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A poem by Jason D. Hill.

Hey you, please forgive me!

It all started on Thursday, we were dancing and having fun, and come Friday – so much fun all around, seeing friends we haven’t seen in years – we all met to dance and celebrate life. Come Saturday morning, the sun begins to rise, it’s so beautiful as it starts to shine all over everyone. 

We’re dancing and happy, hugging, and some of my friends start to leave. Suddenly, rockets start flying over us, I know this, this is my life -I’m from the South.

But then there are paragliders- I hope nothing happens to them…

Then starts the gunfire – what is going on?

We see the truck coming, paratroopers dressed in foreign uniforms – they are killing everyone. 

They just killed Shay, they killed Adi.. They’re kidnapping that girl, who is sitting there hugging her murdered boyfriend. Suddenly you run to the bushes where I sit and hide, not uttering a sound from my lips. 

You’re in the bush next to me, so close, the cries gush out from within you. A terrorist is right above the bush I’m hiding in and I pray he won’t see me, I pray so hard, something I haven’t done my entire life… God can hear my prayer. 

But you won’t stop crying out loud because with every second, someone gets shot and murdered.

They saw you, they’re dragging you out of the bushes. They’re four and you’re one.

You scream for help.

One of them punches you to silence you, and you try to fight them while looking towards my direction, for me to save you.

But if I step out, we will both get murdered. I want to live!

I sit there silently, they start undressing you!

I’m crying, I feel like I need to scream but a hand silences me! Maybe it’s the hand of God, or I don’t know who…

They turn you on your stomach and they start raping you, one by one.

They turn you around again and they yell at you in English, they want you to see for yourself how they have defeated you. You try to crawl in my direction and I pray for something to happen, for someone to kill them so you can get out alive, but as you crawl towards me and they’re on top of you – the shot comes.

They murdered you, but before they murdered your body they murdered your soul.

I sat there, in the bushes, for hours, I did not come out.

I saw a bottle of water next to you and I was so incredibly thirsty, but I couldn’t bear the thought that I should have saved you, so how can I be so disrespectful and drink your water?

I have reached rock bottom, I can’t live anymore. Your look follows me every single day – in the shower, in my sleep, in my room. I couldn’t go back to work, I wasn’t able to.

I’ve been to your house. I didn’t tell your parents what you’ve been through, but they’ve been told that your body was abused, I was a witness.

I ask for your forgiveness. 

I am coming to you, to the next great world, I promise to save you there and protect you. Please forgive me!

And don’t worry, I left a note for my family telling them how much I love them, and thanking them for the life they gave me. 

My sister is having a baby, I thought about sticking around to get to know my nephew, but I don’t think he should know the uncle that couldn’t save you.

It’s okay, I’ll watch him from above.

Translated from the Hebrew by Hen Mazzig. Originally published in push.il.

“When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.”
—Qur’an 8:12

“If we can, you know… we will take [over America], but in… means that the law allows us [sic]. Here, we’re gonna’ make da‘wah [proselytize Islam] to the people. …[I]f America becomes majority Muslims [sic], then, insh’Allah [Allah willing], we choose to implement Sharia.”
—Imam Dr. Fadi Kablawi,
Sermon to the Masjid as-Sunnah an-Nabawiyah North Miami,
January 26, 2024

In 2011, novelist and Daily Wire wit Andrew Klavan made a video for PJ Media’s now-defunct YouTube arm entitled “How to Behave During an Islamic Massacre.” Klavan’s comedic monologue, part of his satiric “Klavan on the Culture” series, included a pearl of sage counsel: “Holding homicidal Muslims responsible for their savage brutality will only annoy them, and could cause you to be accused of Islamophobia: the irrational fear of being decapitated.”

Nearly a decade and half later, Klavan’s axe block humor is perhaps even more prescient than he intended. With Islam so unapologetically on the march, it would appear that almost every Western society today, broadly speaking, has gone ahead and taken his “advice.”

Truly, in many ways, an ominous normalization of Islamic cultural mores, political influence, and even legal strictures has begun to take root across America and especially Europe. Needless to say, willful blindness to the fact that the non-Muslim world is arguably more Islamic since 2001—not to mention October 7, 2023—is a crucial step on the way to willful headlessness.

The undeniable presence of Sharia (the Islamic legal system) within Western societies is worthy of fear and debate of the same intensity with which they are regularly ridiculed or suppressed. And living under Sharia, however faint the future possibility may be, should be cause for anyone in that condition to wish he or she had been willing to “annoy” its would-be implementors in the past. Yet, provably, the bad news is that, at best, such a future is not a faraway one.

Concern surrounding Islamic cultural, political, and legal influences should be an automatic reaction in the West, but fear of all the now typical insults—so omnipotent yet so meaningless—prevents decent people from expressing their natural apprehensions, let alone of having intelligent debates. And a great many of those apprehensions stem from genuinely altruistic revulsion at how Islam and Sharia treat Muslims themselves, particularly women and children. If that is “bigotry” and “intolerance,” then every compassionate human being should wear those slanders as medals of moral clarity.

Sharia is jihad

Sharia (often translated as “justice”) is the system by which an Islamic society is to be governed and controlled. In Islam, both theology and law come from the all-important Islamic “trilogy”: the Qur’an (believed to be the words of Allah delivered through Muhammad), the Sirah (the “life” or biography of Muhammad), and the Hadith (the many thousands of oral “traditions” preserving Muhammad’s sayings and actions).

Islam, let alone Sharia, cannot be understood without the person of Muhammad. Qur’an 33:21 says that “Indeed, in the Messenger of Allah you have an excellent example for whoever has hope in Allah and the Last Day, and remembers Allah often.” This—buttressed by 90 other verses—is understood to mean that Muhammad is the perfect example of conduct for every Muslim. Combined, the Sirah and Hadith form what is called the Sunnah (“way” or “path”) of Muhammad. Given that Muhammad was a warlord who ordered no fewer than 44 assassinations of his enemies, first consummated his marriage to his “favorite” wife A’ishah when she was nine (and still playing with dolls), rid Arabia of its Jews by expulsion and massacre, and embarked on at least 61 acts of jihad in the final decade of his life, upholding such a man as an “excellent example” to be imitated is more than worrying. And since the Sharia is a summation of Qur’an and Sunnah—of which about a third concerns jihad—jihad itself is an integral, load-bearing pillar of the Sharia, if not nearly fungible with it. Sharia, therefore, is the application of Muhammad’s jihadist example to everyday life.

