Jihad (Holy War)

Why, five years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, do reporters insist on qualifying the term "Jihad" with the tag "holy war" when they use it in their stories?

Firstly, interpreting the term Jihad as "holy war," is a gross oversimplification. Muslim scholars have written entire treatises on what Jihad means, and the term "war" as applied by corporate media types doesn't do as much to get at the complexity of the idea as it does to reaffirm the suspicion that all Muslims are pathologically insane. That aside, any American who doesn't know what the term means, even in oversimplified commercial terms, doesn't deserve to understand the point of the story. I seriously doubt that anyone reading or listening to a news story would have to go to the dictionary if the term "Jihad" appeared without an explanation that it means (or at least is implied by the writer to mean) "holy war."

So reporters, please, stop explaining what a Jihad is, or better yet, go more in depth about it. Parenthesizing the definition is no longer necessary. Thank you.