Give yourselves a Good-Beating!

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أحمد

أحمد

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:sl:

:D I think Jihad al-Akbar is a very important aspect of Islam that is left behind by many Muslims in understanding; although it is a very crucial part of Islam. Iman is not Iman without practical confirmation. Every Human being has two strenghs: :shade: Ruh (Good) and :mad: Nafs (Bad). Both are in conflict; this conflict (or battle) is known as Jihad al-Akbar (the Great Jihad), as its not a one day battle, nor a one year battle, but a battle which ceases only at the ceasing of ones life; it ends with the ending of ones life. So you can see its importance and why the Quran tell's us that without it; one cannot enter paradise.

One must know that this isn't fighting someone; it is fighting ones own desires . . .


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:sl:

JazakAllahu Khayran for the reminder :shade: An internal struggle within oneself is an important type of Jihad :shade:

" . . . Jihad means effort or endeavour. In the religious sense, it probably applies to the whole effort of a Muslim to assert and establish the sovereignty of God in men's minds, by performing his religious duty as laid down in the Qur'an - an effort which should last through all his life, [and] should govern every action of his life or he is not a true Muslim. This duty may be summarised as the fight for good against evil in every connection and in every field, beginning with man's own heart and mind. Our Holy Prophet p.b.u.h. said:

"The greatest jihad is that against a man's own lust."​
Which means that the best way of recommending the belief in Allah's universal sovereignty and extending the new realm of peace and brotherhood, is by the example of righteous conduct. The term Al-Jihad-ul-Akbar, "the greatest jihad," is also applied by the holy Prophet to the effort of the student to become learned and the effort of the learned to spread knowledge. . . . "

Source

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:sl:

:zip: A very famous narration (not Hadith, nor in Hadith):

All mankind is to perish, except those who have knowledge.​
And they are all to perish, except those who act upon their knowledge.​
And they are all to perish, except those who act with sincerity.​
And they are all to perish, Illaa bi Ithinillah (except those whom Allah wills (to save)).​
​
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:sl:
Ahmed Waheed said:
Every Human being has two strenghs: :shade: Ruh (Good) and :mad: Nafs (Bad).
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Could you provide us with the source for this, Br. Ahmed?

My understanding is that the majority of scholars believed that the Ruh was the soul, and once it enters the human body it is called the nafs. Besides, your interpretation wouldn't fit because the Qur'an calls the nafs good in certaion cases:

89:27-30. (It will be said to the pious): "O you Nafs Al-Muta'mainna!
"Come back to your Lord, Well-pleased (yourself) and well-pleasing unto Him!
"Enter you, then, among My honoured slaves,
"And enter you My Paradise!"

Osman said:
"The greatest jihad is that against a man's own lust."
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Fabricated. Related by Bayhaqi and classified fabricated by Ibn Hajar. This is not a saying of the Prophet Muhammad saws, but a saying of a man named Ibrahim ibn Abi Ablah. Ibn Al-Qayyim said this fabricated hadith is obnoxious.

We always have to double check. :)

:w:
 
Jazakallah for clarifying that brother. Otherwise it was a good reminder.
 
:sl:

Ansar Al-'Adl said:
My understanding is that the majority of scholars believed that the Ruh was the soul, and once it enters the human body it is called the nafs. Besides, your interpretation wouldn't fit because the Qur'an calls the nafs good in certaion cases:
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:D Nafs (I wrote "bad" in brackets refering to al-ammaara) . . . You can find it mentioned in the Quran: Surah Yusuf 12: verse 53:
وَمَا أُبَرِّئُ نَفْسِي إِنَّ النَّفْسَ لأَمَّارَةٌ بِالسُّوءِ إِلاَّ مَا رَحِمَ رَبِّيَ إِنَّ رَبِّي غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ​

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:sl:

:D Hadith on Jihad al-Akbar (against Tyrant Ruler):

حَدَّثَنَا عَبْدُ اللَّهِ حَدَّثَنِى أَبِى حَدَّثَنَا يَزِيدُ بْنُ هَارُونَ وعَفَّانُ قَالاَ حَدَّثَنَا حَمَّادُ بْنُ سَلَمَةَ قَالَ أَخْبَرَنَا عَلِىُّ بْنُ زَيْدٍ عَنْ أَبِى نَضْرَةَ عَنْ أَبِى سَعِيدٍ قَالَ خَطَبَنَا رَسُولُ اللَّهِ -صلى الله عليه وسلم- خُطْبَةً بَعْدَ الْعَصْرِ إِلَى مُغَيْرِبَانِ الشَّمْسِ حَفِظَهَا مِنَّا مَنْ حَفِظَهَا وَنَسِيَهَا مِنَّا مَنْ نَسِىَ فَحَمِدَ اللَّهَ - قَالَ عَفَّانُ وَقَالَ حَمَّادٌ وَأَكْثَرُ حِفْظِى أَنَّهُ قَالَ بِمَا هُوَ كَائِنٌ إِلَى يَوْمِ الْقِيَامَةِ فَحَمِدَ اللَّهَ - وَأَثْنَى عَلَيْهِ ثُمَّ قَالَ « أَمَّا بَعْدُ فَإِنَّ الدُّنْيَا خَضِرَةٌ حُلْوَةٌ وَإِنَّ اللَّهَ مُسْتَخْلِفُكُمْ فِيهَا فَنَاظِرٌ كَيْفَ تَعْمَلُونَ أَلاَ فَاتَّقُوا الدُّنْيَا وَاتَّقُوا النِّسَاءَ أَلاَ إِنَّ بَنِى آدَمَ خُلِقُوا عَلَى طَبَقَاتٍ شَتَّى مِنْهُمْ مَنْ يُولَدُ مُؤْمِناً وَيَحْيَا مُؤْمِناً وَيَمُوتُ مُؤْمِناً وَمِنْهُمْ مَنْ يُولَدُ كَافِراً وَيَحْيَا كَافِراً وَيَمُوتُ كَافِراً وَمِنْهُمْ مَنْ يُولَدُ مُؤْمِناً وَيَحْيَا مُؤْمِناً وَيَمُوتُ كَافِراً وَمِنْهُمْ مَنْ يُولَدُ كَافِراً وَيَحْيَا كَافِراً وَيَمُوتُ مُؤْمِناً أَلاَ إِنَّ الْغَضَبَ جَمْرَةٌ تُوقَدُ فِى جَوْفِ ابْنِ آدَمَ أَلاَ تَرَوْنَ إِلَى حُمْرَةِ عَيْنَيْهِ وَانْتِفَاخِ أَوْدَاجِهِ فَإِذَا وَجَدَ أَحَدُكُمْ شَيْئاً مِنْ ذَلِكَ فَالأَرْضَ الأَرْضَ أَلاَ إِنَّ خَيْرَ الرِّجَالِ مَنْ كَانَ بَطِىءَ الْغَضَبِ سَرِيعَ الرِّضَا وَشَرَّ الرِّجَالِ مَنْ كَانَ سَرِيعَ الْغَضَبِ بَطِىءَ الرِّضَا فَإِذَا كَانَ الرَّجُلُ بَطِىءَ الْغَضَبِ بَطِىءَ الْفَىْءِ وَسَرِيعَ الْغَضَبِ سَرِيعَ الْفَىْءِ فَإِنَّهَا بِهَا أَلاَ إِنَّ خَيْرَ التُّجَّارِ مَنْ كَانَ حَسَنَ الْقَضَاءِ حَسَنَ الطَّلَبِ وَشَرَّ التُّجَّارِ مَنْ كَانَ سَيِّئَ الْقَضَاءِ سَيِّئَ الطَّلَبِ فَإِذَا كَانَ الرَّجُلُ حَسَنَ الْقَضَاءِ سَيِّئَ الطَّلَبِ أَوْ كَانَ سَيِّئَ الْقَضَاءِ حَسَنَ الطَّلَبِ فَإِنَّهَا بِهَا أَلاَ إِنَّ لِكُلِّ غَادِرٍ لِوَاءً يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ بِقَدْرِ غَدْرَتِهِ أَلاَ وَأَكْبَرُ الْغَدْرِ غَدْرُ أَمِيرِ عَامَّةٍ أَلاَ لاَ يَمْنَعَنَّ رَجُلاً مَهَابَةُ النَّاسِ أَنْ يَتَكَلَّمَ بِالْحَقِّ إِذَا عَلِمَهُ أَلاَ إِنَّ أَفْضَلَ الْجِهَادِ كَلِمَةُ حَقٍّ عِنْدَ سُلْطَانٍ جَائِرٍ ». فَلَمَّا كَانَ عِنْدَ مُغَيْرِبَانِ الشَّمْسِ قَالَ « أَلاَ إِنَّ مِثْلَ مَا بَقِىَ مِنَ الدُّنْيَا فِيمَا مَضَى مِنْهَا مِثْلُ مَا بَقِىَ مِنْ يَوْمِكُمْ هَذَا فِيمَا مَضَى مِنْهُ ».​

