By V.A. Mohamad Ashrof
This paper offers a comprehensive hermeneutical analysis of the concept of Jihad as it appears in the Quran, interpreted through an enlightened, humanistic, universalistic, inclusive and interreligious framework. It moves decisively beyond reductive translations prevalent in both polemical and extremist discourse, restoring the term to its rich linguistic, ethical and spiritual roots: striving in the path of God.
The central argument advanced here is that Jihad, when interpreted through a modern inclusive lens informed by the Quran’s own overarching moral vision, is not a call to perpetual conflict but a dynamic and multifaceted imperative for personal moral growth, social justice, intellectual endeavour and the protection of universal human dignity. Armed struggle constitutes only the most narrowly delimited and strictly conditioned expression of this far broader ethical commitment.
By examining the transition from the Meccan to the Medinan phases of revelation, engaging with classical juridical ethics, and drawing upon contemporary humanistic and interreligious scholarship, this paper demonstrates that Jihad is a multi-layered concept aligned with the highest ideals of humanism, compassionate religion and interreligious cooperation. It is a concept capable of functioning as a bridge of solidarity across communities rather than a source of fear and division.
This analysis further identifies the systematic misappropriation of Jihad by extremist movements as a profound theological distortion, and proposes a set of hermeneutical principles by which the Quranic concept may be recovered in its authentic moral grandeur: as a call to self-transformation, to social justice, to intellectual courage and to peaceful coexistence, with armed resistance representing an exceptional, last-resort response to oppression, bounded at every stage by the demands of mercy, proportionality and human dignity.
Etymological and Linguistic Foundations
Any serious engagement with the concept of Jihad must begin with its linguistic roots, for it is precisely at the level of language that the most consequential distortions have occurred. The term Jihad derives from the Arabic tri-literal root j-h-d, which fundamentally conveys the notions of effort, exertion, strain and earnest striving. The primary meaning is rooted in purposeful endeavour and endurance rather than in hostility or combat. Classical Arabic lexicons such as the Lisan al-Arab define the related noun juhd as the utmost expenditure of one’s capacity towards a worthy goal. It is worth noting that this same root gives rise to ijtihad, the process of independent intellectual reasoning that lies at the heart of Islamic jurisprudential renewal, itself a term denoting rigorous effort rather than violence.
The Quran employs derivatives of this root approximately forty-one times across its six thousand two hundred and thirty-six verses, and a careful study of these occurrences reveals a semantic range far exceeding the boundaries of armed conflict. The text speaks of striving with the Quran itself as an instrument of moral persuasion (25:52), of striving against one’s own lower impulses, of striving in the cause of God with one’s wealth and person, and of striving in the service of justice for the oppressed. In each instance, the quality of the effort, its orientation towards the divine will and the common good, determines its character as Jihad.
This lexical breadth is not merely academic. The Arabic language possesses entirely distinct and precise vocabulary for armed conflict: harb denotes war in the generic sense, and qital refers specifically to the act of fighting or combat. The Quran employs these terms when referring to warfare. The persistent conflation of Jihad with qital in both extremist propaganda and Western popular discourse represents not a translation difficulty but a deliberate or uninformed distortion, one that strips the concept of its moral and spiritual substance and reduces it to a single, narrow application that the Arabic language itself distinguishes from the broader term.
A humanistic hermeneutic therefore takes this linguistic evidence as the starting point for interpretation. Striving is an irreducibly human experience, common to every tradition and every culture: the struggle for self-mastery, the exertion on behalf of justice, the effort to improve oneself and one’s community, the courage to speak truth in the face of power. These are universal human goods, and it is within this broad horizon of shared human endeavour that the Quranic Jihad first and most fundamentally belongs.
Methodological Premises: Humanistic and Interreligious Hermeneutics
The hermeneutical framework employed in this paper is both humanistic and interreligious in character, and it is important to clarify what each of these commitments entails before proceeding to the analysis of specific Quranic material.
A humanistic Quranic hermeneutic begins from the conviction that the divine message aims fundamentally at the protection and flourishing of human life, dignity, conscience and justice in this world, and not only at ritual correctness or the assertion of doctrinal boundaries. Such an approach is grounded in the Quran’s own stated purposes: it declares itself to be a guidance for humanity (2:185), a mercy to the worlds (21:107), and a book that calls people to reflect upon its signs with reason (38:29). Verses are not read in isolation but in light of the overarching Quranic values of mercy (rahma), justice (adl), the doing of good (ihsan) and the dignity of the human person (karama).
Contemporary discussions of Islamic humanist hermeneutics consistently identify several core features: moral intentionality, whereby interpretation asks what ethical purpose a verse serves; contextual reading, which situates verses within their historical circumstances; the prioritisation of universal ethical principles over contingent legal applications; and critical engagement with inherited interpretations that may reflect the assumptions of past eras rather than the permanent moral vision of the text. In such approaches, the Quran’s overarching ethical orientation serves as the standard against which any particular interpretation is measured.
The higher objectives of Islamic law, the maqasid al-sharia as articulated by classical scholars and developed by modern reformers, provide a practical framework for humanistic interpretation. These objectives include the preservation of life, intellect, faith, lineage and property. Any reading of Jihad that leads to the destruction rather than the protection of these goods cannot claim to represent the authentic Quranic vision.
