The Fatwa of Competent Jihad - A Study of Its Intellectual Contents and Political Dimensions

Abstract

The fatwa of Jihad al-Kafa'i issued by the supreme religious authority, Sayyid Ali al-Sistani, during the Friday prayer delivered by Sheikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai in the Husseini al-Sharif courtyard on 13/6/2014, did not only have a military and security dimension, but it had deep intellectual implications and broad political dimensions that contributed to repelling the attack of terrorist gangs, which intended to overthrow the Baghdad government, which was able to control the city of Mosul, the center of Nineveh province in northern Iraq, and the fatwa is one of the anecdotes of jurisprudence. For a century, despite the issuance of many defensive jihadi fatwas such as Sayyid Yazdi's fatwas against the British, Mujaddid Shirazi's fatwas rejecting the referendum, Imam al-Hakim against communist ideas, and Sayyid al-Khoei supporting the popular uprising, we have not found a fatwa that is clearer and more comprehensive in form and content.

The blessed fatwa of the wise authority was a message of peace directed against a prostitute group and worked to resettle the displaced in their cities from which they were displaced and returned places of worship to all religions and components without distinction between religion, race or sect, and this is what all official and non-official bodies were unable to do.