[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]

Monday was a festive day, with the whole world seemingly celebrating the dawn of peace in the Middle East and hailing President Trump for bringing it about. The president himself, while speaking about the release of the hostages in his speech to the Knesset, promised a bright new world unencumbered by past hatred and animosities: “After two harrowing years in darkness and captivity, 20 courageous hostages are returning to the glorious embrace of their families. Twenty-eight more precious loved ones are coming home at last to rest in this sacred soil for all of time. And after so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace.”

Trump proclaimed not just the end of the present war between Israel and Hamas, but of an entire era of war: “This is not only the end of a war. This is the end of an age of terror and death, the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God.” He said that the cessation of hostilities heralded ” a very exciting time for Israel and for the entire Middle East,” and added that “the forces of chaos, terror and ruin that have plagued the region for decades now stand weakened, isolated, and totally defeated.”

Swept up in the excitement of the occasion, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana said: “You, President Trump, are a colossus who will be enshrined in the pantheon of history. Thousands of years from now the Jewish people will remember you. We are a nation that remembers.”

It is likely that President Trump will indeed be remembered thousands of years from now, for he is a transformative figure who has reshaped national and international politics. Whether he will be remembered, however, as the man who brought about “the end of an age of terror and death” and “the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God,” however, is another question altogether.

During his Knesset speech, Trump touted his ability to make deals, and he has certainly demonstrated that ability in bringing about the current ceasefire. But the best dealmaker in world history would not be able to make a deal that would end the Islamic jihad imperative.

Imagine some bizarro alternative where some future president of the United States was pro-murder, pro-theft, and pro-adultery, and desired accordingly to stamp out the Ten Commandments. Even if this rogue president were able to find Jewish and Christian leaders who would sign his agreement banning the Ten Commandments, other Jewish and Christian believers would continue to hold them and act upon them.

The requirement to wage jihad against unbelievers and bring them under the hegemony of Islamic law, which ensures that Islam will dominate and not be dominated, has just that status among Muslims: it comes from the supreme being. It is neither to be questioned nor negotiated away. Those who grant this point but insist that jihad is primarily, if not solely, the spiritual struggle within the soul of the believer to conform his life to the will of Allah are credulously accepting the apologetic half-truths and distortions that Islamic spokesmen have propagated in the West in order to foster complacency and cast resistance to jihad as “bigotry” and “Islamophobia.”

The reality is that jihad in the Qur’an is clearly martial, with repeated exhortations to kill those who do not believe (2:191; 4:89; 4:91; 9:5; 47:4) and the stipulation that the Muslim warrior must give a fifth of his war booty to the messenger of Allah (8:41). In an interior spiritual struggle, there are no spoils of war.

This imperative will remain, no matter what Hamas has agreed to with President Trump. The bellicosity coming out of Gaza as they celebrate what they claim is a victory over the last few days is clear enough evidence of that. Even if Hamas ceases to exist as an organized group, another jihad group, or a multiplicity of them, will take its place.

This is not to say that Trump should not have acted to rescue the hostages, although the price — the freeing of 250 jihad terrorists, many of whom will certainly go back to work — was extremely high. Maybe the relief of their families after two years of heartache, and of the hostages themselves after two years of torment, is worth any price. But amid the euphoria, let’s not get carried away. The jihad is not over. This is no time to deceive ourselves into thinking that it is, and let our guard down accordingly.