An interreligious hermeneutic adds a dialogical horizon to this framework. It seeks understandings of Jihad that can be articulated coherently and honestly in conversation with Jews, Christians, Buddhists, humanists and all who share a commitment to human dignity and the common good. Rather than defending Islamic claims apologetically, it aims to clarify both convergences and genuine differences with, for example, the Christian tradition of just war theory as developed by Augustine and Aquinas, or the Jewish concept of resistance to injustice, or the universalist ethical frameworks of secular humanism.
The goal is not to flatten these traditions into artificial sameness, but to illuminate Jihad as one particular tradition’s articulation of a nearly universal ethical tension: how to resist evil and promote justice without betraying the human and divine demands of mercy and restraint. Such a hermeneutic makes Islamic ethical thought accountable to the conversation of humanity as a whole, and in doing so enriches both the Islamic tradition and the broader global dialogue.
South African scholar Farid Esack has provided a compelling model for this approach, developing a hermeneutical method with liberationist keys grounded in God-consciousness, human solidarity, the cause of the oppressed, and the shared pursuit of justice. In this framework, interreligious cooperation is not merely permissible but actively encouraged by the Quranic text, and Jihad is reframed as the struggle for justice in solidarity with all who suffer oppression, regardless of their religious identity.
Historical Contextualisation: Meccan and Medinan Revelations
A sound hermeneutic demands attention to the Quran’s historical unfolding. The Quranic revelation was delivered over a period of twenty-three years, and the circumstances in which particular verses were revealed profoundly shaped their emphasis and application. A cardinal error of both extremist and polemical readings is the flattening of this chronology, treating verses revealed under conditions of persecution, siege and armed conflict as if they were timeless commands applicable to all human situations. The discipline of recognising the occasions of revelation (asbab al-nuzul) is not an apologetic retreat but an essential tool of sound interpretation.
During the first thirteen years of the prophetic mission, from approximately 610 to 622 of the Common Era, the early Muslim community existed as a persecuted minority in Mecca, facing economic boycotts, physical torture, social ostracism and existential threat at the hands of the ruling oligarchy. Throughout this period, physical retaliation was explicitly prohibited. The Quranic discourse of this phase is dominated by themes of patience, steadfastness and non-violent endurance, and it is within these Meccan chapters that the foundational understanding of Jihad as spiritual and moral striving was articulated.
The Meccan revelation of Surah al-Furqan commands: “So do not obey the disbelievers, but strive against them with the Quran, a great striving” (25:52). Here the instrument of striving is the revelation itself: ethical truth, rational discourse, moral persuasion. This is Jihad as intellectual and moral courage, the courage to remain faithful to truth in the face of hostility and social pressure, to resist despair and moral compromise and to persevere in bearing witness to justice. The term used, a great striving, anticipates what later tradition would identify as the greater Jihad.
From a humanistic perspective, this Meccan emphasis foregrounds non-violent resistance as the primordial form of Jihad, aligning it with what we might today call conscientious objection, principled endurance and civil resistance. An interreligious reading finds important bridges here: The New Testament’s calls to patient endurance in the face of persecution, the rabbinic valorisation of sanctifying God’s name through faithful suffering, the Gandhian tradition of non-violent resistance. Patient moral struggle is, in this light, a shared Abrahamic and indeed human ideal.
The migration to Medina in 622 CE transformed the situation of the Muslim community. From a persecuted minority, it became the nucleus of an autonomous, multi-religious polity governed by the Constitution of Medina, which encompassed Jewish, Arab pagan and Muslim communities under a framework of mutual obligation and shared civic life. It was within this new political reality, facing military aggression and the threat of annihilation from external coalitions, that the Quran introduced the conditional permission to fight.
The transition is marked by the revelation of Surah al-Hajj: “Permission has been given to those who are being fought because they were wronged, and indeed, God is competent to give them victory. Those who have been expelled from their homes wrongfully, only because they say: Our Lord is God” (22:39-40). The hermeneutical markers here are unambiguous: permission is grounded in the objective reality of being wronged, being expelled unjustly, being targeted for violence. Armed resistance entered the Quranic paradigm not as an instrument of expansion, domination or religious compulsion, but as a narrowly delimited and contextually justified response to aggression and persecution.
Crucially, the verse immediately extends the purpose of this permission beyond the Muslim community: “For had it not been that God checks one set of people by means of another, monasteries, churches, synagogues and mosques, wherein the name of God is much mentioned, would surely have been pulled down” (22:40). The justification for armed resistance includes the protection of Christian monasteries and churches and Jewish synagogues alongside Muslim mosques. This universalist scope reveals that even the conditional permission for armed Jihad in the Quran is oriented towards the protection of the plural sacred landscape of humanity, not the imposition of a single religious order.
The Quranic Semantic Field of Jihad
Standard reference works consistently stress that Jihad in the Quran is fundamentally a struggle or striving, the precise meaning of which depends on context and which encompasses a wide range of human activities, from internal moral discipline to external social action. The Quran and subsequent Islamic scholarship place multiple modalities of Jihad under the broad rubric of striving in the path of God: with the heart as inner moral struggle, with the tongue as speaking truth and moral advocacy, with the hand as constructive action and service, with wealth as charitable giving and economic justice, and with the sword as armed defence, but only as a final and strictly regulated resort.
This multi-layered semantic field is not a later apologetic invention but is firmly rooted in the Quranic text itself and in the earliest Islamic scholarship. Classical jurists developed this understanding into an elaborate doctrinal framework, and modern Islamic scholars have continued to elaborate it. What is historically significant is that the reduction of Jihad to armed warfare represents a radical narrowing of the concept, one that gains traction primarily in periods of political crisis and ideological manipulation, and that misrepresents the mainstream of the tradition.
