The original meaning of gihād and fī sabīli llāh
(Günter Lüling,
A Challenge to Islam for Reformation
, Delhi 2003,
p. 354f. in connection with p. 242)
But there is one final aspect to consider
before turning to the personal activities of the Prophet in
In our reconstruction of the hymnodic fragment Sura 25,48-52 (see above p. 242
with commentary) we
have already shown that the reconstructed verse 25,52 has, according to its
Christian context verses 48-52, clearly the biblical meaning as expressed in 1
Tim 6,12 and 2 Tim 4,7 "fight the good fight of faith" that is, the
term gihād
means not "war" or even "holy war" but intends the peaceful
striving to win oneself as well as somebody else over to the good faith. This
is most probably the only meaning of gihād to be met with in the Christian hymns contained in the
Koran (see
also Sura 38.17; 20.130; 50.39; 73.10 which phrases
are obviously hymnodic); and this peaceful meaning of gihād is
obviously also the only appropriate one if one regards its etymology, because
the root g-h-d is immediately akin to
the root g-w-d which means "to
be good" (English "good" as well as German "gut" are quite
certainly a bequest of the Semitic, legally inferior "unifiers" in neolithic and bronze age Europe).
A similar development from a religiously
peaceful meaning to a martial one has taken place with the phrase fī sabīli llāh: The Arabic word sabīl means "path" as well as "(public) well". At first
glance, one might think that these two meanings are quite unrelated. But the
etymology shows that this is not the case: the root s-b-l is to be analysed as s+b-l where s is the augment to make the following biconsonantal
root causative and b-l or b-w-l or b-y-l is the verbal root meaning "to piss" which is made
causative "to make (someone or something) piss". A sabīl is therefore only that kind of well where a donkey or camel or
even a person is employed to draw the bucket with a rope from the depth of the
well to the surface, where a waiter or a technical device will make the bucket
spill its content into an irrigation-channel, pipe or something else; and by
going to and fro the animal creates a path. This is the sort of well and the
sort of path which is called sabīl.[38]
To go or to work fī sabīli llāh means therefore originally and literally "to
work in the irrigation plant of God". There can hardly be a greater
contrast to "going on the warpath of God". And it is possibly not by
chance that the above-mentioned fragment of a pre-Islamic hymn Sura 25,48-52, where we have found the clearly biblical
meaning of gihād
as "the great fight of faith", begins:
Sura 25,48c-49 (reconstructed) |
|
48c "and He (God) sent him (Jesus) down from heaven as immaculate
water" |
و
أنزله من ١لسماء
ماء طهورا |
49a "that He may vivify by him dead soil" |
ليحى
به بلدة
ميّتا |
49b "and make him a fresh drink to His creature," |
و
يسقيه ما
خلقه |
49c "many gentle and friendly people" |
أنعاما
و أناسيّا
كثيرا |
(see p. 242). The phrase fī sabīli llāh
belongs originally into this context.
[38] See for the different kinds of wells in Arabia Erich Bräunlich, Der Brunnen im alten Arabien, in: Jahrbuch der Phil. Fak. Leipzig 1 (1921), 35-37 and in: Islamica 1 (1925), 41-76, 288-343 and 454-528.