Furthermore, as moderately well known today, the Sharia allows for amputation as punishment for theft; the lashing and stoning of adulteresses (some falsely accused); execution or imprisonment of rape victims (rape being classified as “adultery”); rape victims requiring four male witnesses as proof; execution of homosexuals; clitorectomy; a woman’s legal testimony being worth half of a man’s; wife beating; child marriage; forced veiling; chattel slavery; execution for apostasy; execution for mocking Muhammad; and more. (The primary sources for each of these practices are Sunan an-Nasa’i 4873; Sahih Muslim 1690-A; 1690-C; Qur’an 24:13; 15:74; Muslim 349; Qur’an 2:282; 4:34; 65:4; 24:31; Muslim 1602; an-Nasa’i 305; and Qur’an 9:61 respectively.) It goes without saying that such customs are universally and rightly illegal in the civilized world.

Still, one of the most important and surprising aspects of Islam is that the non-Muslim, the Kafir, is a subject of supreme doctrinal importance within its foundational texts. In fact, when combined, no less than 51% of the core Islamic texts—Qur’an (64%), Sirah (81%), and the sahih (“authentic”) Hadith collection of Muhammad al-Bukhari (37%)—is devoted to non-Muslims. This was true in pre-modern times and it remains true now. While—contrary to all hysteria—Jewish law (Halakhah) does not sanction subjugation or degradation of non-Jews, and does not apply to anyone outside the Jewish people, Sharia, by contrast, does apply to non-Muslims.

Even more disturbing is that Islam does not actually possess a version of what Christians call the “Golden Rule.” Instead of what could be called “symmetrical” ethics, Islamic morality is dualistic: one set of ethics apply to Muslims, another to the Kafir. While, for instance, the Qur’an (3:110) calls Muslims “the best nation produced [as an example] for mankind,” thus due mutual respect within the group (see 48:29), the Kafir, on the other hand, can be freely hated (40:35); mocked (83:34); plotted against (86:15–17); terrorized and beheaded (8:12); murdered “wherever you overtake them” (4:91); crucified (5:33); fought, subjugated, and extorted (9:29); taken hostage (47:4); labeled “unclean” (9:28); taken and “possess[ed]” as a sexual slave (4:24); damned as “the worst of creatures” who will abide “in the fire of Hell” (98:6); and deceived (Bukhari 3029, 4037). What’s more, Muhammad’s followers—as justified by Qur’an 8:39, 9:33, 48:28, and 61:9—are obligated to make Islam the religion of the entire world. Therefore, Sharia colonialism is a form of jihad.

Sharia is here

All the more alarming is the fact that, in varying degrees, Sharia exists and is being normalized in Western society. Throughout America, Europe, and the Anglosphere, Islamic legal and cultural practices have been slowly—sometimes even quickly—accepted with a minimum of pushback.

Crucially, jihad is not necessarily violent, with there being four types: of money, speech, writing, and of the sword. Jihad is not just physical conflict but civilizational war, utilizing all aspects of civilization in order to defeat the Kafir. Thus, silent, creeping Sharia is a far more dangerous mechanism of Islamic colonialism than violent terrorism.

There are four stages of what might be called “Islamization.” The first, Dar al-Suh (“House of Treaty”) implies a land strong enough to keep Islam out—thus a people with whom Muslims, in a militarily inferior status, must sign a treaty of mutual boundaries. The second is Dar al-Harb (“House of War”), in which Muslims make war upon weakened non-Muslim lands through immigration, “communal” demands, then violent conquest; finally, with their population past a critical a point, they begin jihad on a constant basis—jihad which can be neither criticized nor punished. The third is Dar as-Islam (“House of Islam”): Islam has conquered, and the Kafir vanquished.

By far the most affected Western venue is Europe, which—though India and Bangladesh arguably are much worse—has seen the influx of millions of Muslim immigrants and migrants within the last decade alone. Sharia, however, has been operational there for decades, flourishing in the shadows long before non-Muslims managed to document it. Europe and India are nearing the sunset of the second stage of jihad, America its blinding dawn.

Further, it cannot be stressed enough that incidences of Sharia colonization are in far too great a supply to permit investigation of three continents in fewer words than Mein Kampf. Therefore, a highly abridged selection of British and American tribulations alone are sufficient for illustration.

U.K.

In England, Sharia seems to be so deeply engrained in what genuinely was once one of the greatest civilizations in human history that it is mostly received with ignorant “tolerance” or learned apathy. While violent jihad has rocked the country on an ever increasing basis since the 7/7 massacres of 2005, it is irrelevant in comparison to what former comedian and Internet polemicist Pat Condell once summarized as “cultural terrorism.” This terrorism—lubricated by large slates of society propagandized with artificial guilt over the British Empire’s supposed savagery, and propagandists who themselves wish to gain power from the chaos—has slowly wormed its way through the foundations of decent, post-racial Britishness to a possibly irreversible degree.

Rape gangs

For many years, gangs of Muslim men groomed, raped, and trafficked countless underage girls in cities like Oldham, Oxford, Rochdale, Rotherham, and Telford, with the full knowledge of the police, social workers, the Blair government, and the BBC, who did nothing (until it was far too late at best).

In one case, rapist Bannaras Hussain was revealed at trial to have sat in a parking lot adjacent to the local police station while forcing one of his child sex slaves, sitting in the passenger seat, to administer a sexual act. “When, shortly afterwards,” counsel for the prosecution told the press, “a police car pulled up alongside them and asked what was going on,” Hussain truthfully told the officer what he was enjoying, and “The police car drove off.” For his part, Hussain’s fellow rapist brother Arshid “fathered” a child with a 14-year-old girl named Sammy Woodhouse. A child to whom a (non-Sharia) court later awarded Mr. Hussain visitation rights.

As regards the police and social workers who abandoned these untold thousands of children, the BBC reported (belatedly) that such dereliction of responsibility stemmed from fear “that if they pursued groups of non-white offenders they might be accused of racism.” Ironically, the British media, in order to conceal the rapists’ religion, resorted (and still resort) to an act of cheap racism: namely, by referring to such criminals as “Asians.” Thereby they smeared and continue to smear millions of law-abiding Hindu and Sikh Britons who happen to look similar in order to avoid being called racist.

