Jihad

Jihad (Arabic) "striving in the way of Allah".  The Koran uses this word 35 times, twice meaning "peaceful struggle" and 29 times meaning "war".  At the beginning of the 11th century the Sufi tradition gave the word a spiritual dimension in the sense of "inner struggle" or "inner growth".  The political history of the Islamic world is full of examples of how Jihad was used as a political instrument to justify military attacks, primarily against "unbelievers" (see bibliography under "History").

Johannes der Täufer

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