The Islamic World Front issued a fatwa on 23 February 1998, charging the United States with the occupation of the holiest lands of Islam, with infliction of "great devastation" on the Iraqi people as consequence of the first Gulf War and with servitude to the "Jew's petty state". Further, it declared that "all these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims". Thus the Islamic World Front called upon the Muslims to engage in a holy war against the West.

In the Western world, Islamic fundamentalism is seen as a threat to the regional Middle Eastern interests and to broader Western interests in the Muslim world. The Iranian Revolution, the attacks on Western embassies in Africa, various hijacking and hostage taking incidents and the violence propagated by groups like the Army of God (Jund Allah), the Holy War (al-Jihad) and the party of God (Hizbullah), all signal the emergence of militant Jihad targeted against the West (Esposito, 1999). Esposito argues that at times it seems that the Communist threat to the West is being transferred to a new threat i.e. the thread of Islamic fundamentalism, where the main tool employed is 'jihad against the West'.

Jihad is an Arabic word, which can mean to "to strive", "to exert" or "to fight", and therefore it can be used to mean different things in different contexts. Esposito defines Jihad as a "struggle against one's evil inclinations, (or) an exertion to convert unbelievers, or a struggle for the moral betterment of the Islamic community."(Esposito, 2003)

This paper studies the relevance of the concept of Jihad in contemporary times. It presents the Islamic and Western discourses on the concept of Jihad and then provides an analysis of the relevance of the concept of Jihad to cotemporary times.

The Islamic discourse on Jihad can be divided into two main categories: the modernist perspective and the fundamentalist perspective.

Presenting the modernist perspective, Moulavi Chiragh Ali contradicts the prevalent belief amongst Muslim and non-Muslim thinkers that "religious war of aggression is one of the tenants of Islam, and (is) prescribed by the Quran for the purpose of proselytizing or exacting tribute." On the contrary, Ali believes that Jihad was not ordained to be an offensive and proselytizing war against Darul-Harb, declaring that "all the fighting injunctions in the Quran are, in the first place only in self-defense, and none of them has any reference to make warfare [sic] offensively. In the second place, it is to be particularly noted that they were transitory in their nature, and are not to be considered positive injunctions for future observance." The crux of Ali's argument lies in the belief that Islam is not aggressive religion. He argues that although the Prophet was persecuted throughout his lifetime, but never initiated a war of aggression against Darul-Harb. The mission of the Holy Prophet's life was not to wage war, as he was only ordained to enlighten the world to the message of Islam. History is witness to the various pacts of peace and compromise that were reached between the various Arab tribes and the Prophet. War was only launched in response to a breach of a treaty, as was the case with the famous Treaty of Hudaibia. Ali also contends that the verses of the Quran that are usually presented in support of Jihad as an aggressive war are misquoted and misinterpreted. In particular, he argues that they have to be read as a whole and in context of the times of the Prophet. He also believes that the rules of interpretation are violated by selectively reading the injunctions of the Quran to support a certain point of view. He point to an established rule while interpreting the Quran, that if there are two injunctions on the same issue, one conditional and the other general, then the conditional one is given precedence. Citing these aberrations, Ali argues that the injunctions relating to an aggressive war against Darul-Harb have been misinterpreted and read out of context. In support of his arguments he says that respected legists of first and second century Hegeria, like Ibn (son of) Omar the second Khalif, Sofian Souri, Ibn Shorormath, Ata and Amar-bin-Dinar held the belief "that fighting was not religiously incumbent (wajib), was only a voluntary act, and that only those were to be fought against who attacked the Moslems" (Ali).

The contemporary proponents of the fundamentalist interpretation of Jihad are Syed Qutb, Maulana Maududi and Majid Khadduri. The fundamentalist interpretation is heavily dependent on the belief that the real objective of Islam is to establish the sovereignty of God over the world. Maududi says Islam wants to remove man from the subjugation of man-made ideologies and make him subservient to God alone. He believes that man-made ideologies and systems cannot provide justice and equality in the world, as man-made ideologies promote the "the lordship of man over man". Thus, the establishment of the ideal society is every Muslim's duty and to "stake one's life and everything else to achieve this purpose is called Jihad" (Maududi). Furthermore, man is under obligation to spread the word of God far and wide and thus Jihad is also sanctioned "against polytheism and must be suffered by all non-Muslims who reject Islam, or, in the case of the dhimmis (Scripturaries) refuse to pay the poll tax" (Khadduri, 59). Therefore through Jihad, the Muslims are required to incorporate Darul-Harb into Darul-Islam.