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Ansar Al-'Adl said:
:sl:

Could you provide us with the source for this, Br. Ahmed?

My understanding is that the majority of scholars believed that the Ruh was the soul, and once it enters the human body it is called the nafs. Besides, your interpretation wouldn't fit because the Qur'an calls the nafs good in certaion cases:

89:27-30. (It will be said to the pious): "O you Nafs Al-Muta'mainna!
"Come back to your Lord, Well-pleased (yourself) and well-pleasing unto Him!
"Enter you, then, among My honoured slaves,
"And enter you My Paradise!"


Fabricated. Related by Bayhaqi and classified fabricated by Ibn Hajar. This is not a saying of the Prophet Muhammad saws, but a saying of a man named Ibrahim ibn Abi Ablah. Ibn Al-Qayyim said this fabricated hadith is obnoxious.

We always have to double check. :)

:w:
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Salam

As far as I know, Ruh and Nafs r two diffrent things, well..i will check who thinks in that way. And yeahm jazakallah khairan bro Ansar for mentioin that the Hadith is fabricated, it is sadly, for some reason I dont know, very commenly spread especially between muslims livin in the west.
 
Ahmed Waheed said:
:sl:

:D Hadith on Jihad al-Akbar (against Tyrant Ruler):

حَدَّثَنَا عَبْدُ اللَّهِ حَدَّثَنِى أَبِى حَدَّثَنَا يَزِيدُ بْنُ هَارُونَ وعَفَّانُ قَالاَ حَدَّثَنَا حَمَّادُ بْنُ سَلَمَةَ قَالَ أَخْبَرَنَا عَلِىُّ بْنُ زَيْدٍ عَنْ أَبِى نَضْرَةَ عَنْ أَبِى سَعِيدٍ قَالَ خَطَبَنَا رَسُولُ اللَّهِ -صلى الله عليه وسلم- خُطْبَةً بَعْدَ الْعَصْرِ إِلَى مُغَيْرِبَانِ الشَّمْسِ حَفِظَهَا مِنَّا مَنْ حَفِظَهَا وَنَسِيَهَا مِنَّا مَنْ نَسِىَ فَحَمِدَ اللَّهَ - قَالَ عَفَّانُ وَقَالَ حَمَّادٌ وَأَكْثَرُ حِفْظِى أَنَّهُ قَالَ بِمَا هُوَ كَائِنٌ إِلَى يَوْمِ الْقِيَامَةِ فَحَمِدَ اللَّهَ - وَأَثْنَى عَلَيْهِ ثُمَّ قَالَ « أَمَّا بَعْدُ فَإِنَّ الدُّنْيَا خَضِرَةٌ حُلْوَةٌ وَإِنَّ اللَّهَ مُسْتَخْلِفُكُمْ فِيهَا فَنَاظِرٌ كَيْفَ تَعْمَلُونَ أَلاَ فَاتَّقُوا الدُّنْيَا وَاتَّقُوا النِّسَاءَ أَلاَ إِنَّ بَنِى آدَمَ خُلِقُوا عَلَى طَبَقَاتٍ شَتَّى مِنْهُمْ مَنْ يُولَدُ مُؤْمِناً وَيَحْيَا مُؤْمِناً وَيَمُوتُ مُؤْمِناً وَمِنْهُمْ مَنْ يُولَدُ كَافِراً وَيَحْيَا كَافِراً وَيَمُوتُ كَافِراً وَمِنْهُمْ مَنْ يُولَدُ مُؤْمِناً وَيَحْيَا مُؤْمِناً وَيَمُوتُ كَافِراً وَمِنْهُمْ مَنْ يُولَدُ كَافِراً وَيَحْيَا كَافِراً وَيَمُوتُ مُؤْمِناً أَلاَ إِنَّ الْغَضَبَ جَمْرَةٌ تُوقَدُ فِى جَوْفِ ابْنِ آدَمَ أَلاَ تَرَوْنَ إِلَى حُمْرَةِ عَيْنَيْهِ وَانْتِفَاخِ أَوْدَاجِهِ فَإِذَا وَجَدَ أَحَدُكُمْ شَيْئاً مِنْ ذَلِكَ فَالأَرْضَ الأَرْضَ أَلاَ إِنَّ خَيْرَ الرِّجَالِ مَنْ كَانَ بَطِىءَ الْغَضَبِ سَرِيعَ الرِّضَا وَشَرَّ الرِّجَالِ مَنْ كَانَ سَرِيعَ الْغَضَبِ بَطِىءَ الرِّضَا فَإِذَا كَانَ الرَّجُلُ بَطِىءَ الْغَضَبِ بَطِىءَ الْفَىْءِ وَسَرِيعَ الْغَضَبِ سَرِيعَ الْفَىْءِ فَإِنَّهَا بِهَا أَلاَ إِنَّ خَيْرَ التُّجَّارِ مَنْ كَانَ حَسَنَ الْقَضَاءِ حَسَنَ الطَّلَبِ وَشَرَّ التُّجَّارِ مَنْ كَانَ سَيِّئَ الْقَضَاءِ سَيِّئَ الطَّلَبِ فَإِذَا كَانَ الرَّجُلُ حَسَنَ الْقَضَاءِ سَيِّئَ الطَّلَبِ أَوْ كَانَ سَيِّئَ الْقَضَاءِ حَسَنَ الطَّلَبِ فَإِنَّهَا بِهَا أَلاَ إِنَّ لِكُلِّ غَادِرٍ لِوَاءً يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ بِقَدْرِ غَدْرَتِهِ أَلاَ وَأَكْبَرُ الْغَدْرِ غَدْرُ أَمِيرِ عَامَّةٍ أَلاَ لاَ يَمْنَعَنَّ رَجُلاً مَهَابَةُ النَّاسِ أَنْ يَتَكَلَّمَ بِالْحَقِّ إِذَا عَلِمَهُ أَلاَ إِنَّ أَفْضَلَ الْجِهَادِ كَلِمَةُ حَقٍّ عِنْدَ سُلْطَانٍ جَائِرٍ ». فَلَمَّا كَانَ عِنْدَ مُغَيْرِبَانِ الشَّمْسِ قَالَ « أَلاَ إِنَّ مِثْلَ مَا بَقِىَ مِنَ الدُّنْيَا فِيمَا مَضَى مِنْهَا مِثْلُ مَا بَقِىَ مِنْ يَوْمِكُمْ هَذَا فِيمَا مَضَى مِنْهُ ».​

