How two decades changed my views on Islam, Muslims, and the West
Young people are often dismissed as naïve because they cling to the hope that if enough people simply believe in peace, sit down together, share meals, and talk across differences, the world will improve. I once held that hope with real conviction. At 41, I still see value in conversation and cooperation. Yet experience has taught me that optimism without real-world knowledge can become a liability.
For more than two decades, the subject of that optimism for me was Islam. My journey from idealistic engagement to harder clarity has been neither simple nor comfortable, as I explain in this piece.
Post-9/11 Beginnings + the Search for Common Ground
I came of age as a post-9/11 teenager, in a climate thick with anxiety about terrorism and suspicion toward Muslims. As an undergraduate student at American University in Washington, D.C., I sought out Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, the former Pakistani high commissioner to the United Kingdom and a prominent Islamic anthropologist dedicated to presenting Islam in ways Western audiences could largely accept. I admired his commitment to interfaith dialogue and the possibility that such work might serve as an antidote to the armed conflict then unfolding in Afghanistan and Iraq.
After returning from London following the completion of my master’s degree, I joined Ambassador Ahmed on the Journey into America project, visiting dozens of mosques across the U.S. in an effort to understand American identity through the lens of Muslims and locate shared ground between the West and Islam. Ambassador Ahmed championed the pluralist vision of the American Founders—religious freedom and equality under the law. I embraced those principles then and still do.
After more than 20 years of study, travel, and relationships with Muslim Americans and Muslims abroad, however, my understanding has grown considerably more layered. I no longer claim that supporting Islam is my duty as a U.S. citizen, or believe that every criticism of Muslim communities or Islamic doctrine equals “Islamophobia.”
Rethinking Islamic Concepts + the Limits of Soft Interpretations
Between 2005 to 2022, I positioned myself as a public defender of Islam. In books, op-eds, lectures, interviews, and classroom discussions, I worked to separate the faith from the violence committed in its name, insisting that the real danger lay in the hearts and minds of Westerners rather than in any doctrinal or cultural patterns among Muslims themselves. I repeatedly explained and argued that any apparent contradiction could be resolved through progressive theological interpretations or better interfaith dialogue. Looking back at these previous endeavors I had used a rubber shield—flexible, well-intentioned protection against charges of Islamophobia—which gradually hardened into a blindfold. It spared me (for a time) from uncomfortable data. It also prevented me from seeing the ideology that kept producing new pawns.
A dense fog of good intentions and academic orthodoxy surrounding Islamic concepts kept me blinded from the truth. In the 2010s I defended Muslims even when the evidence did not warrant it, and, in the process, I shifted attention away from the victims of Islam-inspired terrorism and softened the role of Islamic ideologies that motivated the killers. I routinely responded to Islamist terrorist attacks by warning that alarmist Western reactions would only fuel Islamophobia. I rejected the charge of taqiyah—the claim that Muslims are permitted to deceive outsiders to advance communal goals—seeing it as a tool for those promoting Islamophobia. For over a decade, I asserted that “jihad” means only an inner spiritual struggle. While jihad can indeed carry that meaning, many Muslims in the U.S. and elsewhere understand it as a drive to reshape the surrounding society according to Islamic norms, or, in its more extreme form, as armed conflict. With that said, I continue to respect the hadith that ranks the greater jihad as the battle against one’s own ego and the lesser as physical fighting. What troubles me is how frequently the lesser version appears to dominate in practice.
Much of my earlier outlook was shaped by Western academia and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party—circles I no longer claim as my own. Within the hierarchy of identity politics in both realms, Muslims occupied a privileged place near the top—they were to be treated with special solicitude because they were labeled “oppressed.” I no longer accept that ranking either.
The progressive academic environment that shaped my early thinking actively planted the seeds for Islamist influence. Cultural Marxism, critical race theory, and the broader social justice framework watered those seeds by teaching a generation of students to view every disparity through the singular lens of “oppressor” versus “oppressed,” with Muslims in the bracket of the latter. In that binary, Western civilization, the U.S., and Israel were permanently cast as the villains, while Muslims and Palestinians in particular were granted automatic moral priority. This intellectual architecture supplied Islamist activists with ready-made allies and linguistic cover. Student groups and professors backed them by invoking “de-colonization,” “resistance,” and “equity” while advancing agendas that, in practice, rejected the very liberal order that made the university possible in the first place. The result was that progressive orthodoxy expanded the space for Islamist narratives while shrinking the space for dissent in academia and civil society. I watched this dynamic unfold in real time—first as a participant who internalized the hierarchy of the “oppressed,” and then later as a target when I stepped outside it.