The establishment of this political authority is the collective duty of a community and has not been ordained to individuals alone. Khadduri agues that Islam has imposed this obligation on the community to centralize the command and decision making structure, implying only the Muslim head of state can declare a 'jihad' in the name of Islam. Maududi lays out further criteria, arguing those fighting in the name of Islam, should not harbour any personal agendas and should only fight for "Allah's pleasure and for the benefit and well-being of His creation."

While Khadduri and Maududi focus on the philosophical underpinnings of Jihad, it is Syyid Qutb's discourse on Jihad that provides direction to the Islamists organisations of the day. Qutb slams modernist interpretations of Jihad as mere apologies provided under the influence of Western masters. He categorically states that Jihad was not ordained by God to be a defensive war and agrees that the goal of the Muslim Ummah is the "establishment of God's domain in the world, the elimination of human kingship, (and) the revision of authority from the hands of the usurpers toward God." In pursuit of this goal, he lays out three distinct phases. In the first phase, the Prophet was ordered to preach peacefully and take "recourse to forgiveness" to those who accept God's message. In the second phase he was ordered to fight those who came to fight him, but to "restrain himself from those who did not make war with him." In the last phase he was ordered to fight the polytheists, which has to be continued by the followers of the Prophet.

The establishment of "God's domain in the world" can be done both by peaceful and non-peaceful means. But, Qutb believes that while peaceful means are recommended, they will not suffice as man lusts for power and will not willingly abdicate power back to God. Thus it is essential that, while the message of God is being preached peacefully, the Muslims should also employ other means to remove all obstacles that hinder the establishment of the ideal society.

Discussing the modernist discourse on Jihad, Qutb argues that it is incorrect to confine Jihad to the technical term of a "defensive war". He argues that if we confine it to the modern interpretation of a defensive war, then we are not fulfilling the real objective of Islam. If the real objective of Islam is to be fulfilled then the term "defensive war" has to be interpolated to mean the "defense of man against all those factors and motives that demolish the freedom of man or serve as impediments in his way of real freedom." Further, he argues that any Muslim who understands the purpose of Islam cannot be satisfied by the categorization of Jihad as an offensive war. This categorization would belie the progressive notions of Islam and would imply that Islam is not allowed to challenge the oppressive political systems and the racial and social distinctions of our society. He also notes that holders of these political systems and distinctions will not tolerate the spread of Islam amongst their societies and will fiercely lash out against Islam. Therefore, in any given scenario the Muslims are duty bound to the spread of Islam in the world and have to strive for it both through preaching and movement.

The Western discourse in Jihad can also be divided into two main categories: the confrontationists and the accomodationists.

The confrontationist school is spearheaded by Bernard Lewis. In his book the "Crisis of Islam", Lewis writes that depending on the context Jihad has been interpreted to mean moral striving and armed struggle. The life and experience of the early community of Islam, established by Prophet Mohammed and his companions, provides the model for the spread and defense of jihad and the hijra. Jihad and hijra coupled with the concept of the ummah, which stresses a pan Islamic unity by establishing a worldwide Islamic community, have guided Muslims through out the ages.

According to Lewis, in the chapters of the Quran dating from the Meccan period jihad often refers to moral striving, whereas the chapters dating from the Medinan period (where the Prophet headed the state and commanded the army) the context changes to that of armed struggle. Furthermore, he stresses that for most of the recorded history of Islam the word jihad was used in a military sense. While modern Muslims, particularly when referring to the outside world, explain the duty of Jihad in a moral and spiritual sense, but Lewis declares that the majority of earlier authorities discuss it in the military context. We see a tendency among the confrontationists of the West and Islam to rely on literal interpretations of the Quran and examples of the Prophet, divorcing them from other political, economic and cultural realities. According to Lewis, it is the duty of the House of Islam (Dar-ul-Islam), to continue Jihad until the rest of the World (Dar-ul-Harb or House of War) either adopts Islam or submits to it. He tries to prove this point of view by various quotations from the Quran and Hadiths of the Prophet.

In contemporary times the call for Jihad in Afghanistan was initiated by transnational Islamic religious networks. Ulemas issued fatwas interpreting Soviet intervention as an invasion of the Dar-ul-Islam by the infidels and impious (Kepel, p.139). A defensive Jihad was proclaimed, which according to the Sharia obliges every Muslim to participate. This was further instigated by help from the American and Pakistani governments. Hence jihad began to be seen as the principal force which propagates Muslims towards aggression against the West. As with the Islamic discourse, we notice a divergence of opinion amongst western scholars as well. Not all western scholars believe that violence in the Muslim world has been propagated by religious ideology. As John L. Esposito stresses it would be wrong to interpret Osama bin Laden's ideology by adhering to religious forces alone, as the political climate in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world in the 1960s and 1970s also helped in shaping Laden's extremist worldview. Laden was outraged at the Saudi-American alliance and the presence of American forces in the Kingdom (Esposito, 2002). America was seen by many as a supporter of the corrupt autocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia. Regimes which were commonly viewed as being concerned only with serving their own interests and not paying heed to the demands of the Saudi people at large. Ultimately, the corruption and neglect of the Saudi state was also blamed on America's shoulders, whose support to these regimes hindered the establishment of a more accountable government and a more just society.

