The gomen came up with a ‘jihad’ committee, but are they using jihad correctly?

If you haven’t read the news lately, get your tetanus shots now, because this recent news will send you into spasms.

To tackle the problem of inflation in Malaysia, our beloved government had yet came up with another plan that can only be conceived by the chaddest of chads, and that’s by – wait for it – coming up with another special committee for it. But it’s no ordinary committee. This particular committee sent netizens into seizures not seen since the banana shortage of ’86.

Besides the heavily subcontracted design of the poster, other things ticked people off as well. There’s the name of the committee, which is Pasukan Khas Jihad Tangani Inflasi (roughly translated to Crusade Against Inflation Special Team).  There’s the claimed function: to help the Keluarga Malaysia face the rising cost of living and resolving issues related to inflation. It all combined as a beacon to invite much skepticism and ridicule online.

In fact, it is so unpopular that the Prime Minister’s Office allegedly did a Twitter poll asking people what they think about the committee, but had to later take it down due to overwhelming negativity. Lmao. The poll only lives on now in screengrabs.

Averting our eyes from the massive car crash that is the committee’s PR for a moment, our interest today lies in one thing: the interesting choice of word used in naming the committee – a jihad against inflation. Our readers who may not be familiar with the concept might ejaculate…

“Hey, isn’t Jihad that thing where they strap b-“

Let us stop you there, because there’s more to the concept of jihad than just fighting infidels. Jihad’s literal Arabic meaning is somewhere close to ‘struggling’ or ‘exerting effort’, usually towards a goal. In the Islamic context, jihad means exerting effort to set straight an Islamic community and to put the word of Allah on the highest place. In other words, when a Muslim carries out jihad, he or she exerts effort and struggles to oppose evil and discard untruths. There are many opinions of what jihad is, but commonly there are three parts to jihad:

• The jihad against your own desires, which involves learning the correct version of the religion, practicing it yourself, spreading it to others, and enduring the resistance in doing so.
• The jihad against demons/syaitan, which involves discarding all doubt and anxiety caused by demons trying to weaken your faith, and ignoring the call to satisfy your lust through avenues like adultery, homosexuality, corruption, abuse of power, treachery, and other forms of debauchery.
• The jihad against clear enemies, such as non-Muslims (kafir) and hypocrites (munafiq), subject to limitations. This is probably the stuff that the word jihad is associated with the most nowadays, but besides war, it also involves among others talking to your enemies and praying that they will see the truth.

Of the three, it is said that the jihad against your own desires is of far greater importance than the jihad against enemies, as if you cannot win over yourself, there’s no way you can win against craftier enemies. Anyways, jihad in the Islamic context always carries a religious connotation, as all the struggling and exerting is done for the sake of Allah and Islam.

So now that we’re all more or less familiar with the concept…

What in the ninja turtles’s eggs does ‘jihad’ has to do with ‘inflation’?

To be honest, we haven’t the slightest idea. Nothing can be found about the motivations behind using the word ‘jihad’ in the press release announcing the committee, and neither are there reports of Satan or some infidels jacking up the prices to weaken the Muslims. The only logical explanation left would be that they’re using the literal Arabic translation of jihad that means ‘exerting effort’, so that this committee is ‘exerting effort’ to handle the inflation.

However, based on the description of what the committee will be doing, it’s probably not a fitting word, either.

“This special team’s role is to gather all information from Ministries, agencies and the public to formulate strategies and coordinate efforts in resolving issues related to inflation especially controlling the rising prices more efficiently and effectively. This special team will function… by having meetings two times a week on Mondays and Thursdays. A press conference will be held after every meeting to elaborate on the issues raised by Keluarga Malaysia.” – translated excerpt from Ismail Sabri’s press release.

The other explanation is that the term ‘jihad’ to Ismail Sabri’s PR team is like the terms ‘cheese leleh viral meletup’ to food vendors, and it might have an appeal factor with the Bumiputras. However, if this was the intention, it had backfired hilariously.

Either way, we shouldn’t be spending too much of our brainpower analyzing this issue, because we need to figure out what to do when cooking oil reaches RM60.