Sometimes the greatest act of rebellion is to simply speak the truth.
– Alexei Navalny

I am an Indian Buddhist, but let me make it clear: I do not belong to the clan of neo-Buddhists of Ambedkar, who believe in schism with their heritage and eternal grudge against Hinduism, and are held in scant regard by all genuine Buddhists—Theravada, Vajrayana, and Madhyamaka.

I come from the Vajrayana tradition, but what I write here will give you a few instances of India and other countries’ experience with Islam, and then pick a controversial Buddhist figure from Myanmar to discuss a few ideas of what should be done as a response from so-called “infidels.”

The Martand Surya Mandir (Sun Temple), an architectural wonder built by King Lalitaditya Muktapida, in Kashmir, is one of the most important spiritual sites of ancient India. Under Islamic rule, it became known as “Shaitaan ki Gufa” (The Devil’s Crypt)—a classic case of how Hindu heritage and Hindu symbols were villainized where they could not be entirely razed to the ground.

If only the Persians were able to resist, Zoroastrians and indigenous Persian civilization may not have been wiped out in Iran to be replaced by Arabic ideology. What would Persian civilization have looked like had Zoroastrians successfully resisted the Arab conquest?

In Afghanistan, the fate suffered by the Bamiyan Buddhas in recent times is well known. All these examples clearly show that Islam is incompatible with all other ways of life.

Ashin Wirathu—a voice of defiance, born of a wounded history—is not merely a monk whose sermons crossed international boundaries; he is a product of Myanmar’s unresolved traumas—colonial, demographic, economic, and spiritual. To judge him only through the lens of international headlines is easy. To understand why thousands followed him is harder, but necessary.

Burma’s anxiety about Islam did not begin with Wirathu; it began under British rule. From 1824 onward, when the British annexed Burma into their Indian Empire, the British began importing large numbers of Indian Muslims into Burma’s cities for administration, trade, and labor. Yangon (then Rangoon) became majority Indian by the 1930s. Native Burmese watched their economic control recede. Their land was not just governed by foreigners—it was worked, taxed, and traded by them.

Three consequences followed:

1. Burmese Buddhists became minorities in parts of their own towns.
2. Trade and finance shifted into Indian Muslim and Hindu hands.
3. Buddhism felt pushed into retreat—not only politically, but spiritually

Tension rose. Riots followed. In 1938, Buddhist-Muslim violence erupted in Yangon for the first time—nearly eight decades before Wirathu’s sermons. The seeds were already sown.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Saudi-funded Wahhabi influence quietly spread through parts of Myanmar and Bangladesh. Burmese Buddhists noticed a harder, more literalist form of Islam replacing older syncretic forms. Mosques multiplied rapidly. Many Burmese Buddhists saw this as cultural conquest, not mere worship. When communal violence broke out in Meiktila in 2013 and later in Rakhine, it was not created by Wirathu—he simply gave voice to the fears already circulating.

Wirathu’s message resonated not because it was gentle—but because it spoke to a fear that Burmese Buddhist identity was slowly eroding, while the world seemed to care only for minority rights, never for majority anxieties.

His famous metaphor—“I am like a dog barking when a stranger comes to the house”—reflected a sense of guardianship. For many Burmese, he voiced an unspoken worry: “Will Buddhism survive here? Or are we next to disappear?”

One may disagree with his tone, his exaggerations, his political alliances—but it is difficult to deny that Burmese Buddhists felt existentially unsafe, especially as Islamist movements grew violent globally and the Rohingya conflict gained international attention.

The Rohingya problem now has spread to India—many illegal entries from Bangladesh, and their appeasement by people who should have known better have ensured that. But that is a different discussion.

Ashin Wirathu must be remembered not as a provocateur but as a symptom of deeper wounds in Myanmar’s history. His resistance to Islamism cannot be dismissed as mere bigotry. It was rooted in anxieties that the world did not hear—or did not ask to understand. When identity feels cornered, it lashes out. For Myanmar to find genuine peace, it must do what Wirathu could not:

1. Affirm Buddhism’s dignity.
2. Recognize historical grievances without letting them harden into hatred.
3. Build a nation not of fear, but of cultural confidence.

The response to political Islam ultimately may not be religious war, but strategic clarity: the revival of plural civilization. But if war—by sly means if necessary, and lies—and domination is all Islamists understand, then it’s very hard to see how denying oneself the option of proactive, stiff resistance is any option. Violence in this case has to be met with violence. Negotiation with Islam is not possible.

We see Myanmar being repeated all over the world. We need more Ashin Wirathus to give an angry voice to people’s fear, and then only we can think of moving ahead. Recent incidents in India have once again exposed as a lie the leftist position that Islamism grows in a vacuum of purpose, and we need employment-driven urban policies to prevent radicalization.

Buddhism has historically been associated with non-violence, equanimity, and a unique emphasis on inner transformation. Yet the modern world confronts Buddhists with challenges that our predecessors also knew, though in a different guise, distinct from the forms these difficulties take today: global terrorism, the rise of ideologically motivated violence, and the politicization of religion on a scale that transcends borders.

The seed or the core of these challenges in essence is the same, Islamism—not Islam itself, but a dictatorial political-religious ideology of Islam or a specific tyrannical and autocratic interpretation of Islam that seeks to impose those specific interpretations on the society, often through coercion, violence, hatred, or forceful conversion at the mercy of a drawn blade or a loaded gun.

In countries where Buddhists coexist with Muslim populations—Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and parts of India—Islamist movements have periodically intersected with local tensions, sometimes violently. In these contexts, some Buddhists have responded with fear, aggression, or nationalism. The case of Ashin Wirathu, the Burmese monk who became globally known for extreme anti-Muslim rhetoric, represents a dramatic example.

A contemporary and forceful Buddhist response must be powerful without being hateful, principled without descending into chauvinism, and grounded in the Dharma while addressing real-world threats. Such a response must be capable of condemning violent ideologies—including Islamism—without condemning the people who may be entangled in them.

1. Buddhism and the Challenge of Ideological Violence

1.1 Non-Violence as Principle, Not Passivity

The Buddha did not teach passivity in the face of harm. He taught skilful action, which includes stopping harm compassionately.

In the Dhammapada, the Buddha declares: “Hatred is never appeased by hatred… but by non-hatred alone.”

This is not a command to allow harm to flourish. It is an injunction to resist harm without imitating it. Buddhists are therefore not obliged to ignore extremism, whether religious or ideological. The Dharma explicitly allows:

• Preventing harm
• Speaking truth forcefully
• Calling out wrongdoing
• Protecting communities
• Challenging dangerous views

But all of these must be done without enmity, stereotyping, or thirst for domination.

1.2 Differentiating Islam from Islamism

A Buddhist response must distinguish among:

• Islam—a diverse, Abrahamic monotheistic global religion or faith
• Muslims—adherents or followers of Islam
• Islamism—an Islam-influenced religious, political, and ideological movement that believes that Islam as a religious-political system is superior to all, whose features include:
  • rejection of pluralism
  • non-democratic aims
  • violent jihadism
  • compulsory religious law
  • political expansionism

 So, we can see that wherever Islam itself is a faith or religion, Islamism is a religious and highly political movement which believes in utter totalitarianism. They believe that Islam should influence everything from personal lives to the freedom of choice to the entire political infrastructure. They believe that Islam is superior to communism, liberal democracy, capitalism, and other alternatives in achieving a just, successful society as they see fit. The advocates of Islamism, also known as “al-Islamiyyun,” are usually affiliated with Islamic institutions or social mobilization movements, emphasizing the implementation of Sharia, pan-Islamic political unity, and the creation of Islamic states.

It is true we often fail to see the difference between Islam as a faith and Islam as a movement or Islamism. But this distinction is crucial. Failure to maintain it leads to collective blame, which contradicts Buddhist ethics as well as its codes of conduct and way of life, and inflames violent nationalism.

1.3 Buddhism as an Anti-Totalitarian Tradition

Islamism, like all totalizing ideologies, seeks to define the entirety of a person’s life—including law, culture, identity, and governance—through a single doctrinal lens.

Buddhism rejects such totalisation. The Dharma emphasizes:

• the primacy of liberation of the individual and all sentient beings
• the non-ultimate nature of all views
• resistance to dogmatic certainty
• the prohibition on coercing belief
• the value of pluralistic coexistence

Thus, Buddhism stands in philosophical opposition to any ideology—religious or secular—that demands universal submission.

2. Where Buddhism Encounters Islamism Today

Different Buddhist-majority countries have encountered different forms of Islamist extremism.

2.1 Thailand’s Deep South

Several decades of insurgency in Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat have included attacks on Buddhist civilians and monks by separatist groups employing Islamist rhetoric. The vast majority of Malay Muslims are peaceful; extremists are a minority. Yet the violence has understandably traumatized local Buddhists.

2.2 Sri Lanka

The Easter 2019 attacks, carried out by an ISIS-aligned group, demonstrated that Islamist radicalization exists even in small, historically integrated Muslim populations. This shocked Sri Lankans and intensified pre-existing tensions.

2.3 India and Global South Asian Context

While India is not a Buddhist-majority country, in the past, the picture was quite different and Buddhists faced some extreme assaults by these external extremist forces in the name of Islam.

Nalanda Mahavihar was one of the world’s oldest universities, active from the 5th to around the 12^th and 13th centuries C.E. The earliest detailed narrative of Nalanda’s destruction comes from the Tibetan historian Taranatha (16th–17th century). He claimed that a Turkic general named Bakhtiyar Khilji attacked and burned the monastery around 1193 C.E. Modern historians agree that Nalanda suffered major damage during the late 12th century, linked to incursions by Ikhtiyar al-Din Bakhtiyar Khilji, a military commander of the Delhi Sultanate. Almost 9 million books were burnt, libraries were destroyed, monks were brutally killed, and the entire institutional supports collapsed. The fire at Nalanda University burned for approximately three months, though some accounts suggest a longer period. Not only Nalanda: Vikramashila Mahavihara, Odantapuri Mahavihara, Somapura Mahavihara (Paharpur, Bangladesh)—they all met the same fate.

In today’s world, Buddhism has a strong presence through Dalit movements and Himalayan communities. South Asian Islamist groups—such as those involved in attacks in Mumbai and Kashmir—shape regional security dynamics that affect many religious communities, including Buddhists.

2.4 Myanmar and the Rohingya Crisis

Myanmar has seen violence involving both extremist Buddhist nationalism and militant Rohingya groups such as ARSA. The humanitarian catastrophe that followed—mass displacement, widespread suffering—requires moral clarity: neither extremist Islamism nor extremist Buddhism can be morally defended.

3. The Case of Ashin Wirathu: A Cautionary Tale

3.1 Background

Ashin Wirathu, a Burmese monk associated with the 969 Movement and later Ma Ba Tha (the Patriotic Association of Myanmar), became internationally known for inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric. His speeches painted an entire minority group as an existential threat. Time Magazine labelled him “The Face of Buddhist Terror”—a phrase provocative but rooted in real concern over his language.

3.2 Why Wirathu’s Approach Contradicts the Dharma

Wirathu’s condemnations of Muslims often:

• rely on generalizations
• cultivate fear
• promote exclusionary nationalism
• blur the line between ideological threats and entire populations

Even if some of his concerns are based on encounters with Islamist extremism, the method he used—aggressive rhetoric, dehumanization, moral panic—is incompatible with Buddhist ethics.

Buddhism teaches:

• Right Speech: speech that is truthful yet gentle and conducive to harmony
• The Four Divine Abodes: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity
• Non-Harming: intentional avoidance of harm in thought, speech, and deed

Wirathu’s style violates these standards. A Buddhist monk may criticize a dangerous ideology, but cannot legitimately vilify an entire community.

3.3 Why Wirathu Gained Traction

A forceful Buddhist response must honestly acknowledge why figures like Wirathu attract followers:

• fear of demographic change
• real incidents of Islamist violence
• weak rule of law in conflict regions
• social media disinformation
• lack of Buddhist literacy among the public
• political manipulation

Understanding these factors allows Buddhists to address legitimate fears without endorsing hatred.

3.4 Lessons from Wirathu’s Rise

Wirathu demonstrates that righteous anger can easily morph into destructive anger. A Buddhist response must therefore be:

• vigilant against demonization
• disciplined in language
• rooted in compassion for all sides
• principled in confronting harm
• sharply critical of ideology, never of populations

4. A Contemporary, Forceful Buddhist Rebuttal to Islamism

4.1 Forcefulness Without Hatred

A strong Buddhist stance should do the following:

1. Name Islamism clearly as an ideology

Buddhism need not shy away from stating that violent, totalizing ideologies—whether Islamist, communist, fascist, or ultra-nationalist—are harmful.

2. Oppose violence decisively

The Buddha repeatedly discouraged passive witness to harm. A contemporary response should support community protection, legal enforcement, and deradicalization efforts.

3. Defend pluralism

Buddhist societies can emphasize that diverse religious traditions can coexist peacefully, and that any ideology seeking compulsory dominance is incompatible with pluralistic ethics.

4. Reject collective stereotypes

Islamism is not Islam. Muslims are not Islamists. This is a Buddhist principle as well as a sociological fact.

4.2 Intellectual Critique of Islamism Through Buddhist Philosophy

Buddhist thinkers can critique Islamism on several philosophical grounds:

• Rejection of doctrinal absolutism:

Buddhism warns against attachment to views as ultimately true.

• Rejection of religious coercion:

The Buddha consistently taught freedom of conscience.

• Critique of identity-based politics:

Buddhism sees identity as contingent and empty, undermining the ideological fixation on religious supremacy.

• Non-violent ethics:

Violence for ideological ends contradicts universal Buddhist precepts. This is a way to confront Islamism without demonizing Muslim communities.

