Jihad in the West by Paul Fregosi
Introduction: The Holy War That Isn't
Paragraph 5
To understand the jihad we must be clear in our minds about what it is
and, first of all, what it is not. To start, it is not what most people
think it is. The purpose is not to convert unbelievers to islam by
force. This may have been so in its the first century of life, when the
choice given to the defeated was conversion to islam or death, but this
was soon changed to conversion to islam, death or tribute in the form of
a special tax. It was the case of "your money or your life"! The
purpose the jihad became, and basically still is, to expand and extend
islam until the whole world was under muslim rule. The jihad is
essentially a permanent state of hostility that islam maintains against
the rest of the world, with or without fighting, for more sovereignty
over more territory. We should at this point recall the words of Jacques
Ellal who, on his forward to Bat Yeor's "The Decline of Eastern
Christianity" reminds us of an almost forgotten basic fact concerning
the jihad: "Jihad is a religious obligation. It forms part of the duties
that the believer must fulfill: it is islam's normal path to
expansion." The jihad is an institution in islam which in Christian
language we would call a sacrament. It is part of the normal functioning
of the muslim world, a religious duty which the devout muslim has to
perform if called upon.
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