The Islamic term “jihad” has been taken out of its context to serve purposes that are clearly against Islam, Egypt’s top Islamic cleric, Shawqi Allam said on Sunday.
“Jihad is an honorable term with a long history in Islam, but it had been stolen out of its genuine context to another field that is totally against Islam,” he told Egypt’s state news agency MENA on the sidelines of a conference of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Kuwait.
According to Allam, Jihad was meant as a “way to defend nations and religion in case either of them is assaulted, and it is not a pretext for massacring and displacing people, as it is currenly the case.”
He added that groups carrying out killings and evictions under the banner of jihad “are criminals who, in fact, are committing crimes against humanity.”
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
