2. ● In our daily life, in our societies, living with faith means admitting
the sense of effort. Faith is a test, faith is a trial. In our
representation of an ideal of life, respect and coexistence, the
present social fractures, misery, illiteracy, unemployment are all
elements of the new adversity that has been brought to such a
great extent, the modern age.
Faith as a Test
3. ● Our enemies today, in the way of God, are called hunger,
unemployment, exploitation, delinquency and drug addiction, and
they demand intense effort, a continuous struggle, a total jihad
that needs everyone and of all. As Hassan al-Banna said:
"Death in the way of God is difficult, but life in the way of God is
even more difficult.”
Today’s Enemies
4. ● This jihad is a jihad for life in order to give to each being the
rights that are his: the whole message of Islam carries this
requirement along with its necessary realization.
● Thinking about modernity means thinking about all the strategies
and modalities that can change the order of things. Social action
is a priority and must mobilize the majority of our energies.
Modernity
5. ● We are at war. This is the meaning of Abbé Pierre's formulation
when he emphatically affirms "I am at war with misery" or even
Professor Albert Jacquard and Monsignor Jacques Gaillot when
they "go to war" to house the -shelter. The Pope, in his Social
Encyclical Centesimus Annus, calls for a general mobilization
against poverty and imbalances in the distribution of wealth and
affirms that it is the duty of the Christian to act in this sense.
Misery
6. ● The future of interreligious dialogue will no doubt be fully realized
in this type of strategy and concerted and concrete action. But we
can not think of the future in terms of political and economic
reform, without working to reconstruct a social fabric now torn
apart on a global scale.
Global Dialogue
7. Belief & Action
• There is also a close connection between believing and
acting through the insistent repetition of the phrase, "Those
who believe and do good". Thus, to carry faith is to believe
and to act and the action here is of a multiple nature: it will
be as much the honesty that one imposes itself, that the
goodness and the generosity towards its close ones,
commitment in social reforms, or mobilization against
injustice.
8. Belief & Action
• All these efforts in action are part of the jihad in the sense
that they are moving towards a more just and respectful
order of the revealed principles. The verse states:
"Believers are those who believe in God and his
Prophet - and who no longer doubt it - and who fight in
the way of God with their goods and their persons.
Those are the truths. »Koran 49/15
9. Belief & Action
• We can read the wording in the strict sense and assert that
this is the armed struggle which is necessary when there is
an aggression. This reading finds justification in the context
of the revelation of the verse, but it would be reductive to
draw only this teaching from it. In a broader sense the
Quranic message of "fighting in the way of God" means
mobilizing all forces, directing all efforts, giving of one's
goods and person to overcome of all these adversities such
as injustice, poverty, illiteracy, delinquency and exclusion.
10. Belief & Action
• The Quran offers this latitude in the interpretation of the
word jihad and this from its first revelation:
"I am not those who do not believe and fight against them
with strength, through the Qur'an. »Koran 25/52