A humanistic reading of this semantic field notes that each modality of Jihad corresponds to a universal human capacity deployed in service of the good: the inner struggle calls upon moral and psychological discipline; the Jihad of speech requires intellectual courage and communicative skill; the Jihad of constructive action demands creative engagement with social realities; the Jihad of wealth requires economic generosity and a commitment to structural justice; and even the most conditional dimension, armed resistance, requires the moral courage to face mortal danger in defence of the vulnerable. In each case, the defining characteristic of Jihad is not violence but effort, purposefulness and moral orientation.
The Greater Jihad: Inner Moral and Spiritual Striving
Within the broader Islamic tradition, the internal dimension of Jihad has occupied a central and, in many accounts, primary place. The concept of Jihad al-nafs, the struggle against the self, its destructive impulses, its egoism, its tendency to cruelty, greed and self-deception, is deeply rooted in the Quranic portrayal of the human person as a moral being endowed with both constructive and destructive tendencies.
The Quran depicts human nature in terms of several dimensions of the self: the commanding self that inclines towards evil (12:53), the self-reproaching conscience that holds the person morally accountable (75:2), and the tranquil soul that has found peace through alignment with the divine (89:27). The movement from the commanding self to the tranquil soul is itself a form of Jihad, a sustained moral struggle that requires discipline, honest self-examination, cultivation of compassion and the continuous effort to resist the temptation to reduce others to instruments of one’s own will. The Quran declares: “Whoever strives, strives only for himself” (29:6), placing moral self-development at the very heart of spiritual life.
Classical Islamic thinkers consistently affirmed that this internal struggle is the indispensable foundation for any legitimate external action. Scholars such as Ibn al-Qayyim and modern reformers like Muhammad Abduh established that Jihad al-nafs is the absolute prerequisite for ethical social engagement. Without the transformative discipline of inner striving, any external struggle inevitably degenerates into a pursuit of power, vengeance and tribalism, the very antithesis of Quranic justice. A soldier who has not first fought and restrained the Pharaoh within himself risks becoming a different kind of Pharaoh.
From a humanistic and interreligious perspective, this internal Jihad offers one of the richest points of convergence with other traditions. The Christian tradition of spiritual warfare against sin and egoism, the Buddhist discipline of mindful resistance to craving and hatred, the Jewish struggle for covenantal righteousness against the evil inclination, the Stoic practice of self-mastery, the Gandhian insistence that inner non-violence is the foundation of outer non-violence: all of these traditions recognise that the deepest battlefield of human moral life is the human heart itself. The Quranic concept of greater Jihad can therefore be understood as part of humanity’s shared spiritual heritage, a particular articulation of a near-universal insight into the nature of moral development.
Contemporary psychological and philosophical frameworks lend additional support to this reading. The Quran’s insistence that authentic virtue must be achieved through struggle rather than assumed as a given resonates with modern understandings of moral development, character formation and the ongoing human work of resisting tribalism, prejudice and the abuse of power. An enlightened hermeneutic sees in the greater Jihad not a parochial religious doctrine but a profound account of what it means to become more fully human: more compassionate, more just, more honest and more genuinely committed to the dignity of every person.
The Lesser Jihad: Ethical Engagement and Just Defence
When Jihad manifests in the physical arena, whether through advocacy, active service or, in the most extreme circumstances, armed resistance, the Quran subjects it to a framework of strict ethical conditions that closely parallel and indeed predate modern international humanitarian law and classical Western just war theory. This framework operates across two axes: the conditions under which force may be justified, and the ethical constraints governing its exercise.
The Quran is unambiguous that the primary trigger for armed resistance is defensive: “Fight in the way of God those who fight you, but do not transgress. Indeed, God does not love transgressors” (2:190). The operational condition is those who fight you, establishing the strictly defensive character of legitimate armed Jihad. Unprovoked aggression, pre-emptive expansionism and violence directed against peaceful populations are explicitly classified as transgression and thereby stripped of any claim to religious legitimacy.
Several important corollary conditions emerge from the broader Quranic discourse. The permission to fight is grounded in concrete injustice: being expelled from one’s home, being subjected to persecution, being targeted for violence on account of one’s faith (22:39). The cause must therefore be objectively defensible, not merely claimed. Furthermore, the Quran envisages fighting as a response to active aggression rather than as preventive war or ideological expansion. The notion of a divinely mandated offensive war against humanity as such finds no genuine support in the Quranic text.
The Quran also commands an immediate disposition towards peace: “But if they incline towards peace, then incline to it also and rely upon God” (8:61). This verse establishes that the presumption of the Quranic ethic favours reconciliation over continued conflict. The Quran further declares: “God commands you to return trusts to those to whom they are due, and when you judge between people, to do so with justice” (4:58), suggesting that even in conditions of conflict, the governing framework must be justice rather than victory.
The Conduct of Warfare: Jus in Bello
The Quranic discourse on warfare, supplemented by prophetic practice and early caliphal ordinances, establishes a rigorous matrix of ethical constraints governing the conduct of conflict. These constraints reflect the Quran’s overarching commitment to mercy and the protection of human dignity even in the most extreme circumstances.