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:sl:
Akhi pls provide me with a translation. I am no scholar of Arabic languauge. :-[
:w: :brother:
 
Bin Qasim said:
:sl:
Akhi pls provide me with a translation. I am no scholar of Arabic languauge. :-[
:w: :brother:
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:sl:

:D Jazak-Allah . . . I never thought about the translation before; I'll put this up in the Do u speak Arabic? thread Insha-Allah for someone to translate as an Arabic challenge . . .

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"The greatest jihad is that against a man's own lust."
This hadith is often quoted but it is a weak hadith, i dont knwo the exact details, but never the less, jihad-al-nafs is a great thing.
 
:sl:

:p Here's a report on Jihad:
What Does Jihad Mean?
​

Douglas E. Streusand
This article was published by Middle East Quarterly in September 1997

Jihad, routinely translated as holy war, often makes headlines. For example, Yasir Arafat’s May 1994 call in Johannesburg for a “jihad to liberate Jerusalem”[1] was a turning point in the peace process; Israelis heard him speak about using violence to gain political ends, and questioned his peaceable intentions. Both Arafat himself [2] and his aides[3] then clarified that he was speaking about a “peaceful jihad” for Jerusalem.

This incident points to the problem with the word jihad: what exactly does it mean? Two examples from leading American Muslim organizations, both fundamentalist, show the extent of disagreement this issue inspires. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based group, flatly states that jihad “does not mean `holy war.’” Rather, it refers to “a central and broad Islamic concept that includes the struggle to improve the quality of life in society, struggle in the battlefield for self-defense . . . or fighting against tyranny or oppression.” CAIR even asserts that Islam knows no such concept as “holy war.”[4] In abrupt contrast, the Muslim Students Association recently distributed an item with a Kashmir dateline, “Diary of a Mujahid.” The editor of this document understands jihad very much to mean armed conflict:
While we dream of jihad and some deny it, while others explain it away, and yet others frown on it to hide their own weakness and reluctance towards it, here is a snapshot from the diary of a mujahid who had fulfilled his dream to be on the battlefield.[5]​
Does jihad mean a form of moral self-improvement or war in accord with Islamic precepts? There is no simple answer to this question, for Muslims for at least a millennium have disagreed about the meaning of jihad. But there is an answer. Jihad as Warfare

Jihad is a verbal noun with the literal meaning of striving or determined effort. The active participle mujahid means someone who strives or a participant in jihad.

The term jihad in many contexts means fighting (though there are other words in Arabic that more unambiguously refer to the act of making war, such as qital or harb). In the Qur’an and in later Muslim usage, jihad is commonly followed by the expression fi sabil Illah, “in the path of God.”[6] The description of warfare against the enemies of the Muslim community as jihad fi sabil Illah sacralized an activity that otherwise might have appeared as no more than the tribal warfare endemic in pre-Islamic Arabia.

After the Qur’an, the Hadith (reports on the sayings and acts of the prophet) is the second most important source of Islamic law (Shari`a). In Hadith collections, jihad means armed action; for example, the 199 references to jihad in the most standard collection of hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari, all assume that jihad means warfare.[7] More broadly, Bernard Lewis finds that “the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists [i.e., specialists in the Hadith] . . . understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense.”[8]

These figures formed one distinct interpretation of jihad as war and Ibn Taymiya and his followers formed another. For the jurists, jihad fits a context of the world divided into Muslim and non-Muslim zones, Dar al-Islam (Abode of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (Abode of War) respectively. This model implies perpetual warfare between Muslims and non-Muslims until the territory under Muslim control absorbs what is not, an attitude that perhaps reflects the optimism that resulted from the quick and far-reaching Arab conquests. Extending Dar al-Islam does not mean the annihilation of all non-Muslims, however, nor even their necessary conversion. Indeed, jihad cannot imply conversion by force, for the Qur’an (2:256) specifically states “there is no compulsion in religion.” Jihad has an explicitly political aim: the establishment of Muslim rule, which in turn has two benefits: it articulates Islam’s supersession of other faiths and creates the opportunity for Muslims to create a just political and social order.

Jihad cannot imply conversion by force.

Islamic jurisprudence divides the inhabitants of Dar al-Harb (known as harbis) into two: People of the Book (Ahl al-Kitab) and polytheists. People of the Book, defined in the Qur’an as Christians, Jews, and Sabeans, have a distinct status in Muslim eyes because they follow a genuine—if incomplete—revelation from a genuine prophet. They may live undisturbed under Muslim rule so long as they accept a subordinate status (that of the dhimmi) which entails paying a tribute (jizya) and suffering a wide range of disabilities. As for polytheists, the law requires Muslims to offer them the choice of Islam or death, though this was rarely followed after the initial Muslim conquest of Arabia. Instead, Muslims generally treated all harbis as People of the Book. The jurists first sanctioned the inclusion of Zoroastrians in this category; Muslim conquerors of the Indian subcontinent extended it to Hindus as well, thereby effectively eliminating the category of polytheists.

The belief that jihad should continue until Dar al-Islam covers the entire world does not imply that the jurists expect Muslims to wage non-stop war. The Prophet Muhammad made a peace agreement with the Meccans in 630, the Treaty of Hudaybiya, and several of the early caliphs made peace treaties with the Byzantine Empire (some of which even required them to pay tribute to the Byzantines). Although there is no mechanism for recognizing a non-Muslim government as legitimate, the jurists built on these precedents to allow the negotiation of truces and peace treaties of limited duration. The jurists provide for military prudence, permitting the withdrawal of badly outnumbered or overpowered forces. And some jurists added an intermediate category, Dar al-`Ahd (Abode of Covenant) or Dar al-Sulh (Abode of Peace), for those countries where non-Muslim rulers govern non-Muslim subjects.

The jurists understand jihad not as an obligation of each individual Muslim but as a general obligation of the Muslim community. Only in emergencies, when Dar al-Islam comes under unexpected attack, do they expect all Muslims to participate in jihad warfare. Under normal circumstances, the failure of the community to fulfill the obligation of jihad is sinful; but an individual Muslim need not participate so long as other Muslims carry the burden. Shi`i writers make a further qualification, that offensive jihad is permissible only in the presence of the expected Imam--and thus not under current circumstances.

