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STRUGGLING IN THE PATH OF GOD: PERSPECTIVES
ON JIHAD IN ISLAM |
This seminar will focus on the various meanings of jihad which have seminally shaped the moral, ethical, and legal orientations of Islam. The Arabic term “jihad” that has been used and much abused lately refers at the basic level to the struggle and effort made by the believer to “do the right thing,” both individually and collectively. Our readings will focus on the occurrence and explication of the term in the basic sources of Islamic thought: the Qur'an (the revealed scripture), hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), exegetical and legal literature from the pre-modern and modern periods. This survey will reveal the broad range of meanings assigned to the term jihad, regarded as a moral imperative related to the basic Qur'anic duty of upholding what is right and resisting wrong in various socio-historical contexts. How this crucial, pro-active precept has been invoked and interpreted in key moments of Islamic history by different groups to promote social welfare, combat injustice of various types and foreign aggression, as well as to advance the “cause of Islam,” the definition of which concept remained open to debate, will be one of the main concerns of this course. The Qur'anic treatment of jihad, properly contextualized, will be compared to this later, multi-faceted extra-Quranic discourse as articulated in various sources and dwell on the extent to which this discourse agrees with and diverges from the earliest, scriptural understanding of the term. It is expected that this historical treatment will set the stage for a better understanding of recent and ongoing events and the complex role of jihad in them, which will also be a part of our discussions.
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Asma Afsaruddin, professor of classics, teaches Arabic and Islamic Studies. Her research focuses on the religious and political thought of Islam, Qur'an and hadith studies, and Islamic intellectual history. She has taught at Johns Hopkins and Harvard and won research grants from the American Research Institute in Turkey and the American Research Center of Egypt. Her book Excellence and Precedence: Medieval Islamic Discourse on Legitimate Leadership was published in 2002. She is the editor of Hermeneutics and Honor: Negotiation of Female 'Public' Space in Islamic/ate Societies; coeditor of Humanism, Culture, and Language in the Near East: Studies in Honor of Georg Krotkoff; and a member of the editorial board of the Oxford Dictionary of Islam. She has written extensively on various aspects of Islamic thought.
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