“Nowadays, jihad is often used without any religious connotation, more or less equivalent to the English word, crusade — ‘a crusade against drugs,’” writes Rudolph Peters, professor at the University of Amsterdam. “If used in the religious context, the adjective ‘Islamic’ or ‘holy’ is added to jihad.”2

But in the West, where jihad is a highly charged term, especially since 9/11, we have had two parallel discourses. Those looking to discredit Islam insist that it is an inherently violent religion. “Look, it says right here in the Qur’an,” they say. Osama bin Laden and other terrorists quote those same Qur’anic passages to justify terrorism. But most Muslims and many non-Muslims say Islam is a religion of peace, and they resent that both Islamophobes and militant Muslims are twisting its meaning to suit their disparate agendas.

Falling somewhere in the middle is the Western media narrative on holy war. The American media, in particular, have played hot and cold on the issue. They were highly critical when Iranians rallied under the Islamic banner for the 1979 revolution that toppled the pro-American dictator, the Shah. But during the US-backed 1980-89 holy war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the media glorified the 35,000 Mujahideen (those waging jihad) who had been recruited from forty-three Muslim countries and paid for by the Central Intelligence Agency, and whom President Ronald Reagan had called the moral equivalent of America’s founding fathers. Dan Rather, CBS-TV news anchor, proudly posed on the Afghan frontier wearing the local costume of long shirt and pantaloons, as if he had joined the jihad himself.

The media adopted a more neutral tone during Saddam Hussein’s 1980-88 war on Iran, which he called a jihad and which the United States supported. The media became hostile when Israel and America were targeted — by the Hezbollah during the 1982-2000 Israeli occupation of Lebanon, by some Palestinians during the second intifadah, by al Qaeda on 9/11 and by various groups since in occupied Iraq and elsewhere.

Holy war is good when it suits the West but evil when it doesn’t.

THE QUR’AN AND JIHAD

What does the Qur’an say about jihad? It says a lot. It does so in the so-called sword verses, of which there are about a dozen. Both the critics of Islam and the likes of bin Laden quote these, selectively and out of context.

Take the injunction, Slay them wherever you come upon them. It is part of a passage that emphasizes self-defense when attacked:

Fight in the way of God with those who fight you, but do not initiate hostilities; God loves not the aggressors.

And slay them wherever you come upon them, and expel them from where they expelled you; persecution is worse than slaying.

But if they cease, let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression (2:190-93).