How Just Is Islams Just-War Tradition?
By EVAN R. GOLDSTEIN Scholars debate the meaning of jihad Last year, John Kelsay went to Oman to talk about war. The first night there, speaking at the Grand Mosque in Muscat, he faced a large audience of students studying religion. Discussing the attacks of September 11, 2001, Kelsay argued that the perpetrators had violated the noble tradition of jihad, which is based on legal judgments about the ethics of armed struggle that stretch back to Islam’s formative years.
