Armed jihad is a last resort governed by strict rules. The groups we see today claiming to be performing jihad violate those rules.
Armed conflict could fall under “jihad” when certain conditions deem it necessary, such as the faith or safety of Muslims being physically threatened, human rights being overrun, or when people’s freedom to practice, preach, and embrace Islam is supressed. Islam has strict legal conditions for the use of force as a last resort, which includes the safety of civilians and non-military property, and the forbidding of treachery, mutilation, and plunder. These rules of military jihad, in many ways, preceded what would later become the modern just-war theory.
Read our publication on Jihad, War, and Peace to learn more about the layers of jihad, and how even its military form is fundamentally different from the “holy war” or “conquest ideology bent on world domination” narrative spread by Islamophobes.