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To the extent that terrorist acts perpetrated by Muslims triggered the "war on terror," it could be reduced by a "war on error," in particular by a "war" on errors in traditional exegesis and jurisprudence. For these two pursuits were affected by militant renditions of the teaching of revelation. Traditional jurisprudence teaches that the believers are required wage war on non-Muslims every year, even when the non-Muslims in question are not waging war on Muslims, nor helping anyone else to do so. While a few ulema emphasized jihad as a struggle against the self, "other scholars, basing their conclusions on a different set of hadiths, proclaim that an offensive jihad (jihad al-talab) launched to extend the abode of Islam is valid on religious grounds and, moreover, that it is a collective responsibility (fard kifayah) devolving upon all Muslims. If it remains unfulfilled, all of them would be guilty of violating a divine injunction. Undertaking this religious obligation is mandated at least once every year and cannot be neglected, as its importance is equal to observing the obligatory prayers, the Ramadan fast, pilgrimage, and giving alms. This suggests that it is incumbent upon every adult male." (H. Mavani, "Tension between the Quran and the Hadith: The Case of Offensive Jihad," Journal of Shi'a Islamic Studies, Autumn 2011 · Vol. IV · No. 4, p. 398). Jihad al-talab is endorsed in the Book of Jihad in Sahih Muslim: "Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah...When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them...If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them." (sunnah.com/muslim/32). Spreading Islam by the sword was justified by recourse to the specious teaching of abrogation, according to which all verses that teach peace and reconciliation were abrogated by the verses of the sword, Quran, 9:5 and 9:29. Revelation permits and even requires war in self-defense. It does not, however, endorse jihad al-talab in any form. Notwithstanding the fact that jihad means chiefly the struggle for self-improvement: "the fuqaha not only successfully associated jihad with killing (qatl), they also invented an arsenal of arguments that justified armed expeditions, conquests, raids, incursions, and other military activities as essential forms of jihad. The main tool and principal method of achieving such a mischievous rendering of the term was naskh, abrogation. By using the concept of naskh, according to which Allah's earlier revelations were considered as superseded by later ones, they were able to argue...that later (human) traditions of the Prophet's companions overruled the authoritative verses of the Book and of the authentic sunna." (Muhammad Shahrur, "Interview with Muhammad Shahrur by Andreas Christmann (2007)," pp. 525 - 535, in The Qur'an, Morality and Critical Reason, Brill, 2009, p. 396). A better world requires better education. Better education requires a better methodology of Islam. This requires dispensing with unwarranted accretions and problematic assumptions that corrupted the exegesis, jurisprudence and the knowledge of Islam. We must restructure thought, as M, Iqbal argued in the "Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam." Muhammad 'Abduh similarly referred to traditionalism as a "disease." (M. Abduh, Theology of Unity, 1966, p. 66). Renewal of Islam requires doing away with the teaching of abrogation, problematic assumptions, and the notion that the best way to understand revelation is without the use of reason, through tradit