In contrast to this consensus view on a restricted doctrine of jihad, the prominent legal philosopher Ibn Taymiya (1268-1328) took a more activist position. He declared that a ruler who fails to enforce the Shari`a rigorously in all its aspects, including the performance of jihad, forfeits his right to rule. A vigorous critic of the status quo, Ibn Taymiya strongly advocated, and personally participated in, jihad as warfare against the Crusaders and Mongols who occupied parts of Dar al-Islam. Ibn Taymiya developed his outlook by building on a long tradition of dissidents in Islamic history who directed jihad against rulers they deemed insuffiently Muslim, including the Kharijis of the seventh century and the Assassins of the eleventh century.[9] Perhaps most important, he broke with the mainstream of Islam by his asserting that a professing Muslim who does not live by the faith is an unbeliever. Most jurists tolerated Muslim rulers who violated the Shari`a for the sake of the community, finding tyranny less bad than division or disorder, but Ibn Taymiya insisted on more.[10] Ibn Taymiya and his associates are the most important intellectual precursors of contemporary Islamism.[11]

Warfare as Non-Jihad

Islamic law condemns all warfare that does not qualify as jihad, specifically all warfare among Muslims. Military action against Muslims is justified only by denying them the status of Muslims, classifying them as apostates or ragainst legitimate authority.[12] For example, when Caliph al-Ma’mun and his brother al-Amin struggled for control of the caliphate in 809-13, Ma’mun called Amin an apostate.[13] Muslim writers use the term fitna, meaning trial or temptation, to describe divisions within the Muslim community. Though premodern Muslim writers do not say so, fitna became a permanent condition after 750, when the political unity of the Muslim community (umma) came to an end.

The earliest Muslim writer to codify the laws of war and peace, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan Shaybani,[14] wrote only after the unity had broken down, meaning that Islamic laws on these subjects was formulated only retrospectively, by deriving general principles from a situation that no longer existed and would never again exist. In effect, the law of jihad was formulated after the conditions it fit had passed. The jurists then sought to reconcile the division and disorder of later centuries with the theory, but they averted their gaze from the ugly reality of intra-Muslim warfare all around them. Instead, they primarily sought to establish the legitimacy of authority in the absence of an effective caliph ruling a unified Muslim community. Islamic law, in short, never addressed the reality of political division within the Islamic world.

The division of the Islamic world did not end its expansion. Jihad in the sense of warfare continued, though the jihad ideal rarely determined the policies of Muslim regimes and almost never permitted them to join together against a common non-Muslim foe. Often the term ghazi, literally raiding, was used as a synonym. The Ottoman Empire is often called the empire of the ghazis because success in jihad was a vital component of Ottoman legitimacy. But jihad was not the sole motivation, or even the sole ideology, for Ottoman expansion. Other factors included population pressure, competition with other Muslim states, and the lure of border warfare. In addition to the doctrine of jihad, Ottoman political ideology incorporated Turko-Mongol, Iranian, and Byzantine elements. A similar combination of ideological and other factors drove Muslim expansion in the Indian subcontinent.[15] In other contexts too, Muslim rulers such as Uzun Hasan Aqquyunlu, the ruler of western Iran and eastern Anatolia in 1453-78, and the Safavid Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524-76) participated in jihad not just for abstract reasons of faith but to enhance their legitimacy and acquire booty.

Jihad as Non-Warfare

Warfare is only one interpretation of the concept of jihad. The root meaning of effort never disappeared. Jihad may be an inward struggle (directed against evil in oneself) or an outward one (against injustice). A Hadith defines this understanding of the term. It recounts how Muhammad, after a battle, said “We have returned from the lesser jihad (al-jihad al-asghar) to the greater jihad (al-jihad al-akbar).” When asked “What is the greater jihad?,” he replied “It is the struggle against oneself.”[16] Although this Hadith does not appear in any of the authoritative collections, it has had enormous influence in Islamic mysticism (Sufism).

Sufis understand the greater jihad as an inner war, primarily a struggle against the base instincts of the body but also resistance to the temptation of polytheism. Some Sufi writers assert that Satan organizes the temptation of the body and the world to corrupt the soul. Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (1059-1111), probably the most important figure in Islam’s development after the prophet, describes the body as a city, governed by the soul, and besieged by the lower self. Withdrawal from the world to mystical pursuits constitutes an advance in the greater jihad. Conversely, the greater jihad is a necessary part of the process of gaining spiritual insight.[17] By the eleventh century Sufism had become an extremely influential, and perhaps even the dominant, form of Islamic spirituality. To this day, many Muslims conceive of jihad as a personal rather than a political struggle. But Sufism provoked opposition, most importantly from Ibn Taymiya, who condemned many aspects of Sufism which he believed contradicted the Shari`a. His disciple Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziya (1292-1350) explicitly condemned the doctrine of greater jihad, discarding as a deliberate fabrication the Hadith that originates this concept.[18]

Thus did three main views of jihad coexist in premodern times: the classical legal view of jihad as a compulsory, communal effort to defend and expand Dar al-Islam; Ibn Taymiya’s notion of active jihad as an indispensable feature of legitimate rule; and the Sufi doctrine of greater jihad. It is no surprise that the disagreement over jihad continues in the modern era.


Jihad as Warfare in Modern Times

Perhaps the earliest perspective on jihad from a modern sensibility (i.e., responding to the West) developed among Indian Muslims in the aftermath of the 1857 uprising (the so-called Indian Mutiny). Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and others, writing as much for a Western audience as for their co-religionists, argued that jihad meant only defensive war and could not justify further resistance to British rule as long as the British did not actively interfere with the practice of Islam. Sir Sayyid Ahmad treated Islam as a private religion rather than a public force, and presented it as virtually a pacifist creed.[19] Though clearly a reaction to British suspicions of Muslims after 1857, this view affected Indian Muslim attitudes.

Modernist writers, seeking to reconcile Islam with Western ways, looked to the Qur’an to find a Islamic model to guide Muslim states. They sought a fundamentally defensive vision of jihad, and toward this end argued that all the wars waged by the prophet and the first four caliphs were defensive. Contending that the Qur’an requires Muslims to make peace if their adversaries wish to do so, they include a Dar al-Sulh in their model of the world. Peace treaties may be permanent and Muslims may be neutral in international conflicts.[20] The modernists also work to reconcile Islamic law with international law. Thus, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, an umbrella organization that includes as members most Muslim states, expressed an interest in establishing an international court to reconcile the Shari`a with international public law. Similarly, Muhammad Shaltut, a former rector of Al-Azhar, contends that the Shari`a’s emphasis on international peace and the legitimate right of self-defense prefigures the principles of the United Nations.[21]

Abu al-A`la Mawdudi (1903-79), the Indian and later Pakistani thinker, was the first Islamist writer to approach jihad systematically. He presents it not merely as warfare to expand Islamic political dominance, but also to establish a just rule, one that includes freedom of religion. Mawdudi’s political life began with participation in the Khilafat movement, a post-World War I agitation among Indian Muslims that, among other causes, supported Indian independence from Great Britain. In keeping with this outlook, jihad for Mawdudi was akin to war of liberation; Islamic rule means freedom and justice, even for non-Muslims.

