Jihad

Jihad is an Arabic word used principally by Muslims to connote spiritual struggle directed either to the internal cleansing of one's soul or toward external forces deemed to be a threat to the harmonizing of humankind with God's will. It is the latter interpretation that has likely led some non-Muslims to simplistically define jihad as “holy war,” however for many (if not most) Muslims jihad is a complex idea not easily reduced to a simple recipe for action. For example, an internal struggle to purify one's soul also might call for externally directed actions in service to Allah's will, but such actions need not be aggressive, any more than the efforts of other proselytizing religions are necessarily aggressive. Nevertheless, scholars continue to search for consensus as to the true meaning of jihad in a debate that has been ongoing in the Muslim world for centuries and highlighted and intensified by recent terrorist events. Because it is essentially spiritual, jihad may be inextricably linked to both individual and collective conceptions of attitudes toward death and, as is well known, often leads to the deaths of shaheed (martyrs) and nonbelievers alike. There is disagreement among Muslims as to whether the Quran unequivocally forbids suicide or actually calls for martyrdom and/or the destruction of nonbelievers as the ultimate expression of Muslim faith. These debates aside, multiple social scientific explanations and analyses of jihad have been offered focusing on the various religious, economic, political, cultural, social, and psychological aspects of the phenomenon. Although most accounts are multidimensional, all tend to lead toward one or another discipline as a point of departure and may be [Page 620]categorized accordingly. The categorization that follows is just one of many possibilities, as jihad remains a complex phenomenon.

Economically Centered Explanations

Analyses that focus on economic factors generally view jihad as a reaction to the modernizing and Westernizing influences of global capitalism. That is, jihad is understood as the reaction of a culture that perceives itself to be under threat from the blanketing effects of globalization. Capitalism is described as an economic system that has little regard for local traditions and noneconomic elements of social structure. Benjamin Barber, for example, characterizes jihad as a manifestation of a larger trend toward tribalism, that is, toward efforts to find an identity with a particular social or cultural group that might provide some defense against the destructive and homogenizing effects of global capitalism. Jihad has become the rallying cry for some Muslims who believe their values and traditions are being ground up in capitalism's blind pursuit of profit. Therefore they choose to respond to the juggernaut of global capitalism with an equally forceful and focused pursuit of Islamic traditions, albeit their own particular version of those traditions. Given that individual and collective identity are believed to be threatened with annihilation by this impersonal, secularizing, and foreign created system, killing of the just and the unjust alike is deemed unavoidable.

Politically Centered Explanations

Other efforts to explain and understand violent jihad take politics as the point of departure. The argument is that some Muslims are incensed by Western encroachments on the autonomy of Arab governments, particularly the occupation of Muslim lands by foreign elements. Whether the issue is the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia or Jews in Jerusalem, the fact that non-Muslims are thought to be defiling Muslim holy sites becomes a justification for violence. Indeed, many analysts have noted that al-Qaeda has repeatedly cited the presence of American forces in lands sacred to Muslims as reason for violent attacks against American targets. Of course, the focus on the political motivations of jihad does not preclude recognition of its economic, religious, and cultural dimensions, for these are often cited as interacting, contributing variables. Nevertheless, for some observers, the locus of power, especially as it relates to the control of land, is seen as the critical force behind the violence. Within this framework, violent jihad is understood to be driven primarily by a desire to restore political and territorial control rather than by the marginalizing effects of global capitalism.

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