4.3 Ethical Defence Against Extremist Violence

A Buddhist response can support:

• security measures protecting civilians
• community-based deradicalization
• inter-faith initiatives
• public education on distinguishing ideology from population
• strong rule of law that punishes perpetrators, not populations

Buddhism does not require fatalism in the face of threat; it allows moral firmness.

5. Engaging Muslim Communities as Partners

Ironically, the strongest allies against Islamism are often Muslims themselves. Many Muslim-majority nations have fought Islamist extremism for decades.

A forceful Buddhist response should include:

• supporting Muslim leaders who oppose extremism
• creating interfaith networks to immunize youth against radicalization
• promoting shared ethical values
• building solidarity at the community level
• addressing grievances that extremists exploit

This transforms the conflict from “Buddhists vs. Muslims” to “Buddhists and Muslims vs. extremism.”

6. Preventing Buddhist Nationalism from Becoming a Mirror-Image Extremism

6.1 The Danger of Symmetrical Extremism

History shows that when one extremist ideology arises, its opposite number often forms in reaction. This is what happened in parts of Myanmar and Sri Lanka: nationalist monks mirrored the absolutism they opposed.

Forceful Buddhist ethics must reject this symmetry.

6.2 Monastic Responsibility

The Vinaya (monastic code) instructs monks to:

• avoid partisan politics
• refrain from inciting hatred
• teach with compassion
• avoid speech that divides communities

Monks who violate these principles undermine the moral authority of the Sangha (community).

6.3 The Middle Path Applied to Social Conflict

A Middle Path response to Islamism includes:

• clarity without aggression
• compassion without naïveté
• protection without cruelty
• firmness without fanaticism

This is difficult, but necessary.

7. Building a Dharma-Centered Strategy for the 21st Century

7.1 Educating the Buddhist Public

Many Buddhists react to extremism out of fear rather than Dharma knowledge. Education should include:

• teachings on tolerance
• critical thinking
• understanding extremist recruitment
• non-violent conflict management
• exposure to peaceful Muslim communities

7.2 Strengthening Institutions

Healthy institutions—legal systems, police forces, community organizations—reduce the appeal of nationalist monks and extremist ideologies alike.

7.3 Promoting Buddhist Principles in Policy

A Buddhist-informed social policy might emphasize:

• human rights
• rule of law
• religious freedom
• restorative justice
• socio-economic equity

Such policies weaken the soil in which extremism grows.

8. Conclusion: A New Model for Buddhist Engagement

The modern world requires Buddhists to develop a moral vocabulary that can condemn harmful ideologies without fostering hatred of people. A truly contemporary and forceful response to Islamism must:

• be rooted in Dharma
• condemn violent ideology
• defend pluralism
• remain compassionate
• reject nationalist distortions
• collaborate with peaceful Muslims
• uphold human dignity for all

The case of Ashin Wirathu stands as a warning: fear, even when justified by real threats, can lead to unskilful action. Buddhism offers tools to address threats without becoming what one fears.

The Dharma does not ask Buddhists to be passive. It asks them to be wise.

It does not ask them to ignore danger. It asks them not to lose compassion when facing it.

It does not ask them to accept harmful ideologies. It asks them to reject hatred as a response.

A contemporary Buddhist response to Islamism must therefore be vigorous, principled, and compassionate—a model for the world at a time when polarization threatens to overwhelm humanity’s better instincts.

It is not only possible to be forceful without hatred.

From a Buddhist perspective, it is the only legitimate way.

It is historically understandable that many Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Myanmar feel threatened: there have been violent Islamist attacks and demographic anxieties, and a Pew Research Center piece, “Buddhism, Islam and Religious Pluralism in South and Southeast Asia” (September 12, 2023),  shows religion is tightly woven into identity. 

The general view, though, is that proportionate state action against violent extremists is justified; but majority-led nationalist movements that stigmatize, exclude or violently target entire Muslim communities are not justified—legally, strategically, or ethically. They damage social cohesion, provide fodder for real extremists, and leave societies less safe in the long run. 

There should not be any issues with the first part of this view. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the “Tamil Tigers,” had a long and bloody war with the Sri Lankan army. Many Sri Lankan Tamils were displaced. Many would say that the action the Sri Lankan army took was justified. However, the conflict between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan state was never a Hindu vs. Buddhist fight—and framing it that way is historically inaccurate and academically misleading. The conflict was about ethno-political rights, language discrimination, and autonomy—not religion.

When you look at the history of the so-called Buddhist-Islamic “feud” in Sri Lanka, it is not so at all. Religion—the intolerance shown by nearly all Muslims, and their inability to co-exist or culturally assimilate with the host country—is the key there.

Here are the approximate percentages of different religions in Sri Lanka (based on recent census / reliable data): Buddhism: ~70.2%, Hinduism: ~12.6%, Islam (Muslim): ~9.7%, Christianity: ~7.4% (mostly Roman Catholic). The rest are “others.”  So why are the Muslims singled out as trouble-makers? The reason is very clear for those who have not put on blinkers.

The April 2019 Easter attacks that killed 269 people—mostly Christians—were carried out by a Sri Lankan extremist group (National Thowheeth Jama’ath) with claimed or possible ISIS ties. That attack was a rare but devastating example of Islamist terrorism on Sri Lankan soil and created profound national trauma and security concerns.

Islamist extremists in these countries are relatively small in number and geographically limited. Their presence creates real security problems, but a greater issue is that they are the dominant voice in Islam, and the so-called “moderate” Islamic people cannot or do not speak out against them. They easily radicalize the youth, spread their influence through mosques, and strike whenever they find an opening. The end aim is always jihad; and there is consensus among Islamic scholars that the concept of jihad will always include armed struggle against wrongdoers, and anyone who does not follow Islam is a wrongdoer by that account. No Muslim may deny this.

A state is justified in using proportionate measures to prevent and respond to violent extremism (intelligence, arrests of militants, prosecution). The 2019 Easter bombings and ARSA attacks show the security threat is not purely theoretical. It is easy to say that justified responses must operate under rule of law, with fair trials and protections for civilians; repressive, discriminatory laws that target entire religious communities are inconsistent with constitutional norms and international human rights. Pew’s data showing religion-state integrationism means legal reforms risk being skewed toward majoritarian preferences unless safeguards are enforced; but when the minority are the Islamic people, majoritarian preference has to be given precedence.

Improving intelligence cooperation, community policing, and judicial capacity; arresting and prosecuting violent actors; keeping constant vigil—that is the price Israel pays, and that is the price any country where there is a sizable Muslim population must be prepared to pay. Empowering moderate Buddhist leaders and moderate Muslim voices to delegitimize violent narratives is mostly a stillborn initiative, because the moderate face of Islam has always been a sham.

Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera is the most well-known hard-line Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka today. He has made so-called inflammatory, actually very prescient, remarks about Islam in the past; in 2016, for example, he reportedly described Islam as a “cancer that must be eradicated.”  in 2025, he made claims (during a YouTube interview) about “suicide fighters” infiltrating the Sri Lankan government. Like Ashin Wirathu of Myanmar, Gnanasara articulates a majoritarian Buddhist nationalism. They argue that Buddhism and Sinhala-ness are under threat, especially from Muslims, and they mobilize public fear and identity. A point to be noted is that he has never held this to be at all true about the sizable Hindu population in Sri Lanka. 

Through the JHU and coalitions, Buddhist nationalist monks in Sri Lanka directly enter political life—much more formally than in some other Buddhist-majority contexts. These nationalist monks sometimes enjoy political support (or toleration) from powerful political leaders, which helps them exercise influence beyond just monastic circles. They are not doing it out of self-aggrandizement but because they urgently feel that the threat from Islam is very real, and yapping at the heels.

Galagoda uses his position in BBS (Bodu Bala Sena) to campaign aggressively against what he calls the rise of “Muslim extremism.” He has called for “one law” in Sri Lanka, while some critics have said it implicitly criticizes religious pluralism and minority rights—but look at India and its struggle to have a Universal Civil Code imposed out of similar necessities. Meanwhile, BBS has been directed against Muslims predominantly, and occasionally against Christian evangelists trying to convert Buddhists.

Gnanasara has been incarcerated several times for anti-Muslim remarks; but he was appointed by former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa as Chairman of a “Presidential Task Force for One Country, One Law.” He also made serious charges, alleging that USAID funded NGOs to undermine Sinhala-Buddhist forces. Here there is a clear parallel with Sir Lanka’s much larger neighbour India, which had to pass stringent laws to limit the deleterious influences of many NGOs.

Gnanasara Thera has become a symbol of militant Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalism. Critics argue that his rhetoric has contributed to polarization and violence. Supporters claim he is defending Buddhist heritage and Sinhalese identity from perceived external threats.

In the Buddhist-majority countries, very large majorities of Buddhists see religion as central to their national identity. For instance, 95% of Sri Lankan Buddhists say being Buddhist is important to being “truly Sri Lankan.” Many Buddhists don’t treat their religion purely as a belief system—they also see it as culture, family tradition, and even an ethnicity. 

In Cambodia, 76% of Buddhists say being born Buddhist is part of their identity. A strong proportion of Buddhists in Cambodia (75%), and Sri Lanka (72%), are what Pew calls “religion-state integrationists”—meaning they support basing national laws on Buddhist teachings (dharma). Unlike in some Western contexts, economic growth in these Asian countries does not strongly equate to secularization. Religion remains a core part of life, even as societies modernize.

Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera will likely remain a contentious figure in Sri Lankan history—often criticized for his sharp rhetoric, yet also recognized for raising issues that many preferred to ignore. In a period when global Islamist militancy was rising, he voiced anxieties present among sections of the Sinhala Buddhist majority who felt politically sidelined or culturally insecure.

His methods were frequently termed as divisive, but his interventions forced the country to engage with questions of national identity, legal uniformity, foreign influence, and long-term social cohesion. In this sense, his impact lay not in providing solutions, but in compelling society to confront concerns it might otherwise have suppressed.

After the Easter Sunday attacks of 2019, his warnings could no longer be dismissed, and a broader public debate emerged over how to balance vigilance with inclusivity. The challenge ahead is not to silence uncomfortable voices, but to cultivate wiser ones—encouraging leaders who can protect cultural identity without hatred and uphold security without prejudice.

If Sri Lanka learns from this moment, Gnanasara Thera’s legacy may serve as a reminder that democracies must address fear openly rather than let it harden into extremism. His story shows the need for moral leadership—firm, fair, and deeply rooted in ethical responsibility.

In the shadowed forests of northeastern Nigeria, where the line between hope and despair blurs like the Sahel dust storms, 21-year-old Leah Sharibu is still in chains. Abducted at 14 from her school in Dapchi, Yobe State, on February 19, 2018, by militants of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a brutal offshoot of Boko Haram, Leah Sharibu has become a symbol of unyielding faith amid unrelenting terror. Her crime? Refusing to renounce her Christianity, a defiance that has kept her from the freedom granted to 104 of the 110 schoolgirls kidnapped alongside her.

Today, as the world reels from yet another mass abduction of Christian students, Leah Sharibu’s story pierces the heart of Nigeria’s escalating crisis of religious persecution. On November 21, 2025, gunmen stormed St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, Niger State, seizing approximately 303 pupils and staff in a brazen raid that lasted over 20 minutes, with no security response in sight. About 51 children escaped into the surrounding bush, but the rest remain missing, fueling fears of forced conversions, ransom demands, or worse, echoing the nightmare that swallowed Leah Sharibu whole.

“Leah stood firm in the face of extreme danger, proving outstanding personal courage in defense of her Christian faith,” reads a desperate 2019 plea from her family and advocates, addressed to then-U.S. President Donald Trump and Nigerian leaders. Former President Muhammadu Buhari secured the release of the other Dapchi girls but left Leah behind, a “prisoner of conscience” whose resilience “upholds the highest virtues of religious freedom.” Nearly eight years later, those words ring with fresh urgency under President Bola Tinubu’s administration, as Boko Haram’s insurgency rages on despite official claims of its defeat.

Lean Sharibu’s abduction was no isolated horror. Boko Haram, sworn to establish an Islamic caliphate and eradicating Western education, has targeted schools since 2010, slaughtering hundreds of students and kidnapping thousands more, often girls, whom they view as unfit for learning and ripe for enslavement. The 2014 Chibok kidnapping of 276 girls remains a scar on the global conscience, with 82 still captive after more than a decade. Leah Sharibu’s case, however, stands apart for its stark religious dimension: ISWAP released the Muslim girls but retained her, threatening execution or lifelong bondage if demands for her conversion weren’t met.

Today, with no verified sightings or communications since her capture, the family endures in limbo. Indications suggest she may still be alive, possibly having borne children in captivity, underscoring the profound human cost of her prolonged ordeal.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) lists Sharibu among its “Religious Prisoners of Conscience,” condemning her ongoing detention as a violation of fundamental human rights. In June of 2025, the U.K. Parliament echoed this outrage, with lawmakers demanding accountability from Nigerian authorities. Yet, as Boko Haram and its affiliates like ISWAP splinter and regroup, killing tens of thousands and displacing millions, critics accuse the Tinubu government of inaction, much as they did under Buhari.

In a pivotal development, on October 31, 2025, the U.S. State Department, under the reinstated Trump administration, officially designated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) for severe violations of religious freedom. This marks a renewed escalation in U.S. scrutiny with President Trump accusing the Nigerian government of failing to curb “genocidal” attacks on Christians. The designation, recommended annually by USCIRF amid surging violence, including over 4,000 Christian deaths in 2024 alone, triggers potential sanctions, aid restrictions, and diplomatic measures under the International Religious Freedom Act. Advocacy groups like the LEAH Foundation, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), and Jubilee Campaign hailed the move but warned it must be more than symbolic: “Nigeria must remain a CPC,” they urged in letters to U.S. officials, spotlighting Leah Sharibu’s case as emblematic of unaddressed religious prisoners. Concurrently, Representative Riley Moore (R-WV, District 2) introduced a resolution condemning Christian persecution, while the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025 proposes a bilateral task force to track progress on rescue campaigns like those on behalf of Leah. Nigerian Christian leaders, in response, called for swift investigations into atrocities and the immediate liberation of hostages, framing the CPC as a “wake-up call” for Abuja.

