Through Force or Faith? — Page 110
?— A Reply to Pope Benedict XVI 110 It is clearly stated in the Torah: When the Lord, your God, has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them…then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy (Deuteronomy, 7:1–3). It must be remembered that, according to the Christian faith, this exhortation to be merciless is from God. It is important to point out these issues particularly because the adversaries of Islam, despite these facts and incidents, insist in their writings that Islam is the religion of the sword and Christianity is the religion of peace. Although their allegations are answered repeatedly, they continue to persist in making these accusations. After this brief introduction, we now return to our main subject. Literal Meaning of Jihad The word jihad is derived from juhd which means ‘to utilize one’s entire power and capacity to do something’ or ‘to use the tongue to its fullest’ or ‘to use any faculty one has to extreme limits’ (Lane). In the current times, the word jihad is taken to mean only and entirely war and bloodshed, whereas it is not so. Jihad as mean- ing only ‘bloodshed’ is not found in any authentic dictionary of Arabic language. Similarly, this word is not used anywhere in the Holy Quran to mean only war. However, this word is used for reli- gious wars as its implied meaning. At the end of detailed discus- sion of this word, Lane translates J ā hada fī sabīl All ā h (performed