Between Jihad and Terrorism in Imami Shiite Thoughts and Salafi Viewpoint

‘jihad’ is one of the important and sacred practices in islamic perspective. however, recently it has been taken as a weapon against islam and muslims. today, there are two main attitudes in islamic world which both at the same emphasis on jihad with two different approaches: imami and takfiris. thus, our issue is the relation between jihad and terrorism. the main question of the present paper is “how this relation can be plotted by two main political islam approaches; imami and takfiri? we examined two dominant political islamist attitudes: shiite imami and salafi-takfiri perspective, based on the views of both major leaders and thinkers. the paper argues that there are differences between these two viewpoints, such as: jihad motivation, purpose, the relationship between means and the target, jurisprudential position of jihad, the opposite side, morality, spirituality and the distinction suicide attacks and martyrdom. in addition, other important aspect in imami thought is the nature of islam based on kindness, mercy, option, coexistence, and peace among muslims and people of the worlds. research findings concludes that based on imami approach, jihad is a defensive act to adjudication, disposal of oppression and it is opposes terrorist acts which are originally aggressive and inhuman. while in takfiri approach using violence and terror are used a mean to spread islam.