to Him, patience, asceticism, the remembrance of Allah—Glorified and Exalted is He—and all other kinds of deeds, to an extent unmatched by any other deed.

Those who undertake it, whether an individual or a community, always face one of two excellent outcomes: victory and triumph, or martyrdom and Paradise.

Human beings must inevitably live and die. Through jihad, their lives and deaths are employed in attaining their utmost happiness in this world and the Hereafter, whereas abandoning it leads to the loss or diminution of both forms of happiness. Some people seek arduous deeds in religious and worldly affairs despite their limited benefit, but jihad is more beneficial in both (1) than any other arduous deed. A person may also seek to live at ease until death overtakes him [أ/ق 51], but the martyr’s death is easier than any other death, and it is the best of deaths (2).

If the basis and purpose of prescribed fighting—namely, jihad—are that religion be wholly for Allah and that the Word of Allah be uppermost, then whoever obstructs this must be fought, by consensus of the Muslims. As for those who do not engage in resistance or combat—such as women, children, monks, the very old, the blind, the disabled, and the like—they are not to be killed according to the majority of scholars unless they fight by word or deed. Some scholars, however, hold that all such people may be killed merely on account of disbelief, except women and children, because they are property belonging to the Muslims. The former view (3) is correct. For (4) fighting is directed against those who fight us when we seek to make Allah’s religion manifest, as He said