Non-combatants are explicitly protected. The prophetic tradition, derived from and consistent with Quranic principles, strictly prohibited the targeting of women, children and the elderly. Monks, priests and individuals engaged in worship within their sanctuaries were not to be harmed. Non-combatant labourers, farmers and civilians were similarly protected. Places of worship were to be respected rather than destroyed. Even ecological assets, the felling of fruit trees, the poisoning of water sources, the unnecessary destruction of the built environment, were prohibited.
Proportionality and the prohibition of cruelty were equally central. The Quran commands: “If you punish, then punish only to the extent that you were made to suffer; but if you are patient, it is better for those who are patient” (16:126). This command simultaneously permits proportional response and commends the greater virtue of restraint. Torture, mutilation and the desecration of the dead were explicitly condemned in prophetic practice. Prisoners of war were to be treated humanely.
By binding physical struggle to these stringent ethical parameters, the Quranic framework transforms any legitimate armed action from an anarchic expression of tribal survival into a highly regulated ethical instrument designed strictly to restore equity and minimise human suffering. Any armed action that violates these conditions does not merely fall short of the ideal; it ceases to be Jihad in any Quranic sense and becomes instead transgression (i’tida’), which the Quran explicitly condemns.
Jihad as Comprehensive Ethical Struggle
Beyond the binary of inner spiritual striving and the ethics of armed resistance, the Quranic concept of Jihad encompasses a broad range of social, intellectual and civic dimensions that are essential to any complete understanding. Contemporary Islamic scholarship increasingly emphasises that the full scope of Jihad as striving in the path of God includes sustained efforts to establish justice, promote social reform, fight poverty, advance education, defend human rights and oppose all forms of structural injustice through peaceful, constructive means.
The Quran consistently encourages critical reasoning, careful reflection, observation of the natural world and intellectual inquiry. It repeatedly condemns blind imitation and the suppression of thought. In Surah al-Furqan, as noted above, the great Jihad is commanded through the Quran itself, meaning through the deployment of moral and rational argument against oppression and ignorance. The pursuit of knowledge, the courage to speak truth to power, the effort to challenge dehumanising ideologies and to foster critical consciousness: these constitute forms of Jihad in a deeply Quranic sense.
Philosopher Jurgen Habermas’s concept of communicative action offers a productive parallel here. An enlightened reading of Jihad shifts the emphasis from instrumental action, the use of force to achieve predetermined goals, to communicative action, the use of reasoned dialogue to reach mutual understanding and shared ethical commitments. The prophetic narration that describes the best Jihad as a word of truth spoken to a tyrant is entirely consistent with this framework. It identifies moral courage in speech as the highest form of striving, the unforced force of the better argument deployed against the abuse of power.
In the contemporary context, intellectual Jihad manifests in the work of scholars, educators and journalists who challenge extremist narratives, engage honestly with difficult questions, resist the temptation to simplify complex realities for political ends, and contribute to a culture of rigorous, humane and critical inquiry. The pen, the classroom, the laboratory and the public forum may embody the Quranic spirit of Jihad more authentically than any battlefield.
The Quran places immense emphasis upon defending the oppressed, feeding the hungry, protecting orphans, liberating the enslaved and establishing social justice. Striving against poverty, inequality, racism, patriarchy and authoritarianism constitutes a deeply Quranic mission rooted in the explicit commands of the text (2:177, 4:75, 9:60). The early Quranic revelations emerged in a society marked by profound economic inequality and social exclusion; they challenged these structures and affirmed the equal dignity of all human beings.
Contemporary applications of social Jihad include work for refugee protection, access to healthcare and education for marginalised communities, environmental sustainability, women’s empowerment, labour rights and peacebuilding initiatives. The Quranic command that whoever can change an evil with their hand should do so, and failing that with their tongue, and failing that at least with their heart, establishes a graduated but universal obligation of moral engagement that encompasses every dimension of social life.
The Quran identifies the human being as the steward (khalifa) of the earth (2:30), entrusted with the care of the created world. The ecological dimensions of this stewardship have profound implications for contemporary ethical life. Preserving the cosmic balance, the mizan established by God in creation (55:7-9), and resisting the forces of ecological destruction and unsustainable consumption represent an essential modern expression of Jihad, serving to protect the shared earthly home of all humanity and all living beings.
The Ethics of Jihad: Mercy and Justice
The Quranic discourse on Jihad is governed by two inseparable ethical principles: mercy and justice. These are not peripheral additions to the concept but its moral heart. Mercy keeps struggle from becoming vengeance, while justice prevents mercy from becoming moral passivity in the face of oppression. Together they define the framework of legitimate restraint, proportionality and protection of human dignity within which any authentic Jihad must operate.
Mercy in the Quran is not sentimentality or softness in the face of wrongdoing; it is a moral orientation that seeks to limit harm, preserve life and leave room for reconciliation. The Quran opens every chapter except one with the invocation of God as the Compassionate, the Merciful, and the Prophet Muhammad is described as a mercy to all the worlds (21:107). This pervasive emphasis on mercy is not incidental but constitutive: it shapes the entire ethical framework within which all Quranic commands, including those related to struggle and resistance, must be understood.
A merciful reading of Jihad therefore prioritises non-violent striving wherever possible: speech, moral witness, patient reform, education and the gradual transformation of unjust structures. Even when conflict is unavoidable, mercy requires the protection of non-combatants, the rejection of cruelty and excess, the humane treatment of prisoners and the genuine openness to peace. The Quranic injunction to repel evil with what is better (41:34) establishes mercy as the hermeneutical principle that governs the entire range of Jihad’s expressions.
