Mufti Obama, Jihad and the ‘apologists’

[Rehmat]

On November 8, 2010 – at Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College, the visiting ‘Israel-loving’ US President Barack Obama defined Islamic Jihad in response a student’s question: “The Greater Jihad is the inner struggle for self-improvement to become a good Muslim. The Lesser Jihad is struggle against oppression. …. I think all of us recognize that this great religion in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted to justify violence towards innocent people that is never justified. And so, I think, one of the challenges that we face is, how do we isolate those who have these distorted notions of religious war?”

According to The Time of India, leaders of various Muslim political, religious and social organization agreed with Obama’s definition of Jihad and the pin-pointing the minority of extremists who are distorting the true meaning of the word ‘Jihad’.

Now, it would be too much to ask these apologist Muslim leaders – don’t such extremists exist in other religions, such as Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Sikhism and even Buddhism? In fact if someone study the religious scriptures of Judaism and Hinduism plus the history of Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhist from objective sources – one will find that all those religion teach far more violence than the tiny Muslim minority’s distortion of the true meanings of Islam. Just look around and see which non-Muslim country is being attacked or occupied by Muslim forces currently? Who are the modern-day Nazis who are occupying Muslim lands, i.e., Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Chechnya, Jammu & Kashmir, Philippines, etc.? Who have killed more than two million Muslim men, women, children and raped hundreds of thousands of Muslim girls and women in those countries?

Muslim groups which are fighting against the foreign oppressors the one who understand the true meaning of Islamic Jihad.

According to a majority of Islamic scholars – there are four types of Jihad (utmost exertion) sanction by Allah and His Messenger:

1. Jihad by one’s heart – Self-purification or sometimes called ‘greater Jihad’.

2. Jihad by one’s tongue or writings – persuading people to adopt the right path and to dissuade them from evil. This is the Jihad the Prophet (pbuh) has prefered over force or violence.

3. Jihad by one’s hand – supporting the right and correcting the wrong by using physical means, short of violence.

4. Jihad by one’s sword – War being the ultimate arbiter of nations’ disputes – being the most practical religion, Islam permits the Believers to fight back against the agressors and occupation forces.

Many westernized or apologetic scholars, however, consider the last type of Jihad – not part of Islam – forgeting that during the life of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), Muslims carried over 78 of wars, military conflicts and military skirmishes.

Islam abolished all kinds of warfare except Jihad. Only a war which has an ultimate religious purpose and is conducted under laws and usages approved by Islamic Shari’ah can be termed as Jihad.

Many prominent Islamic scholars including Iran’s Spiritual Leader Ayatullah Khamenei and top Sunni scholar in the Middle East, Sheikh Qaradawi PhD – has blessed Palestinian resistance gainst the Jew-occupiers, as Jihad.

Mufti Obama, Jihad and the ‘apologists’ | Rehmat calling