The Christian Science Monitor reported on a discussion held at the annual convention of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) held last July. The report indicates that during a discussion on Jihad and terrorism, US. Muslim Brotherhood leader Jamal Badawi explained his view of Jihad which he asserted is misunderstood:
..Dr. Jamal Badawi, a prominent author and scholar from Canada, said “holy war” is not in the Koran, but is an English phrase – and an oxymoron. Jihad refers to various means of striving and relates to combat only for “just causes, such as to repel aggression or resist severe oppression, and only if peaceful means to achieve peace fail.” Such war is strictly regulated, including not hurting noncombatants and not destroying infrastructure or the environment. The Koran condemns excesses, even in worship, he added.
Dr. Badawi is a leader in many of the most important organizations of the global Muslim Brotherhood including the Islamic Society of North America, the Council on American Islamic Relations (Canada), the Fiqh Council of North America, the Muslim American Society, and the European Council for Fatwa and Research. As previous posts have noted, recently released documents indicate that he was (and probably still is), a member of the leadership structure of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. Disassociating Islam with terrorism appears to be one of the highest priority items on the agenda of the global Muslim Brotherhood. However, the Brotherhood has provided high levels of support to Hamas as well as to individuals and organizations linked to terrorism in other areas such as Bosnia and Kashmir and Badawi himself is one of the foremost exponents of so-called defensive jihad. In August 2005, Mideast news sources reported that “combatants” from the Islamic Group, essentially the Muslim Brotherhood in Lebanon, were fighting alongside Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon and that the group’s support of Hezbollah dated back to the 1980’s.