Justice, adl, is among the supreme values of the Quranic moral universe. It is commanded absolutely, even against oneself and one’s nearest kin (4:135). It is the standard by which all claims of Jihad must be judged, and the condition to which armed resistance must remain accountable at every stage. A just Jihad is not driven by hatred, tribal loyalty, political ambition or the desire for domination, but solely by the restoration of right order, the protection of the vulnerable and the refusal to allow injustice to prevail unchecked.
The verse that is perhaps most challenging in this regard is the one that makes Jihad an explicit obligation in the face of oppression: “And what is the matter with you that you do not struggle in the path of God and for the oppressed among men, women and children who cry out: Our Lord, rescue us from this land whose people are oppressors?” (4:75). This verse locates authentic devotion to God in concrete solidarity with those who are wronged, particularly civilians, families and children trapped under violence and dispossession. Supporting the oppressed is not a political option in the Quranic framework; it is a moral obligation rooted in the demands of justice.
The deepest Quranic insight is that mercy and justice are not opposites in Jihad discourse but mutually correcting principles. Justice without mercy hardens into brutality; mercy without justice collapses into moral passivity. The Quranic ethic demands both simultaneously. In practical terms, this means that any legitimate struggle must be defensive, proportionate, ethically bounded and genuinely open to peace when peace becomes possible. It means that the protection of non-combatants is not negotiable even under extreme conditions. It means that the purpose of any armed resistance is always the restoration of justice and dignity, never the satisfaction of vengeance or the imposition of domination.
This ethical framing is especially important for correcting the extremist misuse of the term. When mercy and justice are restored to the centre of the concept, Jihad becomes intelligible as a moral struggle for human welfare and dignity, not a licence for terror. The extremist who targets civilians, glorifies cruelty, ignores proportionality and dismisses the possibility of peace has not merely misunderstood Jihad but has inverted it, replacing its moral substance with its exact opposite.
Interreligious Parallels and Shared Ethical Vocabulary
An interreligious hermeneutic of Jihad does not seek to dissolve the genuine specificities of the Islamic tradition into a homogeneous global ethics, but to identify genuine convergences with other traditions’ attempts to navigate the same fundamental moral tensions. The questions of when resistance to evil is justified, how it should be conducted, and what moral limits must be maintained even in the face of grave injustice are universal ethical questions that every major religious and philosophical tradition has wrestled with, and the Quranic tradition’s answers to these questions can be placed in productive dialogue with those of other traditions.
In Christian theology, the tradition of just war theory developed from Augustine through Aquinas and into the modern period offers a series of criteria that bear a striking structural resemblance to the Quranic conditions for legitimate armed Jihad: just cause, right intention, last resort, proportionality, non-combatant immunity, and a reasonable prospect of success. Both traditions began with a presumption against violence and sought to specify the narrow conditions under which armed resistance could be morally justified. Both traditions have also been misused to bless aggressive wars of expansion and conquest, and both have resources for self-correction when this occurs.
At the level of spiritual struggle, the parallel is equally striking. The Christian tradition of warfare against sin, the devil and the ego, classically articulated in the letters of Paul and developed through the monastic tradition, closely parallels the Quranic concept of the greater Jihad as the struggle against the lower self. Both traditions understand that authentic external action in the world requires prior internal moral transformation, and both warn against the danger of self-deception whereby external religious activity masks internal corruption.
The Jewish tradition offers comparably rich parallels. Classical debates over obligatory and discretionary wars in rabbinic literature grappled with questions of legitimate force, proportionality and the protection of civilian life that mirror the Quranic discussions of qital. The prophetic tradition’s insistence on justice for the poor and the stranger, its fierce denunciation of exploitation and its willingness to speak truth to power, resonates deeply with the Quranic obligation to strive on behalf of the oppressed. The concept of tikkun olam, the repair of the world through ethical action, provides a comparable framework for understanding social Jihad as a form of sacred obligation.
Beyond the Abrahamic traditions, Buddhist teachings on non-violent resistance to suffering and the cultivation of inner compassion offer a profound interreligious parallel to the greater Jihad. The Buddhist understanding that violence emerges from internal states of craving, aversion and delusion, and that genuine liberation requires addressing these roots, resonates with the Quranic insistence that the inner struggle is prior to and more fundamental than the outer. Hindu traditions of dharmic action, particularly as interpreted by Gandhi, provide a further parallel: the insistence that inner non-violence is the foundation of authentic ethical engagement with the world, and that the struggle for justice must be conducted in a spirit of truth rather than hatred.
These interreligious convergences are significant not because they reduce all traditions to the same position, but because they reveal that the fundamental ethical tensions that Jihad addresses, between resistance and mercy, between action and restraint, between solidarity with the oppressed and the avoidance of new cycles of violence, are part of the shared moral inheritance of humanity. The Quranic tradition’s particular answers to these tensions can contribute constructively to the ongoing global conversation without either claiming a monopoly on moral insight or surrendering its own distinctive perspective.
Deconstructing Extremist Misreading
Contemporary extremist ideologies have conducted a systematic and deliberate narrowing and distortion of the Quranic concept of Jihad, collapsing it into perpetual offensive warfare and sacralised violence. Understanding how this distortion operates is essential not only for intra-Muslim theological renewal but also for interfaith trust and effective counter-extremism work.
