TRUE JIHAD

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TRUE JIHAD
by Elizabeth Debold
In a recent post on the EnlightenNext Editors' Blog, we featured a previously unpublished article written by senior editor Elizabeth Debold entitled, “True Jihad.” In it she speaks about the broader spiritual significance of this Islamic term, which has in recent years become unfortunately associated almost exclusively with religiously inspired acts of terrorism:

The truer, greater meaning of jihad refers to the battle for the utter liberation of the spirit from the tyrannical nafs—the unconscious motivation in the human psyche that insists on separation and division. . . . The point that the religious traditions make—and illustrate through the wild images of Tibetan demons, Satanic spirits, and the personification of the Seven Deadly Sins—is that there is something fundamental within each of us that must be named, faced, and conquered in order to free the human spirit. The sins of our forefathers weren't simply an inventory of human darkness; they pointed to what needed to be transcended, moved beyond, in order to realize the glory of God ringing through the beauty and goodness of creation.

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