Man has always wanted peace: war has never been his aim. Yet wars have alwaysbeen an undeniable fact of life. Human desire for peace, at times wars do becomeindispensable. However, ideas differ as to when wars could be justified and whenthey are just a matter of sheer aggression. In tune with its claim to universality,...Read More

The term jihad is perhaps the most contentious Arabic word to enter the Englishlanguage in recent decades. In public discourse it has become shorthandfor “holy war” and synonymous with violent Muslim extremism. This scholarlyexamination of jihad and martyrdom by Asma Afsaruddin, a professorof Islamic studies at Indiana University, carefully disentangles their multivalentmeanings within Islamic scholarship...Read More

‘Pharmakon’ is a dualist word which means remedy or poison, or neither remedy nor poison, and it was used by Jacques Derrida in the Pharmacy of Plato (La Pharmacie de Platon – 1972) where he made a structural analysis of Plato’s dialog with Phaedrus. Some think that it is a remedy; it is beneficial, and...Read More

The notion of Jihad in Islamic Law and in the contemporary world has different meanings. Jihad nowadays is regarded by millions of people not just as a military concept but as a religious and constitutional right. For Muslims in Spain jihad represented the most obvious way to defend their land against enemies, although towards the...Read More