ABSTRACT
It is an apparent paradox that the jihad, 1 in its effort to free men from unbelief, should become a device to deprive men of freedom. For the contradictions of liberty 2 and servitude both rest in the ideology of struggle in the path of Allah. As the jihad seeks to ennoble the spirit in Islam — to release the spirit from the bondage of unbelief — conversion is no sanctuary from the servile condition. And if the jihad frees men from unbelief and deprives men of freedom, so also does the humiliation and subjection of enslavement serve to remove men from infidelity. 3 Hence, jihad brings death to the infidel: while it vanquishes kufr, it annihilates the dignity, the essence — indeed the legal existence of the person who sustained it. In order to recapture his identity (nasab), 4 the slave must incarcerate his spirit in Islam, and it is only through manumission that the process is sustained.
