A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Appendix A/33

by Moulavi Gerágh Ali

[Sidenote: (21) The Immunity, IX, 74.]

33. The same verse, word for word.

Sale ... "Wage war."

Rodwell ... "Contend against."

Palmer ... "Strive strenuously."

The word Jáhid is the same in both the passages, yet the translators differ in their interpretation of it. As there had been no war against the hypocrites, the word cannot be held to bear the construction they put on it, even if we deprived it of its proper signification. In one place Sale takes Jáhid to mean "attacking with arms," and in another he takes it in the sense of attacking with arguments.

There is no signification of "attacking" in Jihád, but only that of "exerting," and the verse simply means, "exert thyself in preaching to, and remonstrating with, the unbelievers and hypocrites, and also be strict towards them,"—i.e., not to be smooth with them, nor to be beguiled by them.^[1]

Footnotes

1. Vide Sura LXXII, 9; XVII, 69.