Ill have the same difficulties an American would have explaining to an Afghani why his kid was slaughtered by 30mm from an Apache while he carried a shovel to dig out places to plant trees.
Rhyme or Reason wont matter to him either.. and he will take up "jihad" to kill every other American.
You are only justifying the cycle and involving a blame game without looking for solutions.
This is a predictable response.
I can also go back claiming if OBL didn't ram those planes into towers none of this would be happening. Then you too will go a little back in history.
The question here is of definition of Jihad literally and how it is implemented on the ground thus influencing the perception of a common man of jihad.
As far as solution goes, a little tolerance peppered with education will help but then again when even educated people revert to their religious books and interpret Jihad it will again descend into madness.
So frankly I don't see any solution but rather am looking at your intellegensia to offer one. This is not sarcasm but I am really curious what intelligent opinion makers such as yourself are doing on ground to correct this perception rather than offering definitions found in books and blaming others for not trying to find out more.
P.S- As for solution how about you take the fourth aspect of jihad out of religious context and let it be a state matter.
If you are looking for the Islamic point of view of Jihad, then the incident that your refer to is not Jihad in Islam. It is an act that is strongly condemned. The terrorists use the slogan of Jihad just to fool people and are causing damage to Islam.
Take you own example, have and such bombing made you feel that Muslims are great people and very brave and are willing to die in name of Allah or have such an even enraged you against such act of curelity and barbarism? I bet its the second thought that we all share, we all strongly condemn it. so in this case, have this done any good to Islam? NO!!
Bro, this is not Jihad, there are few people that are just using the name of religion to harm it and to gain there devilish goals accomplished.
No offense, but giving an example from Hinduism might help. What about the cast system in Hinduism? the ones from elite casts say that this is asp er religion and use the name of Hinduism to achieve benefits but overall no one likes this. Evey one condemns it but still there are few that practice it in name of religion. The TTP and other such terrorists organizations do the same in name of religion!!
Sir,
We are talking about a cat. You are focussing on how cute it is and I am saying how vicious it is and how quickly it can scratch your face. Now the fact that it is cute can not hide the other two facets of its personality. Thats all I am saying.
If I go back to Oscar's post there was a line mentioning that Jihad can only be called by ruler of the state. This is an interesting statement. The reason being there are fiefdoms and tribes and clans run by warlord in tribal areas around pakistan (No offence and please correct me if I am wrong) and each warlord is a ruler of the said 'state'. Thus enabling him to call for jihad and hence creating multiple versions and resultant confusion. Not an ideal scenario (even you would agree) conducive to a proper understanding of the concept.
Also, leave alone explaining the concept of jihad to the victims, even people who dish out their own versions of justice won't listen to you because for them what they are doing is also jihad. They will sadly browbeat you back.
The ground reality is, this word has become a justification to kill; this is all it has come down to. Today I was reading about a bomb blast in hyderabad. 19 killed as per latest information and more than 120 injured. Somebody just implemented his version of jihad on a crowded maret.
For the bolded part I actually believe you but you Sir, are in a minority and people with guns have a louder voice.
Also for the cast part there is a difference between discrimination and indiscriminate killing. And that is the essential difference between our cast system and your Jihad. There is no comparison. No offence again.