According to Esposito, the key influences were the puritanical Wahhabi brand of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia, the militant jihad ideology of Egypt's Sayyid Qutb, and defeat the Arabs faced in the 1967 Arab Israeli war. The Wahhabi brand of Islam is a strict puritanical faith that emphasizes literal interpretation of the Quran and the example of the Holy Prophet (Esposito, 2002). By awaking memories of the glorious Muslim past, their leaders such as Abdulaziz summoned missionary zeal in the Muslims and directed them to wage jihad against non-Muslims as well as Muslims who do not follow the faith in its purity. Abdullan Azam, Laden's teacher at King Abdulaziz University was an advocate of this form of global militant jihad. Azam was a captivating speaker who preached the message of militant confrontation. Laden was educated at a time when the jihad movements were on the rise in the broader Muslim world and within Saudi Arabia. When the anti-soviet jihad in Afghanistan began Laden joined the Afghan refugee camps in Peshawar, Pakistan. Ironically, this was "good jihad" for America while it felt threatened by Iran's revolutionary movement, which also proclaimed itself to be a form of jihad.

Western accommodationists distinguish between the actions of legitimate Islamist political groups/movements and the extremist minority (Gerges, p.29). Western academia, government and media mostly emphasize actions of the violent groups and movements while downplaying the actions of the more moderate political and non-political movements. Constructing a monolithic Islam leads to religious reductionism (Esposito, 1999) that views political conflicts in the Islamic world as primarily religious conflicts i.e. Islam versus Christianity and Judaism or Islam versus the Western world. They argue that the Islamic movements are basically motivated by the lack of economic opportunities and political freedom. The Islamist movements oppose specific Western policies, which they believe perpetuate Western dominance and the Muslim society's dependence and subservience to it. These policies include the West's support for the corrupt and repressive Middle Eastern regimes, U.S. unconditional support for Israel and the long history of American economic and military intervention in the region.

Furthermore it may be that rise of fundamentalism presents not only challenges but also opportunities and potential for a more reformist and more representative governments. Hence Jihad can also be interpreted as an attempt to help Muslims rise from their dire economic and political conditions.

In 1973 Anwar Sadat raised jihad against Israel, its code name was Badr, symbolizing the first great victory of the Holy Prophet. Emergence of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Iran's Islamic revolution, seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979 by militants who called for the overthrow of the House of Saud, all point to the rise of internal Islamic opposition and reform movements (Esposito, 2002). Esposito explains Laden's ideology in the following words:

In contrast Lewis ignores the fact that people can and do misinterpret and exploit the actual doctrines in order to justify their own ideologies. To him Laden might be considered wrong by other Muslims but his ideology has been driven by Islamic forces and hence he uses it as base to establish a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. Therefore, according to the confrontationists, the militant ideology of the Muslims and the Islamist movements that it gives birth to, must be contained and stifled at birth.

Esposito claims that although Islam is the second largest religion in the world, many in the West knew nothing about it until Iran's Islamic revolution. Throughout the 1980s, the West's primary experience of Islam was with the Ayatullah Khomeini's brand of radical Islamic fundamentalism. This has obscured the richness of the Shiite religious tradition and spirituality, its diverse branches and differing experiences of attitude towards war and peace. Due to geographic and linguistic factors, inaccessibility of observation of the 'Muslim' individuals, the western observers tend to overemphasize the religious factor.

The Western propensity to see the Arab world through the distorting lens of Islamism (Burgart, p.6) has often been criticized. George Corm argues that the stubborn refusal of Europe to discuss the Muslims of the Middle East, without any reference to geographic, historical or social territoriality is remarkable. They discuss "the world of Islam", "the Muslim people", in a way that entirely disregards history, geography, as well as ethnic roots. There is no distinguishing between Arabs of the Maghreb and the Mashreq, Turks, Iranians and Afghans (Corm, p.378). The Muslims are taken to be one monolithic entity is most popular discourses.

