Hi!
Since I remember (I'm 25yo), some muslims in the other part of the world (I'm from southamerica and I have never ever met a muslim in my entire live) are fighting with bombs and hate speech against occident.
I think some history teacher in high school told me that Jihad ("Holy War") didn't mean a physical war, with weapons and victims, in Quran, but after the cristhians killed a lot of people on crusades, some muslims started some kind of vendetta against occident and Jihad became what we know today.
I'm very sad because of the misconception that I have about muslims, and I'm sure that the whole occident world has an altered concept of what is Islam about.
Like many countries in the occident world, politicians find a great source of power in people's hate and fear, and I think that this is what is happening in muslim culture: since middle age, dictators, kings, and religious leaders keep building a murder rage against "the christian world".
Anyway, my questions are:
Is it true what my teacher told me, that Jihad in the modern sense of the word, started as a reaction to cristhian crusades?
Are the political and religious leaders in the muslim community taking advantage of the events that happened in middle age, or the occident media is purposefully manipulating our vision of Islam (as many conspiranoic states)?
thank you
PS: I found this post asking a similar question but reversed (stating that crusades started as a reaction to abuse agains cristhians in muslims dominated countries): https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2lz2ix/i_saw_this_article_about_the_crusades_posted_on/ But the comments on there don't answer my questions.
No. Jihad has always meant a struggle and included physical struggle and war when needed. Now the idea of jihad=holy war in the Western perception of Islam may well have its roots in the Crusades. However, amongst Muslims Jihad did not mean "holy war" before or after the Crusades.
Jihad is mentioned in the Quran which was written in the early 7th century AD/CE by Muhammad, nearly 500 years before Pope Urban II called the Crusades in 1095.
The word "jihad" means "to struggle/resist", but the definition is definitely vague as muslim scholars and historians have argued over it's meaning in the past.
In context with the Islamic Classical Law, it refers to the struggle a muslim should have against those who do not believe in Allah and do not acknowledge submission to muslims.
I think i've rambled a bit here, ill get back to the question.
No, the muslim Jihad's occurred centuries before the Catholic Crusades and where targeted at spreading the word of Allah through whatever means necessary. Eventually the Islamic Caliphates (Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid) using Jihad as their cause for war would destroy the Sassanids and cripple Byzantium unifying*** North Africa, the Middle East and most of Iberia under Allah.
TL:DR Muslim Jihad existed long before the Crusades and was definitely NOT started as a retaliation to the Catholic Crusades.
no in fact probably the opposite is true: Christianity borrowed some of the 1100's holy war stuff from Muslims especially the warrior monk idea exemplified by templars, knights of the hospital, of saint james, etc. via the conquests of Spain.
spiritual jihad certainly is a thing but the answer your teacher gave was too simplistic and seems more like an attempt to counter a narrative than give a good history.
also yes, people are taking advantage of the modern negative view of crusading for ideological purposes. The real islamic reaction is towards imperialism but the roots get mapped back deeper into an earlier period of Christian advance into muslim territory (hence also the rising importance of Saladin in the east).