(to the unbelievers) by the Holy Prophet to Islām and his Prophethood, and that they may not take for gods others besides Allāh”; that of 56 :143: “ The excellence of him at whose hands another man accepts Islām”; that of 56:145: “The excellence of him who accepts Islām from among the followers of the Book”; and that of 56:178:“How should Islām be presented to a child”.
These headings show that up to the time of Bukhārī, the word Jihād was used in the wider sense in which it is used in the Holy Qur’ān, invitation to Islām being looked upon as Jihād. Other books of Ḥadīth contain similar references. Thus Abū Dāwūd (AD. 15: 4) quotes under the heading “The continuity of jihād”a ḥadīth to the effect that “a party of my community will not cease fighting for truth and it will be triumphant over its opponents”, which words are thus explained in the ‘Aun al-Ma‘būd, a commentary of Abū Dāwūd, on the authority of Nawavī: “ this party consists of different classes of the faithful, of them being the brave fighters, and the faqīhs (jurists), and the muḥaddithūn (collectors of Ḥadīth), and the zāhids (those who abstain from worldly pleasures and devote themselves to the service of God), and those who command the doing of good and prohibit evil, and a variety of other people who do other good deeds”. This shows that jihād in Ḥadīth includes the service of Islām in any form.
It is only among the jurists that the word jihād lost its original wider significance and began to be used in the narrower sense of qitāl (fighting). The reason is not far to seek. The books of jurisprudence (fiqh) codified the Muslim law, and in the classification of the various subjects with which the law dealt, qitāl (fighting) found a necessary place, but invitation to Islām, though a primary meaning of the word jihād, being a matter of free individual choice, did not form part of the law. The jurists who had to deal with qitāl, therefore, used the word jihād as synonymous with qitāl, and, by and by, the wider significance of jihād was lost sight of though the commentators of the Holy Qur’ān accepted this significance when dealing with verses such as 25:52. But that was not the only misuse of the word. Together with this narrowing of the significance of jihād, the further idea was developed that the Muslims were to carry on a war against