Meaning of the word al ‘Jihad’- a semantically approach

Abstract

The term Jihad literally means striving and utmost effort. Meanwhile, as far as the multicultural Sri Lankan context is considered, the term Jihad is referred to contradictory meanings like terrorism and extremism. Whereas, Islam is yet misinterpreted among them. Accordingly, such a study intends to clarify the literally meanings of Jihad. Therefore this study aims at attaining the objectives focusing on qualitative analysis and the secondary data. The books and researches relevant to Jihad were the major sources of secondary data collection. The term Jihad is misinterpreted to be terrorism, extremism aggression and assault contemporarily. In contradiction, the term itself literally means physical, mental striving, commitment, hard work, efficient activity, sacrifice, continuous struggles and much more positive meanings. The finding of this research is denoted that the term Jihad is identified to be the effort and strive for the cause of Allah to attain what Allah desires and to abstain what Allah has forbidden.