Jihad has become a frequently misquoted expression. It is often misunderstood also. The faithful see jihad as an effort to practice religion in the face of opposition, not as a justification for killing people—even the non-believers.

Those who misuse the term jehad give a misleading and false assurance that the ‘martyrs’ in the name of jehad—that is how they describe terrorists—will be welcomed in heaven. A person who goes against the basic tenet of his religion that forbids the killing of innocent is not entitled to such ‘rewards’.
 
One of the ways in which terror masked as ‘holy war’ is justified is by propagating the theory of substitute retaliation, that is to say justifying murder of those who are not directly responsible for the perceived acts of oppression—the innocent citizenry. But the Quran makes no mention of this kind of proxy attack or attacks on ‘substitutes’ 
       
The blood-thirsty instigators are doing a great harm to Islam, forgetting that Islam has been the fastest growing religion in the world. Oddly, a large number of conversions to Islam take place in the United States, the land which is so intensely hated by the protagonists of jihad and terror.

These converts are attracted to Islam because they perceive it as a religion of peace, equality and universal brotherhood. There are many verses and chapters in the Quran which support the perception.  

If that is so, why the notion persists that Islam is a ‘violent’ religion?

At the time of the birth of Islam in Arabia it was a land where inter-tribal violence and the idea of revenge were quite common. Perhaps with so much of aggression and violence all around survival required a bit of the same.  It was the time when retaliation or revenge was a fact of life. If a person was killed then his entire tribe would retaliate against the entire tribe of the aggressor.

QURAN ON BATTLE

The Quran disapproved of this kind of revenge. It says that no matter what wrong one perceives as having been subjected to it was not right to lash out against an entire tribe.  

Quran repeatedly stresses the virtue of forgiveness and stresses restraint, asking the believers not to become ‘oppressors’. There is a verse in the Quran which says that if one saves a life it is as the lives of the entire community has been saved.

Of course, the Quran does mention ‘battle’—a defensive battle against the attacker, the army of the ‘enemy’. But at the same time the defender or the defenders are forbidden from attacking innocent bystanders, non-combatants, women, children and even trees and crops! Nothing except the person or the ‘thing’ that launches attack is to be fought against.
It is not that the Quran is silent on ‘punishment’. But punishment is expected to be ‘proportionate’ to the wrong done to a person.
An even better course, suggests the Quran, is to show patience in the face of provocation because God is always with those who restrain themselves.

GOOD, EVIL NOT EQUAL

The Quran underlines the fact that goodness and evil are not equal.

Says a verse in the Quran, ‘A person who has been repulsed by another person becomes a better person if he repels evil with good. It will eventually see the person repelled becoming a friend of the person who showed hatred towards him’.
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Those who justify violence against non-believers by pointing to the clash of ‘civilisations’ in the early days of Islam do so by giving an out of context example. The fact is that the Muslims in Arabia had discovered that some other communities in their neighbourhood, with whom they had negotiated a peace ‘treaty’, had reneged and in violation of this ‘treaty’ aided those who attacked Muslims.          

Jihadis and terrorists give a deliberate twist to the preaching in the Holy book to instil fear among the believers. What they really want is a world that is moulded in their peculiar, if not pervert, beliefs.

Here again, they, the jihadis and terrorists, make a mistake because Allah wanted his followers to accept the world as it is with all its inequities and infirmities and if changes are to be brought about these have to be through peaceful, cooperative and civilised means; certainly not with the help of guns, bombs and suicides.

In fact, suicide is forbidden in Islam.