From Celebrated Bridge-Building to Crossing the Red Line
For more than a decade, I walked a carefully constructed tightrope. I was celebrated on one side as a Christian bridge-builder who humanized Islam, while the other side remained mostly silent—so long as I never stepped too far away from certain political realities. The moment I did, the rope snapped. This dynamic peaked in 2020 with the publication of my book The Humanity of Muhammad: A Christian View. Favorable treatments of Muhammad and consistent advocacy for constructive Islamic messaging earned me goodwill. Yet those same portrayals provoked resistance from those who saw them as dilutions of the faith designed to appeal to Western sensibilities. These critics showed little interest in locating genuine common ground between U.S. civic values and the priorities of the Ummah. Around this time I also remained broadly “pro-Palestinian” and treated Islamist terrorist organizations as fringe outliers within the ummah. I now see that I functioned as a useful puppet. My positive messaging formed part of a broader strategy to improve Islam’s public image. More tensions surfaced the moment I raised political questions about Palestinians. Pressure then followed to stay within the accepted “party line”—criticize and denounce Israel and its allies. I eventually learned that the non-negotiable boundary was Zionism. Once I crossed it, the relationships changed permanently.
Opposition intensified because of my academic visits to the United Arab Emirates. Critics who rejected interfaith efforts accused the Emiratis of inventing a hybrid “Abrahamism” that blended Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into something new and illegitimate. That criticism increased when I publicly supported the Abraham Accords. Opponents framed the agreements as a betrayal of the Palestinians—an abandonment of the long-standing Arab insistence on linkage between normalization with Israel and progress towards Palestinian statehood. In retrospect, the goodwill I had earned among Muslims was never unconditional. The moment my foot landed on that forbidden ground of Zionism, the rope was cut. Bridge-building, it turned out, had always been conditional.
October 7 + the Price of Clarity
The decisive break came after October 7, 2023. When I publicly stated my support for Israel and Zionism, a wave of cancellation followed online and offline. I lost roughly 80,000 Instagram followers and 30,000 followers on X. Some of those accounts may have been automated, but the message was unmistakable—support for Jews, Israelis, and Zionists was no longer tolerable. Even self-described moderate Muslims stepped away, and some labeled me Islamophobic simply for criticizing Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, equipped with its well-documented and organized presence in the U.S. and the West at large.
At Rice University, where I have served as a faculty member since 2015, my advocacy for Zionism has produced years of difficulty. I cannot detail every incident without risking further professional harm. The result is a form of self-censorship undertaken to shield a faith (Islam) or a movement (the third intifadah) that are not even my own. In today’s academy, open criticism of Islamist networks combined with support for Israel can become grounds for isolation or worse—removal.
My decision to stand with Israel was never merely emotional, tribal, or for professional purposes. The truth is that it was my recognition that the U.S.-Israel alliance is a strategic pillar of Western civilization itself. Israel remains the only democracy in the Middle East. The security partnership between the two countries delivers concrete benefits to Americans with joint development in missile-defense systems and sharing intelligence. Beyond the bilateral relationship, Israel functions as a barrier against the westward expansion of Islamist influence, which has already made its way onto the European continent. The survival or collapse of the alliance would send a signal far beyond the Middle East about the resolve of free societies.
When progressive and Islamist voices demand that the U.S.-Israel alliance be broken, they are not merely criticizing a foreign policy preference. Instead, they are attacking one of the pillars safeguarding the entire democratic and liberal Western order. For me, crossing the Zionism red line of the leftist-Islamist alliance meant refusing to participate in the “soft war” campaign against the West. The personal cost was high, but the alternative—remaining silent while a democratic ally was delegitimized and attacked—would have been a betrayal of the very Enlightenment principles I claim to defend.
If we cannot speak honestly about the doctrines, organizations, and demographic trends that challenge liberal democracy, then the Enlightenment project itself becomes a museum piece rather than a living organism.
