Sixth Pillar of Islam

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There are only five Pillars of Islam that are universally accepted as the basis of Islamic practice. However, the Kharijites upheld the belief that Jihad may be considered the sixth pillar. [1] In their interpretation, jihad could be an individual's internal struggle against baser instincts, the struggle to build a good Muslim society, or a war for the faith against unbelievers. [2] Jihad is a vague term for the act of promoting Islam or improving observance of Islamic practices and may range from holy war to self-improvement. [3]

In Twelver Shi'a Islam, the second-largest branch of Islam, jihad is one of the ten Practices of the Religion.

Jihad was brought up in controversial magazine Charlie Hebdo , which suffered a terrorist attack in 2015, stirred controversy with its coverage of Tariq Ramadan, with a headline that associated him with the Sixth Pillar of Islam. It was brought up since jihad is the pillar that sustains this type of practice in Islam.

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Al-Qaeda is a Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization led by Salafi jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic state known as the Caliphate. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countries, including the 1998 United States embassy bombings and the September 11 attacks; it has been designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union, and various countries around the world.

The Five Pillars of Islam are fundamental practices in Islam, considered to be obligatory acts of worship for all Muslims. They are summarized in the hadith of Gabriel. The Sunni and Shia agree on the basic details of the performance and practice of these acts, but the Shia do not refer to them by the same name. They are: Muslim creed, prayer, charity to the poor, fasting in the month of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.

Jihad is an Arabic word which literally means "striving" or "struggling", especially with a praiseworthy aim. In an Islamic context, it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with God's guidance, such as struggle against one's evil inclinations, proselytizing, or efforts toward the moral betterment of the Muslim community (Ummah), though it is most frequently associated with war. In classical Islamic law (sharia), the term refers to armed struggle against unbelievers, while modernist Islamic scholars generally equate military jihad with defensive warfare. In Sufi circles, spiritual and moral jihad has been traditionally emphasized under the name of greater jihad. The term has gained additional attention in recent decades through its use by various insurgent Islamic extremist, militant Islamist, and terrorist individuals and organizations whose ideology is based on the Islamic notion of jihad.

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The Sokoto Caliphate, also known as the Sultanate of Sokoto, was a Sunni Muslim caliphate in West Africa. It was founded by Usman dan Fodio in 1804 during the Fulani jihads after defeating the Hausa Kingdoms in the Fulani War. The boundaries of the caliphate are part of present-day Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Nigeria. By 1837, the Sokoto state had a population of around 10-20 plus million people, becoming the most populous empire in West Africa. It was dissolved when the British and Germans conquered the area in 1903 and annexed it into the newly established Northern Nigeria Protectorate and Kamerun respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abdullah Yusuf Azzam</span> Palestinian Islamic scholar and jihadist (1941–1989)

Abdullah Yusuf Azzam was a Palestinian Islamic scholar and jihadist. Belonging to the Salafi movement, during the Soviet–Afghan War of the 1980s, he advocated defensive jihad by Muslims worldwide to help the Afghan mujahideen fight against the Soviet forces and Afghan Government forces in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

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Religious fanaticism, or religious extremism, is a pejorative designation used to indicate uncritical zeal or obsessive enthusiasm that is related to one's own, or one's group's, devotion to a religion – a form of human fanaticism that could otherwise be expressed in one's other involvements and participation, including employment, role, and partisan affinities. Historically, the term was applied in Christian antiquity to denigrate non-Christian religions, and subsequently acquired its current usage with the Age of Enlightenment.

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Jihadism is a neologism for militant Islamic movements that are perceived as existentially threatening to the West. It has been applied to various insurgent Islamic extremist, militant Islamist, and terrorist individuals and organizations whose ideologies are based on the Islamic notion of jihad. It has also been applied to various Islamic empires in history, such as the Umayyad Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, who extensively campaigned against non-Muslim nations in the name of jihad.

Mujahideen, or Mujahidin, is the plural form of mujahid, an Arabic term that broadly refers to people who engage in jihad, interpreted in a jurisprudence of Islam as the fight on behalf of God, religion or the community (ummah).

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Salafi jihadism, also known as Revolutionary Salafism or jihadist-Salafism, is a religious-political Sunni Islamist ideology, seeking to establish a global caliphate, characterized by the advocacy of "physical" (military) jihadist attacks on non-Muslim and (takfired) Muslim targets, and the Salafist interpretation of sacred Islamic texts, which they believe to be "in their most literal, traditional sense", to bring about the return to "true Islam".

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Muhammad abd-al-Salam Faraj was an Egyptian radical Islamist and theorist. He led the Cairo branch of the Islamist group al-Jihad and made a significant contribution in elevating the role of jihad in radical Islam with his pamphlet The Neglected Obligation. He was executed in 1982 for his role in coordinating the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat the previous year.

From the time of Muhammad, the final prophet of Islam, many Muslim states and empires have been involved in warfare. The concept of jihad, the religious duty to struggle, has long been associated with struggles for promoting a religion, although some observers refer to such struggle as "the lesser jihad" by comparison with inner spiritual striving. Islamic jurisprudence on war differentiates between illegitimate and legitimate warfare and prescribes proper and improper conduct by combatants. Numerous conquest wars as well as armed anti-colonial military campaigns were waged as jihads.

Starting in the mid-1970s and 1980s, Salafism and Wahhabism — along with other Sunni interpretations of Islam favored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies — achieved a "preeminent position of strength in the global expression of Islam."

<i>The Greatest Jihad</i>

Jihad al-Akbar is the lectures of Imam Khomeini in Najaf, which was published in 1991 by the institute for compilation and publication of Imam Khomeini's works.

Nizamuddin Shamzai was a pro-Taliban Pakistani Deobandi Sunni Islamic scholar and the senior professor of hadith at the Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia. He was considered "one of the most important Deobandi figures in Pakistan" and "one" of the "most revered Sunni clerics" in Pakistan. He was the mentor of Mullah Mohammed Omar, and his madrassa, "taught many students who later became important members of the Taliban regime in Kabul". He issued religious edicts and travelled to elicit support for the Taliban, including a called for a “jihad” against the US after the Al-Qaeda September 11 attacks and US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

References

  1. "Jihad: The Arguable Sixth Pillar of Islam". courses.washington.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
  2. "What is jihadism?". BBC News. 2014-12-11. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
  3. Owens, White, Ridley, Pawson, Chris, Joy, Amanda, Ed. "WJEC Eduqas GCSE (9-1) Religious Studies Route A" (PDF).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)