Jihad in Islamic Law The meaning of Jihad in the classical manuals of Islamic jurisprudence needs to be better represented or emphasised in this article Bernard Lewis is cited and his opinion is that in most of the recorded history of Islam the word jihad was used in a primarily military sense I would suggest it would be better and more authentic to quote straight from Islamic law In Umdat al Salik Reliance of the Traveller for example the connotation of warfare with Jihad is made clearer Jihad means to war against non Muslims and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada signifying warfare to establish the religion And it is the lesser jihad As for the greater jihad it is spiritual warfare against the lower self nafs which is why the Prophet Allah bless him and give him peace said as he was returning from jihad We have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad The scriptural basis for jihad prior to scholarly consensus def b7 is such Koranic verses as 1 Fighting is prescribed for you Koran 2 216 2 Slay them wherever you find them Koran 4 89 3 Fight the idolators utterly Koran 9 36 and such hadiths as the one related by Bukhari and Muslim that the Prophet Allah bless him and give him peace said I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah and perform the prayer and pay zakat If they say it they have saved their blood and possessions from me except for the rights of Islam over them And their final reckoning is with Allah and the hadith reported by Muslim To go forth in the morning or evening to fight in the path of Allah is better than the whole world and everything in it Details concerning jihad are found in the accounts of the military expeditions of the Prophet Allah bless him and give him peace including his own martial forays and those on which he dispatched others The former consist of the ones he personally attended some twenty seven others say twenty nine of them He fought in eight of them and killed only one person with his noble hand Ubayy ibn Khalaf at the battle of Uhud On the latter expeditions he sent others to fight himself remaining at Medina and these were forty seven in number The caliph o25 makes war upon Jews Christians and Zoroastrians N provided he has first invited them to enter Islam in faith and practice and if they will not then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non Muslim poll tax jizya def o11 4 which is the significance of their paying it not the money itself while remaining in their ancestral religions O and the war continues until they become Muslim or else pay the non Muslim poll tax O in accordance with the word of Allah Most High Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day and who forbid not what Allah and His messenger have forbidden who do not practice the religion of truth being of those who have been given the Book until they pay the poll tax out of hand and are humbled Koran 9 29 Reliance of the Traveller A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law p 599 As to whether this book is a reliable source I will point to that in Umdat al Salik we find various endorsments and probably the most important is from Al Azhar University which is the chief centre of Arabic literature and Sunni Islamic learning in the world and Al Azhar certified in 1991 that Umdat al Salik conformes to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni Community Reliance of the Traveller A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law p xx 20