In his review of Miroslav Volf’s Allah: A Christian Response in the most recent issue of the journal Themelios, Imad Shehadeh (Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary, Amman, Jordan) perceives “a serious misunderstanding of God’s OT command to obliterate entire nations. It is very different than the qur’anic Jihad.”

How then is Biblical conquest different from jihad? Shehadeh notes five ways:

The biblical conquest is marked by the following:

1. It is limited to one time, not all times.
2. It is limited to one land, not all lands. It judges sin to fulfill prophecy, not to adhere to a religion.
3. It shows God’s holiness, not his power. Its goal is to bless the whole earth, not subdue it. It is God fighting for his people, not the people fighting for God.
4. It is according to God’s trustworthy nature, not according to a capricious nature.
5. It prefigures God finally absorbing the deserved judgment and wrath on all nations in Christ’s death on the cross. Judgment deserved became judgment absorbed.