Jihad Jihad Ideology

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: THE CONCEPT OF HOLY WAR, JIHAD, CRUSADES OR BOTH…….?

 

Jihad stands alone.

muslim seig heil

In a private discussion with a few colleagues, the discussion on what to call the Islamic State jihadis came up. There were a number of different suggestions presented, then the conversation turned to the contextual meaning of one of the words suggested, the word ”crusade”.

I responded :

Crusade(s) is a belated response to Islamic hegemony. Of course there’s more to the Christian-Islamic interplay in the ME, Efraim Karsh explains it in his book, ‘‘Islamic Imperialism”. It can be also understood that the concept of ”holy war” was borrowed by the Crusaders from the Spanish experience being under the yoke of Islam for 700 years, which continued to wage war on the rest of Christian Europe long after Spain was conquered.

The concept of ”holy war” before the onslaught of Islam (jihad), was unknown to Christianity.  

Another thought the portion was misleading due Ambrose’s theology, which also included blatantly gross anti-Semitism, ”a war against the Jews”, while another agreed that Islam’s holy-war model of territorial-conquest did not originate with Christianity, though Christians have carried out an ”Ambrose-type” of holy wars against its local Jewish populations throughout its history.

That however does not capture the entirety of the institution of Jihad, being an “institutional phalanx” of Islamic manifest destiny, (the crusades were responses over a couple hundred years to Islamic hegemony and intra-political machinations and power plays).  I believe that that alone separates Islam from any other ideology or movement that has practised a similar concept throughout the history of warfare.

Islamic fundamentalist jihad (back to basics Islam 101).

Andy Bostom had an excellent piece about it the other day.  The Turks only a century ago were exacting the same atrocities on the very same peoples, such as beheadings, burying people alive taking slaves and raping women.

It’s only a new eruption of the same Islamic impulse.

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