Striving in the Path of God

Abstract

The term jihad is perhaps the most contentious Arabic word to enter the Englishlanguage in recent decades. In public discourse it has become shorthandfor “holy war” and synonymous with violent Muslim extremism. This scholarlyexamination of jihad and martyrdom by Asma Afsaruddin, a professorof Islamic studies at Indiana University, carefully disentangles their multivalentmeanings within Islamic scholarship from early Muslim history up tothe present day. It also challenges the assertions of those who focus only uponmartial connotations. Instead, she argues that “conceptualizations of jihad asprimarily armed combat and of shahada as primarily military martyrdomare relatively late and contested ones and deviate considerably from theQur’anic significations of these terms” (p. 5). In this substantial, dense text,comprising nine chapters in addition to the introduction and conclusion, shedemonstrates an impressive command of materials by skillfully engaging arepresentative range of Qur’anic exegetical works, Prophetic sayings, andfaḍā’il literature.The first chapter is prefaced with a detailed discussion of the first term’setymological origin and semantic usage. Rooting her analysis in the Qur’an,she points out that its polyvalent nature cannot be reduced only to a combative ...