The Papiri raid has ignited a firestorm of international appeals, drawing direct parallels to Leah Sharibu’s plight. Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ, District 4), a longtime champion of religious freedom, urged tying American aid to Nigeria’s progress in curbing persecution, including sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act against complicit officials. Many labeled the attacks a “coordinated genocide” against Christians, calling on the U.S. to lead with humanitarian aid, security guarantees, and pressure to dismantle discriminatory laws favoring Islamist militias. Pope Leo XIV condemned the abductions, praying for the hostages’ safe return and an end to the “systematic targeting” of schools and clergy in Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon.

As the CPC designation amplifies global pressure, the question of “what to do” has never been more urgent. I emphasized during recent D.C. visits that “Leah must be free now,” a mantra tying personal resolve to collective resolve: “Christian children must be protected. Leah Sharibu must be brought home safely.”

How many more girls’ faces will fade in captivity before the world forces open these iron gates? With the CPC hammer now poised, the onus falls on swift, coordinated action to turn designation into deliverance.

For the Sharibus and countless families like theirs, the answer cannot come soon enough. Advocacy groups like the LEAH Foundation, Open Doors, and USCIRF continue to amplify their voices, but experts warn that without sustained diplomatic and economic pressure, particularly from the U.S., Nigeria’s largest donor, the cycle of abductions will persist. In a nation where faith is both shield and shackle, Leah Sharibu’s quiet defiance reminds us: True freedom begins with one girl’s unbreakable spirit.

Infidel! Kafir! Heretic!

These are not merely insults; they are weapons forged in the theological anxiety of traditions that tremble before the presence of the other. This inquiry begins with a longstanding paradox: polytheistic cultures routinely absorb new deities, while exclusivist monotheisms consistently resist them. In Hindu, African, and other pluralistic contexts, the presence of Jesus, Allah, or local gods produces no theological rupture; the divine is understood as intrinsically plural. For strict monotheisms, however, recognizing an alternative divine presence threatens the coherence of salvation itself. This contrast prompts a deeper question: why do Islamic and Christian fundamentalisms generate the category of the “infidel,” and why does plurality become a threat rather than a possibility?

The answer lies in an epistemic architecture that elevates a single revelation to absolute finality. When the Qur’ān is taken as the sealed message or Christ as the only path to the Father, all other claims are, by definition, false. Truth becomes singular, error universal. Within such a system, other gods, scriptures, or views are not parallel expressions of the sacred but negations of it. From this structure arises the uncompromising force of the First Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”

This exclusivist logic is reinforced by doctrines of salvation and eternal punishment. The Qur’ān links disbelief (kufr) with eternal loss—“Those who disbelieve… the Fire will be their abode” (Qur’ān 2:39)—and the Hadith intensify the severity of apostasy: “Whoever changed his religion, then kill him” (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 6922). Classical Islamic jurisprudence treats apostasy (riddah) as both a theological and civic fracture, allowing legal consequences once repentance is refused. Christian tradition mirrors this trajectory. Salvation is exclusive—“No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), “No other name… by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12)—and this exclusivity produced the institutional machinery of orthodoxy: ecumenical condemnations of heresy, inquisitorial tribunals, and, later, missionary programs that suppressed indigenous religions. Where fear of eternal punishment does not compel conformity, socio-political pressure often does. Islamic history shows the use of takfīr (excommunication) to silence dissent; Christian polities enforced doctrinal allegiance through exile, confiscation, and civil penalties. In both traditions, deviation jeopardizes not only salvation but social belonging. In opposition to this lies the polytheistic view. Let us take up three cases.

First is Caribbean Vodou religion, in which African deities find their place in saints, or where older deities are worshipped and petitioned through saints and angels, as it has happened in Bulgaria, and East Europe. Where the Christianity that was forced upon a people was taken up to masquerade the old ways.

Second, where Islam and Tantra meet leads to usage of talismans and surahs by Hindu tantrics, or the acceptance of wiccan and other magical practices of the West in the practices of East. 

Third is the Sahajiyā Fakiri bauls, who combine the Islamic language and doctrine with the Hindu yogic practices, Lalon Fakir being a predominant figure.

And we can consider a fourth category like Nazrul Islam (20th century C.E), where a Muslim Kazi is devoted to the goddess Kālī, and we also find the story of Bibi Thulukka Nachiar, a Muslim princess devoted to Viṣṇu (11th century C.E.).

In stark contrast to the stagnation attributed to fundamentalism, the polytheistic field exhibits a remarkable circulatory dynamism: ideas, rituals, and personae traverse traditions with comparative ease. Crucially, this permeability is less a matter of exoteric conformity than of an esoteric economy of power, a subterranean praxis of ritual efficacy and mystic technique in which disparate forms of devotion and expertise meet and are made commensurable. Syncretism, therefore, often operates at the level of sādhanā (“realization”), talismanic practice and initiatory transmission rather than merely as doctrinal bricolage.

Equally significant is the inclusion of heterodox and even atheistic positions within this pluralist framework. The hedonistic strands of ancient Greece and the materialist Cārvāka-Lokāyata current in classical India are not sociological anomalies but recognized interlocutors within broader intellectual ecosystems. Polytheism, properly understood, is not simply the worship of many gods but the institutional and philosophical tolerance for multiple, incommensurable accounts of the world. Disagreement and gradation of belief persist while debate, contestation, and hierarchy remain real, yet these do not usually aim at the total eradication of dissent. Rather, plurality admits the coexistence of contradiction; truths are perspectival, efficacy often outranks exclusivity, and the resulting ambience of toleration sets the parameters for the ensuing debate. This critique targets exclusivist theological structures, not the everyday believer. 

The question thus follows: does polytheism prove to be better in this regard?

The charge of “infidelity” itself discloses the conceptual error at the heart of the monotheistic (in this case, Islamic) critique. It rests upon a taxonomic invention internal to monotheistic thought, a classificatory device designed to secure the supremacy of a single, exclusive truth by criminalizing all forms of plurality. Such a category has no parallel within polytheistic traditions, for the simple reason that difference has never constituted a theological or civic threat within them. Polytheism does not require the fabrication of a “false god” in order to stabilize its own identity; it operates on the assumption that the divine may manifest through many names, functions, and contexts. 

Monotheism, by contrast, generates hostility structurally, for it begins by denying the legitimacy of any deity other than its own, thereby transforming diversity into error and coexistence into rivalry. Consequently, the conflict often attributed to polytheistic multiplicity does not originate within polytheism at all; it is produced by the monotheistic need for exclusivity and the discursive apparatus that enforces it. To label the polytheist an “infidel” is therefore not an observation but an imposition, an artefact of monotheistic logic projected onto a worldview that never required such a distinction in the first place. 

Polytheism, as Maurizio Bettini demonstrates in his In Praise of Polytheism (2014), operates according to the logic of a language: its gods correspond, map, and translate across cultural boundaries because divinity is understood as a spectrum of functions rather than an isolated, non-negotiable absolute. This translatability is not a mere curiosity but a structural feature of polytheistic thought. 

It is precisely why a Roman could recognize the Egyptian Amun as a form of Jupiter, or the Greek Hermes as analogous to Mercury. Such interpretative elasticity reveals a worldview trained to identify resonance rather than contradiction. Monotheism, however, denies this very possibility. Its God cannot be translated because translation presupposes equivalence, and equivalence presupposes plurality. The result is an epistemic closure: the monotheist is condemned to misunderstand foreign religions because the architecture of his theology forbids him from recognizing any genuine correspondence.

This is why the monotheistic ideal of “tolerance” is so structurally fraught. Toleration is, at heart, a hierarchical gesture: the dominant faith concedes space to others, but only as a matter of permission, never as a matter of recognition: “You may exist, but only because we allow it.” Polytheism does not operate by such conditional magnanimity. Its practice of interpretation is not a grudging endurance of the alien but an act of comprehension—an acknowledgement that the divine assumes many guises and that foreign gods are intelligible within one’s own religious grammar. 

Thus, whilst monotheists offer a fragile, revocable permission, polytheists offer an interpretive hospitality that treats difference as meaningful rather than dangerous.

This distinction reveals the instability social inherent in monotheistic systems when they come into contact with others. A single divine center—absolute, non-relational, and jealously singular—cannot sustain the pressures of genuine plurality. When confronted with religious differences, such a system does not expand; it contracts. It seeks to defend itself through exclusion, demarcation, and the linguistic strategies of superiority. Polytheism, by contrast, thrives under those very conditions. The presence of multiple sacred forms does not undermine its coherence; it constitutes its coherence. It is structurally incapable of collapsing under diversity, because diversity is the medium through which it understands the world. Multiple divine centers (polytheism) allow flexible coexistence (see Bettini, chapters 4 and 12). Thus polytheism is structurally more resilient.

“You fear curiosity; we practice it.” This contrast becomes even clearer when one considers the historical trajectories of cultures shaped by polytheism. Both the Greek and the Hindu worlds evolved through the disciplined cultivation of questions; inquiry was not only permitted but structurally embedded within their religious and philosophical frameworks. The polytheistic mindset, because it never feared plurality, never feared interrogation either. In Greece, philosophy emerged directly from the freedom to challenge myth, interrogate cosmology, and explore competing accounts of the divine without the threat of doctrinal rupture. A thinker could contest Homer, revise Hesiod, or even deny the literal existence of Olympian figures, and yet remain within the cultural fold. 

Likewise in India, the Védic tradition did not interpret philosophical contestation as blasphemy. The Upaniṣads prospered precisely because they questioned the ritual orthopraxy of the earlier Védas; the heterodox systems—Buddhism, Jainism, Sāṃkhya, Cārvāka—did not simply emerge despite Hindu polytheism but because such a milieu rendered questioning intellectually possible and socially survivable. In neither civilization did critique equate to treason against the divine. Rather, interrogation was understood as a means through which truth might be approached and refined. 

Monotheism, however—with the notable exception of the midrashic tradition within Judaism—renders questioning precarious. Once truth is anchored to a single absolute doctrine, the field of legitimate inquiry decimates. To challenge doctrine becomes to challenge God, thus blasphemy; to revise metaphysics becomes to trespass upon sacred authority. Hence the monotheistic preoccupation with heresy—not as an intellectual disagreement but as a moral transgression. Curiosity becomes dangerous because it threatens the unity upon which monotheistic identity depends. Polytheism, however, faces no such anxiety. It does not require the policing of boundaries because its very coherence lies in its capacity to absorb, reinterpret, and expand. What monotheists condemn as syncretism polytheists recognize as the natural movement of a living tradition. 

This is why polytheistic cultures repeatedly demonstrate intellectual elasticity. They realize that the sacred is not a single monopolized locus, but something that proliferates: in mountains and rivers, in guardians and ancestors, in celestial bodies and ritual moments. Therefore divinity is not held hostage by one name or one narrative. It reveals itself through a multiplicity of forms, each inviting scope of novelty in reflection and reinterpretation. Monotheism, by confining sanctity to one authorized source, inevitably enforces a theology of scarcity. Only one path is legitimate, one revelation definitive, one narrative binding. In such a system, critique becomes a threat because it destabilizes the single axis on which the entire edifice rests. 

Polytheism, therefore, fosters a culture in which the question is not a danger but a duty. It understands that thought evolves through disagreement, through provisional answers, through intellectual hospitality rather than suspicion. It is no coincidence that both Greek dialectic and Indian darśana traditions developed within polytheistic civilizations that accepted contradiction as an invitation rather than an offense. The polytheist is not frightened by competing truths; he assumes the world is large enough to contain them. The monotheist, however, must either conquer difference or repress it, for every competing claim risks becoming a rival revelation. 

Thus the debate returns to its central insight: polytheism multiplies the sacred and thereby multiplies the pathways of thought; monotheism restricts the sacred and thereby constricts the pathways of inquiry. Where you demand purity, we pursue understanding; where you fear deviation, we cultivate reflection. It is through questioning, not through the enforcement of a single truth, that civilizations grow in wisdom. 

In the end, the polemical vocabulary you direct towards us exposes far more about your assumptions than about our practice. “Infidel” is not a descriptor we ever required, nor a category that emerges from our own intellectual or ritual traditions. It is a word born from a system that cannot abide plurality, a system that must divide the world into truth and error in order to stabilize its singular claim. Polytheists, by contrast, never fashioned a term to condemn the religious “other,” for the simple reason that the category of “other” never bore the weight of suspicion or hostility in our worldview. We have no theological need to criminalize difference, no doctrinal anxiety that demands the invention of enemies, no metaphysical insecurity that turns plurality into a threat. It is therefore no surprise that the language of infidelity belongs exclusively to monotheistic discourse: it is the inevitable product of a theology that defines itself against all that lies beyond its own boundaries. 

Thus our reply is both concise and unassailable: the word “infidel” does not describe us—it reveals you.

How do you speak of a story that was never allowed to become a story? How do you describe a hierarchy that hides behind the word “brotherhood”? And, more importantly, how do you convince a world, so eager to believe in neat binaries of “Muslim vs. non-Muslim,” that the deepest fractures often run within, quietly, almost invisibly?

