On Friday night, Dana Perino, who was filling in for The Story host Martha MacCallum, invited Ben Shapiro and Florida CAIR Director Hassan Shibly to debate whether or not Linda Sarsour was in the wrong for calling for ‘jihad’ on the Trump administration last weekend.

Shibly, a friend of Sarsour’s who was present at the event where she dropped the J-word, defended her use of the word because “jihad” means “to struggle for good” and that she claimed that it was “our duty as Americans and as Muslims to put forward our best effort and to struggle, to speak truth to power.”

Shapiro refuted Shibly’s claim that she was “taken out of context” when everyone who has slammed her for using the word shared the full video of her and some even shared the transcript of what she said.

“I don’t think anybody is claiming that she openly called for violence against President Trump,” he continued, “but ‘jihad’ means more than just ‘internal struggle’ or ‘struggle for good.’ And we all know there are terrorists all over the world who invoke the word ‘jihad’ as justification for what they do and Linda Sarsour knows that too.”

He went on to call Sarsour a “radical anti-Semite who has backed terrorists in the past,” which Shibly quickly took offense to.

“Don’t smear a woman who’s not here to defend herself,” Shibly reacted. “Shame on you.”

“Fine,” Shapiro responded. “I’ll talk about CAIR instead––”

“Right, shift the topic!” Shibly shot back.

Perino jumped in and asked Shibly why Sarsour would use the word she knew would be inflammatory to the general public despite its true meaning.

“Well, that’s why it’s so important that she use the word!” Shibly answered.

“What?!” Perino blurted out, causing Shapiro to chuckle.

Shibly continued with his response.

“Because we must reclaim that word from the extremists that have misdefined it, misrepresented it. So Muslim extremists and anti-Muslim extremists have both hijacked and distorted ‘jihad’ to mean something horrible, to mean something jihad does not mean actually and the only way we can reclaim that word, to reclaim our language is by leaders proudly and unapologetically using it in the right context so we can show the world what jihad really means,” he concluded.

After the two panelists had another heated exchange about how Shibly should denounce the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, Shapiro was given the last word.

“If you want to reclaim the word ‘jihad,’ you should start by condemning organizations that promote jihad all over the world instead of associating with them––” Shapiro began before Shibly interrupted him again.

After Shibly claimed that he and other peaceful Muslims stand against all terrorists, Shapiro told him, “Then condemn organizations that participate in it. This is not hard!”

Watch the clip above, via Fox News.

[image via screengrab]

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