A word with 'a number of meanings'

After 22 years of widespread discussion in the West, including the pronouncements of 'specialists,' for some important government institutions the term 'jihad' still means nothing for certain.

An event in central London this past weekend raised a topic that I have explored for more than 35 years. I almost laughed to see it pop up again, but actually I consider the topic deadly serious. And the way it came up carries a tinge of sadness.

Outside the Turkish embassy in front of a large orange banner that appealed to ‘Muslim armies!’ on October 21, speakers from the Hizb ut-Tahrir (‘liberation troop’) organization in Britain called for jihad.

So far no surprise. Calls for jihad are likely being heard in the streets of many cities across Europe and North America, and regularly in many western mosques. When witnesses reported this to the London Metropolitan Police (‘LMP’), however, the LMP released a statement about the protest that disputed the meaning of both jihad and ‘Muslim Armies.’ The LMP wrote that ‘we have counter terrorism officers with specialist language skills and subject expertise’ who were unable to find ‘any offences.’

The LMP added further that the term jihad ‘has a number of meanings.’ As for the large banner appeal to ‘Muslim Armies!’ the LMP claimed that ‘there are varying interpretations of what the language on the placards should be interpreted to mean.’

What made me almost laugh is the way in which important government institutions like the Metropolitan Police are still disputing the meaning of jihad after 22 years of rather widespread discussion of the term in the West. What chokes the laugh is the fact that ‘specialists’ and ‘experts’ still continue to spin the term the way they like.

Immediately after 9/11 there was a good deal of public discussion about the meaning of jihad, much of it helpful. Eventually a kind of territorial tussle developed among Islamic Studies professors in western universities, and some of these ‘experts’ began to provide more confusion than clarification on jihad, sometimes for idealogical reasons. I wrote about this situation in 2007 in an essay for a Christian journal. Later, University of Rochester professor Aaron Hughes wrote a much more comprehensive survey titled ‘The study of Islam before and after September 11: A provocation’ (Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 2012).

When a publisher then asked me to write a commentary on the Quran in 2016, I decided this was my chance to explain all of the scriptural occurrences of jihad and its root verb with a good translation of each occurrence and its context readily readable directly above.

It is quite true that the Arabic root verb of jihad, jāhada, can be defined as ‘to struggle, strive’ (though this is not all that dictionaries like The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Arabic have to say about the word). The question is what the verb means in the context of its use in the Quran. What kind of struggle? And that is something that can be reasonably gauged from context.

It turns out that the verb occurs as an imperative seven times in the Quran, while the noun jihād occurs four times. Briefly, of the seven occurrences of the command, four of them appear in the context of battle, especially in the famous ninth sūra. Of these, Q 9.73 and 66.9 give a suggestion of what ‘struggle’ would mean in these contexts: ‘O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites! Be harsh with them. Their ultimate abode is hell, a hapless journey’s end’ (Pickthall translation). Of the four occurrences of jihād, three come in aggressive contexts, one of them intersecting with the imperative: ‘So obey not the disbelievers, but strive against them herewith with a great endeavor’ (25.52).

Other forms of the verb jāhada could be explained in similar fashion, but none of these departs from the pattern of the command and noun. What really brings frustration, and some sadness, to this whole discussion, however, is the fact that claiming that jihad ‘only’ means ‘struggle, striving’ is a bit of a red herring, or perhaps even a sleight of hand. The Quran is explicit and unequivocal about commanding fighting and killing through two forms of a completely different verb, qatala. Using this verb, the Quran commands to fight 12 times and to kill five times. It is these qatala verbs that make up the context of passages in Sūras 2, 8, and 9, etc. where jihād picks up the sense of physical aggression.

This analysis of jihad in the Quran is similar to that of Reuven Firestone in his book Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam and in his handy essay on ‘Jihād’ in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān. Dr. Firestone notes in his essay that jihad’s etymological meaning of ‘struggle, striving’ did not insulate it from the concept of fighting. Quite the contrary. He writes, ‘Because of its basic notion of deep and total personal effort, jihād, especially “in the path of God,” became the operative term for warring on behalf of Islam and the Muslim community’ (essay, p. 380).

That development of the meaning of jihad moves out from the Quran into how the word was interpreted and used in early Muslim commentaries on the Quran, what it means in the hadith or sayings attributed to the messenger of Islam, what it came to mean in medieval Islam in common usage, and what it means in its use by Muslims today.

What meaning did the London Hisb ut-Tahrir gathering give to the word jihad on October 21, out to celebrate horrific Hamas violence in front of a large orange banner urging ‘Muslim Armies’ to attack Israel? Are our western ‘counter terrorism officers with specialist language skills and subject expertise’ making it clear?