Jihad according to the Quebec Board of the French Language

Submitted by François Gravel (Canada), Oct 28, 2014 at 04:06

Dr. Pipes,

I don't greatly care about well-meaning, ecumenically-inclined Western scholars and Muslim apologists claiming jihad is entirely nonviolent. I mean, what else would you expect? However, I find it far more concerning when this kind of whitewashing pops up, for example, on dictionaries freely available on the Web. Case in point, the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), or Quebec Board of the French Language. This public organization was established in 1961 by the government of Quebec, Canada. Its mission, among other things, is to work on the normalization of language in this province. The online version of its Grand dictionnaire terminologique gives the following definition of jihad (http://www.granddictionnaire.com/ficheOqlf.aspx?Id_Fiche=26503468):

"Précepte coranique qui invite les musulmans pratiquants à faire des efforts sur eux-mêmes pour s'élever spirituellement ou moralement."
My translation: "Koranic precept which calls upon practicing Muslims to make efforts on themselves in order to attain a higher spiritual or moral status."

After that comes an explanatory note which, again, stresses the internal, nonviolent "greater jihad" meaning. Only then is the reader told, at last, about the military, violent "lesser jihad." Here's how it goes:

"Notes. Il existe plusieurs niveaux de combat, à proprement parler, et chaque pratiquant ou chef religieux peut adhérer à l'un ou à l'autre. L'une des formes de combat peut être une lutte personnelle contre ses pulsions intérieures, de manière à les dominer. La forme de combat extrême serait un combat physique contre ce qui est jugé comme une agression contre la foi musulmane."
My translation: "Notes. There are several levels of 'struggle', properly speaking, and each follower of the faith or religious leader may adhere to one or the other. One of these forms of struggle might consist in a personal fight against one's inner urges so as to tame them. The extreme form of struggle would be a physical struggle against what is considered as an agression against the Muslim faith."

Notice the conditional mood in the last sentence: "serait" (= "would be") instead of "est" (= "is"). More importantly, military jihad is defined as purely defensive, hence legitimate warfare against the threatening enemies of Islam. And yet, we are told, this form of struggle must somehow be regarded as "extreme." But why? After all, there's nothing extreme about self-defense in response to unprovoked aggression. (Unless, of course, the aggressor is Hamas and the victim is Israel.) In my opinion, what we find here is a clear case of what psychologists call "double bind": two conflicting messages, one negating the other. It's as if the (anonymous) writer were trying to say: Don't buy into my innocuous definition, with its emphasis on the defensive aspect of armed jihad, because everyone knows that jihad can and does command blanket warfare against non-Muslims--indeed, a pretty extreme concept as far as non-Muslims are concerned.

Or perhaps "extreme" is meant to be understood as synonymous with "insignificant" or "uncommon," as opposed to the supposed primacy of spiritual jihad? But then how uncommon is the concept when, in fact, according to Bernard Lewis, "the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists (specialists in the hadith) understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense"? Who are we to believe: Princeton University's Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Easter Studies, or the OQLF's Grand dictionnaire terminologique? I am no expert on Islam or jihad, but there's no doubt in my mind how to answer that question.

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