Jihad (1)

Jihad (1)

Qu’ranic Verses on Jihad

It is a sacred religious duty incumbent on the Muslim nation at large to set forth defensive war against unbelievers to repel their persecution upon the believers or aggression upon Muslim territories.

This divine duty of religious war is laid down in several verses of the Glorious Qu’ran as well as in the Tradition of the Prophet. The following are translated quotations from the Qu’ran bearing on the subject of religious wars. In Sura 4, verses 75-76, we have the following injunctions:

“Muslims are to fight in defence of the cause of their Lord and to redeem their weak Muslim brethren and sisters and children who are oppressed, who cry for help from God to save them from such oppression and to send them some champion to redeem them. Muslims are to fight to defend the cause of God, while the unbelievers do fight to defend the cause of the devil: surely the struggle of the devil is so weak.”

These verses explain what is meant by fighting for God. While most of the believers who had the means had escaped from Makkah, there remained those who were weak and unable to emigrate. These were still persecuted and oppressed by the Makkahn idolaters. The verses imply a prophecy that those who are fighting for the devil shall be ultimately vanquished.

In Chapter 2, verse 214, the Muslims who emigrated to Al-Medina are addressed by the Qu’ran as follows:

“Do you think that you would enter Paradise, while yet the critical state of those who have passed away before you had not come upon you: Distress and affliction had befallen them and they were shaken violently, so that the Apostle of God and those who believed with him said: “When would the help of God come to us’? . Now surely the help of God is well nigh.”

This verse clearly inculcates faith and perseverance under the hardest trials and is an indication of the Prophet’s own unequalled endurance and faith. It refers not only to the great trials and hardships which were yet in store for them, and which they could clearly see in the masses of all forces that could be used to annihilate them. In Chapter 2, verse 216, we have the following injunctions:

“Fighting is enjoined on you [Muslims], though fighting is an object of dislike to you; and it may be that you may dislike something while it is good for you; and it may be that you may like something while it is evil for you. Now let it be known that God knows best what is good and what is evil while people know not.”   

This verse shows that Muslims did not fight for the booty. They were too weak to carry out the struggle against the might forces of the idolaters that were bent upon their destruction, and also they disliked war. Foreign critics of the history of the advent of Islam are quite mistaken to pretend that the Prophet had now [at Al-Medina] to resort to the sword to accomplish what is preaching at Makkah had failed to do [1].

It is to be borne in mind that not a single instance is recorded in the whole of the Prophet’s history showing the conversion of an unbeliever under the pressure of the sword, not a single instance is recorded of an expedition being undertaken to convert a people. If ever in the world’s history a people were compelled to fight in defence of a grand cause, no nobler instance of it could be given than that of the Prophet Muhammad  with his few faithful followers braving the whole of Arabia in the midst of enemies, who had taken the sword to annihilate them for no other reason than that they were holders of the cause of the Unity of God. The injunction upon Muslims to fight is but an injunction to fight to end persecution and to establish religious freedom and to save the houses of worship of every true religion from being ruined. This noble object is made quite clear by verse 40 of Chapter 22, of which the following is a rendering:

“Those who have been expelled from their homes without a just cause except that they say: ‘Our Lord is God’. Certainly there would have been destroyed cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques where God’s name is much remembered should God had not enjoined upon the believers defensive war against the persecution of aggressive people and surely will God grant victory to those who defend His cause. Most surely God is Mighty and Powerful.”

This verse ought to remind those foreign malignant critics who charge Islam of being a religion of fanaticism that the religious freedom which was established by Islam in a country like idolatrous Arabia over fourteen hundred years ago has not yet been surpassed by the most civilized and tolerant of nations. It is noticeable that the lives of believers are to be sacrificed not only to stop their own persecution by their opponents and to save their own mosques, but to protect churches, synagogues and cloisters as well; in fact, to establish religious freedom against any persecution or oppression by infidels and idolaters. No other religious teacher had taught that noble principle. Muslims closely followed these directions, and every commander of any army had express orders to respect all houses where God was worshipped and even the cloisters of monks, along with their inmates.

In Chapter 9, verse 29, we read the following interpreted injunction: “Fight those who believe not in God, nor in the day of judgment, nor do they prohibit what God and His Apostle have prohibited nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, among those who were given the Scriptures [Jews and Christians] until they pay the jizia with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”