Jihad denotes, literally, doing one’s utmost to achieve something. It is not the equivalent of war, for which the Arabic word is qital. It has a wider connotation and embraces every kind of striving in God’s cause. A mujahid is a person who is sincerely devoted to his cause, who uses all his physical, intellectual and spiritual capacity to serve it and employs all the force he commands in confronting any power which might stand in its way, and, whenever necessary, does not shirk risking his very life for it. All this is jhad. Jihad in the way of God is that striving in which man engages exclusively to win God’s good pleasure, to establish the supremacy of His religion and to make His Word prevail.

Besides the holy struggle, the principle of amr bi’l-ma’ruf wa nahy an al-munkar (enjoining the good and forbidding the evil) seeks to convey the Message of Islam to all human beings in the world and to establish a model Islamic community on a world-wide basis. The Islamic community is introduced by the Qur’an as a model community, one that is required to make every effort in either communicating to mankind what the Prophet communicated to them, or in exemplifying in their own lives what the Prophet, by his own conduct, translated into actual practice: Thus, We have made you a community justly balanced, that you might be witnesses for all mankind, and the Messenger may be a witness for you (al-Baqara, 2.143).

Aspects of the holy struggle in the way of God

The first Revelation which came to God’s Messenger was the command read!. This command, coming as it did at a time when there was nothing yet to read, meant that a believer should exercise all his faculties, intellectual and spiritual, in discerning God’s acts in the universe and His laws in the creation and operation of the universe. Through this discernment, he is to purify himself, his mind, of all the superstitions coming from ignorance and, through observation and contemplation, equip himself with true knowledge.

Man is not a being composed of only the mind; God has endowed him with many faculties each of which needs satisfaction. So, while feeding his mind, on the one hand, with Divine ‘signs’ manifested in the universe, he will cleanse his ‘heart’, on the other, of all his sins. He will live a balanced life in awareness of being supervised by God and continuously ask for His forgiveness. He will break, through seeking God’s forgiveness, the desires of his carnal self for forbidden things, and, through prayer, he will ask God to enable him to always do good deeds.

The command read!, thus signifies an action. For God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, it meant that, since God’s Messenger was absolutely pure in spirit and had no superstitions at all, he would have to start his mission as a Messenger of God. He was to recite to people the Revelations of God, and instruct them in His signs in the universe, and by doing that, he would purify their minds of all the superstitions of the Age of Ignorance and their hearts of all their sins. He would enlighten them, intellectually and spiritually, by instructing them in both the ‘Revealed Book of God’, the Qur’an, and His ‘Created Book’, that is, the universe:

We have sent among you, of yourselves, a Messenger who recites to you Our signs, purifies you, and instructs you in the Book and in the Wisdom, and also instructs you in what you know not. (al-Baqara, 2.151)

Men are in some sense like raw minerals to be worked upon by the Prophets, who purify and refine them by removing the seal from their hearts and ears, and by lifting the veils from their eyes. Enlightened by the Message of the Prophets, men are enabled to understand the meaning of the Divine laws of nature, which are signs of the existence and Unity of God, and to penetrate into the subtle reality of things and events. Only through the guidance of the Prophets can mankind attain the high status expected of them by God.

In addition to teaching the signs, the Prophets also instructed men in the Book and in Wisdom. As the Qur’an was the last Revelation to the Last Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, God means the Qur’an when He speaks of the Scripture, and the Sunnah when He speaks of Wisdom. One must therefore follow the Qur’an and the Sunnah, the example of the Prophet, if one desires to be rightly guided.

The Prophet also teaches us what we do not know and humanity will continue to learn from the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, until the Day of Judgement. We learn from him how to purify ourselves of sins. By following his way, many great saints have attained their distinctions as saints. Among them ‘Ali says that his belief in the Unseen and the essentials of Islam is so firm that even if the veil of the Unseen were lifted, his certainty would not increase. Many others such as Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Imam Ghazali, Imam Rabbani, Fudayl ibn ‘Iyad, Ibrahim ibn Adham and Bishr al-Khafi might well have been endowed with Prophethood, if God had not already set a seal on Prophethood.