Whenever I try to explain the Pasmanda question to a Western or even an Indian audience (pasmanda meaning “those left behind”), I notice a strange silence settle in the room. It’s almost as if admitting that “all Muslims are not equal within Islam” breaks some sacred script of public discourse, breaking the overall protected framework. But does truth wait for permission? And why should moral clarity submit to geopolitical sensitivities?

The story of the Pasmanda (Muslims descended from Hindus of low caste and lured to convert to Islam by the promise of release from their status, but who are today still subject to extreme class disdain within the Muslim community), after all, is not a rebellion. It is not a movement. It is not even an accusation. It is simply a mirror, held up politely, almost shyly, towards a community and the dogmas that have long claimed equality but rarely practiced it. And mirrors, as we know, tend to irritate those who enjoy the comfort of unexamined narratives.

But something deeper lies beneath this veneer—indeed Pasmandas make up at least 80% of Indian Muslims. Something civilizational. Something Indic in my understanding. Because when you look closely at the lives of the Ajlaf (“backward caste”) and Arzal (“untouchable”) Muslim communities, you realize that their memories, customs, accents, even their culinary instincts, still carry the scents and textures of a civilization older than any conqueror’s theology. One begins to wonder: did they convert, or did they simply survive? And if conversion was meant to erase their identity, why does the hierarchy continue to remember exactly who they were before they entered the fold?

This is why the Pasmanda question unsettles everyone. It unsettles the Ashraf elite (the “noble” Indian Muslims descended from the Arab and Persian conquerors) because it forces them to confront the uncomfortable truth that their proclaimed egalitarianism had gatekeepers. It unsettles outsiders—“the infidels”—because it complicates the simplistic idea of a monolithic Muslim bloc. And it unsettles those of us tracing civilizational patterns because it shows, so quietly, the resilience of Indian social memory; how it persists even under pressure; how it bends but refuses to break.

So, the Pasmanda story is not a political claim; it is a civilizational whisper. It is the reminder that inequality can hide inside slogans of unity. It is the proof that identities can endure beneath layers of imposed brotherhood. And it is the gentle question I want to place before the readers: Can any honest conversation on Islamism ignore the voices of those who suffered not outside Islam, but inside it? Because unless we listen to them, we will always mistake silence for harmony, and hierarchy for faith.

The Past That Refuses to Stay Quiet

When we sift through the historical layers of the Pasmanda experience, something curious emerges. The official narrative of Islam in India loves tidy lines, great conquerors, noble Sufi saints, mass conversions driven by spiritual attraction and the usage of caste as the reason for conversion. But history, like people, rarely behaves so obediently. It leaves traces, side notes, hesitations, and half-erased stories that don’t quite fit the brochure version.

Take the question everyone avoids: Why did so many local communities convert? Were they simply moved by revelation, or were they moved by the far more worldly pressures of survival—land, tax, fear, or the political tides of the time? This is not to deny genuine spiritual yearning—India has always been fertile soil for seeking—but how do we ignore that the earliest converts came disproportionately from the most vulnerable occupational groups? And if Islam was meant to erase their past status, why did their “new brothers” remember it so meticulously? And if it was the push factor from within the sanatan way of life, why not many of the most so-called “downtrodden” converted? Rather, we find the converts from the artisans’ fold who were the middle-upper class caste-wise.

A religion that proclaimed equality somehow managed to carry forward every marker of caste, only now shaded with Persian and Arab color. Ajlaf and Arzal became the new vocabulary, but the old hierarchy slipped in through the back door, perfectly at ease. You begin to realize that the theology claimed universality, but the society it created was exquisitely selective. Brotherhood had borders. Equality had conditions.

But here lies the real intrigue, the local Indic signature that never dissolved. Pasmanda communities, despite conversion, somehow held onto their older ecological rhythms, their village cosmologies, their food preferences, their dialects, even their folk gods disguised as “local customs.” It is as if the civilizational soil refused to be overwritten by any imperial script. Islam was adopted, yes, but Bharat (India) never left them.

And this is where the story becomes larger than just “Muslim caste.” It becomes a study in civilizational resilience. If an imported theological framework couldn’t erase these identities even with political power behind it, what does that say about the nature of Indic social memory? Why does it cling so stubbornly, so quietly, across centuries of upheaval?

There is a profound irony here: The communities Islam tried hardest to reshape are the ones who ended up reshaping Islam within the Indian context. And yet, they remain invisible in public discourse, spoken of only when convenient, silenced when not.

Between Faith + Power

Whenever ideological debates erupt—Islam vs. the West, Islam vs modernity, Islam vs democracy—rarely does anyone ask: What about Islam vs. its own oppressed? Why is intra-Muslim inequality treated as an embarrassing family secret best kept hidden from “infidels”?

Perhaps because acknowledging it weakens the political claim to victimhood unity. Or perhaps because it forces the community to confront a truth far more uncomfortable than external criticism: that sometimes the harshest injustice comes from those closest to you.

The Ashraf idea, that descent from foreign blood brings inherent superiority, sits uneasily inside a religion that claims absolute equality. But doctrines do what doctrines always do: they adjust themselves to power, and they punish those who question.

Pasmanda communities never declared rebellion; they were simply never invited into the narrative of “brotherhood” in the first place. And when a community has been historically denied authorship, its silence is mistaken for contentment. But is silence really proof of harmony? Or is it merely the exhaustion of fighting a hierarchy that refuses to acknowledge its own existence?

This question matters today more than ever because the struggle against Islamist extremism is not just external; it is deeply internal. The loudest demands for reform often come from the quietest corners, from people who know the cost of orthodoxy in their bones, not in think-tank reports. And here is the point I want the reader to sit with, not judge, just sit with: How can Islamism be challenged meaningfully if we ignore those who have lived its social consequences from within?

The Infidel Within

When the idea of “infidels respond,” first reached me, I paused. Who exactly is an infidel? The outsider who questions your theology, or the insider who questions your hierarchy? And if the word is meant to mark unbelief, what do we make of those who believe but are not believed in?

The Pasmanda experience forces this uncomfortable shift in perspective. Because if “infidel” simply means the one who stands outside the authority of the powerful, then the first infidels of Islam in India were not Hindus, Jews, Christians, or atheists. They were the very Muslims who never enjoyed equality within their own house.

Strange, isn’t it? A system that divides the world into believers and unbelievers ends up creating its own internal unbelievers—not by creed, but by caste. Not by choice, but by history.

No one says this aloud, of course. Public narratives prefer simplicity. They like their conflicts neatly external. It is easier to blame the outsider than acknowledge the fracture lines running through your own foundation. But Pasmanda lives refuse to fit into those clean binaries. Their struggle reveals that the line dividing “oppression” and “faith” often runs straight through the center of the community itself.

This is why their voice unsettles the Islamist mind. Because it is harder to silence someone who critiques from within the fold. You cannot easily dismiss them as “infidels” when they pray beside you. You cannot accuse them of misunderstanding theology when they recite the same verses. Their dissent is built not on the rejection of Islam, but on the rejection of hierarchy masquerading as piety. And that makes them far more dangerous to orthodoxy than any external critic ever could be.

A Civilizational Memory That Refuses to Behave

India, with her maddening pluralism, her porous boundaries between the sacred and the social, her ability to absorb without dissolving, has always produced communities that defy neat categorization. Pasmanda identity is one such stubborn reminder. Even after conversion, the memory of the land stays. The food habits remain. The dialects remain.
The occupational clusters remain. The sense of belonging to a specific geography remains.

It is as if the Indic civilizational code quietly overrides any attempt at homogenization. You can change names, rituals, Saturday afternoons, yet something older speaks through the cracks. And this older voice often whispers truths that a centralized theological system would rather not hear.

Could this be why Ashraf elites are so uncomfortable with Pasmanda assertion? Because it reminds them that Islam in India is not an imported monolith but a lived, negotiated, deeply local experience shaped more by Bharat than by Arabia. Because it exposes that, even within Islam, the most marginalized carry the most civilizational memory. And memory, especially the kind that precedes conquest, has a way of unsettling any authority that relies on amnesia.

The Global Debate Needs These Voices

When the West debates Islamism, it tends to talk in abstractions—jihadism, radicalization, political Islam, reform movements. Rarely does the global reader ask: Who inside the Muslim community suffers first from extremism? Who pays the social cost of purity politics? Who gets silenced so the elite can negotiate grievances with the world?

The answer, invariably, is the Pasmandas of Bharat.

Not because they oppose Islam, but because they expose the hypocrisy hidden beneath its social structures. They interrupt the victimhood narrative that powers Islamism globally. They show that the oppressor-oppressed binary has always been more complicated than the slogans suggest.

This is why I say, gently but firmly: any honest global conversation on Islamism must begin by listening to those who have lived closest to its consequences. Pasmanda voices do not destabilize the community; they reveal the fault lines that already exist. And perhaps that is the real meaning of an infidel: not someone who rejects God, but someone who refuses to bow before falsehood.

Toward a More Honest Future

So where does all this leave us? With a question: Can a community that does not confront its own inequalities ever hope to confront the extremisms that grow in its name? Brotherhood, after all, is not a slogan. It is a discipline. It is the willingness to see the unseen, to confront the discomforts buried under centuries of habit. Without that courage, brotherhood becomes just another ornamental word, useful in speeches, useless in life.

The Pasmanda story is not a war cry. It is a gentle insistence that equality must be lived, not merely proclaimed. It is a reminder that communities are strengthened not by hiding their fractures, but by acknowledging and healing them. And it is a warning that silence is never a substitute for justice. What is suppressed in one generation returns as suffering in the next. But here is the deeper civilizational point: perhaps the most important one. India has always taught us those identities are not erased easily. They fold, they adapt, they disguise themselves, but they endure. We are what we have evolved from—the soft and the hard heritage. Attempts to homogenize them, whether through theology, ideology, or state power, always fail in the long run. The Pasmanda experience proves this in the most unexpected way. It shows that even inside an imported religious framework, the “infidel” sense of self finds a way to breathe.

Maybe this is why the Pasmanda narrative matters today. Not merely because it exposes intra-Muslim inequality, but because it reveals something profound about resistance: the quietest form of rebellion is simply the refusal to forget who you are. And perhaps this is where the global conversation on Islamism needs to begin, not with fear, not with blame, but with the courage to look inward. Every community has its shadows. Every faith has its blind spots. The question is not whether these exist, but whether we dare to name them.

If Pasmanda voices are finally being heard, it is not because they are loud; it is because the world is finally ready to listen to the whispers beneath the rhetoric. Their struggle is not against Islam, but against the hierarchies that disfigure it. It is a struggle for dignity, for recognition, for the simple right to exist without inherited inferiority. And that makes their story not just a Muslim question, but a human one.

So, as we speak of “infidels” responding, maybe it is time to redefine the word itself. The true infidel is not the one who stands outside the faith, but the one who refuses to question the injustices done in its name. And the true believer, perhaps, is the one who dares to hold a mirror to his own house before criticizing the world outside.

In that sense, the Pasmanda story is less an accusation and more a conversation. It is an invitation to rethink what we mean by equality, by community, by brotherhood. And if we accept that invitation with humility, we may discover that the most transformative revolutions begin not on the streets, but in the quiet courage of those who were never meant to speak.

Namaste!

For over a century, the Bengali identity within India has been synonymous with intellectual sophistication. The region has produced a disproportionate share of the nation’s poets, philosophers, reformers, filmmakers, and academics. Bengal’s cultural DNA carries a deep inclination toward synthesis of ideas, religions, aesthetics, and languages. This syncretic impulse historically enriched Bengal, giving rise to its unique literary traditions, devotional movements, and artistic experimentation.

Yet, this celebrated syncretism has also harboured an overlooked paradox: its capacity to obscure the tensions and asymmetries embedded within the society. In attempting to harmonize every contrast, Bengali syncretism often glosses over ideological imbalances and the pressures exerted by more assertive cultural currents around it. What appears as pluralistic openness transforms, at times, into a reluctance to acknowledge threats to the cultural continuity itself. The tragedy is that Bengal’s intellectualism, while proud of its humanism, is increasingly unable to confront forces that do not reciprocate its ideals of coexistence.

Not Understanding the Intolerance Paradox

A peculiar psychological pattern has evolved within the modern Bengali mind: the belief that secularism demands limitless accommodation, even when faced with ideologies that actively reject mutual respect. In embracing a self-image of cosmopolitan tolerance, many Bengali intellectuals internalize a version of secular identity so expansive that it becomes incapable of recognizing asymmetry. When some hard-line Islamist movements assert exclusivist rhetoric or attempt to impose rigid socio-religious boundaries, the Bengali liberal instinct is often to downplay, relativize, or explain away these challenges. The fear of appearing “communal” overrides the need for an honest analysis.

This dynamic creates a profound vulnerability. While most communities across the world maintain clear boundaries around cultural survival, Bengali hyper-secularism often treats such boundaries as unfashionable or regressive. It proudly refuses to see itself as “the other,” even when it is perceived as such by the hard-line outfits. This internalized reluctance to acknowledge the ideological hostility makes the community susceptible to political manipulation, demographic anxiety, and cultural dilution. Instead of a confident syncretism, this becomes a form of naïve openness—a willingness to overlook militant tendencies in the belief that pluralism requires perpetual self-effacement. In striving to be morally superior, Bengal frequently renders itself defenseless.

The Undermining of Indigenous Bengali Culture

The indigenous Bengali culture has always been a mosaic of influences, from tribal folk cultures to the sophisticated Sanskrit traditions, from contemplative Buddhist monasteries on the hills to the devotional Vaishnava temples in the plains. But the contemporary challenge stems from the gradual overshadowing of indigenous elements by an assertive linguistic and cultural Islamization in the region’s eastern half (which became separated in 1947 as the non-contiguous state of East Pakistan and then became a sovereign country called Bangladesh in 1971 by the help of Indian armed forces). Over time in Bangladesh, sections of Bengali literature, terminology, and performative traditions have been subtly ignored or recast under Arabic and Persianized frameworks, often at the expense of the region’s older plural foundations. This has shaped both linguistic usage and cultural aesthetics, especially in Bangladesh, where state policies, educational restructuring, and public discourse have emphasised a more Islamic civilizational identity.

