What makes the radical Muslim belief of “Jihad” against their enemies so different from the Jewish concept of “Mechiyas Amalek” - the Torah commandment to wipe out and eradicate any trace of the nation known as Amalek - men, women and children included?

     R’ Shmuel Birnbaum zt”l answers that the two cannot be equated because the mitzvah of ‘Mechiyas Amalek’ is an obligation given to Klal Yisroel by Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, before hundreds of thousands of people who witnessed the great event of Matan Torah. We did not make up this mitzvah nor did we decide on our own to start killing people we do not like! There is no such thing in Klal Yisroel.

     “The radical Muslims, however, kill people indiscriminately because that’s what they came up with as the best way to deal with those they do not like. And even if you’ll say that it is written in their scriptures to kill and wage war, all that is based on the word of their “prophet” Mohammed who “claims” to have heard it from G-d. Who knows? Maybe he’s lying! There’s no one else to disprove his words! So his followers rely on his spoken word - and we rely on the holy Torah!”