Sharia courts

Today, dozens of Sharia courts exist throughout the United Kingdom, one estimate being “85 at least” since 1982. The courts’ existence is often played down with reference to their role being limited to “family disputes,” but, given the maltreatment of women and children allowed under the Sharia, this is no comfort at all. Some British mosques, too, according to (of all things) The New York Times, are in the habit of “offering Shariah councils for family matters” under the table.

In response to years of bubbling controversary, in 2016, the British government launched an official inquiry into the courts, brought on by rumors that “some sharia councils may be working in a discriminatory and unacceptable way… contrary to the teachings of Islam.” Well-documented evidence submitted to the tribunal confirmed that the Sharia courts ruled in favor of imprisoning women who had been raped and beaten within forced marriages. This included news coverage from 2008 exposing a “Muslim Arbitrational Tribunal” as having “worked ‘in tandem’ with police investigations” in six cases of serious domestic violence, resulting in all six cases being withdrawn. This point alone casts considerable doubt upon any protestation that these courts had operated without official knowledge or good will.

Disgracefully, however, the board of inquiry included two Islamic scholars as advisors, one of whom, in 2024, signed a petition—along with the “UK Board of Shariah Councils”’ vice chair—demanding the new Labour government “stop the indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians.” The inquiry’s final report, published in the winter of 2018, boasts a section called “Evidence of bad practice” (p. 16), which, among its 13 bullet points, lists none of the abuses documented in testimony or in the media. One bullet point could not even be spared for the revelation that the courts sanction clitorectomy, a crime committed regularly for many years within Muslim communities despite being illegal since 1985 and carrying a minimum 14-year sentence.

Despite the assault against justice they constitute, major institutions have apparently accepted these courts and tribunals as an integral part of British society. For example, in 2021, Bristol University Press published a book about Cohabitation and Religious Marriage—distributed online by Cambridge University Press—containing an essay praising the Sharia courts. Bristol University, incidentally, offers a Sharia-compliant loan program for Muslim students.

Even an “award-winning,” female-led firm of solicitors in Manchester, voted the “UK’s Number One” by The Times, provides advice on “Divorce[,] Sharia Law[,] and your legal rights in the UK.” This follows the trend, given that, in 2022, the U.K. Law Society appointed a Muslim as its president, and a DEI protocol called the “Muslim Employment Charter,” which, news coverage of it says, is meant “to make law firms more Muslim-friendly,” has “a major international law firm onboard.” Undergirding that, a 2016 poll showed that 40% of British Muslims supported “implementation of elements of Sharia law,” holding steady from a 2010 poll—one which also revealed that a third of British Muslim students supported killing in the name of Islam.

Halal meat

Like Judaism, Islam maintains specific requirements for meat preparation, but, unlike Jews, some Muslims have been demanding that Islamic dietary practices be made the norm for all, rather than the exception.

In 2024, the Cowbridge Comprehensive School in Wales announced that it would serve only halal-slaughtered meat in its cafeteria. Despite the fact that only 0.2% of the local population is Muslim, the school went ahead with this gastronomic alteration “in response to community needs.” As far back as 2013, The Guardian found that “Three-quarters of schools under Waltham Forest Council control [in outer London] serve only Halal meat.”

Additionally, school food handlers have been fired for serving non-halal meat to Muslim children, and there is evidence that Islamic food producers (as an example of financial jihad) use their profits to support Hamas.

U.S.

America’s position on the road towards Islam dislodging constitutional government is certainly well behind the U.K., but the evidence shows that the seeds have been sown. The same refusal to, in Condell’s words, “name the poison” which exists in England prevails in America, paving the way for far worse to come.

Muslim Brotherhood

Founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna (Egyptian Nazi sympathizer and leader of anti-Jewish riots) to spread the rule of Islam across the globe, the Muslim Brotherhood has operated all but freely within the United States for decades.

In 2004, the FBI discovered a Brotherhood manifesto entitled “An Explanatory Memorandum: On the Strategic Goal for the Group In North America.” The chilling document, dated May 22, 1991, proclaimed that the Brotherhood’s take on the American Dream was

a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

That sentence—alluding to Qur’an 9:33’s command to make “the religion of truth to manifest… over all religion”—also sums up the Brotherhood’s strategy for defeating the American way of life. Through quiet subversion and clever deception; through inviting Americans, “by their hands,” to dismantle American civilization for them; through the Sharia doctrine of taqiyah, the concept of deception and propaganda in the furtherance of Islam. This has chiefly been done by abusing the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom and Americans’ rightful disdain for bigotry in order to seek that welcoming culture’s elimination. Through use of harmless sounding front-groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and Muslim Students’ Association (MSA), the Brotherhood has worked tirelessly and successfully to further its destructive aims within the framework of American civic life.

Perhaps the most powerful front-group is CAIR, a lawfare organization which regularly libels good-faith critics of jihad and Sharia as guilty of “Islamophobia” and “hate.” In 2024, for example, its Oklahoma branch applauded the defeat of a state bill banning Sharia—which provably oppresses Muslims—because, contrary to the primary source evidence, “Sharia law teaches tolerance and respect for religious diversity.”

CAIR has good reason to be so combative and aggressively dishonest, since, during the infamous 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial, it was exposed as the Brotherhood’s foremost America-based Hamas money-laundering operation. CAIR’s leader, Nihad Awad, has openly said that “I am in support of the Hamas movement”—itself a Brotherhood off-shoot. And, despite the FBI severing ties with them in 2009, Awad and CAIR enjoyed the Obama DOJ’s protection, and even advised the Biden White House on the subject of “Islamophobia.” It was only disavowed at the presidential level in 2023 after Awad said that October 7 made him “happy.”

The MSA, too, wields immense power as the mother organization of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the nationwide campus mafia which terrorizes Jewish college students. SJP and its allies managed to devote roughly the entire 2023 and ’24 academic year to ferocious pro-Hamas protests, while intimidated yet supportive administrators enabled and protected it. The MSA also has a da‘wah (proselytism) wing, which attempts to convert college students to Islam, and is involved in trying to make campuses more “Ramadan-friendly.” Administrators should know that—according to the example of Muhammad—Ramadhan is not just an Islamic holiday but a month-long spree of jihad in which hundreds of innocent people are killed every year, as those who kill during it are sure to enter Paradise. And MSA or SJP members see victories as Islamic victories. Particularly in the context of anti-Semitic BDS resolutions passed through student governments, MSA affiliates have celebrated with chants of Allahu akbar! and jubilant social media posts such as “Hamas & Shariah have taken over UC Davis.” (The day after that UC Davis resolution passed, the Jewish campus fraternity was vandalized with swastikas.) During the 2024 pro-Hamas protests, Muslim students at Columbia and UCLA who were part of the illegal encampments held prayer ceremonies as a visible gesture of victory.