The spill-over effect is felt in India as well. In global forums, “Bengali culture” is increasingly understood through the lens of its Bangladesh-centric articulation—one that is more anchored in Islamic literary tropes, symbolic vocabulary, and socio-cultural priorities. Meanwhile, many indigenous Bengali Hindu practices such as certain folk rites, the Shakta rituals, or Sanskrit literary traditions struggle for visibility. Even within West Bengal (India), the cultural landscape is shifting: expressions of indigenous heritage are sometimes treated with discomfort by hyper-secular elites, who fear that celebrating Hindu components may be seen as exclusionary.

This dynamic affects the language, too. Bengali vernacular registers that once carried a balanced mix of Sanskrit and Persian influences are slowly being reshaped. Younger audiences often absorb mediated cultural content from across the border, reinforcing an Islamized version of Bengali normativity. While exchange between cultures is natural, the asymmetry becomes evident when one heritage is consistently foregrounded while the other is marginalized. This is not a rejection of Islamic contributions to Bengali culture; rather, it is a call to recognize that cultural balance is tipping unevenly, and the indigenous foundation risks erosion if the trend remains unexamined.

“Bengali” is Not Synonymous with “Bangladeshi”

A recurring problem for Indian Bengalis in the global arena is the conflation of their identity with that of the modern nation of Bangladesh. As Bangladesh has emerged as the numerically dominant Bengali-speaking state, global platforms increasingly equate Bengali with Bangladeshi cultural norms, political narratives, and religious identity. This inadvertently sidelines the distinct civilizational experience of Indian Bengalis, whose cultural evolution was shaped by a multi-religious, philosophically diverse, and historically Sanskrit milieu. After August 2024, when several geopolitical and cultural shifts further consolidated Bangladesh’s international visibility, this conflation has become particularly pronounced. Conferences, literary festivals, and cultural showcases often feature Bangladesh as the de facto representative of Bengali identity, even when the subject concerns pre-modern Bengal or pan-regional traditions. The Indian Bengali voices, especially that of Hindu Bengalis, recede into the background. Their contributions in fields such as natural sciences, classical music, literature, and indigenous folklores receive diminishing recognition.

This marginalization has socio-political implications. When Bengali identity is globally perceived primarily through an Islamic majoritarian framework, the plural, syncretic, and Hindu-rooted traditions of West Bengal risk becoming invisible. Indian Bengalis find themselves culturally overshadowed, their distinct traditions absorbed under a homogenized label. To reclaim nuance, it is essential to articulate clearly that Bengali identity extends beyond national borders and religious demography. The richness of Bengali culture lies in its multiplicity, not in the dominance of any single state-sponsored narrative.

The Silent “Bhadralok” + the Fear of Losing the Secular Badge

The Bengali bhadralok’, meaning the “polite class,” has long shaped the intellectual and cultural direction of Bengal. Yet today, this very class, which was once the vanguard of reforms and resistance, often chooses silence when confronting the growth of ideological hardening in certain regions, including some madrasa-networks and militant religious organizations. Their reluctance does not stem from apathy but from a deep anxiety about losing moral legitimacy. To criticize any form of radicalization is, in their view, to risk appearing “illiberal” or “communal.” The bhadralok ethos, shaped by post-Tagorean humanism and Nehruvian secularism, treats silence as a virtue and confrontation as a moral failure.

This creates a paradox: the very class that once championed progressive critique now hesitates to challenge extremist tendencies. This hesitancy emboldens the hard-line networks, which interpret silence as acceptance. Meanwhile, moderate and peaceful people find their cultural space shrinking under the pressure of ideological polarization. The bhadralok’s adherence to prestige-oriented secularism prevents them from defending the plural traditions that define Bengal. The cost of this silence is high. When intellectual leadership avoids difficult conversations, the society beneath loses clarity. Without the bhadralok’s moral courage, Bengal risks drifting into a cultural imbalance where extremist voices disproportionately shape discourse. A healthy, pluralistic society requires honest introspection, not a mere “performative neutrality.”

Why No Political Party Can Solve This Alone

The tensions within Bengali syncretism are not merely political; they are deeply civilizational. As demographic patterns evolve and ideological influences intensify, Bengal’s equilibrium becomes increasingly fragile. Political parties—whether the right-leaning Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the centrist Trinamool Congress (TMC), or the left-wing Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M)—each engage with this issue selectively, constrained by electoral and partisan compulsions. None can address the long-term structural challenge, for doing so would require political risks that few are willing to take.

For the BJP, raising concerns about ideological extremism invites accusations of communal polarization. Their messaging often fails to resonate with the Bengali ethos, which distrusts overt religio-political mobilization. Meanwhile, the CPI-M, shaped by decades of Marxist universalism, struggles to discuss religious radicalization without contradicting its ideological framework. It aims to protect minority rights (which surely is a commendable goal if the “minority” truly is a “minority,” and is threatened—which it is not), but often hesitates to acknowledge how certain extremist groups exploit this very protection. As for the TMC, it has relied heavily on the minority vote-bank, making it politically difficult to confront rising radical networks without jeopardizing their electoral support.

The result is a political stalemate. Each party views the issue through a short-term lens: votes, narratives, and coalitions. But the deeper problem of preserving Bengal’s pluralistic civilization requires cross-party cooperation and civil-society mobilization. The fear among many is that, if demographic and ideological shifts continue unchecked, Bengal could lose the cultural environment that once nurtured its intellectual brilliance. This is not about the emergence of a formal theocratic state; rather, it is about the subtle weakening of the cultural conditions that allow secularism and liberalism to flourish in the first place. If certain Islamist hard-line movements expand their influence in Bengal, both the left and the right will face existential challenges. The left risks losing ideological ground, while the right loses cultural continuity. Both depend on a pluralistic environment for survival.

Thus, safeguarding Bengal’s cultural future cannot be outsourced to party politics. It requires honest engagement from educators, writers, community leaders, moderate religious organizations, and ordinary citizens. This collective responsibility transcends electoral cycles. Bengal’s heritage, its literature, its music, its festivals, its philosophical traditions, are too valuable to be left vulnerable to ideological extremism or excessive demographic pressure. Political parties can contribute, but only society at large can ensure cultural survival.

Jews + Hindus: Learning from Each Other 

The Jewish people offer a powerful model of cultural resilience. Despite centuries of dispersion and persecution, they preserved their identity through language, ritual continuity, education, and community solidarity, without isolating themselves from global culture. Bengali Hindus can learn from this strategic balance: cultural openness must be paired with self-preservation, intellectual confidence with clear boundaries, and pluralism with vigilance against ideological extremism. Conversely, Jews could learn from Bengali Hindus the art of sustaining multifaceted cultural expression of music, storytelling, philosophical synthesis, and ritual aesthetics that draw from diverse sources. Bengali culture had once demonstrated how synthesis, when rooted in confidence rather than self-erasure, can produce extraordinary creativity. The future of Bengal depends on recalibrating syncretism: embracing plurality without surrendering identity. Only then can the region’s intellectual legacy survive the pressures of modern ideological and demographic shifts.

I was born and raised as a Druze in Israel, part of a small community that believes deeply in loyalty, service, and coexistence. Throughout my life, I grew up between cultures, languages, and religions. I learned to respect others, to help whenever I could, and to believe that every human life—regardless of faith or background—has value. As Druze, we are taught not to judge people by their religion, but by their actions, by who they truly are.

On October 7, 2023, that belief—my entire worldview—flashed before me in an instant.

Serving Food, Not Knowing We Were Walking into a Massacre

Before the attack, I came with my brother and our team from Taboonia to serve traditional Druze food at the Nova Music Festival. It was supposed to be a weekend of music, joy, freedom, and peace. We brought the flavors of home—food made with love, tradition, and hospitality. We were proud and excited to be part of something positive, giving people a memorable experience.

None of us imagined that serving food would turn into a fight for survival.

The Moment Everything Changed

At dawn, when the air was still quiet, we heard the first explosions. At first, we thought it was far away—maybe rockets, as we had heard many times before. But, within seconds, we realized it was close. 

Then came the sound of gunfire—continuous, all around us. And then we saw them. Dozens of Hamas terrorists stormed the festival. They were not coming to fight soldiers. They were not coming for political gain. They came to murder civilians—intentionally, calmly, without hesitation. People who had been dancing just moments before became targets.

The terrorists did not care who we were. They did not ask whether we were Jewish, Druze, Muslim, or Christian. They did not care what we believed in or where we came from. To them, we were all the same: people to kill.

Running for Our Lives—Ten Hours of Fear + Death

Within seconds, we understood that we had to run. I yelled to my brother and our team: “Run! Don’t look back!”

Around us was fire, smoke, and injured people, screaming. Thousands tried to escape at once. Cars were on fire. Young people ran barefoot. It was a nightmare.

We ran into the woods, and, from that moment on, we kept running. We ran for ten hours. Ten hours of crawling through trees, hiding among bushes, enduring hunger, pain, and unending fear. Ten hours of gunfire—near and far, all around us.

We heard the terrorists hunting people in the forest, calling out in Hebrew to trick survivors. We heard people pleading for help, then silence.

That day, we lost part of our team—friends, colleagues, people who had been with us from the beginning.

Escaping Hell

When I finally reached a safe zone and saw Israeli soldiers, my body collapsed. My legs could not hold me. My chest burned. My mind felt shattered.

Hundreds were killed that day. Friends, colleagues, people standing in line for our food just hours before. People who came for a festival of peace—not for war. I still don’t understand how I survived.

What it Means to Be Druze after October 7

As Druze, we have always been part of Israel’s defense. We serve side by side with Jews, protecting the country and all its citizens. I have always believed in unity and coexistence. But October 7 taught me something deeper: 

Radical Islam does not differentiate. 
It does not see religion. 
It does not see background. 
It does not see humanity. 
It sees only targets.

As a Druze, the terrorists tried to kill me, my brother, and our team. They did not care who we were.

Carrying the Trauma, Choosing to Speak

Since that day, I have tried to rebuild my life. I opened my restaurant in New York—Taboonia—to continue bringing goodness into the world.

I told myself: “If evil tried to destroy me, I will respond with love, with food, with purpose.” But the fear remains.

The memories are still alive. The nightmares return. Still, I choose to speak.

I choose to tell my story. Not for politics, not for attention, but out of responsibility.

The world must understand: What happened at Nova was not a “conflict.” It was a massacre of innocent people. A massacre fueled by an extremist ideology that does not value human life.

Why I Write This

When I was asked to write about my experience as a Druze confronting radical Islam, I knew I had to say yes. Because my story is not only mine. It is the story of every survivor. Of every family that lost someone. Of every person who saw hatred up close.

Radical Islam tried to kill me. It tried to kill my brother and our team. It tried to murder hundreds in one morning. It did not care who we were. And that is why the world must unite against extremism. It threatens all of us, no matter where we come from.

Hope after Darkness

Despite everything, I still believe in peace. I believe coexistence is possible.

I believe the vast majority of people—Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze—want to live well, raise their children, build—not destroy.

I survived the Nova massacre, and surviving carries responsibility: Responsibility to speak. Responsibility to remember. Responsibility not to let hatred win.

If my story can help someone understand what really happened there, I have done my part.

Growing up as a Druze in Israel is not something you simply “experience”—it’s something you carry. It stays with you like a second heartbeat. On one side, you belong to an ancient, secretive faith that has survived a thousand years by staying small, loyal, and deeply rooted in tradition. On the other side, you are fully Israeli—shaped by democracy, by military service, by the chaotic energy of this country where everyone has an opinion and no one knows how to whisper.

It’s a strange dance: village life versus modern life; old customs alongside a society that encourages you to question everything. Some days you feel like an olive tree planted on a mountain. Other days you feel pulled into the fast current of Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem—into a world moving a hundred kilometers an hour. But that mix, that clash, that fusion—it’s what forms you.

I didn’t always appreciate it like now. Only later—much later, after October 7—did I realize what this identity truly meant, and who was actually standing between us and the darkness.

A Small People in a Dangerous Neighborhood

The Druze are a tiny minority in the Middle East—about one million in total. We’re scattered between Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. But the only Druze in the region who live with real freedom of religion, equal civil rights, and genuine state protection are the Druze of Israel.

That’s not a political statement. That’s reality.

In Lebanon, Druze communities survive by navigating militias and clan politics. In Syria, for decades, Druze lived cautiously under the Assad regime. But, after the regime’s collapse, things got far worse: Islamist factions filled the vacuum, and the Druze suddenly found themselves exposed with no reliable state to protect them.

Meanwhile, Israeli Druze—my people—serve in the IDF, hold government office, run businesses, teach, lead, and speak freely without fear.

Israeli Druze girls send satellites to space; Syrian Druze girls get kidnapped and sold as sex slaves. And, in “Palestine,” they won’t even let us live.

That contrast didn’t fully hit me until I saw what was happening across the border. After October 7: Syria falls apart, and the Druze are hunted again. They tried to literally exterminate them all!

While the world focused on Israel after the October 7 massacre, Syria went through a transformation that most Western readers have no idea happened. The Assad regime finally collapsed under years of war and economic ruin. And into that vacuum stepped Ahmed al-Sharaa, known as Abu Muhammad al-Golani—the former leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, with deep roots in al-Qaeda-linked militias.

