offensive jihad

Submitted by dogagas (Canada), Mar 10, 2010 at 09:21

lol...I'm a little flattered by the attention. The Quran does not have the dichotomy I spoke of so clearly laid out, but every interpreter of the Quran has had to deal with the issue of Jihad, and has tried to argue a certain case. The scholars have made the dichotomy I speak of (I dont mean modern day Islamic apologists, I mean tradtional scholars.) In many cases the Quran was directly responding to a situation going on in the time of the Prohet (pbuh), and so the verse of the sword etc. have genrally been understood in a wartime context. This is because there is a consensus in the scholars (an ijma we call it) that Quranc verses have to be put into context of the Hadith.

But I am not trying to argue theology. I am not speaking as a believing muslim, though I am one, because nothing I say on some interenet foum will convince you dfferently about Islam. I am speakng as someone who has lived in the Muslims world for a long time, and knows that the ideology of offensive jihad is not going to motivate many Muslims to stand up, as the are just trying to live thier lives and pray 5 times a day. A state of continous warfare would be far too inconvenient for them to be motivated by, specially since no movement who advocates this has any support from any established Islamic instituton. However, when recruiters show pictures of Muslim cities being bombed, Muslim children being crippled, Muslim men being humiliated in prison, and Muslim women being widowed, it becomes much easier to recruit people. This is whay an end to American Imperialism will immediately cause a sharp decline in the funding, support and harboring of violent factions in the Muslim world. Regardless of theology, this is just political reality. Any movements that do remain will probably be destroyed by thier own dicatatorships, or will have to focus on building a workable society for Muslims.

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