Muslims Fight For Political, Not Religious Reasons

By Salim Lone
Sunday, 28 January 2007
ICHBlog

Those Muslims who fight against occupations invoke their religion in order to mobilise the people. That is no different from others invoking freedom, democracy or human rights as rallying cries for war. What should determine our view of all wars are not the rallying cries but whether they are "just."

... It seems a very large number of people are convinced that "Islamists" and "Jihad" are dirty words, connoting a desire to forcibly convert the world to Islam.

When the Islamic Courts Union declared a jihad last month against invading Ethiopian soldiers, that sealed their fate for many Kenyans and the international media.

A grossly illegal action, invasion, became much less important than a word. Jihad, of course, has been portrayed in the media as a "holy war" and reinforces the propagandistic notion that Islam was spread by the sword.

Jihad has many interpretations even for Muslims, but a holy war to convert the enemy is not one of them. Forcible conversion is forbidden by the Qu'ran.

Jihad means struggle, and its many incarnations include a struggle within oneself to rise to a higher spirituality, a struggle of the "pen" to convince others of your religion's authenticity, and, of course, its most commonly used formulation, which is the struggle against tyranny and injustice.

Those Muslims who fight against occupations invoke their religion in order to mobilise the people. That is no different from others invoking freedom, democracy or human rights as rallying cries for war. What should determine our view of all wars are not the rallying cries but whether they are "just."

The vast majority of Muslims who fight such wars do so for political reasons; those who do so for religious reasons are a tiny, tiny minority. That is why the intense conflicts we see are primarily in occupied Muslim countries.

In any event, if unlawful violence is perpetrated by those who are Muslim, or for that matter Christian, Jew or Hindu, that does not mean that we can malign all those who belong to that religion.

Complete Article:
http://www.ichblog.eu/content/view/173/1/