jihad: war against the infidel
CNN radio is repeating a short piece claiming that "jihad" does not mean "holy war" and that Islam is a peaceful religion. I have no doubt that the numerous media reports to this effect are well-meaning and meant to counter rampant and spreading anti-Muslim bigotry. Nor do I have any desire to provide ammunition to those who ignorantly defame Islam, but in fact Islam is not historically a peaceful religion and "jihad" does traditionally mean a holy war carried out to bring a land of unbelievers under Islamic control. Every religion has its warts and jihad is one of Islam's greatest failings from a human rights perspective.

It is true that there are more philosophical interpretations of "jihad" as well. These are much less common and more marginal uses, which one would need to hunt intently through several scholarly references to find. These non-warlike definitions of "jihad" are spiritualized versions of the plain and common primary meaning, which every Arab speaker knows.

Daniel Pipes has been covering militant Islam for decades, and he has his facts straight on this issue. The word has only been recast in popular discourse in recent years as a propaganda measure. Real scholars are not fooled.

When Saddam Hussein tells the Arab world that Iraq is the country of jihad, he is using the traditional and usual meaning of the word, in the correct expectation that he will be understood by his target audience as referring to armed struggle against the infidel. When terrorists gather together under the name Islamic Jihad, they are not perverting an originally pure philosophical term. They are speaking in plain language, in which jihad means holy war.

Thelemites who insist that the Third Chapter may only be read metaphorically should not be too quick to point fingers here, or at the glorious divine slaughters of the Bible. The Third Chapter lends itself all too easily to a literal meaning, and Crowley interpreted it in that light. His idea of how the world would be brought to Thelema was a very similar kind of holy war, modeled in his interpretations on the traditional jihads of Islam, a religion he greatly admired for its masculinity.

It would be a wonderful thing for Islam and for the world if the abstract and philosophized meanings of "jihad" were to become the norm and the old warlike meaning be forgotten. However, as current events remind us, that meaning is still primary today.