What caught my eye about this chapter was simple, a word. The word jihad seems to not be so foreign these days and I felt a certain familiarity reading the word. However upon reading the paragraph I realize that it is just another word I have heard and rather than have an understanding of it I simply link it to the first thing that came to mind. I am utterly embarrassed to say what I saw a connection with but I will try and explain. There is a show called NCIS and on this show a character named Zevva, of Hebrew descent works with many terrorism cases. While I know nothing about what it is I decided to do some research. The book says that jihad is sometimes called the sixth pillar and can refer to struggle. I while I continued reading I found "the understanding and use of the jihad concept varied widely within the history of Islam and remains a matter of controversy int he twenty-first century" (306).
I wanted to see what the first thing that popped up when I searched the word jihad on google and it was, without fail wikipedia, next was something called Jihad Watch. Jihadwatch.org states that:
"Jihad Watch is dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology play in the modern world and to correcting popular misconceptions about the role of jihad and religion in modern-day conflicts. By shedding as much light as possible on these matters, we hope to alert people of good will to the true nature of the present global conflict."
What concerns me most however is that this website may not be spreading as fast as it should, for example if you switch your search to just images, I would say that easily 99% of the results are images of violence, in same cases grotesque pictures. I suppose I want to understand why this word jihad has not been dissected back to its true meaning? If so, there could be a greater chance that we would honor our neighbors for their beliefs instead of betraying their true character.
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