Precept of Islam
The greater struggle.
Returning from battle, the tradition reports, the Prophet named the harder war: the one against the self. Jihad's first meaning is interior.
What it asksStruggle — first against your own appetites, then for justice, and only then, under conditions, by arms
Who it bindsEvery Muslim in the first sense; the armed sense is hedged with rules on who may declare it and against whom
Where it bitesThe greater/lesser jihad hadith is graded weak by some scholars — but the interior reading long predates the debate
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held
Jihad means struggle, and its interior sense — against ego, appetite, and cowardice — is called the greater jihad in a widely cited report that some hadith scholars grade as weak. That grading is often used polemically in both directions, but the interior reading does not depend on the report: it is developed at length in classical ethics and Sufi literature independently. The martial sense is real and heavily conditioned in law: who may declare it, whom it may target (never noncombatants), and when it must stop.
The same ground, other faiths
claims that share this one's ideas
You hand it all over, and it is not given back.
The Hutterites
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S
Shiva — destroyer and regenerator.
Hinduism · figure
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Ordination.
Buddhism · rite
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The soul is liberated by its own effort.
Jainism · core tenet
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The binding of Isaac.
Judaism · story
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Lent — the forty days.
Christianity · rite
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