Islam wants to employ all the forces and means that can be employed for bringing about a universal, all-embracing revolution. It will spare no efforts for the achievement of this supreme objective. This far-reaching struggle that continuously exhausts all forces employment of all possible means are called jihad.

Mawdudi’s outlook significantly changes jihad, beginning its association with anticolonialism and “national liberation movements” that seek not to expand Islamic rule but to establish independent states -- not to force non-Muslims to accept dhimmi status but to make them politically independent. Mawdudi’s approach paved the way for Arab resistance to Zionism and Israel to be called jihad. In this spirit, the rector of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University contended in 1973 that all Egyptians, Christians included, must participate in jihad against Israel.[23] And thus did the secular PLO make itself the leader of an secularized jihad -- as in Arafat’s statement about a “jihad to liberate Jerusalem.”

Although Mawdudi’s conception opens the door to a secular and nationalist interpretation of jihad, neither he nor his acolytes went through that door. Such Islamist thinkers such as Hasan al-Banna (1906-49) and Sayyid Qutb (1906-56) followed Mawdudi’s emphasis on its role in establishing a truly Islamic government. For them, as for Ibn Taymiya, jihad includes the overthrow of governments that fail to enforce the Shari`a. Jihad here again subsumes the idea of revolution, though this time a purely Islamic one. Before directing jihad against external enemies, Muslims must first deal with their own rulers. If leaders such as Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar as-Sadat are not true Muslims, they cannot lead jihad, not even against a legitimate target of jihad (such as Israel).Significantly, Islamists consider jihad mandatory for all Muslims, making it an individual rather than a communal duty.[24]

The Neglected Duty, a pamphlet produced by Sadat’s assassins to explain and justify this use of violence, is perhaps the purest expression of this Islamist perspective on jihad. (Its author, Muhammad `Abd al-Salam Faraj was executed along with the actual killers.) It argues that jihad as armed action is the cornerstone and heart of Islam; the neglect of jihad has caused the current depressed position of Islam in the world. Force must be used, for it alone can destroy idols. Abraham and Muhammad both began their careers by smashing idols; the Islamists propose to follow their example. The Neglected Duty defines the current rulers of the Muslim world (such as Sadat) as apostates, despite their profession of Islam and obedience to some of its laws, and advocates their execution. The Neglected Duty is explicitly messianic, asserting that Muslims must “exert every conceivable effort” to bring about the establishment of truly Islamic government, a restoration of the caliphate, and the expansion of Dar al-Islam; and their success is inevitable.[25]

Shi`i revolutionaries have a similar perspective. Ayatollah Khomeini (1903-89) contends that jurists, “by means of jihad and enjoining the good and forbidding the evil,[26] must expose and overthrow tyrannical rulers and rouse the people so the universal movement of all alert Muslims can establish Islamic government in the place of tyrannical regimes.” The proper teaching of Islam will cause “the entire population to become mujahids.”[27] Ayatollah Muhammad Mutahhari, a top ideologue of the Iranian Revolution, considers jihad a necessary consequence of Islam’s content; having political aims, Islam must sanction armed force and provide laws for its use. Mutahhari deems jihad defensive; but his definition includes the defense against oppression and this may require what international law would consider a war of aggression. For example, he endorses an attack on a country of polytheists, not to impose Islam but to eliminate the evils of polytheism. Mutahhari finds that the doctrine of jihad marks Islam’s superiority over Christianity, for Christianity lacks the political and social agenda necessary for a doctrine of jihad.[28]

This survey indicates that while the concept of jihad retains a special place among the Islamists, the spiritual descendants of Ibn Taymiya, other Islamic thinkers of the modern age have developed distinctive approaches to this issue.

Jihad as Non-Warfare in Modern Times

Two groups of contemporary Muslims have articulated doctrines of peaceful jihad. Modernists may see the concept as central to the religion but see it as encompassing all forms of political and social action to establish justice. Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani scholar and long-time professor at the University of Chicago, argued that it had to exist to accomplish Islam’s social and political agenda. “There is no doubt that the Qur’an wanted Muslims to establish a political order on earth for the sake of creating an egalitarian and just moral-social order. Jihad is the instrument for doing so.”[29] In this spirit, President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia used jihad to describe the struggle for economic development in Tunisia, much as Lyndon Johnson spoke of a “War on Poverty.” In this context, jihad imply no more violence than does crusade in today’s English.[30]

The Sufi doctrine of greater jihad remains alive. Though less influential than Islamism in the political realm, it may have more impact on the spiritual life of Muslims, at least in Egypt where one writer contends that the number of Egyptians active in Sufism may well exceed the number of Islamists.[31] Sadat wrote articles for the first issues of Sufi journals in 1958 and 1979, both entitled “The Greater Jihad,” in which he welcomed the diffusion of Sufi ideas.[32] On the basis of field work in Egypt, the Sudan, and Tunisia, an anthropologist mentions jihad only in the context of the Ramadan fast: “Fasting for the whole month is a . . . personal trial for Muslims . . . a form of personal jihad . . . part of the more difficult inner struggles with the flesh and worldy appetites.”[33]

The Sufi outlook remains important enough so that Islamists like Hasan al-Banna and The Neglected Duty feel compelled to repeat medieval criticisms of greater jihad.[34] This criticism, plus the prevalent definition of jihad as warfare, causes Sufis often to employ mujahada, a related word for al-jihad al-akbar.

The Impact of Jihad

The concept of jihad as a moral struggle touches the daily lives of many Muslims, and not only Sufis. Jihad as warfare, though far better known, has had a narrower impact. In some cases, like the assassination of Sadat, jihad as warfare has had enormous consequences. But it has never mobilized Muslims en masse or transcended the ethnic and political divisions within the Muslim world. Few Muslim governments, and few individual Muslims, have acted in accord with doctrine. The conception of jihad as warfare in defense of the Dar al-Islam did not produce a Pan-Islamic resistance to colonialism. The many movements that arose to resist European expansion or occupation were regional or local, tied to a specific leader, regime, or other specific circumstances; at no time did a jihadjihad against colonialism formed a part of program of religious reform and renewal. movement arise which united Muslims with geographic, sectarian, or political differences. In most cases,

The most systematic attempt to mobilize Muslims against the West, the Ottoman declaration of jihad against the Allies in 1914, failed entirely. With its declaration of war, the Ottoman regime simultaneously published a fatwa (ruling according to the Shari`a) calling the war a jihad that every Muslim had to participate in -- including the Muslim subjects of Russia, France, and Great Britain. To secure the widest possible circulation, the fatwa was published in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish. But the fatwa did not cause significant Muslim defections from the Allied cause, nor did it prevent the Arab Revolt against Muslim rule.[35]

More recent invocations of jihad have been equally ineffective. Frequent calls for jihad against Israel have not overcome division among Israel’s opponents or produced an effective mobilization of their capability against Israel. Saddam Husayn’s call for a jihad against the United States, part of an overall effort to Islamize the image of his secular regime, may have resonated among Islamists but they did not affect the outcome of the crisis. The same applies to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatullah `Ali Khamanei’s similar designation of war against U.S. forces as jihad. Neither pronouncement had significant political or military results.

