The Jihad Struggle: #MyJihad Campaign

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  1. Jaime J. Sanz Mali says:

    Indeed it has to seem a fascinating matter that a North-American Muslim community is vindicating its “muslimness” in a publicly displayed campaign at what the West would understand as the heart of Modernity (The United States of America). Although this of course can lead to a heated debate on the relation secular/religious public space on North-American soil, it seems in my point of view more interesting to modestly seek to explain what it could mean that what seems like a young, vibrant Muslim community well connected with modern day technologies as would any young generation in the western world (examples given are twitter or facebook, youtube, etc.) engages in a campaign to clean the word “Jihad” (as a way of cleaning up Islam in general terms) from the systematic abuse it has received from western culture leading to a much more profound debate: if a person can simultaneously be modern and Muslim.

    The article presented here by Martijn points very interestingly to the way the #MyJihad campaign seeks to redefine the concept of Jihad (struggle) normally interpreted as “holy war” and legitimizing terrorist acts around the world as if the violence of the few represented the peaceful religiosity of the greater Muslim majority. The campaign thus gives the term a twist, making it something personal and not even necessarily religious (each individuals’ struggle in everyday life). With this not only is there an attempt to “de-taboo” the word Jihad so that it has a personal meaning for the user but also to eliminate the collective denotation that the Western world (especially the United States) has placed on the word and its relation to Islamist terrorism.

    It has greatly been speculated, inclusive in the academic world, as to whether it is possible to be Muslim and modern at the same time emphasizing a very violent perception from its detractors: that Islam will always attempt to fight modernism because of its “inherent” traditional nature. It is, in fact, western ethnocentric blindness that seeks to understand modernity as encompassing all values and structures born-and-raised in the western hemisphere so as to be able to classify Islamic discourse, values and structures as anti-modern and, thus, reaffirm this western binary relationship. The idea that is behind Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations.

    With this said the #MyJihad campaign vindicates something more important than just a readjustment of the term “Jihad” but what seems like the correct possibility that Islam and Modernity are indeed compatible, as the campaign proves by itself (the incorporation of all kinds of media technology to spread its message); even the possibility that the concept of modernity might need to redefine itself to allow for new ideas and values (or religious creeds for that matter) that globalization entails. And globalization is inherent in Modernity.

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