NPR and the word Jihad and Jamie Tarabay

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jul 21, 2008 at 07:12

Dr Pipes

Are you aware that this past Friday there was a report on NPR by Jamie Tarabay, where she claimed that the word jihad does not really mean "holy war" and it only means strive to improve, and the rest of this bogus greater v. lesser jihad bogus thing. And her sources were the usual suspects: an Indian Muslim man and a Pakistani woman. And if she would have asked an Arab about what does the word jihad really mean the answer would have been: Holy war

I expect much more from NPR and I do urge the readers to e-mail NPR in order to object to such poor and biased journalism. Here is my evidence: Check Hans Wehr's Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic on page 142B, where you will find the word jihad and it is translated as "holy war."

Shame on NPR

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Daniel Pipes replies:

Wehr's dictionary does indeed state exactly that.