66.9 – Prophet! Struggle against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be stern with them
“Struggle” translates the Arabic verb jāhada, from which the word jihad comes, and in this verse it appears in the form of a command to “the prophet” in particular. This is the final occurrence of seven commands to struggle in the Quran. In this verse (like 9.73) the surrounding words themselves seem to suggest that the meaning of jihad is physical fighting, and this is indeed how many Muslim commentators have understood it.
The meaning of jihad and its various verb forms has become a point of contention in the modern West, but the word was not so vigorously disputed among Muslims during the first centuries of Islam. The early Muslim commentator Muqātil ibn Sulaymān (d. 767), for example, finished the command “struggle against the disbelievers” in both 66.9 and 9.73 by adding the phrase “with the sword.” Many Muslim commentators, including al-Ṭabarī (d. 923), insisted that jihad refers to participation in warfare even where the context does not clearly point the word in that direction, as in 22.78.