For most of us in the West, that word conjures up images of holy war. Suicide bombers. 9/11. Crazed lunatics running around killing the non-believers.
That’s certainly how I thought of that word before I moved to Turkey and started meeting people named Cihat, the Turkish spelling of the word jihad. I met one person named Cihat. Then I met another person named Cihat. Then I met another person named Cihat. And they were all nice, friendly, good people.
So I couldn’t help but wonder, my god, what are these people thinking? Doesn’t anyone around here know what that word means?
In the Muslim world Jihad is a common name for a man. Being named Jihad is like being named Bob or Steve, and when you meet a Bob or a Steve, you don’t go running for the hills, do you?
So soon after starting to meet people named Cihat I began thinking, maybe I’m the one who doesn’t understand what that word means. I decided to do a little research, and here is what I found:
The word jihad has multiple meanings. And yes, “violent war against an external infidel” is one of them. But that is not the primary meaning of the word jihad.
The primary meaning of the word jihad, the main meaning of the word, is “struggle against sin in your own heart.” Never mind the heathens, just purify your own heart.
I did not have to go to some peacenik, Middle East-loving source to find this definition. I just went to Wikipedia. I went to wikipedia.org and I typed in “jihad.” And then to verify what I learned there, I went to a couple other mainstream American websites like Yahoo.com and Ask.com.
Jihad is a word of peace and love. Jihad simply means to live God’s word in your own heart.
I’m not saying that suicide bombers are a tragically misunderstood folk. I’m not saying that at all. What I am saying is that for every crazed lunatic eager to strap a bomb to his chest and go meet his 72 virgins in the sky, there are thousands of gentle, loving souls who say jihad is about purifying your own heart. They say never mind the non-believers, our job is just to live God’s word in our own hearts.
The “scary minority” phenomenon is common to every religion around the world. For every radical Christian who thinks his religion is about grabbing a sword and slaying the heathens in the name of the Lord, there are thousands of Christians who say Christianity is about peace and love. Thousands of Christians who say, “never mind the non-believers, God just wants us to purify our own hearts.”
Learning I misunderstood the bigger meaning of the word jihad reminded me I make bad assumptions about people all the time. I make bad assumptions about all Russians being in the mafia, all Mexicans being lazy, all Asians being mathematically inclined. Just because we know someone’s nationality, or someone’s religion, or in this case someone’s name, we don’t know what that person is about, and yet we make these kinds of assumptions about each other every single day.
When we meet someone else, someone from another religion, or another country, or even another profession or another social class, it is our duty to that other person to remember that our understanding of that person is probably incorrect.
And it is our duty to ourselves to overcome that incorrectness.
After all, if we allow our mistaken assumptions to guide our actions, our actions will be misguided, and even if we do reach our goals, we will probably find out, too late, that we chose the wrong ones.
[This is an excerpt from the chapter “My cousin’s name is Jihad” in A Tight Wide-open Space.]