Extremist readings characteristically operate through a set of hermeneutical moves that violate the basic canons of sound Quranic interpretation. They detach individual verses from their historical context, reading commands addressed to specific historical actors in specific emergency situations as timeless universal obligations. They systematically ignore the ethical constraints that the Quran places on armed resistance, treating permissions as commands and conditions as irrelevancies. They invert the tradition’s presumption of peace by treating permanent conflict as the normal condition of Muslim existence, when the Quranic default is coexistence, cooperation and justice.
The so-called sword verse of Quran 9:5 is the most frequently misused example. Extremists cite this verse as a universal command to fight all non-Muslims everywhere and always. But a contextual reading immediately reveals its historical specificity: it was revealed in connection with particular Arab polytheist tribes who had repeatedly and flagrantly violated the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah and actively conspired to destroy the Muslim community. The immediately following verse, which extremist literature consistently suppresses, commands: “And if any one of the polytheists seeks your protection, then grant him protection so that he may hear the words of God. Then deliver him to his place of safety” (9:6). An absolute command to kill cannot be logically reconciled with an explicit mandate to grant asylum, provide moral education and guarantee safe passage. The contextual and literary evidence decisively refutes the extremist reading.
Extremist ideologies also characteristically suppress the priority of the greater Jihad as inner moral and spiritual striving. By reducing Jihad entirely to armed warfare, they strip it of its most fundamental dimension. This suppression is not accidental: an ideology that depends on the mobilisation of violence cannot afford to acknowledge that the tradition its claims to represent identifies the struggle against one’s own ego, hatred and lust for domination as the primary form of religious striving. The recovery of the greater Jihad is therefore not merely a theological correction but a direct challenge to the psychological foundations of extremist recruitment.
Extremist readings further ignore the Quran’s explicit affirmations of religious plurality, freedom of conscience and the worth of righteous people of all faiths. The declaration that there is no compulsion in religion (2:256) is a foundational Quranic principle that cannot be abrogated by any conditional permission to fight specific aggressors in specific historical circumstances. The affirmation that God has made humanity into diverse peoples and tribes that they may know one another (49:13) describes human diversity as divinely intended rather than as a problem to be solved by conquest. The acknowledgement that righteous Jews, Christians and Sabians will receive their reward from their Lord (2:62) provides a structural framework for salvific pluralism that is entirely incompatible with a Jihad aimed at religious domination.
Exposing these distortions requires the kind of rigorous, contextual and humanistic hermeneutics that this paper has sought to provide. Classical Islamic scholarship never regarded Jihad as unrestricted violence; the development of elaborate rules emphasising justice, restraint, proportionality and the protection of non-combatants was precisely a response to the danger of such distortions. Recovering this classical wisdom and demonstrating its Quranic roots is the work of authentic Islamic renewal in the contemporary context.
Universalistic and Inclusive Dimensions
The Quran addresses humanity in its broadest sense, repeatedly using the phrase “O humankind” (ya ayyuha al-nas) rather than addressing Muslims exclusively. It presents Islam as the culmination and continuation of a long series of divine revelations to human communities, and it insists that the moral truths it proclaims are not the exclusive property of any single community but belong to the shared heritage of rational and ethical human life. This universalistic dimension of the Quranic message has profound implications for the understanding of Jihad.
The objectives of Islamic law, as classically articulated, are not the protection of Muslim interests alone but the preservation of the five goods, life, intellect, faith, lineage and property, for all human beings. A Jihad that destroys rather than protects these goods, whatever community they belong to, is by definition a violation of Islamic law rather than an expression of it. The protection of Christian churches, Jewish synagogues and places of worship of all communities that the Quran explicitly identifies as a purpose of legitimate armed resistance (22:40) makes clear that the scope of Jihad’s concern is universal rather than tribal.
This universalistic character provides the foundation for a vision of Jihad as humanity’s collective struggle towards moral civilisation. Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, secular humanists and all people of conscience can, in principle, participate in shared ethical striving against ignorance, oppression, poverty, environmental destruction and violence. The Quran’s command to cooperate in righteousness and justice (5:2) provides a Quranic basis for this kind of interfaith solidarity, and a humanistic reading of Jihad provides the conceptual vocabulary for articulating it.
Jihad, Pluralism and the Ethics of Coexistence
An inclusive hermeneutics of Jihad must take seriously the Quran’s affirmations of religious pluralism and freedom of conscience, for these affirmations are not peripheral to the concept of Jihad but integral to it. The same revelation that permits armed resistance in defence of the oppressed also insists that there is no compulsion in religion, that God has deliberately made humanity diverse, and that righteous people of all faiths have their reward with their Lord. These affirmations are not in tension with the concept of Jihad properly understood; they define the moral horizon within which Jihad must always operate.
Properly understood, Jihad is not a mandate to impose any religious or political order upon humanity. It is a commitment to struggle for a just and peaceful order in which diverse communities can live, worship and flourish freely. The Constitution of Medina, the earliest Quranic-inspired political compact, established precisely such an order: a multi-religious polity bound by mutual obligation, shared civic responsibility and genuine respect for the religious practices of each constituent community. This historical precedent provides a model for understanding Jihad as compatible with, and indeed generative of, pluralist constitutional orders and universal human rights frameworks.
