It all started when Jihad Watch writer Hugh Fitzgerald offered 38 uncomfortable questions that could be used by those who encountered “I’m a Muslim — Ask Me Anything” Islamic apologists. Hugh then gave answers to the questions: 1-6; 7-10; 11-15; 16-23; 24-29; and 30-38.

Now a Muslim named Rizwan Khan, who is a member of the Ahmadiyya sect that claims to renounce violence and is violently persecuted as heretical by Sunni Muslims in Pakistan and Indonesia, and which energetically purveys deceptive Islamic apologetics designed to foster ignorance and complacency about the jihad threat in the West, has left a series of his own answers to Hugh’s questions in the comments section. Rather than leave them there unanswered, I decided to highlight them in a series of posts with answers of my own, to show you how slyly deceptive and dishonest Islamic apologists can be.

Several of the questions are poorly formed or based on unfounded assumption; nevertheless, here are brief answers to all of these questions:

1. What is the meaning of Jihad?

Jihad means to strive. The Quran describes only one form of Jihad as the “great Jihad”, which is the Jihad of explaining the message of the Quran. The Quran says, “So obey not the disbelievers and strive against them by means of it (the Qur’an) a great striving.” (25:53) All other forms of Jihad are lesser Jihad to this Great Jihad.

The only permission in the Quran for the lesser Jihad of fighting is in self defense: “Permission to fight is given to those against whom war is made, because they have been wronged” (22:40)

The Qur’an does indeed speak of a “great jihad”: Rizwan Khan doesn’t make it clear, but when the Qur’an refers to “a great striving,” the word used for striving is jihad. What is not in the Qur’an, contrary to his claim, is any statement to the effect that this “great jihad” consists wholly and solely of “explaining the message of the Qur’an.” The idea that the “great jihad” is spiritual or pedagogical comes from a hadith attributed to Muhammad, in which he referred to spiritual striving as the “greater jihad.” But this is a weak hadith, not found in any of the hadith collections that Islamic scholars consider to be the most reliable. What’s more, even if it is greater than the lesser jihad of warfare, the greater jihad does not cancel or abrogate the lesser jihad. Even Khan grants for fighting in self-defense. He disingenuously does not mention that the Qur’an also says: “And fight them until there is no fitnah and [until] the religion, all of it, is for Allah” (8:39). That is not self-defense; that’s a maximalist call for warfare until Islam establishes hegemony everywhere. Khan is, like virtually all Islamic apologists, is relying on the ignorance of the kuffar.