Jihad – just the word alone conjures up a frightening picture in the West. Even for educated Europeans, jihad, the Holy Islamic War appears in the guise of a Turk swinging his scimitar against the Occident, threatening every infidel with death and spreading death and terror throughout the world. The poor West! The elite there react to the word jihad with dark, subliminal fears, as if a medieval counter-crusade is around the corner.

How can such distortions and irrational fears still exert their influence? Especially when the West has for more than two hundred years demonstrated its superiority over the Islamic world by colonizing it and setting the terms of its study through Orientalism. From whence this fear?

Bearing in mind the striking imbalance of forces between the West and the Islamic world, the laments and furies of the Arabs concerning the enduring European crusade sound far less irrational than the analogous European fears of jihad. Or could it be that this ongoing invocation still fulfills a pair of goals: first, to smooth over second thoughts about the avaricious practice of Western colonialism, and second, in a less subtle way, to mobilize forces for the confrontation of the rich North with the ever-poorer South. I am just asking. In any case, the industrialized nations have a very limited view of Islam, and this is part of the answer. The West has drawn an extract from a historical religion rooted in many cultures and practiced by numerous, completely different societies over a long period of time. This extract pronounces that jihad is simply an aggressive tendency inherent in Islam, regardless of history, circumstance, place, or the distribution of forces. According to the cliché, militarism, belligerence, and bloodshed are ineradicable qualities of all Muslims, no matter where they are or what they do or aim to do. One day, a billion Muslims will set out and attack the bulwark of Western rationalism in the name of Allah. That is the fear, for which jihad is the shorthand.

However, what does jihad really mean? Etymologically, the concept is derived from a root that covers all sorts of activities. Thus, a whole series of radically different activities has been described as jihad in Islamic history.