By Anwarulhaq Baig
NEW DELHI—Trying to remove various misgiving about “Jihad” that has been misused by anti-Islamic forces to malign Islam and Muslims all over the world, including India, noted Islamic scholar Dr. Muhammad Raziul Islam Nadwi said that Islam has not come to eradicate Un-Islamic belief forcibly or by using military campaign as is being propagated by some non-Muslim scholars with an ulterior motive.
Dr. Nadwi, who is also national secretary of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind(JIH), India’s prominent religio-cultural organization, pointed out that when Islam upholds freedom of expression and that extends to freedom of religion as well, how could such a religion advocate forced eradication of other faiths.
Making these observations at a lecture at the JIH headquarters here recently, he said that centuries of Islamic and Muslim rule in different parts of the world did not lead to the elimination of non-Muslims in the respective countries. History is a witness that followers of other religious continued to co-exist under Muslim rule, including India. He said that it was a false propaganda that Jihad in Islam was used to eliminate non-Muslim societies.
Explaining that one of the various purposes of Jihad (literally means effort or striving against evil in oneself or society) is to protect the weak, oppressed and above all to establish justice.
He said that Allah in the Quran asks Muslims to defend the weak, ill-treated and oppressed among men, women and children who cry out for protection. And this is Jihad in physical term and such action under no circumstances can be termed terrorism. Defending and protecting the life and property of the weak and oppressed is one of the basic human rights.
He pointed out that the aim of Jihad is not acquisition of wealth but to establish justice and resist oppression and aggression.
Expressing serious concern over vilification of the term “Jihad”, Dr. Nadwi said that the term had wrongly been associated with terrorism, unjust killing, looting and attacks on innocent lives.
He said that anti-Islamic forces have propagated the negative narrative about Jihad that influenced people’s perception not only in India but all over the world. This negative propaganda has resulted in a kind of aversion against Islam among people not familiar with true teachings of Islam.
He noted that a negative propaganda about Jihad has also led to a type of apologetic attitude among Muslims who shy away from using the term Jihad as type of struggle against evil in the society. The term has so much been associated with violence in the writings of Western Islamophobic writers that mere mention of term Jihad evokes an imagery of violence, killing and mayhem in the mind of commoners. He advised publication and distribution of literature about the true concept of Jihad and also post them online for the benefit of youths who generally read materials on internet.