And while government has been nearly unable to react to the deafening storm of anti-Jewish campus jihad, it has managed to place the Muslim Brotherhood in a position to influence religious freedom policy (the perfect domain of Sharia normalization). In 2024, the Biden administration announced the appointment of Mohamed Elsanousi, a longtime ISNA member, to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Elsanousi must be fully aware that almost nobody in government knows anything about the Brotherhood’s network, since he proudly includes his 12 years as a senior member of ISNA in his official online bio. A bio which also boasts of a bachelor’s degree in “Sharia and Law” from the International Islamic University in Pakistan.

Mosques

As terrorism expert Steve Emerson’s award-winning 1994 film Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America documented a generation ago, throughout the 1980s and beyond, Brotherhood operatives regularly fundraised for overseas jihad in mosques and at conferences across the country. Some keynote speakers—such as al-Qa‘idah co-founder Abdullah Azzam—were active terrorists on leave from the Afghan, Chechen, and Israeli theaters. These coincided with the growth of Usamah bin Laden’s recruitment and fundraising network, which eventually spread to 35 countries worldwide, as well as a minimum of 38 American cities.

It is known today that many individuals tied directly to 9/11, and the major jihad episodes prior to it, were, from both within and abroad, associated with the Masjid al-Farooq in Brooklyn. The mosque, founded in 1976, was a major fundraising center for al-Qa‘idah and Hamas going back to the 1980s, but none of this was fully understood prior to 2001. Despite everything discovered after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and even 9/11, the mosque’s brightly colored façade still graces Brooklyn with open doors.

This inability on the part of government and law enforcement to investigate mosques has undoubtedly resulted in unnecessary confusion, not to mention human carnage. One of the most egregious examples is the case of the Islamic Society of Boston, founded in 1981 by convicted terrorist conspirator Abdulrahman Alamoudi, with the late Brotherhood “spiritual leader” Yusuf al-Qaradhawi as a board member. Since then, the ISB and its ISNA-owned “mega-mosque” off-shoot, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, have produced 14 (known) associates, former members, and students who are at large, dead, in prison, or have been deported for involvement in terrorism—including the Boston Marathon bombers. It was this mosque which, in 2010, asked a field trip group of local high school students to participate in Islamic noontime prayers.

Local researchers formally briefed the FBI (at its request) about the mosque as far back as 2009, detailing its terrorist connections and vile curriculum, including instructions on wife-beating. But, at a congressional hearing two months after the Marathon bombing, FBI director Robert Mueller claimed that he knew nothing about the mosque’s leadership or conduct.

The Qur’an

The free speech and establishment clauses of the First Amendment allow Americans to criticize or mock any religious text, but, in the eyes of the U.S. government, the Qur’an has been off limits for years. America is still a mostly Christian country, but disrespect shown towards the Christian Bible is never nearly as controversial as any slight to the Qur’an’s dignity.

In 2005, a series of guidelines were issued for personnel serving at Guantánamo, requiring those guarding terrorists to wear “[c]lean gloves” if a copy of the Qur’an must be touched, and to treat it “as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art.” When an obscure, attention-seeking Florida pastor put the Qur’an on “trial” and burned it in 2011, President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and General David Petraeus vigorously condemned the burning of the “holy Qur’an.” Because Muslims in Afghanistan rioted and murdered at least 14 people in response to the pastor’s actions, the U.S. government chose to elevate a bound sheaf of paper over Americans’ First Amendment rights to be peacefully crude or offensive.

In the course of Operation Enduring Freedom, American leaders chose to transplant Afghan morality to America—arguably placing Qur’an 9:33 over the Constitution they swore to uphold, protect, and defend.

A fitting post-script is that, in the midst of the Biden administration’s catastrophic 2021 pull-out from Afghanistan, CNN claimed that a Navy veteran, Zachary Young, had somehow committed a crime in selflessly rescuing women and children from the clutches of the victorious Taliban. Nearly three years later, in its defense against Young’s well-deserved $1 billion defamation suit, CNN’s legal team cited the fact that the Taliban has “implemented Sharia law, banning women from leaving the country” as reason for their innocence.

As Klavan admonishes: “With just a little intellectual dishonesty and some unprincipled sniveling, we can put an end to Islamic slaughters peacefully by eliminating their cause: our freedom.”

“Islamophobia”: a weapon of abusive psychological warfare

The term “gaslighting” will appear constantly in any serious abuse counselor’s materials, but the easiest way for an abuse counselor to endure relentless public abuse is to admit the truth that “Islamophobia” itself is the most powerful form of socio-political gaslighting in recent history. It is a method for convincing good people to doubt objective moral reasoning. Reasoning which makes it clear that Islam, both in theory and practice, suffers from severe moral inadequacies, and that having the freedom to condemn injustice wherever it may be includes within Islam. There is nothing irrational, for example, about fearing courts which could, can, and do refuse a woman’s plea for a divorce on grounds of physical cruelty.

Additionally, Marxists traveling under the fake passport stamped “liberal”—who watch The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopic fantasy of Christian misogyny, and rejoiced at Obergefell v. Hodges—consistently denounce anyone who criticizes evil when it comes from Islam. The Handmaid’s Tale very nicely captures Islamo-Nazi-occupied Iran—where 184,000 girls under the age of 15 were “married” between 2017 and 2022—and Obergefell would never exactly make it to the Supreme Court of Afghanistan, but, even so, people who claim that all cultural values are equal are never so polite to their own. Accusing the truly liberal of “racism” for their concerns is not only racist against Muslims—making them, like toddlers, beneath honest, well-intentioned moral criticism—it also is factually absurd. If Islam were a “race,” then there would not be Muslims of every color—including Muslims who own African slaves. Islam and Sharia are ideas, and, as Sam Harris said famously on Real Time with Bill Maher in 2014, “We have to be able to criticize bad ideas… and… Islam, at the moment, is the motherload of bad ideas.”

