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Synopsis Noted scholar and eminent academician Professor Habibur Rehman has rightly emphasized that the fear of global Islamic terror, kindled by the ghost of Jihad is haunting mankind, and all the forces of the world have entered into a holy alliance to contain this spectre. Conscious and concocted efforts were made in recent times to establish connection between international terrorism and the fundamentalist Islamic movement in the light of the rise of militancy to convince people that the world was witnessing a clash of civilizations between the forward looking secular world and the so-called backward looking intolerant Islam.

Professor Rehman has tried to show that Islam never believes in clashing with people and civilizations because it abhors violence, bloodshed and mischief. It did not consider the wars launched by the Muslim rulers and dynasties committing atrocities and excesses as exercises in the cause of Jihad. The notion of Jihad, as a matter of fact, had almost ceased to exist in the Muslim world after the tenth century until it was revived in 1979 by some of the superpowers to fire a pan-Islamic movement to defeat Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He has amply demonstrated that terrorism in the name of Islam is a misinterpretation because a religion which considers the slaying of an innocent person as slaying the whole human race and saving a life as saving the life of all people cannot allow its believers to kill innocent people of any caste, creed, race or religion.