Jihad What Everyone Needs To Know

Download or read book Jihad: What Everyone Needs to Know written by Asma Afsaruddin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word "jihad" is everywhere in the global media. It generally appears in the context of violence waged against the West by militants in or from Muslim-majority societies. This usage overwhelmingly colors popular discourse about Islam and Muslims and it has resulted in highly simplistic, distorted, and ahistorical understandings of the concept of jihad. For most Muslims, jihad refers to the continuous human struggle to promote and implement what is morally good and noble in all walks of life, as well as to resist and prevent what is morally wrong and unjust. This book addresses the great need for a discussion of jihad that explores its various dimensions without fear-mongering or sensationalism. Here it is examined from multiple perspectives: scriptural, theological, moral and ethical, legal and socio-political. Asma Afsaruddin looks at the key questions about jihad and provides concise yet thorough answers. Jihad: What Everyone Needs to Know® provides a historically-grounded, scholarly yet accessible treatment of the meanings of jihad from the formative period of Islam until the contemporary period.

Download or read book Striving in the Path of God written by Asma Afsaruddin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In popular and academic literature, jihad is predominantly assumed to refer exclusively to armed combat, and martyrdom in the Islamic context is understood to be invariably of the military kind. This perspective, derived mainly from legal texts, has led to discussions of jihad and martyrdom as concepts with fixed, universal meanings divorced from the socio-political circumstances in which they have been deployed through the centuries. Asma Afsaruddin studies in a more holistic manner the range of significations that can be ascribed to the term jihad from the earliest period to the present and historically contextualizes the competing discourses that developed over time. Many assumptions about the military jihad and martyrdom in Islam are thereby challenged and deconstructed. A comprehensive interrogation of varied sources reveals early and multiple competing definitions of a word that in combination with the phrase fi sabil Allah translates literally to "striving in the path of God." Contemporary radical Islamists have appropriated this language to exhort their cadres to armed political opposition, which they legitimize under the rubric of jihad. Afsaruddin shows that the multivalent connotations of jihad and shahid recovered from the formative period lead us to question the assertions of those who maintain that belligerent and militant interpretations preserve the earliest and only authentic understanding of these two key terms. Retrieval of these multiple perspectives has important implications for our world today in which the concepts of jihad and martyrdom are still being fiercely debated.

Download or read book Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement written by Daniel Byman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Founded as the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, Al Qaeda achieved a degree of international notoriety with a series of spectacular attacks in the 1990s; however, it was the dramatic assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 that truly launched Al Qaeda onto the global stage. The attacks endowed the organization with world-historical importance and provoked an overwhelming counterattack by the United States and other western countries. Within a year of 9/11, the core of Al Qaeda had been chased out of Afghanistan and into a variety of refuges across the Muslim world. Splinter groups and franchised offshoots were active in the 2000s in countries like Pakistan, Iraq, and Yemen, but by early 2011, after more than a decade of relentless counterterrorism efforts by the United States and other Western military and intelligence services, most felt that Al Qaeda's moment had passed.

Download or read book American Jihad written by Steven Emerson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-02-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading the second wave of post 9/11 terrorist books, American Jihad reveals that America is rampant with Islamic terrorist networks and sleeper cells and Emerson, the expert on them, explains just how close they are to each of us.

Download or read book Shariah written by John L. Esposito and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Americans and Europeans have by now heard of Shariah. In the West, politicians, media commentators, televangelists, and others have stoked fears that Muslims intend to impose a repressive rule based on Shariah in America and Europe. Shariah has been portrayed as a medieval system that oppresses women, stifles human rights, and imposes harsh punishments like stoning and amputation. In reality, however, Shariah is a complex concept that has been interpreted in many ways over time and around the world. It plays a vital role in the lives of Muslims around the world, offering guidance on everything from personal morality to ritual practices, family life, and finance. In this timely addition to Oxford's What Everyone Needs to Know(R) series, John Esposito and Natana DeLong-Bas offer an accessible and thorough guide to this little-understood, but often caricatured system. The book provides clear and even-handed answers to a wide range of questions, covering the history, development, content, and practice of Shariah. What are its origins? What is a Shariah court and how does it work? How does a person become a Muslim in the eyes of Islamic law? Does Islamic law allow Muslims to marry non-Muslims? What are blasphemy laws, and how are they enforced? How does Islamic law govern trade and contracts of sale? Do Muslims in the West want Shariah Law? Is there a need to protect American and European societies from the imposition of Shariah? By answering the questions that so many people have about Shariah and its role in Muslim life, this book makes an invaluable contribution to the crucial task of fostering mutual understanding in our globalizing, pluralistic societies.

Download or read book What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam written by John L. Esposito and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-13 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of September 11, there has been an overwhelming demand for information about Islam, the faith in the name of which the hijackings were perpetrated. Esposito has assembled a list of the most frequently asked questions about Islam, and here provides accessible, sensitive, and even-handed answers.

Download or read book Road Warriors written by Daniel Byman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, fighters from abroad have journeyed in ever-greater numbers to conflict zones in the Muslim world to defend Islam from-in their view-infidels and apostates. The phenomenon recently reached its apogee in Syria, where the foreign fighter population quickly became larger and more diverse than in any previous conflict. In Road Warriors, Daniel Byman provides a sweeping history of the jihadist foreign fighter movement. He begins by chronicling the movement's birth in Afghanistan, its growing pains in Bosnia and Chechnya, and its emergence as a major source of terrorism in the West in the 1990s, culminating in the 9/11 attacks. Since that bloody day, the foreign fighter movement has seen major ups and downs. It rode high after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when the ultra-violent Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) attracted thousands of foreign fighters. AQI overreached, however, and suffered a crushing defeat. Demonstrating the resilience of the movement, however, AQI reemerged anew during the Syrian civil war as the Islamic State, attracting tens of thousands of fighters from around the world and spawning the bloody 2015 attacks in Paris among hundreds of other strikes. Although casualty rates are usually high, the survivors of Afghanistan, Syria, and other fields of jihad often became skilled professional warriors, going from one war to the next. Still others returned to their home countries, some to peaceful retirement but a deadly few to conduct terrorist attacks. Over time, both the United States and Europe have learned to adapt. Before 9/11, volunteers went to and fro to Afghanistan and other hotspots with little interference. Today, the United States and its allies have developed a global program to identify, arrest, and kill foreign fighters. Much remains to be done, however-jihadist ideas and networks are by now deeply embedded, even as groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State rise and fall. And as Byman makes abundantly clear, the problem is not likely to go away any time soon.