The word jehad, derived from the Arabic word jahd, means effort or endeavour. It is a struggle to defend the highest values laid down by Islam and devoutly cherished by its adherents. It is a divine institution of warfare to extend Islam into darul-hurb (the non-Islamic territories which are described as the ‘abode of struggle’). Mohammad, the Prophet, says, "The highest form of jehad is to speak a just word before a tyrannical ruler". He added, "The worst form of class prejudice is to support one’s community in tyranny, or he who knowingly lends support to tyranny is outside the pale of Islam."

The Koran says:

It is incumbent on the adults to participate in jehad if the need arises, but not all of them, provided there is a sufficient number to take it up. An important precondition for launching jehad is a reasonable prospect of ensuring success, failing which jehad should not be attempted. According to the Prophet’s Sunnah, jehad is unlawful unless it involves the summoning of non-believers to belief, and jehad must end when the objective is achieved, that is when the non-believers have either accepted Islam or when Islam is no longer under threat. It is impossible to undertake jehad against Muslims. During colonial rule, it was not considered necessary for the Muslims to wage jehad on the ground that Islam was not prohibited and the Islamic institutions were allowed freedom. Though opportunistic politicians have given calls for jehad for the gratification of their vested interests, popular support has seldom come. A genuine jehad is not political warfare and, according to some Muslim theologians, a real jehad has rarely been invoked since Islam’s original struggle against non-Muslims.

A 10th entry sermon by Tobu Nubta exhorts thus to jehad

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was a profound scholar and interpreter of Islamic theology and law, and authored a masterpiece, Tarjuman-ul-Quran, took a broad and catholic view of jehad. According to him, Islam never commends narrow-mindedness and racial and religious strife nor does it make the recognition of merit and virtue of human benevolence dependent on the distinction of religion and race. Azad maintains that no one can be a Muslim and a believer in one God unless he undertakes jehad. He defines jehad as follows:

"Every effort devoted to what is right, every expenditure of resources that serves the cause of truth and goodness, every labour and burden undertaken to promote justice, all pain and suffering endured in the body and the mind while striving in the way of God, all the fetters and shackles of the dungeon that bind hands and feet in punishment for proclaiming the truth, enevy scaffold to which the beauty of truth and love of justice leads, in short, every sacrifice of life and property, every service with tongue and pen, performed with the cause of truth and justice is jehad in the way of Allah and is comprehended in the meaning of jehad."

Maulana Azad’s interpretation of jehad is completely humanistic, setting out the highest standards of virtuous deeds performed for equity, justice, truth and welfare of man exemplifying the nobility of Socrates, Jesus and Prophet Mohammad. But it is a pity that few people listen to Azad’s voice. In a recent study, Shattering the Myth: Islam beyond Violence, Bruce L. Lawrence of Duke University wrote: "Jehad has become little more than a perjorative code word for collective protest against excesses committed by the regimes in power." The Muslim clerics in the service of rulers had used fatwa for jehad as a form of spiritual and physical weapon against political opponents. Recently, jehad has acquired an economic dimension. It has come to mean the advocacy of social and economic justice and protection of the life and property of Muslims. According to Prophet Mohammad, he is not a Muslim who eats his full while his neighbour goes hungry. This is interpreted as a crusade to secure economic uplift.

Whenever attempts have been made to re-evaluate the fundamentals of Islam in the context of a changing world, they have come to a naught. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Sir Mohammad Iqbal and Maulana Azad had made desperate efforts to bring the fundamentals of Islam in harmony with the needs of the present age, but they were isolated and condemned by the orthodox.

Now in many of the 7,500 madarsas in Pakistan with about 7,50,000 to 1 million students, jehad is a holy weapon used for the defence of Islam and the hero, Osama bin Laden. These students, from seven or eight to 20 years old, come from poor families and are offered limited education, concentrating mostly on the Koran. They cannot afford the other type of education in a country that spends about 90 per cent of its budget on debt services and military.

Most of the leaders of the Taliban, including Mullah Mohammad Omar, were educated in the madarsas in Pakistan, and most of them in Jamia Darul Uloom Haqqania in Akaro Khattak village in the North-West Frontier Province. In view of the type of education imparted to the youth, Pakistan has become a nursery of militant terrorism.

How to meet the challenge of the Muslim militant terrorism? Much water has flowed down the river Indus since the creation of Pakistan. It is an exercise in futility to go into the causes of the rising tide of militancy in Pakistan at this stage. What is needed is sagacious statesmanship of the highest order — bold and daring, which is capable of inaugurating an era of Islamic renaissance in Pakistan. It is the enlightened and the liberal intelligentsia which is the harbinger of modernity without cutting off the highest traditional values that sustain society. It was the vision and hitting power of Martin Luther that saved Europe from violence, obscurantism and ignorance and paved the way for reforms and progress. History has always many lessons to give and guide us in our critical times.