The excerpt below is taken from a recently published academic chapter - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-99-3862-9_13 Introduction: Jihad as an Obstacle to Interfaith Understanding and Practice Probably one of the most contentious ideas, with a long and controversial historical pedigree, is the doctrine of jihad . It is considered a major threat to international order by the global north and a civilizational threat to western-liberal democracies (Cook, 2005 ; Egerton, 2011 ; Kepel, 2009 ;Li, 2020 ; Polk, 2018 ; Turner, 2014 ). Moreover, the term jihad has been used as one of the constellations of concepts that are emblematic of the threat (some) Muslims residing in the West are considered to pose to the liberal-democratic order of western societies (Egerton, 2011 ; Kepel, 2017 ; Tibi, 2014 ). As noted by Afsaruddin ( 2022 ), the term jihad , especially since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has become ubiquitous in non-academic mass media and popular discourses