Peace and conflict
Islamic Studies · GCSE · The School
When fighting is permitted, and its limits
The Quran permits fighting in self-defence and against oppression, and sets a hard boundary in the same breath: "do not transgress; Allah does not love transgressors" (2:190). Classical law drew the limits tightly — non-combatants, women, children, the elderly and clergy are not to be harmed; crops and trees are not to be destroyed; treaties are binding; and 8:61 instructs that if the enemy inclines to peace, incline to it too. A war fought outside those limits is not made lawful by its cause.
The two jihads
JIHAD means struggle, and it carries two senses. The greater is the struggle against one's own selfishness and wrongdoing — the daily one, and the one classical scholars called greater. The lesser is armed struggle, which is hedged by the conditions above and, in classical law, is declared by legitimate authority, not by individuals. Groups that claim the word for attacks on civilians are rejected by mainstream scholarship precisely because they break every limit listed above.
The range of Muslim views
Most Muslims hold that force is justified only defensively and within those limits. Some argue the conditions are so rarely met that the practical position is close to pacifism, pointing to the Quran's repeated preference for pardon (42:40) and to the Prophet's ﷺ amnesty at Makkah. Others emphasise a duty to resist oppression actively. An exam answer that gives only one of these has not described Muslims; it has described one Muslim.
Classical scholars set conditions: a just cause, usually defence or the prevention of oppression; proper authority, not a private group; proportionality; and rules of conduct — non-combatants, the elderly, children, religious figures, crops and trees are all protected in the reports from Abu Bakr's instructions to his armies. Now measure any modern conflict against that list, and notice how much it rules out.