A Manual of Hadith: Chapter XIX: Jihād

This is a religious-exegetical work in the Islamic scholarly tradition, presenting a commentary on the concept of jihad through selected Quranic verses and hadith (prophetic traditions), likely from an Ahmadiyya Muslim perspective given its explicit endorsement of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian as the Mujaddid of the fourteenth Islamic century. Its central argument is that jihad is primarily a missionary and spiritual duty — described as the "very great jihad" — rather than a military one, and that physical fighting was only ever sanctioned as a strictly defensive measure against those actively seeking to destroy Islam, never as a means of coercing conversion. The text marshals Quranic injunctions (including "no compulsion in religion") and examples such as the Prophet's diplomatic letters to foreign rulers to argue that invitation, not conquest, defines the Islamic ideal. A notably distinctive claim is the author's reinterpretation of the hadith prophecy about the "son of Mary" appearing among Muslims: drawing an analogy with John the Baptist as the "Elijah" of the New Testament, the text argues this refers not to a literal return of Jesus but to a Muslim figure arising "in the spirit and power" of the Messiah — a reading used to legitimate the Ahmadiyya claim about Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. The work is essentially a theological apologia aimed at non-Muslim audiences and intra-Muslim critics, arguing that Islam is inherently peaceful in its methods of propagation while also asserting Islam's ultimate global ascendancy through persuasion.

A Manual of Hadith: Chapter XIX: Jihād

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