by Jane Bate and Bryan Hermansdorfer, ©2021
(Apr. 15, 2021) — [Editor’s Note: Read previous installments in this series here.]
What, really, is meant by the term “jihad”? You may have seen signs saying, “My jihad is to lose weight,” or “My jihad is to give up smoking.” Self-improvement campaigns such as these are known as “the greater jihad,” while the warlike form of jihad is referred to as “the lesser jihad.” This is very deceptive, however. If you read through the Hadith, the official biography of Muhammad (which accounts for the greatest volume of the Islamic trilogy, the basis for Sharia), you will find that 98% of the mentions of “jihad” have to do with the “lesser”/violent jihad, and only 2% of the text concern the “greater”/self-improvement jihad. So those signs seen on buses and in subway stations are misleading – likely deliberately so.
Dr. Bill Warner, in his excellent 50-page primer, Sharia Law for Non-Muslims, explains that there are four basic means of waging jihad: through speech, writing, money or by the sword. For many centuries following Muhammad’s arrival in Medina in 622 (at which point he altered his strategy aimed at attracting followers, from preaching to violent physical attacks), Muhammad gained immense amounts of land, valuables, slaves, concubines, and new (unwilling) recruits to Islam at the tip of the sword. What is usually referred to as the “First Jihad” ended in 732 in Tours, France, thanks to Charles Martel, while the “Second Jihad” ended, under the leadership of the Polish king, Jan Sobieski, at the Gates of Vienna on September 11, 1683.
Currently, however, in our Western civilization, stealth jihad (creating the illusion of peaceful pursuits through tactics such as the deceptive jihad signs, whitewashing textbooks, and much more) is proving to be far more effective than military attacks, and the Muslim Brotherhood – jihadis in suits – do this very well.