Backed by powerful Muslim clans and remnants of ISIS and al-Qaeda, al-Golani took control of large parts of Syria. And, very quickly, the Druze and Christian communities found themselves in the crosshairs.

Quiet villages in the Suwayda and Jabal al-Druze region suddenly faced:

• Extremist militias
• Forced conversions
• Violent raids
• Kidnappings
• Executions
• Pressure to submit or flee

It was the same old Middle Eastern pattern: a minority living peacefully; suddenly Islam goes unchecked, free and in numbers, and, all of a sudden, the other is treated like an obstacle to be removed. It’s religion. It’s the “will of Allah.”

Honestly, New Yorkers should be very careful with your new mayor. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Everything about him screams Muslim Brotherhood—silent jihad—but I know New Yorkers won’t listen to our warnings—the ones from the Middle East who truly know this danger. Well, at least I’ll know I warned them.

Back to our story. And again, the world didn’t care. No U.N. meetings. No human rights campaigns. No headlines. Silence.

Realizing Who Actually Protects Minorities in This Region

As I watched what was happening to my people across the border, something inside me snapped. I found myself advocating not only for my Jewish brothers and sisters here in Israel, who were slaughtered on October 7, but also for Druze and Christians in Syria—people whose faces I will never know, but whose fate I felt in my bones.

Because the truth became painfully clear: The only Druze in the Middle East who are safe… are the Druze who live under the protection of the State of Israel.

Not because Israel is perfect—not because everything is easy—but because Israel protects its minorities. Actively. Consistently. Sometimes at a heavy cost.

The Day Israel Stepped In

Then came the moment that sealed everything for me. When al-Golani’s forces and allied jihadist groups moved armored vehicles toward Druze communities near Khadr, preparing for a massacre, it wasn’t the U.N. that reacted.

It wasn’t the Arab world. It wasn’t Europe. It was Israel.

Under direct orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Air Force struck the armored convoys and disrupted the assault. Israeli pilots flew into Syrian airspace—not for Jews, not for Israeli citizens, but for Druze in a foreign country, an enemy country.

Israel saved them. Israel stopped what would have been the next Yazidi-style genocide. Israel acted when the world shrugged. And that was the day I understood—fully and without hesitation—who stands between my people and extinction.

A Loyalty that Flows Both Ways

People sometimes ask, “Why are the Druze so loyal to Israel? Why do they serve in the IDF in such high numbers?”

The answer is simple: Because Israel is our home. Our country. Israel protects us. We protect it. Not in speeches. Not in theories. In action.

Israel didn’t save the Druze in Syria because they were Israeli. Israel saved them because it was the right thing to do. Because minorities matter here. Because human life matters. And that loyalty flows both ways.

Why I Became a Voice

After October 7, after the rise of al-Golani, after watching the Middle East threaten yet another small minority, I made a decision: I will not stay silent. I will use  my channel on YouTube and other platforms—my podcast; my advocacy.

To be a voice to minority’s in a world where the small are voiceless, the majority play victims, and bully the minority to submission.

Look at Islam worldwide and then go ask New Yorkers who are the victims in the Middle East: they will think it’s Muslims. Ask their new mayor and he will say Israel is the problem—meanwhiles Israel is the solution! We all know it here: we the minorities are the ones who truly need saving.

So CNN won’t cover us; the New York Times will not talk about us; Colombia University will teach its students that the Druze and the Jews are the problem in the Middle East meanwhile protecting the Muslims who are trying to exterminate us. This I can’t allow and I will use my humble platform to advocate for truth and real peace just like the Druze and the Jews have. And that’s a real peace! I know it I feel it.

Not because I’m special—but because I can. Because I live in a country where I am allowed to speak. Because my family is safe. Because my religion survives. Because Israel protects what other countries destroy.

And I felt a duty—an obligation—to use my voice for those who cannot: the Druze. The Christians. The Yazidis. Every small community that extremist movements want erased from the map.

Why I’m Writing This for a Western Audience

The West often misunderstands our region. They think Israel is the powerful bully and everyone else is the victim. But the Middle East is not a story of “strong versus weak.” It’s a story of who survives.

And minorities in this region survive only in one place: Israel. In all the other places, they get systematically erased.

So I write this for Americans, for New Yorkers; for anyone who thinks they understand the Middle East from TikTok videos.

If Israel falls, minorities fall with it. If Israel retreats, extremists advance. If Israel disappears, so do we.

My Simple Truth

I am proud to be Druze. I am proud to be Israeli. And I know exactly who stands between my people and annihilation.

Israel didn’t just give me freedom—it gave my people a future.

Yours,

Mansor Ashkar 
A father 
A YouTuber 
A former officer in the IDF

Who was Hideyoshi—and why he matters now for Japan facing Islam

Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) unified Japan after a century of civil war. He governed as a builder, not a zealot: taxes were stabilized, authority consolidated, and public order placed above sectarian power. In 1587, he confronted a religious-political influx of Portuguese Catholics, expelling Jesuit missionaries while keeping trade on terms set by Japan. He also challenged Portuguese slave trafficking, which had entangled itself with missionary influence, and demanded redress for Japanese captives.

The core lesson was jurisdiction. Faiths could be tolerated as long as they were compatible with Japanese culture, but foreign religious leverage would not set the rules of civic life. That posture— clear lines, early—is the point of reference for Japan’s current dilemma.

Thesis: Japan needs a Hideyoshi-like attitude now. Welcome (in reasonable numbers) peaceful, compatible, and competent new residents along with their commerce; hold the civic line through clear, no-double-standard law; decline institutional pressures, from any creed, that would remake public routines. If we fail to do this, we drift toward the European pattern of irreparable damage and unmanaged frictions that accumulated for decades before anyone named them aloud. As Douglas Murray warned, Europe has committed suicide.

Japan’s temperament

Japan’s religious life is practical. Most people mark time by shrine visits, temple rites, and family memorials rather than strict doctrine. Manners and seasonal obligations hold the fabric together. Tolerance here is a habit of coexistence: queue well, keep your voice down on the late train, clean the street outside your home. These are not dogmas; they are the choreography of a diffuse spirituality and nature-rooted civic life. Imagine trying to submit Japanese culture to any monotheistic, dogmatic religious group: it would overwhelm the social fabric in no time.

This temperament has made space for difference, so long as difference does not require the majority to rebuild its routines. Earlier Muslim arrivals generally fit that pattern: families worked, married, prayed in rented rooms, and did not ask institutions to change shape around them. The present phase, however, now feels different in several towns. Non-negotiable obligations in Islamic practice now collide with systems built for a broadly Buddhist-Shintō, secular public: refusal of cremation where cremation is the norm; halal requirements within a one-menu, secular school lunch program; large mosque projects on narrow streets. Many citizens feel a fundamental change is being asked of the majority, and that the ask arrived without due regard for native forms.

Christopher Hitchens put the test plainly: “The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.” The question is not whether Islam is welcome in Japan. The question is whether we can think and legislate in ways that protect civic order while allowing only compatible immigration into Japanese life. The answer should be yes—if we keep jurisdiction steady, speak plainly, and publish the rules. Under no circumstances should Japan be bullied into integrating practices incompatible with its civic frameworks.

What the 2025 election revealed

The most recent national vote made one point unmistakable: many voters are alert to immigration pressures and resent what they perceive as bullying or special treatment by some newcomers. In the July 20, 2025, Upper House election, immigration and foreign-resident policy emerged as central campaign issues; several new conservative parties, such as Nippo Hoshuto and Sanseito, expanded rapidly by running on a “Japanese First” platform, and the government created a cross-agency “control tower” days before the vote to address public concerns about foreigners amid a record 3.8 million foreign residents. After the election, officials even floated debating a cap on foreign residents. Together, these moves show how sensitive the public has become. 

Let us point out specifically how Muslim cases are being debated in this context in Japan recently.

Friction One: Burial

Islam prohibits cremation; Japan has normalized it almost universally. That clash produces recurring fights when ground-burial sites are proposed.

Hiji, Ōita: A Muslim cemetery project advanced, then stalled, then fell when a new mayor refused to sell municipal land, citing groundwater concerns and resident opposition. Officials published technical criteria and international guidance; the answer remained no.

This was not a verdict on Islam. It was a procedural, ecological, and cultural refusal. Anyone seeking residence in Japan should respect such determinations.

Miyagi Prefecture: Despite residents’ apprehensions, the governor floated a dedicated Muslim cemetery to accommodate existing residents and workers, which triggered extensive objections. Over the past year, the proposal has see-sawed—consideration, pushback, even talk of withdrawal. Whether it proceeds or not, the dispute is now a prefectural matter, not a parochial one. 

Burial according to Islamic law is a legitimate religious need. However, in Japan, cremation is the norm. Logic suggests that newcomers either adapt their practice to local conditions or choose a country where such needs are commonly met. The remedy is not panic but precise law and cultural boundaries.

Friction Two: School lunches

Public schools in Japan are secular institutions. When a small number of pupils cannot eat the standard menu because slaughter methods and certification do not meet their law, families already have a straightforward option: bring lunch from home. Despite this option, pressure has mounted in some districts. In 2024, Sakai and Goka (Ibaraki) introduced halal options despite the secular nature of the schools. The debate is now national.

The institutional stance must be clear: one system applied to all. This is how we avoid the drift Melanie Phillips described in Europe: parallel systems growing inside public institutions without public consent. The Japanese Constitution’s separation of religion and state supports that clarity in public schools.

Friction Three: Mosques + neighborhoods

As populations grow, prayer rooms become mosques, and small mosques seek larger buildings. Japan has moved from a few dozen mosques a generation ago to well over one hundred by 2023, with counts around 130–150 today depending on the tally. The trend is clear.

Neighborhood conflicts are not mysterious: parking, noise, fire egress, crowding on narrow streets. Europe’s lesson is that city halls can lose their nerve when confronted by organized religious lobbies. By permitting highly intrusive facilities without firm conditions, some cities allowed the proliferation of spaces where parallel norms took root. Murray’s larger warning, that a civilization can forget to believe in itself, applies as much to permitting as to rhetoric.

The angry case: Kawaguchi + Warabi

Kawaguchi and neighboring Warabi (Saitama), with a high concentration of Kurdish immigrants, became national symbols after two kinds of incidents. First, a mass altercation among mostly Kurdish residents outside a hospital in 2023 disrupted ambulance service and went viral. Second, a Kurdish man who had received a suspended sentence for sexual assault of a minor was later convicted for another sexual assault against a thirteen-year-old and given an eight-year prison term, though authorities did not promptly announce the second case. The sequence hardened public anger and fostered the belief that the system protected an offender more than it protected children because the perpetrator was of Muslim origin, as was the case in the grooming-gang situation in the U.K.

When serious crimes occur, prosecutors and police must move quickly, speak plainly, and seek sentences commensurate with the harm, without the double standards about which many Europeans now complain. Timely, transparent updates prevent rumor from punishing the innocent along with the guilty.

Scale and tempo

Reliable estimates place Japan’s Muslim population in the low hundreds of thousands and rising; foreign residents overall reached about 3.8 million by late 2024. Three decades ago in Europe, a few mosques and modest inflows seemed inconsequential. We know now how rapidly local pressures—reinforced by robust birthrates—can accumulate when institutions hesitate.

Most Japanese are not hostile to Muslims as neighbors, so long as the norms and culture of Japan are respected. Europe’s experience over the last three decades is instructive. The Japanese are understandably anxious about a politics of religious and cultural demand that feels endless. To paraphrase Hitchens: you cannot defend multiculturalism when it is used to erase the host culture. The rule of law requires a confident center and one visible standard.

We need Hideyoshi—before we become Europe

Europe forbade boundary-setting and vilified those who asked basic questions about cultural survival. Phillips saw it early: official multiculturalism, fused with appeasement of extremism, produced a “state of paralysis across British institutions.” Murray’s sharper sentence is a harsh warning, but it should not be a fate. Japan needs to set the lines while numbers are still small and institutions still trusted. In short, we need Hideyoshi, now, before it’s too late. 

And Hideyoshi’s relevance is not nostalgia. It is the model of rationality. Separate faith from leverage. Keep the rules inside the polity. Welcome trade, and accept new residents only on clear terms: respect the host country’s civic spirit and legal norms. Modern Japan is a constitutional republic—and an old cultural entity. If the current government holds the line with steadiness rather than noise, the historical comparison will take care of itself.

Japan should remain what it has been: basically open; non-monotheistic; Buddhist in rhythm; Shintō in feeling; secular in public life. It can be hospitable to people who are not from here and still refuse to surrender the forms that hold the place together. That is not hostility. It is custodianship.

A thousand years have passed since strangers came,
Yet still my homeland bleeds from ancient wounds.

The fire of our fathers dimmed,
Our voice drowned beneath foreign storms.

O Iran, rise again from sorrow—
Your spirit is older than their swords.

In the year 630, Prince Ukaydir was celebrating his 35th birthday when he rode out from Dumat al-Jandal for an early-morning hunt, carrying only a light spear and bow. A Christian Arab prince and ally of Byzantium, he led his brother and his most trusted retainers, men who had hunted with him since childhood.

The desert was cool with oryx grazing in the half-light, as dawn stained the horizon. This ride should have affirmed Ukaydir’s strength and his command of the terrain that encircled his principality. Instead, Ukaydir was the one being hunted.

Weeks earlier, Muhammad had commissioned Khalid ibn al‑Walid (the “Sword of Allah”) to bring Dumat al‐Jandal under Islamic control, securing the northern trade routes into the Arabian Peninsula, and Khalid’s scouts had shadowed Ukaydir’s movements. Before dawn, hidden riders took up position on the ridgelines, and, just as Ukaydir raised his spear toward a grazing oryx, the horizon erupted in hoofbeats. Khalid’s cavalry descended like a storm, cutting off every escape path.

