Future Former Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and Will-Never-Be Mayor John Tory Struggle to Understand the Word "Jihad"

When Rob Ford's brother Doug said there is "a full-out jihad against us right now," the two candidates, devotees of political correctness, knew exactly what to say:

“Using a loaded and inflammatory term like ‘jihad’ to describe legitimate criticism is pathetic and shows that the Fords just don’t get it,” Tory said in a statement.

Chow addressed Ford’s “jihad” comment in a tweet: “In the Koran jihad = struggle. Ignorantly Doug Ford used a loaded term to attack a dad [who has an autistic son and who took umbrage at Doug Ford's comments about a group home]. The real struggle is bw Fords & truth. They wont win.”

Dear John: The more we infidels use the word, the less loaded and inflammatory it becomes. Or do you think its use should be reserved exclusively for Muslims, in the same way that a court in Malaysia recently barred non-Muslims from using the word "Allah" ?

Dear Olivia: In the Koran jihad = struggle--to wage holy war:

Jihad is a verbal noun with the literal meaning of "striving" or "determined effort." The active participle mujahid means "someone who strives" or "a participant in jihad." 

The term jihad in many contexts means "fighting" (though there are other words in Arabic that more unambiguously refer to the act of making war, such as qital or harb). In the Qur'an and in later Muslim usage, jihad is commonly followed by the expression fi sabil Illah, "in the path of God."⁶ The description of warfare against the enemies of the Muslim community as jihad fi sabil Illah sacralized an activity that otherwise might have appeared as no more than the tribal warfare endemic in pre-Islamic Arabia. 

After the Qur'an, the hadith (reports on the sayings and acts of the prophet) is the second most important source of Islamic law (Shari'a). In hadith collections, jihad means armed action; for example, the 199 references to jihad in the most standard collection of hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari, all assume that jihad means warfare.⁷ More broadly, Bernard Lewis finds that "the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists [i.e., specialists in the hadith] . . . understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense."⁸ 

Sounds to me like Doug has a better handle on the definition than either John or Olivia do.