The word Jihad, which is derived from the Arabic root meaning "to strive" or "to make an effort," connotes a wide range of meanings, from an inward spiritual struggle to attain perfect faith to an outward material struggle to promote justice and the Islamic social system to a compulsory duty to enlarge Islam's domain - by force if necessary. Through the centuries Islamic society has alternately emphasized one, then another, of the variant meanings.

  Early on, Jihad for territorial expansion, was a central tenet of Islam. Muslims came to rule much of the Arabian Peninsula by the time of Mohammed's death in 632. a century later Muslims had conquered a region from Afghanistan to Spain. Subsequently, jihad spurred Muslim conquests as far afield as India, Sudan, Anatolia, and the Balkans.

  In the years following the initial spread of Islam and establishment of the Caliphate, Sufi mystics popularized a tradition advising Muslims to withdraw from worldly concerns and concentrate on achieving spiritual depth. In Sufi thought inner jihad is held to be greater than the outer jihad. In this sense jihad reflects the Qur'anic injunction to the Muslim community to "command the right and forbid the wrong" (3:104, 110). The close connection of jihad with the struggle for justice is reinforced in the hadith, the sayings and actions attributed to Muhammad. One reminds Muslims to struggle against injustice first by actions, and if that is not possible, by words, and if that is not possible, at least by intentions.

  During the period of Qur'anic revelation while Muhammad was in Mecca (610-622), jihad meant essentially a nonviolent struggle to spread Islam. Following his move from Mecca to Medina in 622, and the establishment of an Islamic state, fighting in self-defense was sanctioned by the Qur'an (22:39). The Qur'an began referring increasingly to qital (fighting or warfare) as one form of jihad. Two of the last verses on this topic (9:5, 29) suggest a war of conquest or conversion against all unbelievers.

  In medieval legal sources jihad was understood to mean a divinely sanctioned struggle to establish Muslim hegemony over non-Muslims as a prelude to the propagation of the Islamic faith. The world, as conceived by Islamic legal scholars, was divided into two spheres: Dar al-Islam (land of Islam), where Islamic law applied, and Dar al-Harb (land of war), where the absence of Islamic law fostered anarchy and immorality. It was the duty of Muslims to reduce the Dar al-Harb, through war if necessary, until it had been incorporated into Dar al-Islam. Jurists differed on the possibility and duration of peace between the two spheres. The majority held that jihad could be suspended if the Muslim commander deemed it in the interest of the Islamic state, but usually not for more than ten years. This continued legitimacy of this finding can be seen, for example, in modern day offers of peace made to Israel by various terrorist groups. Qur'anic verses that suggest peaceful accommodation or coexistence with unbelievers (especially 2:193, 8:61) were abrogated by later, more belligerent ones.

  Medieval thought included elaborate rules on the right conduct of jihad. No war was a jihad unless authorized and led by the leader of the Islamic state. Enemies were to be given fair warning. Jews and Christians who submitted to Islamic rule, but who chose not to accept Islam, were offered protected (dhimmi) status, allowing them to retain communal autonomy within the Islamic state in return for tax payments. Noncombatants were not to be killed, nor was enemy property to be destroyed unnecessarily.

  In addition to the expansionist jihad, medieval scholars also dealt with internal conflicts against rebels within Islam. In this form of jihad, stricter rules of engagement and greater protection for the lives and property of the enemy applied than in the case of non-Muslims. The aim of this type of jihad was to rehabilitate the rebels as quickly as possible into the Muslim body politic.

  Three are three major modern interpretations of jihad. First, the apologetic arose in the late nineteenth century in response to Western criticism that jihad meant "holy war" and that Islam was spread through force. Muslim apologists argued that the Qur'an and Prophetic traditions allow war only for self-defense against persecution and aggression. Some Muslim writers, particularly those in British India, restricted even further the legitimate scope of jihad by arguing that so long as no direct threat to Islamic worship was posed by European imperialists Muslims should not challenge colonial rule. According to this view, the medieval definition of jihad as expansionist war was misguided.

  The second, modernist, approach also diminishes the military aspects of jihad and the ethical dimensions of Islamic faith. Like the apologists, modernists dismiss jihad-as-expansionist-war as a distortion of Qur'anic ethics. The division of the world into Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb is found nowhere in the Qur'an or Hadith. A war is jihad, therefore, only if it is fought in defense of Muslim lives, property, and honor. Modernists are motivated less by Western criticisms of jihad than by the desire to interpret this concept in a way compatible with modern international norms. Jihad in the modernist view is the Islamic equivalent of the Western idea of just war, a war fought to repel aggression with limited goals and by restricted means.

  The third approach, the revivalist, arose in response to the apologist and modernist writings. Revivalists claim, that by restricting jihad to self-defense, the dynamic qualities of jihad have been debased. They assert that, during the Prophets final years, jihad clearly referred to the struggle to establish a worldwide Islamic order. The goal of jihad today ought not to be to coerce people to accept Islam, because the Qur'an clearly encourages freedom of worship (especially 2:256); rather, it ought to be to overthrow un-Islamic regimes that corrupt their societies and divert people from service to God.

  For revivalists, non-Islamic regimes include those ruling in most Muslim countries. The immediate goal of the revivalist jihad is to replace hypocritical leaders with true Muslims. Only when the goal of reestablishing an authentically Islamic base can external jihad resume. Thus today is synonymous with the pronouncements of Islamist (so-called fundamentalist,or radical)individuals and groups such as Osama bin Laden and Hizbollah.

  For them, jihad is not intended to spread the Islamic faith, that is a secondary, but eventual goal. Jihad is but a means to achieve Muslim dominion over the entire globe. Today, jihad is the world's foremost source of terrorism, inspiring a worldwide campaign of violence by self-proclaimed jihadist groups