Even in Afghanistan, where resistance fighters went by the title mujahidin, the idea of jihad had surprisingly little power. The Afghan cause did attract considerable support from the rest of the Islamic world, but only three Islamic states (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran) actually allocated significant resources to the mujahidin. The other outside participants in the Afghan resistance wereindividuals who represented a marginal element within the Islamic world. (Marginal but not insignificant: they later formed an Islamist cadre blamed for Islamist extremism in other parts of the Islamic world, especially North Africa.) Moreover, the concept of jihad did not unite the Afghan resistance, which remained divided by social, political, ethnic, and ideological differences. Although the resistance groups all considered themselves mujahidin, they perceived different paths of God and sought to produce different results in human terms. These groups did not cooperate effectively and often fought each other rather than the Soviets. The concept of jihad had little direct influence on the course of the Afghan war.[36] After the Soviet withdrawal and the establishment of a new government they continue to fight each other.[37]

Most Muslims do not see jihad as warfare as an active obligation, upon either themselves or the Muslim community as a whole. Reinhold Loeffler, working in a tribal village in southern Iran, encountered cogent criticisms of the Islamic Republic’s conception of jihad. One informant asserted: “young men with no proper training go to the front and are senselessly killed. I don’t believe they are martyrs going to paradise.” Another one contrasted Khomeini’s preaching with the conduct of the Imam Husayn: “before his final battle the Imam Husayn exempted his followers from the obligation of jihad so that they might save their lives. Khomeini, however, pitilessly incites people to go to their deaths.” A father spoke of his son: “My son now is telling me about the true Islam; they have to fight a holy war (he says) and of necessity get killed. I tell him there is no holy war in the absence of the Last Imam.”[38] This anecdotal evidence suggests that the Islamic Republic’s invocation of jihad met with mixed emotions, not universal enthusiasm.

What Does Jihad Mean?

Muslims today can mean many things by jihad—the jurists’ warfare bounded by specific conditions, Ibn Taymiya’s revolt against an impious ruler, the Sufi’s moral self-improvement, or the modernist’s notion of political and social reform. The disagreement among Muslims over the interpretation of jihad is genuine and deeply rooted in the diversity of Islamic thought. The unmistakable predominance of jihad as warfare in Shar`i writing does not mean that Muslims today must view jihad as the jurists did a millennium ago. Classical texts speak only to, not for, contemporary Muslims. A non-Muslim cannot assert that jihad always means violence or that all Muslims believe in jihad as warfare.

Conversely, the discord over the meaning of jihad permits deliberate deception, such as the CAIR statement cited above. A Muslim can honestly dismiss jihad as warfare, but he cannot deny the existence of this concept. As the editor of the “Diary of a Mujahid” writes, “some deny it, while others explain it away, yet others frown on it to hide their own weakness.”

The term jihad should cause little confusion, for context almost always indicates what a speaker intends. The variant interpretations are so deeply embedded in Islamic intellectual traditions that the usage of jihad is unlikely to be ambiguous. An advocate of jihad as warfare indicates so through his goals. A Sufi uses the term mujahada or specifies the greater jihad. Bourguiba clearly did not advocate violence to improve education and development in Tunisia. When ambiguity does exist, it may well be deliberate. In the case of Arafat’s statement about a “jihad for Jerusalem,” he intended his Muslim audience to hear a call to arms while falling back on the peaceful definition to allay concerns in Israel and the West. Only his later actions reveal whether he was coopting Islamists by adopting their rhetoric or duping Israelis by hiding his violent intentions.



Douglas E. Streusand is the author of The Formation of the Mughal Empire (Oxford University Press, 1989) and The Islamic Gunpowder Empires in World History (Westview Press, forthcoming).
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Notes:
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  1. Text in Middle East Quarterly, June 1994, p. 50.
  2. Reuters, May 18, 1994; Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1994.
  3. The Boston Globe, May 24, 1994.
  4. At .
  5. At .
  6. For a listing of all appearances in the Qur’an of jihad and related words, see Muhammad Fu’ad `Abd al-Baqi, Al-Mu`jam al-Mufahras li-Alfaz al-Qur’an al-Karim (Cairo: Matabi` ash-Sha`b, 1278), pp. 182-83; and Hanna E. Kassis, A Concordance of the Qur’an (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 587-88.
  7. Muhammad ibn Isma`il Bukhari, The Translation of the Meaning of Sahih al-Bukhari, trans. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, 8 vols. (Medina: Dar al-Fikr: 1981), 4:34-204.
  8. Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 72.
  9. Tamarra Sonn, “Irregular Warfare and Jihad: Asking the Right Questions,” in Cross, Crescent and Sword: The Justification and Limitation of War in Western and Islamic Tradition, ed. John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1990), pp. 132-38.
  10. Henri Laoust, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politique de Taki-D-Din Ahmad b. Taymiya (Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institute Francais D’Archeologie Oriental, 1939), pp. 360-370.
  11. Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics, enlarged ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 101.
  12. Fred M. Donner, “The Sources of Islamic Conceptions of War,” in John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson, eds., Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), pp. 51-52.
  13. Albert Arazi and `Amikam El’ad, “L’Epitre a l’Arm?e,” Studia Islamica 66 (1987): 59-60.
  14. His work is translated into English: Muhammad ibn al-Hasan Shaybani, The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybani’s Siyar, trans. Majid Khadduri (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966).
  15. Richard M. Eaton,The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 71-77.
  16. `Ali ibn `Uthman al-Hujwiri, The “Kashf al-Mahjub,” the Oldest Persian Treatise on Sufism by al-Hujwiri, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (London: Luzac, 1911), pp. 200-201./li>
  17. John Renard, “Al-Jihad al-Akbar: Notes on a Theme in Islamic Spirituality,” Muslim World 78 (1988): 225-242; Valerie J. Hoffman, Sufism, Mystics and Saints in Modern Egypt (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 196-200.
  18. Johannes J. G. Jansen, The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadat’s Assassins and Islamic Resurgence in the Middle East (New York: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 22, 102.
  19. Maulavi Cheragh Ali, A Critical Exposition of the Popular “Jihad” (Delhi: Idareh-i Adabiyyat-i Delli, 1984; original publication 1885) is the best example. Its subtitle reads “Showing that all the wars of Mohammad were Defensive, and that Aggressive War and Compelled Conversion is not allowed in the Koran, with appendices proving that the word jihad does not exegetically mean warfare.”
  20. Mustansir Mir, “Jihad in Islam” in Hadia Dajami-Shakeel and Ronald A. Messier, eds., The Jihad and Its Times (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Center for Near Eastern and North African Studies, 1991), pp. 119-122; Ann Elizabeth Mayer, “War and Peace in the Islamic Tradition and International Law” in Just War and Jihad, pp. 195-226.
  21. Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Medieval and Modern Islam: The Chapter on Jihad from Averroes Legal Handbook “Bidayat al-Mujtahid” and the Treatise “Koran and Fighting” by the Late Shaykh of Azhar Mahmud Shaltut (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977), p. 66.
  22. Abu’l A`la Mawdudi, Al-Jihad fi Sabil Illah (Gujranwala, Pakistan: Dar al-`Arubat li’d-Da`wa al-Islamiya, nd.), pp. 9-10, trans. Tamarra Sonn, “Irregular Warfare and Jihad”, p. 141.
  23. Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism: the Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), p. 134.
  24. Sivan, Radical Islam, pp. 16-21, 114-16.
  25. Jansen, Neglected Duty, p. 162.
  26. Qur’an 3:104, 110 commands Muslims to “enjoin the good and the evil.” This phrase covers the entire moral content of Islam.
  27. Ruhullah Khomeini, Islamic Government, text in Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, trans. and annotated Hamid Algar (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981), p. 108, 132.
  28. “Jihad in the Qur’an: First Lecture,” in Mehdi Abedi and Gary Legenhausen, eds., Jihad and Shahadat: Struggle and Martyrdom in Islam: Essays and Addresses by Ayatollah Mahmud Taleqani, Ayatullah Murtada Muttahari and Dr. Ali Shari’ati, (Houston: Institute for Research and Islamic Studies, 1986), p. 89.
  29. Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980), pp. 63-64.
  30. Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Weiner, 1996), pp. 116-17.
  31. Hoffman, Sufism, Mystics and Saints, pp. 357-58.
  32. “Al-Jihad al-Akbar.” Cited in Jansen, Neglected Duty, pp. 65-66, 74, 82.
  33. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Islamic Society in Practice (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), p. 28.
  34. Ibid., p. 22, 200; Tamara Sonn, Between Qu’ran and Crown: The Challenge of Political Legitimacy in the Islamic World (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), p. 203.
  35. Peters, Islam and Colonialism, pp. 90-94.
  36. Olivier Roy, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan, 2nd. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
  37. Olivier Roy, Afghanistan: from Holy War to Civil War (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995).
  38. Reinhold Loeffler, Islam in Practice: Religious Beliefs in a Persian Village(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 229, 235, 237.
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Are you trying to overwhelm me with all that brother? :lol: Good read!
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:D Laa Tahzan, there's more on its way Insha-Allah . . .

