Jihad and qital

The claim collapses two distinct terms into one, and the collapse is the whole argument.

The terms

Jihad derives from jahada, and it means struggle or exertion. It is rendered “holy war” by Orientalists and by the press, and that rendering imports a concept the word does not carry. Qital means fighting, battle, armed combat. The two are related and they are not identical, and Muslims have never treated them as identical.

The test

The Prophet said that the mujahid is the one who performs jihad against his own self. If jihad were simply another word for armed combat, that saying would instruct Muslims to conduct a suicide mission against themselves, or to choke themselves to death. It plainly does not, and no Muslim in fourteen centuries has read it that way.

The equation therefore fails on its own terms. A word that can take the self as its object is not a synonym for killing other people.

Why jihad was permitted

Jihad may be waged in Islamic law for a number of reasons, and compelling people to accept Islam is not among them. It was first permitted so that Muslims could defend themselves against persecution and against expulsion from their homes.

Qur’an 2:256 states that there is no compulsion in religion. A doctrine of forced conversion cannot be constructed on a text that forbids compulsion, and the attempt requires that the verse be left out.