Such an understanding supports Muslim participation in the broad global project of building just, pluralist and rights-respecting societies. Jihad in this context becomes a language for ethical exertion on behalf of the oppressed and the marginalised, regardless of their religious identity, and for the construction of social orders in which the dignity of every human being is genuinely protected. This transformation of Jihad from a term of confrontation to a vocabulary of shared ethical struggle represents not a departure from the Quranic tradition but a recovery of its deepest aspirations.
Contemporary Relevance and Applications
In the contemporary world marked by extremism, nationalism, widening inequality, environmental crisis and civilisational polarisation, recovering the authentic Quranic spirit of Jihad is both a theological and a humanitarian necessity. A concept that has been weaponised for violence must be reclaimed as a resource for justice and peace. This reclamation is not apologetic but prophetic: it insists that the tradition’s most powerful resources are those that serve the flourishing of humanity rather than its destruction.
At the individual level, the greater Jihad remains as urgent as ever. The cultivation of compassion over contempt, of honest self-examination over self-justification, of commitment to truth over tribal loyalty, of service over domination: these are the perpetual demands of inner Jihad, and they are as relevant in the twenty-first century as in any previous era. In a social environment saturated by social media tribalism, algorithmic outrage and the constant temptation to dehumanise those who differ from us, the Quranic call to struggle against one’s own lower impulses acquires a particular contemporary urgency.
The work of reclaiming Jihad from extremist misappropriation is itself a form of Jihad in the truest Quranic sense: the use of speech, reason and moral persuasion to challenge a dehumanising ideology. Muslim scholars, educators and community leaders who engage in this work, whether through rigorous scholarship, community education, pastoral engagement with young people at risk of radicalisation, or public advocacy for a more accurate and nuanced understanding of Islamic ethics, are performing an act of Jihad that is entirely consistent with the Quran’s deepest values.
Educational initiatives that present Jihad as a multi-layered concept, spiritual, ethical, social and only in the most constrained circumstances military, have been shown to change perceptions significantly. Such initiatives are most effective when they do not treat Jihad as a problem to be explained away but as a resource to be reclaimed: as a powerful vocabulary for ethical engagement with the challenges of contemporary life.
In interreligious contexts, an accurate and humanistic presentation of Jihad opens rather than closes doors. When non-Muslim dialogue partners come to understand Jihad as an all-encompassing ethical struggle in which armed conflict is the most narrowly delimited and strictly regulated final resort, they frequently recognise parallels with their own traditions’ ways of navigating the same fundamental moral tensions. This recognition does not erase genuine differences but creates the shared ethical vocabulary that makes productive dialogue possible.
Initiatives such as A Common Word, the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme, and Scriptural Reasoning forums, where members of different traditions study their sacred texts together and explore both convergences and differences, provide models for this kind of dialogue. In these contexts, Jihad can be discussed honestly, in all its complexity and richness, in a spirit of mutual respect and shared commitment to the common good.
Gender Jihad: An Inclusive Dimension
A genuinely inclusive hermeneutics of Jihad must engage with the dimension of gender justice, for the struggle for the equal dignity of women is among the most important contemporary expressions of Jihad’s social dimension. Scholars such as Amina Wadud have developed the concept of gender Jihad as a hermeneutical effort to return to the Quran’s original egalitarian spirit, one that affirms the full moral agency and spiritual equality of women alongside men.
The Quran’s foundational declarations of human dignity apply without distinction of gender: “O humankind, We have created you from a male and a female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you” (49:13). Righteousness, not gender, is the measure of human worth in the Quranic vision. The struggle to ensure that this principle is genuinely embodied in Islamic interpretation, legal practice and community life constitutes a form of Jihad that is both deeply Quranic and urgently contemporary.
This struggle takes multiple forms: scholarly work to recover the original egalitarian impulses of early Quranic interpretation, pastoral and educational engagement with communities where gender-based injustice persists, legal advocacy for women’s rights within both Islamic and secular frameworks, and the empowerment of women to participate fully in religious leadership, scholarship and community governance. Each of these represents a dimension of the struggle for justice that lies at the heart of the Quranic concept of Jihad.
Humanistic Principles Emerging from Quranic Jihad Discourse
When the Quranic discourse on Jihad is read through a humanistic lens attentive to the text’s overarching moral project, several foundational principles emerge that are of enduring relevance for ethics, politics and interreligious relations:
• Protection of human life and dignity: All commands and prohibitions related to fighting aim fundamentally to safeguard life, honour, property and the environment, and to prevent cruelty and corruption. Any interpretation that leads to the destruction rather than the protection of these goods betrays the Quranic vision.
• Justice and opposition to oppression: The permissibility of armed struggle is tied exclusively to resistance against oppression, expulsion and persecution, and is framed as a means to restore justice rather than to impose domination. Jihad on behalf of aggressors is a contradiction in terms.
• Mercy and restraint: The Quran warns repeatedly against excess in warfare and enjoins mercy, forgiveness and openness to peace. The preference for reconciliation over continued conflict is not a counsel of weakness but a reflection of the divine character as Compassionate and Merciful.
• Universal moral concern: The Quranic concept of legitimate struggle is concerned not only with Muslim interests but with broader human values, including the protection of non-combatants, the preservation of religious sites of all communities, and the well-being of all who are vulnerable.
• Priority of non-violent striving: The greater Jihad of inner moral development, and the various forms of non-violent social, intellectual and ethical striving, take precedence over armed resistance in the Quranic framework. Violence is exceptional, conditional and always subject to strict moral constraints.
