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Religious WarA religious war, literally, is a war fought on the pretext of religion or religious differences. The European Wars of Religion, the Crusades, and the Reconquista are frequently cited examples. Opinions differ as to whether the leaders of such wars are in fact motivated by religion, or whether they are motivated by political power or conquest. The Islamic term jihad (literally "struggle") can refer to religious war ("lesser jihad"), though historically, the concept refers to an inward striving for perfect faith ("greater jihad"). There has come some dispute to the previous comment, whether the "greater" or "lesser" form of jihad refers to physical combat or an inner struggle. The debate comes from a hadith, or narration from the Prophet Muhammad, where he was quoted as saying, after returning from combat, "We have returned from the lesser jihad (jihad al-asghar) to the greater jihad (jihad al-akbar);" however, this report has received much criticism as being an inauthentic saying, i.e. it is a saying of someone after the death of Muhammad and was not the words of Muhammad himself. Some view the greater jihad to be that of "the sword," or physical combat, using multiple references to the importance of fighting (al-qital) in the Quran and authenticated narrations from Muhammad as evidence. Beside all of this, both sides of the debate agree that the physical fight requires an initial overcoming of spiritual dismay, which is itself an inner struggle; thus, intellectually, one could derive that both struggles, the physical and the spiritual, are encompassing one of the other. Likewise, the spiritual success supposedly leads one to yearn to fight for the sake of God, whether in pure defense or preemptive strikes, so the actual fulfillment of such inner struggle is requisite to the purity of the outward struggle.
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