A Conservative wants to know about Islam

Townhall.com, a page run by the Heritage Foundation which publishes a collection of articles by various US right-wing columnists, has published one by Doug Giles, "a no-nonsense, God-fearing student of society with a special ability to jerk the slack out of slacking young people" according to this bio. He has a few questions he wants answered about Islam, and they are here. Assume for the moment that this guy is sincere, maybe some of you can write some cogent answers and pubish them and/or send them to him. I'm working on some of my own which I intend (insha Allah) to publish on my web page (it's too big for a blog entry).