The word “Islamophobia” itself has drunk much ink in recent decades—some deserved, most not—and, frankly, should have died of thirst in the choking ash of 9/11. Despite masquerading as a rhetorical air raid shelter for a persecuted minority, it is known to have been first popularized in 1989 following British Muslim pressure groups’ support for Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa for the murder of Salman Rushdie. So, too, given that the cutting edge of British society scandalously sided with the world’s first true Islamic terrorist state against a mild-mannered immigrant novelist, its very origins indicate that Muslims in the West were (and are) hardly as persecuted as advertised.

Identically to interpersonal abuse, the only cure for gaslighting, as for “Islamophobia,” is to reject it. “Islamophobia” is as real as waiters’ fear of the booth fairy, and civilized people must likewise disown it, condemn it, and drown it in suitably abusive humor.

“When you get to the stage where anyone criticizing your beliefs is automatically deemed to have a mental illness,” to quote Condell once more, “that is a sure sign of mental illness. It’s also cultural terrorism.”

Is hope worth our time?

The Western world must understand that it is worth more than the sum of its shortcomings. It is built upon the ideas of individual liberty, God-given dignity, and personal responsibility. Islam, sadly, is not compatible with these values, espousing diametrically opposing ones.

It must be restated that opposition to Sharia is not only an act of Western self-interest, but of empathy. Islamic legal and cultural practices, even now, harm Muslims far more than non-Muslims. It is Muslim women and children who are beaten and raped, dwarfing the number of non-Muslims subjected to the same crimes. Those who express moral disapproval of Sharia do so because Muslim suffering at the present moment irks them as much as their own in the coming years.

Finally, Islam, like the West, despite everything, may be in trouble, too. Even in the face of its vigorous birth rate, Islam’s rate of conversion is anemic. What’s more, its apostasy rate is massive, enough for prominent imams to express public bewilderment—one calling it an “avalanche.” Ex-Muslims are now prominent on YouTube and social media, and their following, while dwarfed and subject to Internet censorship, is reliably growing.

Like Muhammad’s following before them, theirs can be neither ignored nor discounted. Their knowledge and courage may be part of a blind, suicidal West’s last chance for survival—for they, unlike us, know that Andrew Klavan’s “advice” was a joke.

Sharia is not a system which any Western person would—even should—perceive as morally recognizable.

The fear of being labeled as “Islamophobic” has caused far too many people to avoid examining the problems that come with normalizing Sharia.

A poem by Darren Glick

Pakistan is in the news again with horrifyingly brutal murders of people over allegations of “blasphemy.”

A Pakistani man who was visiting the country’s Swat Valley as a tourist on June 20 was accused of blasphemy. On such hearsay, he was beaten to death, then his body was set on fire by an angry Muslim mob.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported:

The mob severely beat the man, identified as a resident of Punjab Province, and dragged his burning naked body through the streets… Swat police chief Zahid Ullah said police officers initially rescued the man from the people who attacked him and sheltered him at a police station in Madian.

…[T]he mob broke down the gate of the police station and entered the building. They then poured gasoline on the man and set him on fire before dragging his lifeless body as they continued to beat him.

The rioters also burned three police cars and set fire to the police station, the journalist said. The incident started when a number of people accused the man of having burned pages of the Koran in his bag and started a fight with him. When it was announced through mosque loudspeakers that a “blasphemer” had been rescued by police, a crowd converged on the police station.

Another horrific lynching captured on camera took place on a university campus in Pakistan. The victim was Mashal Khan, a university student who described himself as a “humanist” and “liberal.” He was lynched by an angry Muslim mob on the premises of his university, the Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, in 2017 over allegations of “posting blasphemous content online.” His attackers were his classmates and university employees. 

Khan was a successful student of journalism and debated observant Muslims at university over Islam and religion. The debates, however, were increasingly followed by threats. A friend of Khan’s who spoke to the BBC said that Muslims at the university threatened Khan because they thought he was an atheist or agnostic and they thought he could influence other students. In televised comments, Khan criticized his university for its alleged corruption. After the murder, Pakistani police confirmed that Khan did not commit any “blasphemous offense.”

A retired Pakistani professor, whose son incited violence against Khan by accusing him of blasphemy, told the BBC:

“Mashal was committing blasphemy. According to the law, nobody should commit blasphemy. Otherwise, he will be hanged… Mashal is responsible for his own death. If my son commits blasphemy and somebody kills him, he is responsible for this too.”

Fahim Alam Khan, a journalism student, told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal:

“When I reached the dorm, I saw Mashal had been badly beaten. They had ripped his clothes off and were hitting him with stones, clay pots, sticks, rods—anything they could get their hands on,” he recalled. “Then they kicked his bloodied, lifeless body down the stairs.”

Nirma Khan, a student, said her peers wouldn’t dare report any teacher for misconduct or incompetence. 

“Any kind of criticism, particularly questions about what happened to Mashal Khan, are off-limits,” she said. “The families of many of my female friends refused to let them return to the campus after the killing.”

Nazia Khan, another student, said the attack brought an end to freedom of expression.  

“Everyone is afraid of being accused of blasphemy,” she told Radio Mashaal. “The narrative some religious fanatics constructed was so effective that even some of Mashal Khan’s supporters distanced themselves from him.”

Ziaullah Hamdarad, a professor of journalism, paid a price for standing up for the truth. Court testimony would absolve Khan of the blasphemy charges, but the threats that followed forced Hamdarad to leave Pakistan. He moved to the United Kingdom and continued his career there.

“Khan’s brutal murder stirred up so much fear that 99 percent of teachers remained silent after his murder,” he told Radio Mashaal. “They should have denounced his murder and gone to his house to offer their condolences.”

The fear was so pervasive that scores of students and faculty members refused to talk with Radio Mashaal, citing concerns they would be targeted. Interviews with parents, students, and faculty have suggested that any mention of Khan’s murder—along with any debate, discussion, or freedom of expression over sensitive issues—remains off-limits even years after Khan was absolved of blasphemy.

Ahsanullah Zaryan, a poet and former student, said religion could not be discussed in any form at the university. He said that while studying Pashto literature, he faced a backlash after writing a verse that criticized those who utilized religion for personal gain.

“The pushback forced me to remove the verse from my poem,” he said. “It takes a great deal of courage to discuss any controversy after Khan’s killing. Most of us just keep silent when we sense our views might be labeled as controversial.”