It is interesting to note that when trying to explain the Crusades, Lewis stresses that it has lost its meaning as a Holy war for the Christian world, and is used in a moral sense i.e. a good campaign for a good cause. Whereas, all the subsequent battles between Muslim caliphs of Damascus, Baghdad etc. against the Christian Emperors in Constantinople, Vienna and in more distant countries further west, are explained only under the context of Jihad, ignoring any political, geographical, cultural and moral reasons. Bush referred to the aar against Iraq as the 'Crusades' and later retracted his words. In American foreign policy we can discern a desire to separate religious sentiments from other pressures such as fighting for terrorism, human right violation etc. Bush repeatedly claimed that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were against terrorism and not against Islam or the Muslims. Hence religious forces are conveniently sidestepped when referring to Western policies but are exaggerated when referring to the world of Islam.

As Edward Said argues, although U.S. government and organizations like Human Rights Watch are concerned about bringing Saddam Hussein to trial against humanity, nothing is said against U.S. policy which fully supports Israel's bombing of civilian targets, a crime punishable according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. He questions why is the case that Sharon, Barak, Peres, and all the other leaders whose routine assaults on civilian and human rights constitute the longest-standing and longest-unpunished set of war crimes in history, are never brought to trial or why aren't their actions labeled as religious fanaticism?

In the late twentieth and twenty first centuries the word jihad has been used repeatedly by liberation, resistance and terrorist movements to legitimate their cause and to motivate their followers. Many Muslims believe that the conditions of their world require a jihad. The Muslim world is dominated by corrupt authoritarian governments and wealthy elites. The elite in countries such as Pakistan is a minority concerned solely with its own prosperity. Western governments are perceived as supporting oppressive regimes and exploiting the region's human and natural resources, robbing Muslims of their culture and their options to be governed according to their own choice and to live in a more just society.

Many believe that the restoration of power and prosperity requires creation of more religiously oriented states and societies. A radicalized minority advocate militant jihad in order to liberate Muslims at home and abroad. Islamists will have to realize the fact that they live in a globally interdependent world. And the need to interpret religious ideology in the contemporary world order is essential. Fundamentalists should ask themselves whether the boundaries of Dar-ul-Harb and Dar-ul-Islam are still maintained? The level of corruption, poverty, illiteracy in the Muslim world far surpasses that of the Western world. In such a situation how can the fundamentalists claim to enlighten the rest of the world when their own house is covered with dark clouds?

Further, it should be noted that the fundamentalist interpretation of Jihad, provided by revivalist Muslim scholars are a direct by-product of the turmoil and the crisis of identity suffered by the Muslim world in recent times. In an attempt to understand the predicament of the Muslim world, Muslim thinkers largely came to the conclusion that it is the deviation from the Muslim ways that has led to this plight. In particular, Maududi developed Islamic revivalism in response to fear of Hindu-British domination in the subcontinent and Qutb furthered his brand of Islam revivalism buoyed by the belief that the Muslims were returning to pre-Islamic Jahiliyya, under the influence of western imperialism.

In contemporary times, while invoking the doctrine of Jihad, Osama Bin Laden is pursuing a political agenda, rather than an Islamic one. His rhetoric is mainly based against political issues, i.e. the presence of the American troops in the Arabic Peninsula, American imperialism and American support of the Israeli cause. While the objectives of these terrorists organization do claim the establishment of the ideal Muslim society, yet their actions are divorced from the stated objectives. By targeting their attacks against America and Western world, the Islamist organizations do not help further the message of God to the rest of the world. Rather, they hurt the interests of the Muslim world by providing a skewed version of jihad and Islam to the Western world.

In the contemporary times, the instrument of jihad is expediently employed by Islamist groups to wage their own political agendas. It should also be kept in mind that according to Islamic discourse, jihad is a collective responsibility and can only be declared by a Muslim head of a state, any arbitrary Muslim does not have the authority to declare war in the name of God. Therefore, jihad as it is used in the contemporary times is an aberration of the original concept and has become a mere pseudo-name for the various proxy-wars being waged against the West, in the name of Islam.

It is recommended that in order to achieve a more tolerant world order it is important to investigate why extremist groups have stuck to the militant version of Jihad, leading in some cases to the legitimization of terrorism. Fighting violence with violence will not help solve the problems faced in the contemporary world. It is evident that America's war on Afghanistan and Iraq did not help diminish the extremist movements, but rather helped aggravate anti-American feelings around the globe? The need is for the world to view these problems in an unbiased way and make an attempt to understand the factors that nurture Osama Bin Ladens in our world. It is recommended that the 'greater' Jihad be waged in the Muslim world in the form of reform movements that attempt to diagnose the problems rather than cure the symptoms.