And those who perform jihad for Us, We shall certainly guide them in Our ways, and Godis surely with the doers of good. (Quran XXXIX; 69)
You have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad. (Hadith)
The Arabic term jihad, usually translated into European languages as holy war, more onthe basis of its juridical usage in Islam rather than on its much more universal meaning inthe Quran and Hadith, is derived from the root jhd whose primary meaning is to strive orto exert oneself. Its translation into holy war combined with the erroneous notion of Islamprevalent in the West as the ‘religion of the sword’ has helped to eclipse its inner andspiritual significance and to distort its connotation. Nor has the appearance upon the stageof history during the past century and especially during the past few years of an array ofmovements within the Islamic world often contending or even imposing each other andusing the word jihad or one of its derivative forms helped to make known the full importof its traditional meaning which alone is of concern to us here. Instead recent distortionsand even total reversal of the meaning of jihad as understood over the ages by Muslimshave made it more difficult than ever before to gain insight into this key religious andspiritual concept.
To understand the spiritual significance of jihad and its wide application to nearly everyaspect of human life as understood by Islam, it is necessary to remember that Islam basesitself upon the idea of establishing equilibrium within the being of man as well as in thehuman society where he functions and fulfills the goals of his earthly life. Thisequilibrium, which is the terrestrial reflection of Divine Justice and the necessarycondition for peace in the human domain, is the basis upon which the soul takes its flighttowards that peace which, to use Christian terms, ‘passeth understanding’. If Christianmorality sees the aim of the spiritual life and its own morality as based on the verticalflight towards that perfection and ideal which is embodied in Christ, Islam sees it in theestablishment of an equilibrium both outward and inward as the necessary basis for thevertical ascent. The very stability of Islamic society over the centuries, the immutabilityof Islamic norms embodied in the Shari’ah, and the timeless character of traditionalIslamic civilization which is the consequence of its permanent and immutable prototypeare all reflections of both the ideal of equilibrium and its realization as is so evident in theteachings of the Shari’ah(or Divine Law) as well as works of Islamic art, thatequilibrium which is inseparable from the very name of islamas being related to salamorpeace.
The preservation of equilibrium in this world, however, does not mean simply a static orinactive passivity since life by nature implies movement. In the face of the contingenciesof the world of change, of the withering effects of time, of the vicissitudes of terrestrialexistence, to remain in equilibrium requires continuous exertion. It means carrying outjihad at every stage of life. Human nature being what it is, given to forgetfulness and theconquest of our immortal soul by the carnal soul or passions, the very process of life ofboth the individual and the human collectivity implies the everpresentdanger of the lossof equilibrium and the fact of falling into the state of disequilibrium which if allowed tocontinue cannot but lead to disintegration on the individual level and chaos on the scaleof community life. To avoid this tragic end and to fulfill the entelechy of the human statewhich is the realization of unity (altawhid)or total integration, Muslims as bothindividuals and members of Islamic society must carry out jihad, that is they must exertthemselves at all moments of life to fight a battle both inward and outward against those forces that if not combated will destroy that equilibrium which is the necessary conditionfor the spiritual life of the person and the functioning of human society. This fact isespecially true if society is seen as a collectivity which bears the imprint of the DivineNorm rather than an antheap of contending and opposing units and forces.
Man is at once a spiritual and corporeal being, a microcosmcomplete unto himself; yethe is the member of a society within which alone are certain aspects of his being developed and certain of his needs fulfilled. He possesses at once an intelligence whosesubstance is ultimately of a divine character and sentiments which can either veil hisintelligence or abett his quest for his own Origin. In him are found both love and hatred,generosity and covetousness, compassion and aggression. Moreover, there have existeduntil now not just one but several ‘humanities’ with their own religious and moral normsand national, ethnic and racial groups with their own bonds of affiliation. As a result thepractice of jihad as applied to the world of multiplicity and the vicissitudes of humanexistence in the external world has come to develop numerous ramifications in the fieldsof political and economic activity and in social life and come to partake on the externallevel of the complexity which characterizes the human world.