:shade: JIHAD AL-NAFS[font=Calisto MT,Times New Roman][/font]

[font=&quot]FIGHTING THE EGO[/font]

Views of IMAM Al-GHAZALI
​
Translated from the 'Ihya' `Ulum al-Din' [The Revival of the Religious Sciences]:

Meaning of nafs:

 It has two meanings. First, it means the powers of anger and sexual appetite in a human being... and this is the usage mostly found among the people of tasawwuf [Sufi’s], who take "nafs" as the comprehensive word for all the evil attributes of a person. That is why they say: one must certainly do battle with the ego and break it1, as is referred to in the hadith: "Your worst enemy is your nafs which lies between your flanks."2.

The second meaning of nafs is the soul, the human being in reality, his self and his person. However, it is described differently according to its different states. If it assumes calmness under command and has removed from itself the disturbance caused by the onslaught of passion, it is called "the satisfied soul" (al-nafs al-mutma'inna).

In its first meaning the nafs does not envisage its return to God because it has kept itself far from Him: such a nafs is from the party of shaytan. However, when it does not achieve calmness, yet sets itself against the love of passions and objects to it, it is called "the self-accusing soul" (al-nafs al-lawwama), because it rebukes its owner for his neglect in the worship of his master... If it gives up all protest and surrenders itself in total obedience to the call of passions and shaytan, it is named "the soul that enjoins evil" (al-nafs al-ammara bi al-Su')... which could be taken to refer to the ego in its first meaning.

Soldiers of the heart

 God has armed soldiers whom He has placed in the hearts and the souls and others of His worlds, and none knows their true nature and actual number except He... [He proceeds to explain that the limbs of the body, the five senses will, instinct, and the emotive and interactive powers are among those soldiers.] Know that the two soldiers of anger and sexual passion can be guided by the heart completely... or on the other hand disobey and rebel against it completely, until they enslave it. Therein lie the death of the heart and the termination of its journey towards eternal happiness. The heart has other soldiers: knowledge (`ilm), wisdom (hikma) and reflection (tafakkur) whose help it seeks by right, for they are the Party of God against the other two who belong to the party of shaytan...

God says: "Have you seen the one who chooseth for his god his own lust?" (25:43) And "He followed his own lust. Therefor his likeness is as the likeness of a dog; if thou attackest him he panteth with his tongue out, and if thou leavest him he panteth with his tongue out" (7:176) and about the person who controlled the passion of his ego God says: "But as for him who feared to stand before his Lord and restrained his soul from lust, Lo! The garden will be his home" (79:40-41).

Know that the body is like a town and the intellect of the mature human being is like a king ruling that town. All the forces of the external and internal senses he can muster are like his soldiers and his aides. The ego that enjoins evil (nafs ammara), that is, lust and anger, is like an enemy that challenges him in his kingdom and strives to slaughter his people. The body thus becomes like a garrison-town or sea-outpost, and the soul like its custodian posted in it. If he fights against his enemies and defeats them and compels them to do what he likes, he will be praised when he returns to God's presence, as God said: "Those who strive in the way of Allah with their wealth and lives. Allah hath conferred on those who strive with their wealth and lives a rank above the sedentary" (4:95).

Inspiration and insinuation

 The thoughts that stir one's desire are of two kinds... praiseworthy, and that is called "inspiration" (ilham), and blameworthy, and that is called "whispering" (waswasa) The heart is owned mutually by a shaytan and an angel... The angel stands for a creature, which God has created for the overflowing of benefit, the bestowal of knowledge, the unveiling of truth, the promise of reward, and the ordering of the good... The shaytan stands for a creature whose business is to be against all this. Waswasa against ilham, shaytan against angel, success (tawfiq) against disappointment (khidhlan).

The Prophet (s) said: "There are two impulses in the soul, one from an angel which calls towards good and confirms truth; whoever finds this let him know it is from God and praise Him. Another impulse comes from the enemy which leads to doubt and denies truth and forbids good; whoever finds this, let him seek refuge in God from the accursed devil." Then he recited the verse: "The devil shows you fear of poverty and enjoins evil upon you" (2:268)3

Hasan Al-Basri said: "Two thoughts roam over the soul, one from God, one from the enemy. God shows mercy on a servant who settles at the thought that comes from Him. He embraces the thought that comes from God, while he fights against the one from his enemy. To illustrate the heart's mutual attraction between these two powers the Prophet (s) said: "The heart of a believer lies between two fingers of the Merciful"4... The fingers stand for upheaval and hesitation in the heart... If man follows the dictates of anger and appetite, the dominion of shaytan appears in him through idle passions [hawa] and his heart becomes the nesting-place and container of shaytan, who feeds on idle passions. If he does battle with his passions and does not let them dominate his nafs, imitating in this the character of the angels, at that time his heart becomes the resting-place of angels and they alight upon it...

The Prophet (s) said: "There is none among you in whom there is not a devil" They said: "Even in you, O Messenger of God?!" He said: "Even in me, but God helped me to overcome him and he has submitted to me, so he doesn't order anything except good"5... The mutual repelling of the soldiers of the angels and the devils is constant in the battle over the heart, until the heart is conquered by one of the two sides which sets up its nation and settles there. And most hearts have been seized by the soldiers of shaytan, who fill them with the whispers that call one to love this passing world and disregard the next.