Bound and brought before Khalid, Ukaydir was offered a choice: conversion, death, or dhimmitude, a covenant of surrender that permitted survival under a legal code of subservience and humiliation.

Khalid took Ukaydir’s robe, his ornaments, and his sword as trophies, then sent him to Muhammad in Medina. There, the Prophet ordered his release in exchange for tribute. Ukaydir agreed to pay the annual jizyah on behalf of his people, and to dismantle the crosses that adorned the churches of Dumat al-Jandal.

The prince returned home stripped of sovereignty, his city a frontier post of the caliphate, and its tribute a symbol of subordination.

For the region’s non-Muslim communities, this event foreshadowed a new phase of conquest, and the hunting of infidels would never end.

After the Arab conquests, Islam’s expansion carried it across the Middle East and North Africa, through Spain into France, and all the way in the east to Vienna. The Crusades were not an unprovoked assault on a “religion of peace,” but a coordinated response to centuries of invasion and enslavement. Before the Crusades, Islam was invading Europe from both ends and seemed prepared to tighten the noose.

We forget today that the Middle East and North Africa were once overwhelmingly Christian. The decline occurred through conquest, discrimination, social coercion, and, of course, violence. Under Islamic rule, Christians were permitted to exist, but only if they paid special taxes. They were subjected to rules of humiliation, and violence against them was common. 

Islam sent the message that Christian men are subhumans whose wives could be raped “as that which the right hand possess[es]” (Qur’an 4:24), whose sons would convert to avoid the fate of their fathers, and whose daughters would be made to “marry bearded men” (a policy reflected in works such as al-Mawardi’s Ahkam al-Sultaniyya and noted by Evliya Çelebi’s Travels).

Under the Ottomans, Christian numbers collapsed over time.

In Iraq, just this century, Christians numbered roughly one and a half million; today, fewer than 150,000 remain. In Syria, entire Christian communities once shaped whole cities; today, their population is estimated to be just 300,000.

Turkey entered the twentieth century with a population that was about one-fifth Christian; today, they account for less than one quarter of 1%. Egypt, which historically had a Christian majority, now retains a Coptic minority of about 10%.

North Africa produced Augustine and some of the greatest thinkers of early Christianity. It is now almost entirely Muslim. From Morocco to Libya, the indigenous Christian populations were targeted, generation by generation, until they vanished. By the time European colonialism returned a temporary Christian presence in the nineteenth century, the original communities had been gone for centuries.

In Iraq and Syria, the rise of the Islamic State emptied entire Christian towns. Families who had traced their faith straight back to the Apostles fled. 

In Iran, conversion to Christianity is illegal. Yousef Nour was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for attending a home church and owning Christian literature. His wife Zahra was fired from her job for refusing to reveal fellow believers. Their children were taken away after authorities confiscated their home. 

Such stories are common. Hundreds of Iranian Christians now worship in secret, knowing that a single knock on the door could end in prison, or death.

In August of 2023, two Christian men in the Pakistani city of Jaranwala were accused of defiling a Qur’an. Within hours, mobs swept through Christian neighborhoods, burning churches and homes. Twenty-six churches were destroyed and hundreds of families fled. One teacher, Shazia, hid under a bed with her children as rioters set fire to her home. She later said “the men outside were laughing as they chanted that this was Allah’s justice.” Few attackers were ever held accountable.

In Egypt, persecution takes both violent and institutional forms. On Palm Sunday of 2017, two coordinated bombings struck Coptic cathedrals in Tanta and Alexandria. More than 40 people were killed as they gathered to celebrate one of their holiest days. A 10-year-old altar boy named Mina died wearing his white robe, proud to serve God. 

While such terror attacks are vivid, the everyday discrimination faced by Egyptian Christians is relentless: abductions, forced conversions, and attacks go unpunished. Coptic families report that building or repairing churches is often blocked by local officials, permits denied or delayed for years.

Across the Islamic, world these stories repeat. In Nigeria, Christians are targeted by Boko Haram and Fulani militants who burn churches and massacre worshippers. In Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, the few Christians who remain live entirely in secrecy. 

Islamic societies have historically tolerated Christians only as long as they remain silent, hidden, and submissive. Those who speak their faith aloud risk their homes, their freedom, and often their lives.

Though Christians were relegated to second-class status under the dhimmi laws, Jews were often treated even more harshly. From the earliest Islamic expansions, Jewish communities found themselves caught in a cycle of forced submission, mass expulsions, and outright slaughter. 

In 627, much of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza was annihilated in Medina after refusing to convert; the men were executed, and, after a siege at Khaibar a year later, the rest of the tribe surrendered and the women and children were enslaved. This event set a precedent that echoed through subsequent centuries: Jewish existence would be tolerated only at the pleasure of their rulers.

Across North Africa, the Middle East, and the Iberian Peninsula, Jews endured alternating periods of conditional tolerance and sudden violence. 

The so-called “Golden Age” of Spain, often romanticized today, was pockmarked with massacres such as the pogrom of Granada in 1066, when a Muslim mob crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and slaughtered around 4,000 Jews in a single day. 

In Yemen, Jews were periodically forced to convert, forbidden to build synagogues, and compelled to wear distinguishing garments long before similar degrading codes appeared in Europe. The notorious 1679 expulsion decree, the Mawza Exile, drove thousands of Yemenite Jews from their homes into the desert. Many died on this death march.

In Morocco, Jewish populations were repeatedly confined to mellahs (walled ghettos), where they lived at the mercy of local rulers. Violent outbreaks such as the Tétouan massacres (1790–1792) left entire communities devastated. In Persia, Jews suffered forced conversions under the Safavid dynasty, and, well into the nineteenth century, Jewish girls could be seized by Muslim men for marriage against their will, without recourse.

The trend continued into the modern era. When Israel declared independence in 1948, nearly 900,000 Jews lived across the Islamic world. Within a single generation, roughly 99% of them had been killed, expelled, dispossessed, or forced to flee. Ancient communities in Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo, Tripoli, Algiers, and Tunis disappeared.

Chants of “From the river to the sea” terrify Jewish people based on a history that taught them—certainly the descendants of those expelled—exactly what Islamic supremacy means for their survival. They have experienced it for more than 13 centuries.

In every region where Islam becomes dominant, Christian and Jewish communities are destroyed, and Hindu civilization has perhaps suffered more from jihad than any other people on earth. 

Beginning in the eighth century, wave after wave of Islamic invasions tore through the Indian subcontinent. Historian Will Durant called the Islamic conquest of India “probably the bloodiest story in human history,” taking perhaps 80 million lives between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries.

The early raids of Muhammad bin Qasim in Sindh, the brutal campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni, and later the Ghurid invasions left vast regions depopulated. Ghazni alone destroyed hundreds of Hindu temples, including the sacred site of Somnath, whose defenders were slaughtered and whose idol was smashed and taken back to Afghanistan as a trophy of victory. 

Chroniclers from the era record massacres so large that corpses clogged rivers and turned fields to ash.

Under the Delhi Sultanate, Hindu populations were subjected to forced conversions, mass enslavement, and systematic destruction of their sacred architecture. Entire regions saw the abolition of local customs under threat of death. The jizyah was imposed with maximum humiliation, sometimes collected by forcing Hindus to present themselves barefoot before tax collectors.

The invasion campaigns of Timur (1398–1399) were catastrophic. His own writings in the Tuzk-i-Timuri brag about killing 100,000 Hindus in a single day. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb later oversaw the tearing down of thousands of temples, replacing some with mosques constructed using the original stones. His reinstitution of the jizyah and enforcement of Sharia brought one of the largest non-Muslim populations in the world under a regime of fear and coercion.

Many Hindu communities see modern Islamist movements, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and ISIS-inspired cells as continuations of the same historical pattern: a civilizational struggle between jihadist expansionism and a culture that has fought to survive it for over 1,200 years.

We think of intifada as a “struggle” against Israel, and even when we hear “Globalize the Intifada,” we think of it as anti-Semitic.

The word intifadah—a product of Yasser Arafat’s meticulous KGB training—means “uprising,” “rebellion,” or “shaking off,” and it can describe any revolt against perceived oppression, corruption, or occupation, regardless of who the target is. This has, of course, been used against Israel, but intifada is more than that.

Many Islamic scholars define “oppression” based on whether or not societies submit to Allah’s law. Sayyid Qutb, in Milestones, wrote that “when, in a society, the sovereignty belongs to Allah alone, expressed in its obedience to the Shari‘ah… only then is every person in that society free from servitude to others.”

Abul A‘la Maududi echoed the same: “If an Islamic society consciously resolves not to accept the Shari‘a, and decides to enact its own constitution and laws… such a society breaks its contract with God and forfeits its right to be called Islamic.” This framework, shared by movements like Hizb ut-Tahrir, judges the legitimacy of nations solely by their conformity to Sharia. From this perspective, every secular or non-Islamic government, whether in Europe, North America, Asia, or the Muslim world, is viewed as a realm of unbelief (kufr) to be “shaken off.”

And it is not only Christians, Jews, and Hindus who have endured this. 

Buddhists saw their monasteries burned from Afghanistan to Bengal. Yazidis have suffered more than 70 genocidal campaigns, the most recent at the hands of ISIS between 2014 and 2017. Persian Zoroastrians were nearly erased from the land of their birth. Sikhs in India arose in direct resistance to Islamic persecution. Animist communities across Africa are slaughtered by Boko Haram and ISIS affiliates. The pattern is not regional, ethnic, or even political. Jihad is best understood as civilizational conquest. 

Wherever jihad becomes ascendant, religious diversity collapses, and ancient peoples vanish. Every religion but Islam is hunted and slaughtered like wild game. “Globalize the intifada” means “globalize Islam.”

The hunt continues through Europe today, where Islamic scholars and imams claim to be “oppressed” by the corrupt governments of Germany, France, England, Canada, Australia, and various other countries around the Western world. Modern militancy makes the era of spears and ridgelines look like a relic from the past, but the hunt against Christians, Jews, and Hindus does not stop. Open acts of terrorism, whether with knives, vehicles, or bombs, are becoming increasingly common.

Father Jacques Hamel, an 85-year-old Catholic priest, was murdered on July 26, 2016, while celebrating morning Mass at his parish church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, near Rouen in France. Two men, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, both 19-years-old, stormed the church, taking the small congregation hostage. They forced Father Hamel to kneel at the altar and slit his throat, killing him in front of two nuns and several parishioners. The Islamic State later claimed responsibility, calling the attackers its “soldiers.”

During the 2015–2016 New Year’s celebrations in Cologne, over 1,200 women were sexually assaulted by mobs of mostly North African and Middle Eastern men. In most cases, the men would form a wall around the victim, force her to the ground, and take turns gang raping her.

A German federal investigation found the attackers acted from a collective belief in “male entitlement” and “contempt for Western women.” Western women now count as “that which the right hand possess[es].” Raping them is seen as forcing them to submit, and is exalted (Qur’an 4:24 and 23:5–6).

An English parliamentary debate noted that, “In Rotherham, hundreds of children were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013. Girls as young as 11 were raped by multiple attackers, trafficked to other towns and cities, and abducted and beaten.” 

One teenager in Rochdale was groomed at 13 and then passed around for sex by up to 18 men at a time. She later told the court that the abuse “destroyed my childhood” and left her grieving “for the little girl I was once, with the world at my feet.” These girls are forced into heroin addiction to keep them obedient.

That story was repeated across England against thousands of young girls, for at least a decade. The authorities knew it was happening and refused to admit it publicly, much less to take action against it, out of fear of looking “Islamophobic.”

If that is what happens to Christian girls in Christian countries, imagine what happens to them once Sharia becomes the law of the land.

A government that cannot protect 11-year-old girls does not deserve to exist. We need to do more.

Innocent Jewish children were killed on October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel. Hamas did not descend on Israeli towns as an army confronting another army, but as a jihadist movement entering what it sees as a land populated by what Qur’an 98:6 calls “the worst of creatures.” 

Families were murdered in their homes, women raped, and children abducted. Jewish lives were deemed inherently illegitimate in the shadow of Islamic supremacy. At the Nova music festival, 378 young Israeli adults were killed after gathering to hear music.

A 30-year-old DJ at the festival was dancing when the first rocket struck. Within seconds, the ground exploded in terror: music silenced, lights shattered, thousands of young people running and screaming. He survived, but every time he closes his eyes he sees the bodies, and every time he hears a beat, he tastes ash. He became one of the living testimonies of how a night of hope turned into a massacre.

The brutality shocked the world only because we had forgotten the long history behind it, from the Farhud pogrom in Baghdad in 1941 to the expulsions of nearly 900,000 Jews from Arab lands after 1948. To the victims, the massacre of October 7 felt less like the eruption of something new than the resurfacing of a hunt that never ends.

The reaction in the West was equally revealing. Crowds in Western capitals celebrated the attack, praising it as “resistance” while Jewish families buried their dead. This was a response to decades of propaganda portraying Israel as an intruder and as an apartheid state. Qatar—Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief funder, which the U.S. treats as if it were Japan or Denmark—spends billions spreading such lies throughout the Western world. 

The children killed on October 7 were not victims of geopolitics; they were victims of an ideology that has hunted Jewish people for over a millennium. The world may pretend that such violence is confined to the borders of Israel, but jihad is global. The same hatred that slaughtered Jewish children in Israel is already marching through London, Paris, Berlin, and New York, chanting for an intifada that does not end at the Mediterranean. 

October 7 was a warning of what happens whenever the hunt is allowed to rise again.

These patterns continue for Hindus as well. In Kashmir, targeted killings of Hindu teachers, shopkeepers, and migrant laborers have accelerated in recent years, with jihadist groups vowing to purge the region of its remaining non-Muslim population. 