In its most outward sense jihad came to mean the defense of daral islam,that is, theIslamic world, from invasion and intrusion by nonIslamicforces. The earliest wars of Islamic history which threatened the very existence of the young community came to beknown as jihad par excellence in this outward sense of ‘holy war’. But it was upon returning from one of these early wars, which was of paramount importance in the survival of the newly established religious community and therefore of cosmic significance, that the Prophet nevertheless said to his companions that they had returned from the lesser holy war to the greater holy war,
the greater jihad being the inner battleagainst all the forces which would prevent man from living according to the theomorphicnorm which is his primordial and God given nature. Throughout Islamic history, thelesser holy war has echoed in the Islamic world when parts or the whole of that worldhave been threatened by forces from without or within. This call has been especiallypersistent since the nineteenth century with the advent of colonialism and the threat to thevery existence of the Islamic world. It must be remembered, however, that even in suchcases when the idea of jihad has been evoked in certain parts of the Islamic world, it hasnot usually been a question of religion simply sanctioning war but of the attempt of asociety in which religion remains of central concern to protect itself from beingconquered either by military and economic forces or by ideas of an alien nature. Thisdoes not mean, however, that in some cases especially in recent times, religioussentiments have not been used or misused to intensify or legitimize a conflict. But to say the least, the Islamic world does not have a monopoly on this abuse as the history of othercivilizations including even the secularized West demonstrates so amply. Moreover,human nature being what it is, once religion ceases to be of central significance to a particular human collectivity, then men fight and kill each other for much less exalted issues than their heavenly faith. By including the question of war in its sacred legislation,Islam did not condone but limited war and its consequences as the history of thetraditional Islamic world bears out. In any case the idea of total war and the actualpractice of the extermination of whole civilian populations did not grow out of acivilization whose dominant religion saw jihad in a positive light. On the more externallevel, the lesser jihad also includes the socioeconomicdomain. It means the reassertionof justice in the external environment of human existence starting with man himself. Todefend one’s rights and reputation, to defend the honor of oneself and one’s family isitself a jihad and a religious duty. So is the strengthening of all those social bonds fromthe family to the whole of the Muslim people (alummah) which the Shari’ahemphasizes.To seek social justice in accordance with the tenets of the Quran and of course not in themodern secularist sense is a way of re-establishing equilibrium in human society, that is,of performing jihad, as are constructive economic enterprises provided the wellbeingofthe whole person is kept in mind and material welfare does not become an end in itself;provided one does not lose sight of the Quranic verse, ‘The other world is better for youthan this one’. To forget the proper relation between the two worlds would itself beinstrumental in bringing about disequilibrium and would be a kind of jihad in reverse.
All of those external forms of jihad would remain incomplete and in fact contribute to anexcessive externalization of human being, if they were not complemented by the greateror inner jihad which man must carry out continuously within himself for the nobility ofthe human state resides in the constant tension between what we appear to be and whatwe really are and the need to transcend ourselves throughout this journey of earthly life inorder to become what we ‘are’.
From the spiritual point of view all the ‘pillars’ of Islam can be seen as being related tojihad. The fundamental witnesses, ‘There is no divinity but Allah’ and ‘Muhammad is theMessenger of Allah’, through the utterance of which a person becomes a Muslim are notonly statements about the Truth as seen in the Islamic perspective but also weapons forthe practice of inner jihad. The very form of the first witness (La ilahailla’ LlahinArabic) when written in Arabic calligraphy is like a bent sword with which all othernessis removed from the Supreme Reality while all that is positive in manifestation isreturned to that Reality.
The second witness is the blinding assertion of the powerful andmajestic descent of all that constitutes in a positive manner the cosmos, man andrevelation from that Supreme Reality. To invoke the two witnesses in the form of thesacred language in which they were revealed is to practice the inner jihad and to bringabout awareness of who we are, from whence we come and where is our ultimate abode.
