It is simplistic and plain wrong to ascribe the terror tactics of Islamic extremists to the Muslim faith. In fact it is a gross distortion of what this religion is really about, says Ian Harris.
When Muhammad, prophet of Islam, rode home from a battle in which he successfully defended the new faith, he said: "We are returning from the lesser jihad [holy war] to the greater jihad."
Ayatollah Khomeini applied this sentiment repeatedly to Iran after the Shah was overthrown in an Islamic revolution 30 years ago.
It was as if they were saying: "We've done the easy part by winning the military or political struggle.
Now for the bit that really matters - living the way Allah intends by mastering the self, establishing justice, and bringing about the spiritual transformation of society."
That perspective on jihad is worth bearing in mind, especially in light of the latest Jakarta hotel bombings by Jemaah Islamiyah (meaning "Islamic group").
The idea of jihad certainly comes straight out of the Koran, but the tactics used by the extremists of Jemaah Islamiyah and al Qaeda are perverse, self-serving and repugnant to the deeper insights of Islam.
The word means "striving" or "struggle".
For most Muslims it implies working hard to make their faith real in their lives and in society.
At the core of that faith is the belief that Allah is merciful and compassionate, just as at the core of Christianity is the conviction that God is love.
That then becomes the litmus test for Muslim or Christian action.
Anything that cuts across those understandings repudiates those faiths, even when it is done in Allah's or God's name.
For Muslims, jihad is to be worked out in different ways. There is jihad of the tongue, or speaking about the faith. The Christian parallel is evangelism.
There is jihad of the hand, or putting one's faith into action. Christians are encouraged every Sunday to do likewise.
Jihad of the heart means working to make faith real as a spiritual force in peoples lives. Christians will see a parallel in prayer, meditation, study and worship.
Only then comes the "lesser jihad", that of the sword. This can be interpreted in a number of ways, from a duty to defend one's Islamic community from attack to a command to expand the boundaries of Islam by force.
Ironically, the bloodiest jihad of recent times involved two Muslim countries, when Iran fought back against an Iraqi invasion in 1980.
This illustrates how a concept which emerged in one context - Muhammad's need to defend his fledgling Muslim community in Medina from possible obliteration - can be seized on and corrupted centuries later by people using religious arguments to further their political ends.
The distortion stems from belief in the absolute sovereignty of an external, objective God whose laws for humanity, written within a vastly different world, are believed to be mandatory and unchangeable.
For extremists, this leaves no room for other views.
Secular governments become their targets.
So do those based on individual freedom and democratic values, which fundamentalists regard as wanton displays of humans overreaching themselves, and hence an intolerable affront to Allah.
In the past half-century, this kind of thinking has taken root in areas of the Muslim world where colonialism, political oppression and western secular values seemed to be endangering the health and future of Islam.
Anxiety bred fear, alienation, despair, rage and increasingly, a determination to fight back.
In the battle against the Christian crusaders of the 12th and 13th centuries, jihad was the collective duty of the faithful to defend Islam from attack.
Modern ideologists have reinterpreted it as a revolutionary duty to overthrow secularising regimes in Muslim countries.
Their goal is to reclaim their religious heritage by re-establishing Islam at the centre of power.
In recent years, al Qaeda has upped the ante by carrying the battle against westernisation into the Christian heartlands from which it sprang, adopting terror tactics to make its point - and even turning its jihad into a religious crusade to convert the West to Islam.
This runs clean counter to the Koran's rejection of coercion ("there shall be no coercion in matters of faith"); to its condemnation of aggression, allowing war only in self-defence; to Islam's general record of tolerance of Jews and Christians as peoples of the Book, and therefore not idolaters; and to its bed-rock refrain that Allah is compassionate and merciful - which makes the mass slaughter of innocents in New York's twin towers, Bali's Kuta beach, London's underground, Iraq's markets, and Jakarta's hotels unconscionable.
This terrorist mayhem is a grotesque perversion of what religion should be about.
Muslims true to their faith should be the first to denounce it.
- Ian Harris is a journalist and commentator.