According to Islamic scriptures, both blasphemy and apostasy are crimes punishable by death. The website “The Religion of Peace” explains:

When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed. There is no indemnity for killing an apostate (since it is killing someone who deserves to die). Acts that define “leaving Islam” and being subject to execution include:

• to intend to commit unbelief, even if in the future
• to deny the existence of Allah… or any of his attributes
• to be sarcastic about Allah’s name, his command, his interdiction… or his threat
• to deny any verse of the Quran
• to mockingly say, “I don’t know what faith is”
• to believe that things in themselves or by their own nature have any causal influence independent of the will of Allah.

The deadly, Islamic teachings regarding “blasphemy” and apostasy are also threatening the security and free speech of Western nations.

In 2006, for instance, tens of thousands gathered throughout the Muslim world—burning European embassies, issuing threats, and taking hostages—in protest over 12 caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper.

Author Sam Harris writes:

It is time we recognized—and obliged the Muslim world to recognize—that “Muslim extremism” is not extreme among Muslims. Mainstream Islam itself represents an extremist rejection of intellectual honesty, gender equality, secular politics and genuine pluralism. The truth about Islam is as politically incorrect as it is terrifying: Islam is all fringe and no center…

Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe. Throughout the E.U., Muslim immigrants often show little inclination to acquire the secular and civil values of their host countries, and yet exploit these values to the utmost—demanding tolerance for their backwardness, their misogyny, their anti-Semitism, and the genocidal hatred that is regularly preached in their mosques. Political correctness and fears of racism have rendered many secular Europeans incapable of opposing the terrifying religious commitments of the extremists in their midst. 

In an effort to appease the lunatic furor arising in the Muslim world in response to the publication of the Danish cartoons, many Western leaders have offered apologies for exercising the very freedoms that are constitutive of civil society in the 21st century. The U.S. and British governments have chastised Denmark and the other countries that published the cartoons for privileging freedom of speech over religious sensitivity. It is not often that one sees the most powerful countries on Earth achieve new depths of weakness, moral exhaustion and geopolitical stupidity with a single gesture. This was appeasement at its most abject.

The same people who burn down streets and kill people over a few cartoons are silent or even supportive when their Muslim brothers elsewhere kidnap, rape, and beheaded innocent victims. There are almost no Muslim objections to these atrocities because they are committed to advance the cause of Islam.

“That Islam is a ‘peaceful religion hijacked by extremists, is a dangerous fallacy,” writes Harris and asks a significant question that urgently awaits an answer: “How should the West proceed its dialogue with the Muslim world?”

Euphemisms, political correctness, cowardice, silence, or appeasement have proven ineffective. Instead, they empower Islamic fanatics not only in Pakistan, but also in Europe. 

Despite Pakistan committing barbaric crimes, the country remains the EU’s second biggest trading partner and enjoys a smooth diplomatic relationship with the EU executive without sanctions or boycotts.

The West’s confusion over Islam, as well as the weakening of its own Judeo-Christian faith and heritage is naturally playing into the hands of Islamists. Islamic fanaticism is constantly strengthening worldwide. It’s high time Western nations put values and principles first over misguided strategic interests to protect themselves from the barbarity that the world often witnesses in Pakistan and other Islamic nations.

Dmitri Shufutinsky argues that Islamists and Marxists have conquered social movements in the US and the West, using them as vehicles to promote their ideologies and undermine Western democracy. He calls for a return to focused social movements that avoid being co-opted by unrelated causes.

“Islam is one of three Abrahamic faiths and has more in common with Judaism and Christianity than not.”

For the first half of my life, I believed this to be true and would have accused anyone who said differently of xenophobia (the term “Islamophobia” had yet to be invented). My belief was that the god Muhammad wrote so much about is also the G-d of Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yakov. And my stock response to anyone who tried to explain that Islam is, in fact, hostile to Judaism was: How can that be? The patriarchs are no less important to Muslims than they are to Torah observant Jews, la? 

I said and believed these things because I had not yet been exposed to the supremacist beliefs that form the core of Islam. Not “radical Islam,” but Islam as it can be readily understood by anyone who reads the Qur’an word for word and is aware of how those words have been put into practice. Not just during the 7^th century, but during every century since then. Those supremacist beliefs do not allow for the kind of sincere dialogue that the interfaith movement has been advocating for since 9/11 (even if there are a handful moderate clerics who might want that dialogue to bear fruit), and the lip service paid to it by the likes of CAIR (which has been placed on the UAE’s list of organizations linked to terrorism due to it being an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood) only serves to normalize the mistaken belief that the West would not be in conflict with the Muslim world if it had dealt more fairly with that world in the aftermath of the fall of the Ottoman Empire (the last form of the Islamic Empire). Had that empire not been defeated, it would have continued its policy of expansion and the Islamization of all that it expanded into. But because the Muslim world lost its empire and all the hard power that it made possible, it came to rely on a softer approach to achieving the primary goal of Islam.

The secular, post-imperial reality that now defines the West offends the Islamist and, for Muslims who live in the West and embrace Sharia, the answer to the problem presented by that reality is to form communities that are at least partially beyond the reach of Western civil society. In just two decades, a Muslim enclave in Dearborn, MI, became a supermajority that is capable of passing Shariah-based ordinances, like the one that forbade Christian evangelists from preaching in public lest their words reach the ears of a Muslim in violation of Islamic law. 

In East London, an even larger Muslim majority has established a network of some 89 Shariah councils that decide any and every legal issue that would normally be decided in a court of British law. This may not seem as dramatic as a once American city thumbing its nose at the U.S. Constitution, but the real-world effect of this alternative and opaque system of law is that it can and does deprive the most vulnerable members of East London’s Muslim community of their rights under British law. Conflicts of interest in a community that is defined by equal measures of dependence (women are largely dependent upon men unless they belong to a subset of posh, upwardly mobile Muslim families) and interdependence (many Muslim families are linked or related in more than one way) are just as inevitable. All of this results in a form of segregation that should be given at least some of the attention that is directed toward “institutional discrimination,” “systemic racism,” and the like.

It should also be acknowledged that Dearborn and Islamic London, which have long supported Hamas and Hezbollah, have something other than a cleaving to Shariah in common: both commemorate Ashoura and march in the thousands to remind themselves of the death of their prophet’s grandson at the hands of his enemies, the Umayyads. Once a minor day in the Shi’a calendar, Ashoura was reimagined by the Ayatollahs of Iran to feature messaging that parallels the “imperialist West” with the Umayyads and those who pursue jihad (terrorism) with Husain Ibn Ali, the martyred grandson of Islam’s originator. According to Avril Haines, U.S. Director of National Intelligence, U.S. intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.” 