The daily prayers (salator namaz) which constitute the heart of the Islamic rites are againa never ending jihad which punctuate human existence in a continuous rhythm inconformity with the rhythm of the cosmos. To perform the prayers with regularity andconcentration requires the constant exertion of our will and an unending battle andtriving against forgetfulness, dissipation and laziness. It is itself a form of spiritualwarfare.
Likewise, the fast of Ramadan in which one wears the armour of inner purity anddetachment against the passions and temptations of the outside world requires anasceticism and inner discipline which cannot come about except through an inner holywar. Nor is the hajj to the centre of the Islamic world in Mecca possible without longpreparation, effort, often suffering and endurance of hardship. It requires great effort andexertion so that the Prophet could say, ‘The hajj is the most excellent of all jihads“. Likethe knight in quest of the Holy Grail, the pilgrim to the house of the Beloved must engagein a spiritual warfare whose end makes all sacrifice and all hardship pale intosignificance, for the hajj to the House of God implies for the person who practices theinner jihad encounter with the Master of the House who also resides at the centre of thatother Ka’bah which is the heart.
Finally the giving of zakat or religious tax and khumsis again a form of jihad not only in that in departing from one’s wealth man must fight against the covetousness and greed ofhis carnal soul, but also in that through the payment of zakat and khumsin its many formsman contributes to the establishment of economic justice in human society. Althoughjihad is not one of the ‘pillars of Islam’, it in a sense resides within all the other ‘pillars’.
From the spiritual point of view in fact all of the ‘pillars’ can be seen in the light of aninner jihad which is essential to the life of man from the Islamic point of view and whichdoes not oppose but complements contemplativity and the peace which result from thecontemplation of the One.
The great stations of perfection in the spiritual life can also be seen in the light of the inner jihad. To become detached from the impurities of the world in order to repose inthe purity of the Divine Presence requires an intense jihad for our soul has its roots sunkdeeply into the transient world which the soul of fallen man mistakes for reality. Toovercome the lethargy, passivity and indifference of the soul, qualities which havebecome second nature to man as a result of his forgetting who he is constitutes likewise aconstant jihad. To pull the reigns of the soul from dissipating itself outwardly as a resultof its centrifugal tendencies and to bring it back to the centre wherein resides DivinePeace and all the beauty which the soul seeks in vain in the domain of multiplicity isagain an inner jihad. To melt the hardened heart into a flowing stream of love whichwould embrace the whole of creation in virtue of the love for God is to perform thealchemical process of solve et coagula inwardly through a ‘work’ which is none otherthan an inner struggle and battle against what the soul has become in order to transform itinto that which it ‘is’ and has never ceased to be if only it were to become aware of itsown nature. Finally, to realize that only the Absolute is absolute and that only the Selfcan ultimately utter ‘I’ is to perform the supreme jihad of awakening the soul from thedream of forgetfulness and enabling it to gain the supreme principal knowledge for thesake of which it was created. The inner jihad or warfare seen spiritually and esotericallycan be considered therefore as the key for the understanding of the whole spiritual
process, and the path for the realization of the One which lies at the heart of the Islamicmessage seen in its totality. The Islamic path towards perfection can be conceived in thelight of the symbolism of the greater jihad to which the Prophet of Islam, who foundedthis path on earth, himself referred.
In the same way that with every breath the principle of life which functions in us irrespective of our will and as long as it is willed by Him who created us, exerts itself through jihad to instill life within our whole body, at every moment in our conscious lifewe should seek to perform jihad in not only establishing equilibrium in the world aboutus but also in awakening to that Divine Reality which is the very source of our consciousness. For the spiritual man, every breath is a reminder that he should continuethe inner jihad until he awakens from all dreaming and until the very rhythm of his heartechoes that primordial sacred Name by which all things were made and through which allthings return to their Origin. The Prophet said, ‘Man is asleep and when he dies heawakens’. Through inner jihad the spiritual man dies in this life in order to cease alldreaming, in order to awaken to that Reality which is the origin of all realities, in order tobehold that Beauty of which all earthly beauty is but a pale reflection, in order to attainthat Peace which all men seek but which can in fact be found only through the innerjihad.