Does "Jihad" Mean "Inner Struggle?"

Bill Warner, at Political Islam, is doing some interesting and original work. He simply counts up the statistics in Islamic doctrine to arrive at useful, insightful, illuminating facts. For example, 61 percent of the Koran is about non-believers. That's a lot.

I've used that fact already in my writing. Why do non-Muslims need to know what's in the Koran? Because sixty-one percent of it is about them. Here's a good one:

Another statistical conclusion: Islam is primarily a political doctrine, not a religion.

Simple statistics reveal the true nature of the political/religious idea of jihad. When the word jihad is used, Muslims say that there are two kinds of jihad. There is the religious jihad, the "greater jihad" — the inner struggle against personal problems. And the war jihad is the "lesser jihad."

The Hadith of Bukhari gives all of the tactical details of jihad. A simple counting method shows that 3% of the hadiths are about the inner struggle, whereas, 97% of the hadiths are about jihad as war. So is jihad the inner struggle? Yes, 3%. Is jihad the war against kafirs? Yes, 97%.

We can really use this insight. When someone makes the "inner struggle" argument, we now have a solid response. Read the rest of the article: Statistics and the Meaning of Islam.

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