Ashoura, as it is now popularly commemorated in Dearborn and East London is, in every way, an export of the Iranian regime and a near exact replica of the anti-American and anti-Israel Ashoura staged in Tehran on the first day of the Islamic calendar. And because Shariah is a wedge against assimilation or bridging tradition with secular and democratic values, it is no coincidence that this latest Iranian propaganda effort has been hugely successful in Dearborn and London. And because the objective of this propaganda effort is to spread and intensify anti-Western animus among and in Muslims living in the West, that propaganda effort taken together with Sharia as it is allowed to be put into action in the West should be considered an existential threat to the internal security of any country that has already experienced an Islamist terrorist attack, homegrown or otherwise. 

It should be said in no uncertain terms that the average Muslim is not to be considered an enemy of the West. For it is written, “Let sin be finished from the earth, and evil be no more. My soul will bless God, Hallelujah!” (Tehillim 104:35) These words should inspire us to separate, in so far as possible, the bad ideology from the ideologically possessed and target what possesses them. This dovetails with the Christian verse “Because your fight has not been with flesh and blood, but with Principalities, The Rulers and The Powers of this dark world and with wicked spirits which are under Heaven.” (Ephesians 6.12)

As poetic as these words may sound, they tell us how to fight an enemy that acts through those who will not be aware that they are little more than avatars and disposable vessels. And when caught in a system that limits who and what they might become, they may be hard pressed to imagine a better way and embrace a God who never commanded anyone to conquer the world and place it under the dominion of just one faith. 

The best weapon against any bad idea is a better one and the good things that come from translating it into action. So, when those loyal to the Iranian regime or any Islamist entity spread hatred that is meant to incite violence against Jews, Israel, and the West, we must love ourselves and our way of life in ways that offend and even shock the hateful. Above all else, we must counter their false sense of primacy with the light of civilization. That light is cast by the U.S. Constitution and those who stand by it as much as it is by Britons who have not yet traded their heritage for a place in the post-national order that the new ruling class has been using mass immigration and social displacement to bring about. But this light is cast best by Torah, which commands us to love both truth and peace, but to love the truth best (Zechariah 8) no matter where the truth takes us.

Islam is a religion that insists on global adoption of its laws and customs, even in non-Islamic countries.

One of the most enduring questions Jews and non-Jews have asked for centuries is why do Jews continue to overachieve in every professional, intellectual, and artistic field?

The answer can be found in just three Aramaic words: Dina d’malchuta dina. Or in English: “The law of the kingdom is the law.”

The phrase is actually an edict Jews have been admonished to uphold as far back as the time of the prophet Nehemiah in the fifth century B.C.E. It basically means that when Jews live outside of Israel and under non-Jewish sovereignty, they must adhere to the secular laws of those non-Jewish countries with the same loyalty as Jewish religious law.

Nehemiah gave this advice in Hebrew to the original diaspora communities exiled to Babylonia, but it was the rabbis of the period after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. who fleshed out the concept and passed it down to their rabbinic heirs from the period of the Talmud all the way through the 20th century.

From a logistical point of view, one can see the wisdom of this policy. Without Jewish sovereignty, the best way to avoid chaos throughout the Jewish world was to find the non-Jewish nations where Jews could thrive as loyal residents of those nations, if not as full citizens.

Beyond the basic survival mentality of dina d’malchuta dina, there are also just the organizational advantages to consider. As Jews spread out further and further across the globe over the centuries, they didn’t always bring with them a sufficient number of rabbis to answer their communal questions or adjudicate disputes. The often distantly removed rabbis wisely abdicated much of their authority on more secular aspects of life to the non-Jewish  leaders of the increasingly further flung areas where Jews were settling.

But here come two essential questions: what does dina d’malchuta dina have to do with Jewish achievement? And why have Muslim communities, which have so vigorously rejected a similar code of basic conduct by insisting on spreading Sharia law, regressed so much by comparison?

To start the process of answering these questions, we must first examine the prevailing explanations for the outsized Jewish achievement in modern world history.

There are a number of theories, but the consensus usually hovers around the idea that the Jewish tradition and requirement of education and lifelong study is the key. Education is the key to success, we’re (rightly) always told, and there’s certainly plenty of evidence for that as long as you don’t confine your definition of “education” to formal book or school learning.

Some of the purveyors of this idea are aware that the rabbis substituted pre-rabbinic Judaism’s focus on sacrifices and Temple rituals with the philosophy that Jews must all strive to study the Torah day and night. Naturally, this requirement produced a highly literate people who upheld a tradition of intellectual development, regardless of how religiously observant individual generations remained over time.

But respect for education and the edict to study Torah day and night can’t possibly be the reason why Jews have simultaneously produced great rabbinic scholars, scientists, philosophers, comedians, technical wizards, and filmmakers.

To achieve all that, you need not only the cherishing of education but a strong tradition of intellectual and cultural exchange between people inside and outside of your community.

Why is this important? Because, throughout human history, there has been no better catalyst for advancement than the exchange of ideas among people. The evidence for this is infinite, but the history of China is perhaps the best macro-geographic example.

Chinese civilization was centuries ahead of Europe and even the Middle East in ancient times, but began a steady decline starting when systematic construction of the Great Wall began in the 15th century during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). After that time, China’s increasing isolation from its neighboring traders and scholars slowly put that country into an intellectual and cultural form of stasis. For example, at exactly the same time the Renaissance began to flower in Florence, China had the largest merchant fleet in the world, whose ports of call stretched from Japan and Indonesia to East Africa. But, in 1434, the emperor Zhu Zhanji banned outbound overseas trade—partially because the government could not exercise absolute control over it. By the time of the Modern Age in Europe—though the Forbidden City was as wealthy and powerful as it had ever been—China was one of the most backward nations on earth.

Now, after fewer than 100 years of renewed full interaction with the rest of the world—and some would say that interaction has consisted mostly of industrial piracy and plagiarism—China is again one of the world’s most modern technological powers, and that’s despite its lack of any modernity in its totalitarian political environment.

Dina d’malchuta dina forced Jews to embrace a cross-cultural, international, and even interfaith openness and awareness that we wouldn’t necessarily have adopted without it.

