GARDEN GROVE, Calif.—The Islamic Society of Orange County mosque in many ways reflects the prosperous heart of Southern California where it’s located. As congregants waited for a guest imam to speak, grandmothers scolded noisy children and teenagers texted on their cell phones. Two teenage girls in the women’s prayer room said their favorite pastime is shopping. Another teen called a friend, trying to convince her to dig through her closet for an abaya, a loose-fitting garment, and join her at the mosque for the fundraising talk and dinner.

Protests across the country Saturday raised the concern that Sharia law could spread throughout the United States, but many of the rallies drew even rowdier counterprotests. Hundreds of demonstrators marched through downtown Seattle behind a large sign saying, “Seattle stands with our Muslim neighbors.” Authorities said a large fight broke out after the gathering, and police used tear gas to disperse the crowds and arrested three people for obstructing law enforcement. The rallies, held in more than two dozen U.S.

Many books about the Islamic State (ISIS) focus on the group’s terrorism. Graeme Wood, after meeting influential ISIS adherents in Tokyo, Melbourne, London, and elsewhere, examines its ideological core in The Way of Strangers, a runner-up for WORLD’s 2016 Book of the Year in the Understanding the World category.

The warmth and candor Nabeel Qureshi brings to each work enhances his sharp intellect and apologetics. In No God but One, Qureshi, a Pakistani-American medical doctor who grew up a devout Muslim but converted to Christianity in 2005, comprehensively shows why the evidence for Christianity overwhelms that for Islam.

My friend and fellow editor Mindy Belz, who knows more about the Middle East and our war against radical Islam than just about anyone else, reacted this way yesterday when I mentioned on our internal WORLD discussion board that George W. Bush would not have won Florida without majority Muslim support: “What?!? I’ve never heard that, Marvin.”

An exclamation point and two question marks can get me moving, so I’ve put together a summary for Mindy and the many others surprised and shocked by this historical footnote.

On Jan. 27, the evening of President Donald Trump’s announcement of an executive order banning entry to the United States from seven terrorist hot spots, around 175 people gathered in a hotel conference room in Rapid City, S.D. Most in the crowd were part of the 40 to 50 percent of Americans who, according to polls, approve of Trump’s order, and the topic of discussion was Muslim immigration.

Professors at U.S. colleges and universities teach some world history and a lot of mythology. Those who speak of a war against terrorism rather than a war against radical Islam put forward a myth of multicultural harmony in medieval Spain among Muslim overlords and Christian or Jewish subjects. Not so, asserts author Darío Fernández-Morera, who shows how Muslims ran a dhimmi system that was a gangster-like protection racket. Christians and Jews had to pay up and accept second-class citizenship. If they rebelled, Muslims could cut off their heads or make their children sexual slaves.