Soccer Dad

Abbas's Palestinian Jihad.

I usually agree with Biur Chametz, but today I have to register a minor dissent. Though Biur Chametz admits to skepticism about Abu Mazen, he sees some hope in the statement:

He added: "The small jihad (holy war) is over and the big jihad has begun. We are facing tough missions - how to build a state of security where people live a dignified life."

First of all I find IMRA's account of how "Jihad" was used interesting:

Israel Radio Arab Affair Correspondent Avi Yissakharov explained this
morning that while Abu Mazen declared that the Palestinians were going from
a "little Jihad" to a "large Jihad" and that normally "jihad" would mean a
holy war against Israel that "my sources tell me that he means by "jihad"
the reform of the PA and the release of Palestinian prisoners by Israel.

I get the impression that IMRA feels that Yissakharov was covering for Abbas.
But more importantly there's Daniel Pipes who insists that "Jihad" only has military meanings. In "Jihad and The Professors" (occasioned by the Harvard senior who wanted to use Jihad in his valedictory) he writes:

In premodern times, jihad meant mainly one thing among Sunni Muslims, then as now the Islamic majority.* It meant the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims (known in Arabic as dar al-Islam) at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims (dar al-harb). In this prevailing conception, the purpose of jihad is political, not religious. It aims not so much to spread the Islamic faith as to extend sovereign Muslim power (though the former has often followed the latter). The goal is boldly offensive, and its ultimate intent is nothing less than to achieve Muslim dominion over the entire world.

By winning territory and diminishing the size of areas ruled by non-Muslims, jihad accomplishes two goals: it manifests Islam's claim to replace other faiths, and it brings about the benefit of a just world order. In the words of Majid Khadduri of Johns Hopkins University, writing in 1955 (before political correctness conquered the universities), jihad is "an instrument for both the universalization of [Islamic] religion and the establishment of an imperial world state."

I'm guessing that Biur Chametz knows something about the use of the term that I don't. (That's why I'm relying on sources.) Color me skeptical on the subject of his hope.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at January 11, 2005 05:02 AM | TrackBack