The media, strategic studies centers, and various think tanks have diluted the obligation of jihad, turning it into a fully fledged crime. How? By labeling as jihad the actions of a small group of Muslims who exploit their erroneous interpretations of religious texts to call themselves “mujahideen,” while the faith itself is innocent of them. Jihad has its conditions, characteristics, and circumstances, and not everyone who carries a weapon to impose his own vision of religion is a mujahid. What we witness from the criminals in the Sahel has nothing to do with Islam, nor do the militants of Boko Haram—originally Nigerian—who have turned the lives of Muslim students into a nightmare through kidnappings, forced recruitment, and immoral abuses against young girls.
The essential questions are: What do we understand by jihad? In what context is it practiced? And within what framework ? As for considering al-Qaeda, ISIS, and their counterparts—organizations that proliferate like bubbles—as “jihadist” groups, this is an injustice and an utterly unacceptable description. Readers and viewers must be equipped with a culture that helps them distinguish right from wrong, the valuable from the worthless, and the noble essence of religion from deviant human interpretations, so that people are not alienated from the faith and the reputation of a divine religion—the final heavenly message—is not distorted.
Resorting to killing as a means of imposing a visible reality has nothing to do with Islam, and intruders into the faith have no right to excommunicate others in order to declare jihad. And what jihad is this, and against whom? Even confronting Zionist or Western aggression requires a response by regular armies, while observing the Islamic ethics of warfare—not the chaotic practices of today’s criminal armed groups.
We are in urgent need of grounding religious concepts in the daily life of Muslims in a manner that honors the primary purpose of the mission of the Prophet of Truth, peace be upon him: that he was sent as a mercy to all creation.
