“The question of how Islamic is ISIS … is actually a bit of a trick question,” said Dalia Mogahed, the research director of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. Even so, it’s one that has defined discussion of the group and its aims, with U.S. President Barack Obama having declared that the group “is not Islamic,” and The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood countering in a cover story: “The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic.”

Mogahed said it’s “kind of an obvious point” that the group uses Islamic texts to justify its brutality. “But I want to answer a slightly different question, which is: If Islam did not exist … would a group like ISIS, with all the other realities as they are, exist today and do the same things?”

“My answer to that hypothetical question is a resounding yes.” Discussing global terrorism at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Mogahed, who formerly led research on Muslims with the polling organization Gallup, said that extremist groups all over the world commit the same kinds of violence using what she called “the local social currency” to justify it. “That is sometimes Christianity. That is sometimes Judaism. That is sometimes Buddhism. And it is sometimes secular ideologies. So a world without Islam would still have a group like ISIS—they would just be called something else that may be less catchy.”