jihad and the islamic law of war - The Royal Islamic Strategic ...

jihad and the islamic law of war
tradition after the first century or two after the
Prophet.The state created by the Prophet and his successors
was a golden age, and Muslims must duplicate
it to the extent possible. Society must be cleansed of
those elements which are “innovations” from the pure
state of the early Muslim community.
Takfiris: (Sometimes called “jihadists” or “militant
religious fundamentalists”).Those who do not follow
true Islamic teaching (as defined by them) are no
longer actually Muslim and fall outside of the protections
of the law. Most self-identified Muslims and all
non-Muslims are legitimate targets of violence,
because they stand in the way of a very narrowly
defined vision of Islam. Takfir means “to declare
another to be an unbeliever/apostate”.There are now
both Sunni and Shi‘i Takfiris—or rather, some Takfiris
consider themselves to be Sunnis and others consider
themselves to be Shi‘is.
In reality the modernists and the puritanical literalists
(the “fundamentalists”) represent only a small percentage
of the population of the Muslim world, perhaps less than
10% combined. The majority of people—90%—in the
Islamic world fall within a range which should be called
“traditional” and which itself encompasses a certain range
of religiosity, but which is neither a complete affirmation of
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