Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Heretic - Chapter 4: Those Who Love Death: Islam's Fatal Focus on the Afterlife

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I'm now looking at more articles linked to by #GenerationCaliphate, and I've just read an article by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, namely, chapter 4 of her book Heretic, in which she argues that an obsession with death permeates Islam - a fear of Hell's fire, a longing for the virgins of Paradise - especially among Islamists, I presume, for we constantly hear their spokesmen insisting that they love death more than we love life, an irreconcilable difference between Islamists and us, but anyway, here's what Hirsi Ali says:

If you want to understand the completely irreconcilable difference I am talking about [between Muslims and Westerners], you need only compare two groups of people: the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, flying their hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, and the New York City firefighters running up the stairs of the burning Twin Towers, determined to save whoever they could, regardless of the risk to their own lives. The West has a tradition of risking death in the hope of saving life. Islam teaches that there is nothing so glorious as taking an infidel's life - and so much the better if the act of murder costs you your own life. (Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Heretic, 116-117)

This contrast by Hirsi Ali will become more clear if you read the article itself, which is found here. She explains her view that Islam is obsessed with the inevitability of death and Allah's judgement, an obsession that she claims to know not only from her own experience growing up Muslim, but also from her work with Muslim refugees in the Netherlands and her serious study of Islam's central texts after 9/11.

Anyway, take a look at what she has to say.