The Arabic word jihad is derived from the root jahada, meaning 'to strive' or 'to struggle.' In Islam the concept covers a range of activities, from the personal, spiritual struggle for purity (or jihad al-nafs) to physical conflict.
Crucially, in the Islamic tradition a jihad is always just; if a person is acting in a corrupt way, he or she cannot, by definition, be undertaking a jihad. When a person declares a particular action to be a jihad, they are effectively asserting that it is both a struggle for Islam and for the moral good. As the Prophet (pbuh) said: "The best form of jihad is to speak a true word to a tyrannical ruler."[1]
In recent years, numerous political events have led to the word being frequently equated with the English term 'holy war' (which, strictly speaking, would be written in Arabic as al-harb al-muqaddasa). This, however, is misleading. Whilst some English translations of the Quran do at times render the word in English as 'fight,' this translation is far from uniform across the whole revelation.[2]
Indeed, the specific word that the Quran uses for warfare is qital. The term jihad is used far more broadly. Accordingly, it is not at all wrong for Shagufta Yaqub, former editor of Q-News, to say, "for me, just going out every day in a hijab is a jihad."[3] Jihad
is, in Khaled Abou El Fadl’s words, "like the Protestant work ethic: hard work in a good cause."[4]
[1] Abu Dawud, Sunan Abu Dawud, II, 438.
[2] M. A. S. Abdel Haleem’s translation, published by Oxford University Press, is a good example of this.
[3] Shagufta Yaqub speaking in an interview with Anthony McRoy, Third Way, 2003, 26 (2), p. 21.
[4] Khaled About El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists. London: HarperCollins, 2007, p. 223.
