Intended Meaning
Fighting in the path of God is not understood here as an end in itself, but as a means of serving freedom, justice, and equality. It is legitimate fighting only if it is directed toward protecting these values and realizing them.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: legislative
- Argument movement: legitimate fighting is a means of protecting freedom, justice, and equality.
- Key terms: legitimate fighting, freedom, justice, equality.
- Degree of centrality: primary.
The atom confines the legitimacy of fighting to a clear moral end, so that fighting is not an end in itself. In this way, it links force to the defense of public values, not to the establishment of violence as an independent goal.
Links for Reading
- Muhammad Shahrur’s Eradication of the Sources of Terrorism
- Jihad, Fighting, and the Critique of Violence
- freedom
- Legitimate fighting is defensive and constrained by the aim of freedom
Basis
- Supporting text: «Fighting in the path of God is only for the service of freedom, justice, and equality».
Degree of Documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom relies on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of the reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted verbatim.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is definitional; it fixes a meaning or conceptual distinction that Shahrur relies on in constructing the idea.
Related to
Editorial Note
The atom distinguishes between jihad as protection and violence as coercion.