journalists who reported on Obamaʼs speech (and the
academic experts on Islam quoted by these journalists) had
nothing even remotely critical to say about the texts or the
doctrines from that society, doctrines which incite
genocide.^12 What is going on?
The explanation is that Islam is completely unlike our
normal expectations of a religion. Contrary to religions like
Buddhism and Christianity, Islam sanctifies violence against
unbelievers: the only reward guaranteed to Muslims is they
will get to spend an eternity in Paradise provided they die
fighting to impose Islam on others. Not only do those who
die during jihad go to Paradise, they have the most honorific
position in Paradise, and have the power to help get
members of their family into Paradise.^13 Those Muslims
who do not die in this way face the prospect of an eternity
of torment in Hell. The body of scripture underlying Islam is
very explicit in the violence perpetrated by Mohammed and
his followers. The violence was aimed at conquest and such
violence was committed even when the opponents of Islam
were pluralist and offered no resistance. Islam is
expansionist, instructing its followers to wage jihad on non-
Muslims for all time (as Qurtubi says, the commands to kill
are “general” and “unqualified”). The Islamic State we now
see in Syria and Iraq is a new incarnation of the previous
Islamic State, a state which only ceased to exist in 1924
(after enduring from the twentieth century all the way back
to the seventh-century Arabia). Seeing Islam as a religion is
less accurate than viewing it as an ideology committed to
installing the most totalitarian regime imaginable. Compared
to the centuries-old threat from Islam, the threat from