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      The meaning of Jihad

      One result of this diversity and inventiveness inside Islam is that jihad has meant different things at different times to different Muslims.

      The prophet Muhammad was born in 570 AD in Mecca, in what is now Saudi Arabia. Though high-born, he was orphaned at six and as a boy Muhammad earned his keep helping his uncle, who was a traveling trader. This unusual upbringing, in which he experienced privilege and poverty, gave Muhammad a unique outlook. He was a social rebel, who married a much older woman for love and treated her as an equal. He was also a reformer who – guided by the divine visions he began receiving at 40 – fought against the inequality, immorality and tribal lawlessness of 7th century Arabia. After his death in 632 AD, his followers set about formalising his teachings in a canon of holy custom and law. That work is still ongoing but its central elements include the Qur’an, God’s collected revelations to Muhammad, the Hadith, sayings which describes sunna, Muhammad’s way of life, and sharia, which is Islam translated into law. It was in these scriptures that the term “jihad” first appeared.

      Most scholars agree jihad denotes lawful and justifiable war. It is founded on notions of sacred duty, righteousness and sacrifice. It applies most commonly to a war against oppression, especially one defending Muslims persecuted by unbelievers or apostates. It is that idea, coming to the aid of fellow Muslims, and the obligation and global Islamic brotherhood that implies, on which the concept of the itinerant foreign jihadi is based.

      Inside these broad parameters, however, there is room for considerable debate and interpretation. Just as there is a rainbow of sects from Catholic to Calvinist inside Christianity (and just as Judaism, Christianity and Islam are themselves all subsets of the same, monotheistic faith) so inside Islam there are Sunnis, Shias, Sufis, Salafis, Ismailis, Ibadis and many more. Like different Christian groups, each strand of Islam tends to insist on its own infallibility. Like Christians, too, they set out their competing arguments in the way humanity has always communicated and argued with itself: in story form, in this case a highly creative mix of fact, fable, metaphor and parable.

      One result of this diversity and inventiveness inside Islam is that jihad has meant different things at different times to different Muslims. In Islam’s first few centuries, Arab forces conquered most of the Middle East and North Africa, plus Portugal, most of Spain and even a small part of southern France. That empire is to what many Muslims are referring when they talk of the caliphate and in the context of this early Islamic imperialism, many scholars gave jihad