The Jihad against the nafs

 The Prophet (s) said: "The fighter against unbelief is he who fights against his ego in obeying God"6. Sufyan al-Thawri said: "I never dealt with anything stronger against me than my own ego; it was one time with me, and one time against me". Yahya ibn Mu`adh al-Razi said: "Fight against your ego with the four swords of training: eat little, sleep little, speak little, and be patient when people harm you. Then the ego will walk the paths of obedience, like a fleeing horseman in the field of battle."

This important topic was translated from the following parts of 'Ihya' `Ulum al-Din' [The Revival of the Religious Sciences]:

a) Definitions at the beginning of the book Kitab sharh `aja'ib al-qalb [Book of the Explanation of the Mysteries of the Heart]

b) Section entitled: "The Soldiers of the Heart" in the same book

c) Section entitled: "Shaytan's domination over the heart through whispering [al-waswas]" in the same book

d)Section entitled: "Proofs..." from the book Kitab riadat al-nafs wa tahdhib al-akhlaq wa mu`alajat amrad al-qalb [Book of the training of the ego and the disciplining of manners and the healing of the heart's diseases]

Notes

1 (la budda min mujahadat al-nafs wa kasriha)

2 Arabic: A`da `aduwwuka nafsuka al-lati bayna janibayk. Al-`Iraqi says it is in Bayhaqi on the authority of Ibn `Abbas and its chain of transmission contains Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Ghazwan, one of the forgers.

3 Tirmidhi: hasan; Nisa'i; `Iraqi did not weaken it.

4 Muslim, Ahmad, Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah.

5 Muslim

6 Arabic: al-mujahidu man jahada nafsahu fi ta`at Allah `azza wa jall, Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah, Ibn Hibban, Tabarani, Hakim, etc


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:D Just another paragraph or two . . .

Jihad (Struggle)

The meaning of jihad in Arabic is the exertion of ones effort and capability. In Islam, the meaning of jihad is the exerting of one's total effort and strength in repelling the enemies of Islam and fighting them directly or by aiding those who fight them directly with wealth or other means. This is the meaning of jihad and fiy sabeel Allah when used in the Qur'an and the hadith. This is the direct meaning although there are a few instances where it is used allegorically to apply to other things.

Types of Jihad:
Jihad against the self

The struggle against the "self" - i.e., the self which calls to evil (an-nafs al-ammaaratun bi as-suu') by denying it anything which it desires which Allah has forbidden, taking on aspects of good character and leaving the ways of foolishness and perservering in obedience to Allah even if it is difficult. This is NOT the greatest jihad and the popular hadith which says so is not authentic. It is nonetheless a vital aspect of every Muslim's practice. Allah said: {And as for the one who fears the standing before his Lord and forbids his self its desires * Surely, paradise is his shelter} An-Naazi'aat: 40-41

But, this overcoming of the lower desires is not accomplished by our efforts, but only by the grace and mercy of Allah. When we turn to Allah in belief and obedience, He blesses us with a shield or a protection against the evil inclinations within. Allah said:

{Those who prepared the abode and the faith before them love those who migrated to them and find no need in their hearts for what they have been given and the put others before themselves even if they are in need. And whoever is protected from the avarice of his own self is surely among the successful.} Al-Hashr: 9

Jihad against Shaitaan

By opposing and repelling both the desires and the intellectual confusion with which Shaitaan tempts Allah's slaves. This jihad is even more difficult than the jihad against the kuffar since at least we can see them and assess their strengths and weaknesses. Shaitan can see us while we cannot see him and his experience at leading astray goes back thousands of years to the creation of Adam. Allah said: {O you who believe, do not follow the steps of Shaitaan. Whoever follows the steps of Shaitaan [will find that] he commands obscenity and sin. If it were not for the grace of Allah upon you and His mercy none of you could ever have kept clean. But Allah purifies who He wishes and Allah is the Hearer, the Knower.} An-Nur: 21


Jihad against the disbelievers

This is be physically fighting them under a righteous Muslim Khalifa either by direct participation in combat or by donations of wealth or other methods of supporting the struggle - including idealogical struggle. This is the greatest jihad. The Prophet (sas) said: "Fight the polytheists with your property, your lives and your tongues." Allah mentions the greatness of fighting in the path of Allah in very many places in the Qur'an. Generally, these are all references to this type of Jihad.

Jihad against the hypocrites

This is by establishing the proofs against them and calling the Muslims to adhering to the daleel - proofs from the Qur'an and the Sunnah, educating the Muslims to protect them against such fitan and opposing their mischief in every way. It should be noted that only Allah knows the identity of the hypocrites - we only have signs. Nonetheless, we must oppose distortions of Islam by all the means mentioned. Allah said: {O Prophet fight the disbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh to them. There abode is hell-fire and what an evil abode.} At-Tahreem: 9


Jihad against corrupt Muslims

This is jihad is by physical means (the "hand"), the tongue and the heart. The Prophet (sas) said: "Whoever among you witnesses wrongdoing, let him correct it with his hand. If he is unable, then with his tongue. If he is unable, then with his heart and that is the weakest of faith." Allah said: {And fight in the path of Allah [against] those who fight you and do not transgress, surely, Allah does not love the transgressors.} Al-Baqarah: 190

{Prepare against them all forms of strength of which you are capable and ranks of horses with which you strike fear [in the hearts of] Allah's enemy, your enemy and others besides those. You do not know them, but Allah knows them. And whatever you spend in the path of Allah will be fully repaid to you and you will not be oppressed [in the least].} Al-Anfaal: 60

"Others besides those" in this verse is a reference to the internal enemy of this nation - i.e., the hypocrites, those who appear to be Muslim and practicing Islam externally but in whose hearts there is kufr and in whose actions there is mischief and destructiveness. The Muslim Ummah must be a strong and cohesive entity capable of meeting any military or other threat. This strength and unity based on the sound foundation of the Qur'an and Sunnah reflects inwardly and outwardly. It holds both the external and the internal enemy at bay and puts fear in their hearts. Without this strength, unity and means, we will continue to be afflicted by both the external enemy and the internal enemy.

*Ref: http://www.islam.co.kr/jihad.htm

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if one or two scholars grade a hadith weak or fabricated because of so and so in the cain, does it rule out all the other scholars who graded it sahih and think of so and so as reliable?

this is a dangerous thought cause there is not a consensus on ilmel rijal
 
Link said:
if one or two scholars grade a hadith weak or fabricated because of so and so in the cain, does it rule out all the other scholars who graded it sahih and think of so and so as reliable?

this is a dangerous thought cause there is not a consensus on ilmel rijal
Click to expand...
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:D A hadith may be fabricated in one book or chapter of a book, and yet in another; it may be authentic. The question of authenticity; we go to Ali (as); the cousin of the Prophet (saw). He said that there are 3 steps to ahadith authenticiation, from which even one being flawed fabricates the hadith.


  1. :thumbs_upSanad: Channel (chain) of narration; through whom is the narration narrated, and can they be trusted.
  2. :thumbs_upLuqa: Quranic compatibility with the hadith; the Prophet (saw) NEVER spoke against the Quran.
  3. :thumbs_upTa`weel ul-Athr / Ta`weel fil-Iman: meaning of the transmitted statement, and its effects on Iman.

:) I will Insha-Allah elaborate on this in the near future, if necessary. :p So please do ask if you want it explained Insha-Allah . . .

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