Networks, Frameworks + Uncomfortable Data
My experiences over the years never amounted to mere personal friction or the challenging give-and-take of interfaith work. It was actually a small window into a much larger strategic convergence that has been taking shape for decades—the growing alliance between leftist revolutionaries and Islamist radicals, which is the focus of my forthcoming book When Marx Meets Islam: Navigating Radical Ideologies in Defense of the West. Building on the analysis first advanced by David Horowitz, I now see this partnership as an active “soft war” against the West—especially against the U.S.-Israel relationship anchoring Western security, primarily in the Middle East. The alliance is not made up of classic liberals or ordinary Muslims. Rather, it is composed of extremist ideologues who share a Marxist worldview that divides humanity into the “oppressed” and the “oppressors.” That binary fuels anger, resentment, and permanent victimhood while systematically targeting the civic culture of the West. The leftists supply the language of diversity and social justice, while the Islamists supply the energy and focus of religious absolutism. Together, they exploit the very openness and tolerance that define Western societies, turning those virtues into vulnerabilities and, at worse, threats.
The goal of the leftist-Islamist alliance, as I explain in the book, is not open dialogue or potential reform, but the gradual capture of institutions and the eventual displacement of democratic norms with radical alternatives. Once I understood that the pressure I faced was part of this broader campaign rather than isolated disagreement, the pattern of cancellation, self-censorship, and enforced silence became far more intelligible—and far more alarming.
As the leftist-Islamist alliance came into focus, I grew disillusioned with the overlapping networks that present themselves as secular civil-rights or interfaith organizations. Behind the public affirmations of loyalty to the U.S. often lay a deeper resentment toward the country and the West at large. Both are portrayed as inherently racist and Islamophobic, an assessment I find both false and corrosive. Equally troubling is the widespread adoption by many Muslim Americans of a simplistic Marxist lens that divides the world into “oppressors” and “oppressed.” In this scheme Americans, Christians, Westerners, Jews, Israelis, and Zionists occupy the former category, while Palestinians, Muslims, and the Third World occupy the latter. The framework is intellectually lazy and a direct product of trends inside Western universities. It is also blatantly hypocritical, as there is a virtual silence among Muslim Americans regarding the plight of Christians around the world, particularly those living in Islamic countries.
The rupture within interfaith circles was especially revealing in recent years. Some Muslim communities prefer to partner only with Jews who reject Zionism—individuals who, in practice, prioritize Palestinian and Muslim interests above those of Israelis or even their own people. Genuine Jewish partners who are Zionists who affirm Israel’s right to exist are shunned and publicly condemned as “not the right kind of Jews” or “bad Jews.” This selective solidarity is inherent in Marxism and the “oppressor”-“oppressed” framework—Jews who remain Zionists are reclassified as evil, while those who renounce Zionism are welcomed as morally upright and on the “right side of history.”
With all that said, I do not argue that Islam should be barred from the United States. I do argue, however, that serious problems exist. A recent Pew Research poll found that 44% of Muslim Americans hold favorable views of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. That figure is unacceptable. It is a bleak commentary on our moment in time that opposition to Hamas, groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or to Qatari influence in the U.S., is automatically branded Islamophobic, bigoted, or racist. It is equally concerning that significant numbers of Muslim Americans have aligned themselves with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, a faction that has drifted toward socialist and communist premises. These are clear red lines for me as well.
A Warning Grounded in Experience
Ultimately, my path from hopeful dialogue to this clearer assessment was shaped by accumulated experience, by observable patterns, and by the repeated refusal of too many to confront what stands in plain view. The moment I insisted on supporting Israel or examining Islamist networks with the same scrutiny applied to every other political movement, I discovered how quickly the language of tolerance can be weaponized to enforce silence. Regarding the academy, it once served as the institutional guardian of free inquiry, but it now often functions as its opposite, rewarding conformity and punishing deviation. If we cannot speak honestly about the doctrines, organizations, and demographic trends that challenge liberal democracy, then the Enlightenment project itself becomes a museum piece rather than a living organism.Defending those values requires the courage to apply them universally, without exemption for any progressive cause or interpretation of Islam.
I offer this account as a caution to progressives and to anyone still inclined to overlook the realities mentioned here. At the heart of what is under assault are the Enlightenment values that make free societies possible—individual liberty, freedom of conscience, open debate, and the right to follow evidence wherever it leads. These principles are the operating system of the West itself, not some optional cultural preferences. When any ideology—whether progressive identity politics or political Islam—demands that certain questions be placed off-limits, that certain groups be granted moral immunity, or that criticism itself be redefined as bigotry, those Enlightenment foundations are eroded. My own trajectory illustrates the cost.
