Jihad was also invoked against regimes that came into power after the colonial governments fell. Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966), a prominent member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, opposed the regime of President Gamal ‘Abdel Nasser, asserting that it was contrary to Islamic principles. During nearly a decade of imprisonment and torture, Qutb called for the overthrow of “un-Islamic” regimes by violence if necessary and invoked the doctrine of jihad. His writings continue to inspire radical groups that use the concept of jihad to justify violence. The most significant reinterpretation of jihad in recent times took place in the context of the Cold War when a coalition of several nations, led by the United States, co-opted and endorsed a militant form of jihad in their battle against communism after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
These are not the only possible meanings of jihad, or even the most popular meanings as understood by Muslims through time and space. Muslims also speak of a jihad of the tongue and jihad of the pen as ways to express the teachings of Islam. Some Muslims have understood jihad in ethical terms, conceiving of it as a person’s inner struggle against the impulses of the ego, such as greed, anger, and jealousy—what the Prophet Muhammad himself referred to as the “greater jihad.”
In another sense, some Muslims consider jihad to be a human being’s struggle to fulfill one’s obligations to family and society. In the context of the modern nation state, jihad has been used to refer to a state-sponsored program that is non-military in nature. For example, President Bourguiba of Tunisia and General Musharraf of Pakistan employed the term in the context of eliminating illiteracy, poverty, and economic stagnation to promote economic and social development in their countries.
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