Decius wrote:

They contend that resistance is always legitimate, and that its legitimacy is not dependent on any particular conditions.

Maybe its the way it is being presented here, but that's the dumbest thing that I have ever heard. Legitimacy is conditional by definition. In order for something to be legitimate, it must be possible for it to be illegitimate, and therefore there must be conditions that tell you where you're at. This declaration is equivelent to an admission of guilt.

I suspect there may be a disconnect/miscommunication here, due in part to differences of language and worldview.

I could see them saying that jihad is always legitimate. The complaint about "conditional by definition" is resolved/avoided by the fact that legitimacy is built into the definition of jihad. This is something of a semantic shift, and perhaps it is one to which the western mind is not accustomed.

But in this view, if it is jihad, then it meets the criteria of legitimacy. Unfortunately not everyone agrees on the definition of jihad. So you still have the same debates, but they are framed in terms of whether something or not thing X is jihad, rather than whether or not jihad Y is legitimate (which, having met the definition of jihad, it obviously is).

RE: Debate in the Arab Countries – Is Hizbullah a 'Resistance' Organization or Not?