[Make sure to read Robert Spencer’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]

Every Hamas communiqué these days concludes with these words: “It is a jihad for victory or martyrdom.” This is a succinct summation of the ideas that have made jihad warriors such a formidable fighting force in so many conflicts throughout history, as “The History of Jihad” shows: the jihadi either wins and then can help himself to the property and the women of those whom he has defeated, or he loses and is killed (“martyred”), in which case he will spend eternity with the celebrated virgins of Islamic paradise. In this, the cult of jihad is much like the cult of National Socialism (that’s what “Nazi” is an abbreviation for, kids): it’s an idolatry and caricature of masculinity that appeals in particular to weak men.

The Qur’an makes a promise to those who gain a place in paradise: “Indeed, for the righteous is achievement, enclosed gardens and vineyards, and large-breasted women of equal age, and a full cup” (78:31-34). A hadith has Muhammad expand on this: “There is no one whom Allah will admit to Paradise but Allah will marry him to seventy-two wives, two from houris and seventy from his inheritance from the people of Hell, all of whom will have desirable front passages and he will have a male member that never becomes flaccid (i.e., soft and limp)’” (Sunan Ibn Majah vol. 5, book 37, no. 4337). The “inheritance from the people of hell” are women who have been condemned to eternal torment and sentenced to serve their time by becoming sex slaves for the Muslim men in paradise.

This fleshly, X-rated idea of eternal bliss is taken with the utmost seriousness among many Muslims. Back in 2020, an Islamic scholar in Gaza, Ahmad Khadoura, detailed the joys that awaited Muslim men in paradise: “You will be given two wives as you enter Paradise. There will be no menstruation, no childbirth, no saliva, no mucus, no urine, and no excrement. If a woman from the dwellers of Paradise were to merely look upon the people of the Earth, she would fill the Earth with light and with a wonderful scent….Therefore, you will be given in Paradise the sexual strength of a few [men]. Allah’s Messenger was asked ‘Will we be able to endure this?’ He said that [every man] will be given the strength of a hundred men.” Khadoura wasn’t making this up; all this is straight from Islamic tradition as well.

And it all points up a fact that Islamic apologists in the West do their best to conceal: Islam in general is a religion for males, and in particular, for sexually avaricious adolescent males. Islam is a cult of masculinity, and in this, its appeal is very much like that of National Socialism. Both indulge in a kind of idolatry of masculinity, confusing genuine masculine strength with brutality, bloodlust, domination, and the exaltation of violence and brute force. This is why both National Socialism and Islamic jihad groups such as Hamas often attract weak men who are overcompensating for their lack of real masculinity and who often also wish to deny and suppress their homosexual inclinations.

Think of Ernst Röhm, the leader of the Storm Troopers who was betrayed and murdered by Hitler during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934; Hitler professed shock at Röhm’s homosexuality, conveniently forgetting that it had been known and accepted among the National Socialist leadership for years. Remember also the practice of bacha bazi (“boy play”) in Afghanistan, in which an older male takes a young boy as a sexual companion; American troops were shamefully directed to ignore this practice among our Afghan allies because to exclude those who practiced it would have decimated the ranks of the Afghan National Army.

Converts to Islam in the West (generally as opposed to men who grow up in Islamic cultures) and sons of immigrant Muslims who become deeply committed to their faith over here often tend to be frustrated and angry young men who are attracted to the spurious sense of superiority and strength that Islam offers them as well as insecure half-men who can’t get a woman other than through force or by making a deal with her father. Remember Adam Gadahn, the self-described “revolting geek of mass proportions” who converted to Islam and became an al-Qaeda leader until an American air strike sent him to his virgins.

The spurious masculinity that jihad offers is especially appealing in our age of weak, feminized men. When the West was culturally strong, converts to Islam were virtually unheard of, but in this age of emasculation, they’ve become common among a certain type of men. Kickboxer Andrew Tate, who has a comically debased view of masculinity and women that has entangled him in sex trafficking and rape charges, is also a convert to Islam. Homosexual or not, Tate is a classic Röhm-like figure, embracing a harsh caricature of masculinity that scarcely conceals a hatred (and likely fear) of women.

“Jihad for victory or martyrdom” just seals the deal. In that scenario, the revolting geeks of the world, balaclavas in place and AK-47s in hand, can’t possibly lose. Finally.