The word “jihad” has been used in many different ways by different people. Its most obvious use throughout the world of political discourse has been violent; terrorists routinely invoke jihad, violent war against the nonbeliever. Moderate Muslims attempt to use the word “jihad” to mean struggle, whether internally or externally — I am fully aware of that.
You obviously want her words regarding “jihad” to be taken in their least suggestive way, and that’s fine. But excuse me if it’s hard to take them that way when she opened her speech by praising Siraj Wajjah, “her favorite person in the room.”
Back in 2001, after 9/11, Bush gave a speech in which he called for a “crusade” against Islamist terrorism. The press went crazy, suggesting that this was the language of religious war. This was approximately a millennium after the actual crusades; the word crusade has been stripped of its religious meaning for centuries. Unlike the word crusade, the word “jihad” is alive and well as a mode of religious violence. Sarsour knows that.