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There is just one historically relevant meaning of Jihad despite contemporary apologetics.

Jahada, the root of the word Jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran – under a variety of grammatical forms.

With four exceptions, all the other 36 usages (in specific Koranic verses) are variations of the third form of the verb, i.e. Jahida.

Jahida in the Koran and in subsequent Islamic understanding to both Muslim luminaries – from the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam (including Abu Yusuf, Averroes, Ibn Khaldun, and Al Ghazzali), to ordinary people – meant and means “he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like,” as described by the seminal Arabic lexicographer E.W Lane.

Indeed, Lane’s, “An Arabic English Lexicon” (6 volumes, London, 1865) is still used to this day by Muslim and non-Muslim scholars for definitive Arabic to English translation.

Thus Lane, who studied both the etymology and usage of the term Jihad, observed, “Jihad came to be used by the Muslims to signify wag[ing] war, against unbelievers.”

Læs Andrew Bostoms udredning af begrebet ‘jihad’.