• Freedom of conscience: No invocation of Jihad can override the Quran’s foundational principle that there is no compulsion in religion. Faith achieved through coercion has no moral or spiritual value.
• Openness to peace: The Quran commands Muslims to incline towards peace when the other party inclines towards it, and to place their trust in God rather than in the continuation of conflict. Peace is the telos of Jihad, not an interruption of it.
Towards an Enlightened, Universalistic Hermeneutic of Jihad
Bringing together the threads of this analysis, an enlightened, universalistic hermeneutic of Jihad in Quranic perspective involves seven interconnected commitments:
First, the primacy of ethical universals. All verses about struggle and war must be interpreted in light of the Quran’s overarching commitments to justice, mercy, human dignity and the protection of life. Any reading that contradicts these overarching values must be treated as hermeneutically suspect, regardless of its apparent surface plausibility.
Second, contextual and historical sensitivity. War-related verses must be situated within the concrete circumstances of early Muslim persecution, migration and defence, and must resist abstraction into timeless commands for aggression. The occasions of revelation are not a convenient apologetic device but an essential tool of responsible interpretation.
Third, the centrality of the greater Jihad. The concept of Jihad must be re-centred on inner moral and spiritual striving, as well as on peaceful social and intellectual efforts for reform, with armed struggle treated as strictly secondary, conditional and exceptional.
Fourth, the strict limitation of the lesser Jihad. Any legitimate armed Jihad must meet rigorous ethical conditions: a defensive cause, last resort character, proportionality in execution, non-combatant immunity and genuine openness to peace. Violations of these conditions do not diminish the legitimacy of a Jihad; they nullify it entirely.
Fifth, interreligious accountability. Interpretations of Jihad should be formulated in ways that can be articulated and defended in conversation with other faith traditions and secular moral philosophies, seeking convergence on shared principles of just peace and human rights while honestly acknowledging genuine differences.
Sixth, critical engagement with extremist misuse. The systematic distortions of Jihad perpetrated by extremist movements must be explicitly and rigorously refuted, drawing on both classical scholarship and contemporary humanist critiques. This refutation is itself an act of Jihad in the truest Quranic sense.
Seventh, commitment to pluralism and shared struggle. Jihad must be reframed as a commitment to struggle alongside others, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, against injustice, poverty, environmental destruction and tyranny. This transformation recasts a misunderstood term as a shared ethical horizon for all who are committed to the dignity and flourishing of humanity.
Jihad as a Universal Call to Human Excellence
The concept of Jihad, when examined through an enlightened, humanistic, universalistic, inclusive and interreligious hermeneutical lens, reveals itself as one of the most profound and enduring ethical concepts in the Quranic moral universe. Its reduction to warfare represents not a clarification of its meaning but its most fundamental betrayal, stripping away the moral substance that gives the concept its genuine force and transforming a comprehensive call to human excellence into a licence for destruction.
The Quranic Jihad, recovered in its fullness, is a comprehensive ethical framework encompassing the inner struggle against egoism, cruelty and self-deception; the intellectual struggle against ignorance, dehumanising ideologies and the suppression of critical thought; the social struggle against poverty, inequality, racism and the abuse of power; and the political struggle for just institutions, genuine pluralism and the protection of human dignity. Armed resistance occupies only the most narrowly delimited place within this framework: the last resort of those who have been unjustly attacked and who have no other means of defending their dignity and the freedom of worship of their communities.
This recovery of authentic Jihad is not a modern innovation imposed upon an unwilling tradition. It is a retrieval and re-centring of emphases already present in the Quran itself, in the classical tradition of Islamic juridical ethics, and in the long heritage of Sufi spiritual wisdom and humanistic Islamic scholarship. It represents fidelity to the text rather than departure from it.
For the Muslim community, this understanding offers an authentic and morally serious path forward: one that takes the demands of faith with full seriousness while engaging honestly with the complexity of contemporary life. It refuses both the quietism that abandons the oppressed and the moral nihilism that excuses unlimited violence. It calls for the cultivation of inner integrity as the foundation of authentic public engagement, and for solidarity with all who suffer injustice as the expression of genuine devotion to God.
For the broader human community, this understanding offers a resource for dialogue and cooperation rather than a source of fear. When Jihad is understood as the striving for justice, the struggle against ego, the effort to build a more humane world, it becomes recognisable as part of humanity’s shared moral heritage rather than as an alien and threatening force. The convergences with Christian just war theory, Jewish traditions of resistance to oppression, Buddhist disciplines of inner transformation, and secular humanist commitments to justice and dignity are genuine and significant, and they provide a basis for the interfaith solidarity that the contemporary world so urgently needs.
In the deepest Quranic sense, Jihad is not war against humanity but striving for the liberation, dignity and moral elevation of humanity itself. It is the eternal human struggle to ensure that mercy, that defining attribute of the Divine which the Quran invokes over three hundred times, remains the governing principle of human civilisation. When religion is disconnected from compassion and reason, it degenerates into tribal ideology and violence. When it is interpreted through justice, wisdom and mercy, as an enlightened hermeneutics of Jihad seeks to do, it becomes a transformative force for peace and human flourishing, offering not division and fear but the hope of a shared moral future for all the children of humanity.
Bibliography
Esack, Farid. Quran, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1997.
Wadud, Amina. Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006.
V.A. Mohamad Ashrof is an independent Indian scholar specializing in Islamic humanism.
1 Jun 2026
Source: countercurrents.org
