Jihad, and Other Misconceptions

How do current humanitarian crises like the rise of ISIS and the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan put historical events into perspective? What is the connection between events in the novel and current Jihadi terrorist groups?

What is jihad exactly? According to Shaykh Muhammad Kabbani, Chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, and Shaykh Seraj Hendricks, Head Mufti of Cape Town, South Africa, jihad “can refer to internal as well as external efforts to be a good Muslim or believer, as well as working to inform people about the faith of Islam” (ISCA, 10).

The word itself means struggling or striving, not “holy war,” as is a popular misconception in America. The Arabic word for war is “al-harb” and more accurately describes the actions of so-called “Jihadi” fighters.

In true jihad, there are strict rules of engagement not followed by radicals like those in ISIS and the Haqqani Network. For one, innocents must never be harmed in the name of Islam, including women, children, and invalids. Turn on any news channel and you’ll find that the radicals conveniently forget this rule quite often.

Jihad is also not supposed to be a declaration of war against other religions. The Qur’an actually mandates that Christians and Jews in particular be respected as “people of the book” who worship the same God (ISCA, 10). This should dispel the generalized notion that all Muslims are violent people, a concept on which Hosseini himself hoped to elucidate through A Thousand Splendid Suns and his earlier work, The Kite Runner. Furthermore, it is clear that the primary victims of radical “jihad” are Muslims themselves.

The word “jihad” is not the only Arabic term to have been muddled over the last few decades. “Al-Qaeda,” an organization most notorious for the September 11th attacks, borrows its nomenclature from the Arabic word for “database” (Foden). During Russia’s occupation, the CIA possessed a database of rebel fighters eligible to receive training, funding, weapons, and supplies. It didn’t take long for those fighters to turn on America once the Soviets left, as explained in Hosseini’s novel.

Those parallels to Iran come back into play when we consider that Middle Easterners have long memories—we as Americans don’t understand it. We went from being bitter enemies with Japan to BFFs in less than a century and hold a grudge about as long as Dory from Finding Nemo. Iran…not so much. According to former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, since we toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2005, “Sunni Arabs have perceived that they are under attack by Shia irregulars abetted by Iran or sometimes by the Shia-majority Iraqi government forces” (Ford). This has caused the pace of ISIS gains in areas like the Levant, where majority oppression exists, to accelerate rapidly. Combine a terrorist network that we created in Afghanistan with political unrest that we created in Iraq and a pretty dicey situation unfolds. Still, we would make a mistake by supporting the Iranians against ISIS, since their goal is to secure Shia dominance, not an equal balance of power (Ford). That mistake could cost us another fifty years of military involvement, which frankly explains why that region is so unhappy with us, anyway.

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