Terrorism Jihad 
Yasmeen Mashriqi
International Terrorism
12/05/2014
Professor Schlossberg
Jihad
Jihad is a term that the West has come to know and fear. The Arabic word, Jihad, means struggling or striving and applies to any effort exerted by anyone. Jihad is really a struggle in life. Extremists misinterpret the religion into believing the religion implies that they should fight with anyone that is against Islam. Extremists use their religion as a scapegoat. Those who are involved with Jihad are a very small percentage of Muslims who are from the extreme, radical, and violent wing of Islamic Fundamentalism.
They are very passionate, religious, and anti Western. They tend to interpret Jihad in terms of personal struggle towards purity. What many people don’t know is that Jihad is not a declaration of war against other religions. The Quran specifically refers to Jews and Christians as "people of the book" who should be protected and respected. All three faiths worship the same God. Allah is just the Arabic word for God, and is used by Christian Arabs as well as Muslims.
Jihad means struggle and that means any struggle, personal struggles, spiritual struggle, or more popular term for these days a political struggle. In Islam we have no right to fight anyone for any reason except for self-defense. The media plays a large role in the Middle East. It portrays hate back and forth by religious leaders who call death to Americans. Not only is the insidious nature of their broadcasts abhorrent, but they are also educating children on a diet of Jihad to become suicide bombers and murderers.
In reality, this form of Jihad, which has an aspect of physical combat, is nothing like the terrorism and murder that we see committed all over the world in the name of Islam; rather, it based upon defending the rights of the oppressed, as Allah said in the Qur’an:
“And what is [the batter] with you that you fight not in the cause of Allah while the oppressed among men, women, and children
International Terrorism
12/05/2014
Professor Schlossberg
Jihad
Jihad is a term that the West has come to know and fear. The Arabic word, Jihad, means struggling or striving and applies to any effort exerted by anyone. Jihad is really a struggle in life. Extremists misinterpret the religion into believing the religion implies that they should fight with anyone that is against Islam. Extremists use their religion as a scapegoat. Those who are involved with Jihad are a very small percentage of Muslims who are from the extreme, radical, and violent wing of Islamic Fundamentalism.
They are very passionate, religious, and anti Western. They tend to interpret Jihad in terms of personal struggle towards purity. What many people don’t know is that Jihad is not a declaration of war against other religions. The Quran specifically refers to Jews and Christians as "people of the book" who should be protected and respected. All three faiths worship the same God. Allah is just the Arabic word for God, and is used by Christian Arabs as well as Muslims.
Jihad means struggle and that means any struggle, personal struggles, spiritual struggle, or more popular term for these days a political struggle. In Islam we have no right to fight anyone for any reason except for self-defense. The media plays a large role in the Middle East. It portrays hate back and forth by religious leaders who call death to Americans. Not only is the insidious nature of their broadcasts abhorrent, but they are also educating children on a diet of Jihad to become suicide bombers and murderers.
In reality, this form of Jihad, which has an aspect of physical combat, is nothing like the terrorism and murder that we see committed all over the world in the name of Islam; rather, it based upon defending the rights of the oppressed, as Allah said in the Qur’an:
“And what is [the batter] with you that you fight not in the cause of Allah while the oppressed among men, women, and children
Cited: Simonsen, Clifford E., and Jeremy R. Spindlove. Terrorism Today: The Past, the Players, the Future. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000. Print. Terrorism and International Law. Leiden, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 2007. Print. Nanes, Allan S. International Terrorism. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, 1983. Print. Kobrin, Nancy. The Banality of Suicide Terrorism the Naked Truth about the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing. Washington, D.C.: Potomac, 2010. Print. http://www.clarionproject.org/understanding-islamism/islamic-extremism