Rebranding Violence, Repression, and Death: the My Jihad Movement
by Darrell W. Pack


Not all of you will remember when Seven-Up soft drink advertised itself a the "Uncola" with a cool bald guy that had a cool Jamacan-style accent. It was a great branding move. Many of us thought about that soft drink in a new light. Recently, a group of Muslims who are concerned with the image of their religion have decided to try one of history's most challenging re-branding efforts. In this case I don't think that a cool accept will be enough because they are trying to re-brand Jihad.

The MyJihad effort (www.myjihad.org) is an effort to wrest from the hands of extremist Ideological Muslims the term "jihad". They also wish to preemptively strike--rhetorically, of course--at the so-called Western extremists who decry Jihad as an evil. In the writings of so-called or extremists, Western or Muslim, Jihad is a call to violence and armed struggle against Allah's enemies. It speaks of terror and oppression. But in the context of MyJihad the term becomes the kinder and gentler face of jihad. He is part of the MyJihad website description of the word and concept of Jihad.

Jihad is a central tenet of the Islamic creed which means “struggling in the way of God“. The way of God, being goodness, justice, passion, compassion, etc (not forcible conversion as wrongly claimed by some).

As Muslims, we are taught to put forth a concerted and noble effort against injustice, hate, misunderstanding, war, violence, poverty, hunger, abuse or whatever challenge big or small we face in daily life, with the purpose of getting to  a better place.

Jihad is a personal commitment to service, patience, determination, and taking the higher road, as such, it tasks us with confronting our own weaknesses, vices, and shortcomings; it is about taking personal responsibility.

Can I just say, "awesome!" I so hope that this works. It would be great for planet earth if every Muslim embraced this excellent vision of jihad. It would make Muslims great citizens and neighbors and friends. But of course there is a real challenge here. Namely, those mean Muslims who kill and blow stuff up for Allah and his prophet claim to know the true meaning of Jihad and would see this as a watering down of a holy tenet of their faith. In fact, they are so sure of this that some of them would blow up our intrepid re-branders and their chic Modbook Pro Tablets.

For the next number of posts I will present the basis in the Quran and the life and Traditions of Muhammad the prophet of Islam (hadith) of the violent jihadist. A nice, shiny and pleasant re-branded Jihad carries with it an inherent danger: it can lessen our vigilance in opposing Jihad. In that way it can turn into something like re-branded Nazism. Nicely dressed, well-spoken, clean-cut little Aryan boys wearing little swastikas still represent a truly dangerous movement even if they are only picking up garbage in a public park to serve their community. Nice MyJihad can become just a cover for the growth of Mean TheirJihad.