Jihād: The Origin of Holy War in Islam
Reuven Firestone
Abstract
While there is no evidence to date that the indigenous inhabitants of Arabia knew of holy war prior to Islam, holy war ideas and behaviors appear already among Muslims during the first generation. This book focuses on why and how such a seemingly radical development took place. Basing the hypothesis on evidence from the Qurʾān and early Islamic literary sources, this book locates the origin of Islamic holy war and traces its evolution as a response to the changes affecting the new community of Muslims in its transition from ancient Arabian culture to the religious civilization of Islam.
Keywords: holy war, Islam, Muslims, Qurʾān, Islamic holy war, Arabian culture, Arabia, jihād
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2002 | Print ISBN-13: 9780195154948 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 | DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195154948.001.0001 |