The awareness aspect was how it started: How can Jews faithfully follow the secular laws of the land if they aren’t even informed about what those laws are? Right away, this created a more engaged Jewish community wherever they lived across history. That increased awareness has almost always led to an evolving level of engagement, depending on the extent of human and political rights Jews have enjoyed in different societies over time.

Inevitably, Jews of all religious levels of observance have eventually felt compelled to weigh in on the laws and other aspects of their home countries. Sometimes this led to heavy Jewish involvement in political movements, at others it led to more of a tacit acceptance of things and hopes for something better in the future. This is precisely the reality that produced—in the same country at the same time—Jews joining the Bolsheviks on the one hand, and rabbis who simply prayed for G-d to “bless and keep the tsar far, far away from us!” (with apologies to the Shalom Aleichem) on the other.

But the example of late tsarist Russia should not mislead people into thinking that only more secular Jews have engaged in outward political movements or the affairs of state throughout the history of the diaspora. 

The legendary achievements in science and politics that define the life and teachings of Maimonides are perhaps the best example of that. Not as historic, but often quite impressive, are the cultural and political commentary we often get from more publicly engaged ultra-Orthodox leaders from Lubavitch to Aish Hatorah, etc.

Politics and culture don’t even provide us with half of the story. Science and technology’s increasing role in the day-to-day lives of humanity have made them just as important to follow for Jews and everyone else as the rise and fall of kings and empires. Jewish engagement with and contributions to modern scientific advancements absolutely grow from the same tree planted by the dina d’malchuta dina ethos.

It’s also even helped to enhance religious Jewish thought. Instead of being threatened or flummoxed by great non-Jewish thinkers, our most astute rabbis throughout history have been able to bolster Jewish beliefs and observance by showing how powerful non-Jewish thought is still in line with our own ethos. So, too, they have been able to explain why those beliefs may be well-meaning but off the mark. Engaging with and exposing themselves to non-Jewish thought has often resulted in something like intellectual calisthenics for the rabbis since the time of Aristotle.

But this paradigm hasn’t always served the Jewish people well. From a religious standpoint, this very open engagement with the more impressive and enviable aspects of non-Jewish society has often fueled excessive assimilation and a more radical turning away from Jewish life and traditions. It’s a fair question to ask whether persecutions and forced conversions have erased more Jews from the world over the past 2,000 years than has the allure of non-Jewish culture and society. Similarly, it can be argued that the dina d’malchuta dina commitment to pluralism often stunted any hopes for a return to Jewish sovereignty over time.

This especially seems to have been the case during the Napoleonic Era. Napoleon, who was bent on replacing the established monarchy in Europe, saw the Jews as a logical replacement for many of the members of the aristocracies who had mismanaged European society for generations. In return, Napoleon didn’t just give citizenship to Jews everywhere his armies conquered: he also offered the Jews of Europe a chance to establish a continental Sanhedrin, and even a chance to re-establish some kind of sovereignty in Israel.

But there was just one problem: the Jews of France and wider Europe simply weren’t ready for the offer. Nearly 2,000 years of following the dina d’malchuta dina ideal created a people so comfortable in its virtual “second-class” status. Sadly, it would take the extreme persecution of organized Russian pogroms and the Nazi Holocaust to snap most Jews out of it.

On the bright side, the centuries-long tradition of Jewish engagement with the non-Jewish world gave the modern Zionist movement many of the tools and leaders it needed when anti-Semitism woke so many Jews out of that subservient slumber. Zionist thought leaders from the secular Theodor Herzl to the religious Rav Kook to the strong Jewish self-determination icon Ze’ev Jabotinsky used the tools of secular public discourse to advance their variations on Zionist philosophy. To put it in modern terms: Writing about Zionism and Zionist action in the vernacular of modern political discourse and action wasn’t the Jews’ “first rodeo,” and that was partially thanks to dina d’malchuta dina.

The emergence of the state of Israel has provided a good antidote to the failings of dina d’malchuta dina as well. Nevertheless, it’s obvious that we can’t say that Jews in America and other major areas of the diaspora have “snapped out of it.” When we see so many Jews from former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to Senator Bernie Sanders seemingly so eager to show how loyal they are to their presidential employers or secular political movements, it’s hard to deny that the dark side of dina d’malchuta dina is still a formidable problem.

But what about everyone else? Specifically, how has it worked out for those who reject this kind of cross-communal and societal engagement? That’s where that global push for Sharia law by Muslims in every nation where they are found today comes into the conversation.

Like the regressive results China suffered from its quite literal closing off to the rest of the world nearly 600 years ago, Muslim society has gone from holding a position atop the scientific and economic world to a steady decline since the 12th century. The rise in the post-colonial age of the Muslim Brotherhood and its project of subjugating the non-Muslim world has not only exacerbated that regressiveness, but also threatens to plunge the rest of the world into darkness.

As Muslim migrants from Europe to the United States increase in number, there has been little evidence that their communal leaders will change their insistence on dominating every aspect of their lives in a way that is completely the opposite of how dina d’malchuta dina has pushed Jews to getting ahead of the rest of the world time after time.

The good news is that some political and religious Muslim leaders clearly realize this and are doing something about it. In the political realm, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Muhammdd bin Salman is opening up his country to the rest of the world in ways his predecessors would never have imagined. Meanwhile, Indonesian Muslim religious community leader Kyai Haji Yahya Cholil Staquf is a pioneer in the efforts to create a worldwide acceptance of pluralism among Muslims. Not coincidentally, both bin Salman and Staquf basically advocate for their nations’ normalization with Israel.

But they are still in an extreme minority. From the suburbs of Paris to the streets of Dearborn, Michigan, too many Muslim communities are being kept in the Dark Ages. Worse yet, the economic and cultural disadvantages the demand for Sharia law bring with them also create a fertile ground for violence and crime. This is not because of poverty, but because of the intellectual close-mindedness and a lack of in-person interactions which lead to the dehumanization of others. The Muslim neighborhoods in Europe and increasingly here in the U.S. that have become de facto “no-go zones” for police and other authorities might as well be re-named “no success zones,” too.

Because so many Western societies and their governments are so weak and corrupted, those pushing for Muslims to be allowed to install Sharia law wherever they go feel emboldened to continue in their efforts. But they can’t possibly feel emboldened by the residual results.

Jews got the gift of a key out of the virtual prisons created by overly insular communities. That key was dina d’malchuta dina, and we can only hope Muslims and others learn to embrace it as well.