⁶¹⁰ This is valid for the Christian fundamentalists who take biblical verses without taking into in account the temporal dimension and the circumstances in which they have been written.⁶¹¹ The believer whoever is Christian or Muslim “must hold in account of the historic dimension as well as the socio-politic conditions that surrounds such verse.”⁶¹² For example the Qur‟anic Surah Al Baqarah 2: 190-193 says:

Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors. And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.⁶¹³

Another verse which can lead to confusion if it is not well interpreted is the Surah 9: 5, which again makes reference to violence: “And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the

608 E. Weber et G. Reymond, Ibid, p. 64.

609 M.S. al-ashmawy, Ibid., p. 94.

610 E. Weber et G. Reynaud, Ibid, p. 314.

611 Ibid, p. 63.

612 Ibid, p .66.

613 <https://quran.com/2/190-193>, 16th August 2016.

polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush.”⁶¹⁴

These violent Qur‟anic verses remind that the violent situation is not particular to the Islamic revelation, but it is also present in Christianity within the Bible. Two references among many are Jos. 6: 17 and in 1 Sam. 15: 3 where it is written: “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children, and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys”⁶¹⁵ With these verses it would be for example, catastrophic to apply them “to a modern situation without varying, without analyzing the context in which they have been written, without knowing to that addresses really such or such verse, and could drive to the biggest diversion of the original qur‟anic or biblical thought.”⁶¹⁶ The term jihad causes confusion because a non-Muslim cannot assert that jihad is not a means of violence as warfare. And a

Muslim cannot dismiss jihad as warfare.⁶¹⁷ But as we have seen, a greater jihad is the struggle against oneself. “For the prophet Muhammad the best jihad is a word of justice to a tyrannical ruler.”⁶¹⁸ As matter of fact, he used armed jihad, defensively but also offensively.

Muslim jurists explained that there are four kinds of jihad fi sabilillah, struggle in the cause of God:⁶¹⁹

- Jihad of the heart, jihad bil qalb/nafs, is concerned with combatting the devil and in the attempt to escape his persuasion to evil. This type of Jihad was regarded as the greater jihad, al-jihad al-akbar.

614 The Quranic Arabic corpus, <http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=9&verse=5>, 16th August 2016.

615 New International Version Bible, <http://www.blbclassic.org/Bible.cfm?b=1Sa&c=15&t=NIV>, 16th August 2016.

616 E. Weber et G.Reynaud, Ibid, p. 63.

617 Douglas E. Streusand, What does Jihad mean, <http://www.meforum.org/357/what-does-jihad-mean>, 09th November 2012.

618 Reuven Firestone, Ibid,

p.17, quoted Dawud Sunnah Abi Dawud, Cairo, 1408/1988.

619 The Counter Jihad Report, <http://counterjihadreport.com/tag/four-kinds-of-jihad/>, 08th April 2016

- Jihad by the tongue, jihad bil lisan, is concerned with speaking the truth and spreading the word of Islam with one's tongue.

- Jihad by the hand, jihad bil yad, refers to choosing to do what is right and to combat injustice and what is wrong with action.

- Jihad by the sword, jihad bis saif, refers to qital fi sabilillah, armed fighting in the way of God, or holy war, the most common usage by „Salafi Muslims‟⁶²⁰ and offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood.⁶²¹

620 The Salafi movement or Wahhabi movement is a movement or sect within Islam that takes its name from the term salaf, predecessors, ancestors. Their beliefs are pure Islam as practiced by the first three generation of Muslims. They are also called Al-Salaf Al-Salih “the righteous processors” Salafists are literalist, strict, and majority of come from Saudi Arabia, UEA, Qatar… See Magnus Ranstorp, Understanding Violent

Radicalization, Routldge, NY, 2010, p.193.

621 The Counter Jihad Report, <http://counterjihadreport.com/tag/four-kinds-of-jihad/>, 08th April 2016