In 2021, terrorists walked into a school in Srinagar, singled out two Hindu educators by name, and executed them in front of their students. Bombings and attacks on Hindu pilgrims traveling the Amarnath route have become routine, with militants openly declaring such pilgrims fair game under jihad.

In Bangladesh, Islamist mobs have repeatedly burned Hindu temples and villages, including the 2021 riots in Comilla and Noakhali, where dozens of Hindu homes were torched and idols smashed as police stood aside.

Outside South Asia, ISIS-K has explicitly named Hindus as targets, claiming responsibility for attacks on Hindu gatherings in Afghanistan, including the suicide bombing of a Sikh-Hindu temple in Kabul in 2020 that killed dozens. 

In Kenya and Mozambique, ISIS-affiliated groups have murdered Hindu shopkeepers and business owners as part of broader campaigns against non-Muslims. 

Some Islamic scholars in the West present Islam’s expansion into Europe and North America as a moral correction for Western decadence. Yasir Qadhi, an American Muslim academic and unskilled defender of child marriage, has declared that Islam is not a private faith but “a complete system that governs every part of life, including politics and law.” Tariq Ramadan, once celebrated in Western media before being accused of molesting underage girls and recently convicted of rape in Switzerland, has written that the West must accept Islam not as a guest but as a participant in shaping its future.

Muslims believe that Sharia is Allah’s law, given from Allah. They do not believe they need to pass Sharia into law. The law is not what is passed in hallowed halls, but whatever is enforced on the street.

This belief echoes the writings of early Islamic jurists, who divided the world into two spheres: the Dār al-Islām (“House of Islam”) and Dār al-Ḥarb (“House of War”). Those phrases are literal such that if you are not a part of the House of Islam, you are considered at war with Islam (Qur’an 8:39 and 9:29).

Israel is particularly hated, partially because Muhammad felt rejected by Jewish leaders in his day, and partially because Israel stands on ground Islam once conquered that was later taken back. It goes against Islamic Law to ever give land back, and if Israel ever fell, Spain, Portugal, and vast swaths of Eastern Europe would be looked at next. All of that land was once conquered as well, making it, by Islamic law, a part of Dār al-Islām, to be ruled by Islam until the end of time (per Qur’an 2:191).

Sayyid Qutb described Western freedom as an illusion that leads only to moral corruption. His writings remain taught in study circles across the West. The idea is consistent: the West is not tolerated, but transformed.

Islam now shelters beneath the very liberties it condemns, demanding protection from criticism while denying the moral foundations that make protection possible. Its advocates call truth hate speech, even as they press for a supremacy that will one day silence the freedoms they now exploit.

Western governments, anxious to prove their tolerance, have mistaken appeasement for virtue. In shielding Islam from offense, they shield a political theology that seeks to replace them.

This ancient division never disappeared; it only changed form. The struggle between the House of Islam and the House of War has shifted from the battlefield to the courtroom, the classroom, and the public square, but the objective remains the complete submission of all that lies beyond Islam. 

Will Durant once said, “There is always a hungrier tribe still in the bush.” Islam is hungry. We are not. If the Western world will not face this, we will be conquered in time.

The oryx still grazes in the half-light of the Arabian desert, as it did on Prince Ukaydir’s 35th birthday, but the horizon that trembles with the sound of approaching hooves is now our own.

I was born in a village in southern Sudan, growing up without knowing that there was any other kind of society in any other part of the country—or any other religion. As a toddler, I didn’t know what Arabs were or that I, as an African Shilluk, looked different from them. But, by the time I learned how to speak, the first thing we children learned as part of becoming people who know the world was running from the Arabs.

The adults in my village had heard stories of how Arabs had come down from the north and burned other villages to the ground, those who could get away running for their lives, forced to leave the elderly, sick, and wounded to die. Every year they heard these stories, this cycle of terror: the Arab army would come and raid the villages, burn them down, and then come back to see what was left—who had survived and if they had rebuilt again. There was no way to know if this would happen to our village, but, as a child, it wasn’t my responsibility to worry about it.

Sudan had become independent from the British on New Year’s Day 1956, but fighting had broken out between the mostly black, Christian south and the Arab, Muslim north the summer before. The Arab government in Khartoum wanted to force the African tribes of the south to become Muslim and adopt Arabic culture. But the people in the south, whether they were Christian or believed in the ancient tribal religions of the Nile region, wanted to remain the way they were and have political autonomy. 

Then, one day, the Arabs came. And they did exactly what the rumors said they would. They swarmed into the village shooting everywhere. My family and I didn’t know what was happening until we heard the shots coming from every direction. I was nine-years-old.

We had to run, but the Arabs followed us, and they killed two of my friends who were running away with me. We didn’t even know where we were running, but we ran until these screaming figures firing guns disappeared. We children hid in the bush and tried to sleep as night came, but we were too terrified and had no idea if the Arabs would come back.

The next day, we walked back the way we came and somehow found the village—which was completely destroyed. But, miraculously, my family had survived. Not long after, my father, remembering those stories from other villages, decided that it was pointless to stay and rebuild. Instead, he brought us to the capital of Upper Nile state, which was the town of Malakal.

Malakal was a mixed place, with both Africans and Arabs living there. In fact, there was an Arab family which lived near us, made up of brothers who came from other regions in both the north and the south. One brother was named Abdullahi, and, one day, he asked me to help him bring his luggage onto a steamer which was waiting to cross the Nile. It was the rainy season, when the main type of transport is the ferry, and we lived close to the river, so I was happy to help him. He seemed kind, and not like the other Arabs who had burned down our village and killed my friends.

He told me to sit next to his luggage on the steamer, because he was going to buy things at the market near the riverbank. Without even thinking that anything bad could happen, I took his word and stayed waiting for him to come. He didn’t show up right away, until the time that the steamer started moving out from the dock. I became terrified and I started screaming, and, just in time, he came running and made it onto the boat before it left.

He calmed me down, telling me that the boat had left the dock. There was no way they could turn it back, since it was one of the biggest steamers and ferries have tight schedules. He told me that we had to wait until the boat got to its destination, which was Kosti, capital of White Nile state in northern Sudan—almost 260 miles away down river. He would then help me get on the steamer coming back the other way to Malakal.

There were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people on the steamer, and Abdullahi was the only person I could trust. I was lost in the middle of the Nile for the first time in my life. My life was now in his hand. I had to trust him in everything.

Finally, we reached Kosti. There, it turned out that Abdullahi had also kidnapped three other black boys before me, and they were waiting for him. I was the youngest. He brought me and two older ones to the market, which was divided into stands based upon where the sellers lived, with each stand corresponding to a different village. There was a line of trucks ready to take these people home, and we got into one of them. We didn’t know how to count the hours it took or how many miles it was.

The truck dropped us off in a village called Fashishoya, north of Kosti. In Fashishoya, Abdullahi was greeted happily by his family, which was really just a branch of maybe six or seven families. Part of why his relatives were so happy was because Abdullahi come back from southern Sudan and brought “slaves” with him. We didn’t know what the word “slave” meant, let alone that we were going to end up becoming slaves. In fact, Abdullahi’s family was so happy to receive slaves that a dispute broke out among some of the men over who would get the older boys, since they looked stronger and more useful. Eventually, they compromised: one larger part of Abdullahi’s family would get the oldest boy, the smaller one the younger.

Then, like the others, I was given away, too. A female relative of Abdullahi’s had only one son—meaning their household didn’t need one of the stronger, older boys—so Abdullahi gave me to them. As a gift.

I asked them where Abdullahi was, and said that he’d promised me that he would help me get on the next boat back to Malakal, but they said that I belonged to them now and I wouldn’t see Abdullahi again. I cried, but I was punished for crying, and ordered to keep silent. But how can you be silent when you are now being told that you will not see somebody who promised that he will send you back to your loved ones? How can you be quiet when you’re being told that you were given away as a gift?

After the tears finished, I spent two and a half years as a slave—carrying heavy containers of water, sleeping in the same place as the farm animals, doing household chores, and being beaten. I eventually escaped when my “masters” moved closer to Kosti, and—thank God—some people from my Shilluk tribe saw me outside the new house and then helped me slip away.

I had survived that war, which ended in 1972 with the Addis Ababa Agreement, after up to a million and half people were killed (with no one counting those enslaved). But what most people don’t know and no one in the West knew then was that what the media called a “civil war” was actually a jihad—just like the one which had brought the Arabs to Africa in the first place, enslaving millions of Africans and killing tens of millions more.

In 1983, the Arabs got sick of being at peace with my people. Again, they said that all of Sudan must submit to Islam and accept Sharia law, and went back to war. When the Muslim Brotherhood took over the government of Sudan in 1989, that regime declared a formal jihad against the south on paper, but both “civil wars” were one jihad which began when the Arabs first invaded Africa almost 1,400 years ago. It is true that the Arabs hated the peoples of the south because they were black, and wanted their green, oil-rich land, but they also hated us because they believed in jihad.

I was living in Egypt when the 1989 coup happened, and that was when I escaped again (legally) to America. But, about six years after I came to New York City, something very strange happened. In 1993, I had met a Jewish man from Boston named Charles Jacobs who had learned about slavery in Sudan and wanted to do something about it. With a black Mauritanian Muslim diplomat named Mohamed Athié and another South Sudanese man named David Dechand, we founded the American Anti-Slavery Group. More than a year later, when Andrew Cooper, the editor of The City Sun, a black Harlem newspaper, saw Charles and Mohamed on Tony Brown’s Journal, a black community talk show, he asked Sam Cotton, one of his part-time reporters, to see if it was true that Arabs still owned African slaves. In the winter of 1995, Sam published the first of a series of articles showing that there were tens of thousands of other people enslaved just like I had been—but, we found out, there actually were black people who wanted to stop him spreading the truth.

I had never heard of the Nation of Islam, but their members were the ones stealing as many copies of The City Sun as they could so that other black people couldn’t read Sam’s article. Louis Farrakhan’s spokesman, Abdul Akbar Muhammad, then started saying that slavery did not exist in Sudan and that the CIA, FBI, and Israel had made it up. Akbar even went onto Tony Brown’s show with Sam and personally blamed Charles—just because he “is Jewish”! That was funny, because Jews like Charles cared about me when even some black Christians didn’t, and Israel had secretly helped the South Sudanese during the first war against the Arabs. Akbar’s “evidence” that slavery was CIA propaganda was that the Sudanese government had taken him on a trip around the country and he hadn’t seen any slavery—and that his organization had written a book, called The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, about how Jews (and not Muslims) supposedly ran the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

As the Western media (reluctantly) began to cover slavery in Sudan a bit more, Farrakhan and his thugs eventually talked about it less, but the fight they put up was both disturbing and disgusting. These were people who were so proud of being “black,” and loved to take trips to Africa, but they were defending and actually helping the Arab killers who had enslaved me to kill and enslave more of my people. They behaved like—but worse than—the black Sudanese intellectuals I met who didn’t want South Sudan to become independent, as well as the Sudanese Africans who had converted to Islam centuries before and “become” Arabs—many of whom made up the militias who burned down villages and kidnapped slaves. But Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam were even worse than that, because they were like dhimmah: the people who did not convert but submitted to Islam and became slaves in all but name, and did everything they could to please their Arab masters. To me, the Nation of Islam boys were just slaves—but, unlike me, they were proud to be slaves, and wanted all other black people to be just like them.

But, as time went on, I noticed that a form of the insanity which had turned some black Americans into ignorant Farrakhan worshippers who didn’t want to listen to me was infecting the rest of the stupid Western world. The Nation of Islam is not actually Islam, but their jihadist friends were taking over America.

When 9/11 happened in New York, people learned what “terrorism” was, but not jihad. A few people remembered that bin Laden had lived in Sudan under government protection between 1991 and 1996, and that Sudan was involved in helping the people who planned 9/11, but they were mostly national security analysts. Also, Sheikh Omar Abdulrahman, the man who planned the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, was given asylum by Sudan when he fled Egypt, and then came to America from Sudan in 1990. Even people like President George Bush—a man who was sensitive to the fact that Africans were being enslaved, and signed the Sudan Peace Act in 2002 to try to stop the killing—didn’t know what jihad was, and did almost nothing to wake the country up to the real threat.

It is true that America did help stop the war in Sudan, which ended, if you count the “first” one, after almost exactly half a century, in 2005, after perhaps four million people were killed, seven million forced from their homes, and 200,000 enslaved (just the second time around). Then, in early 2011, there was a referendum on whether the south would have to stay inside Arab Sudan, and nearly 99% voted to leave. South Sudan, with all of its horrible problems, then became independent later that year.

But, unlike South Sudan, America didn’t vote to kick jihad out of its borders. It let jihad take over Dearborn, Michigan, the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and universities like Columbia, Harvard, and UCLA. It let Qatar buy up Washington. It let Iran build nuclear weapons. And it let Zohran Mamdani become mayor of my city of New York—the place to which I had come to escape jihad.

I have been speaking about my experiences for more than 30 years now, which was difficult at first, because, in South Sudanese culture, being a slave is a disgrace, and when you talk about it and explain it, you open up the wound. But, because of God, I am a free man, and that’s why I’m speaking: on behalf of those who are not free.

As of now, I live in a free world, and that free world fought a war to end slavery, but it wasn’t easy. In America’s case, hundreds of thousands of people died, to end this practice of one people dehumanizing another. But the West and America won’t fight a war to end jihad. Jihad is new to people here in the West, but it isn’t new, and certainly not to we survivors of Islamization and Arabization.

When I began my mission to tell the world what I left behind, I remember that I was told by one elected official here in the United States that “You are just being paranoid” when I talked about jihad and slavery in Sudan. My response to that gentleman was, “It is not because of what happened to me. It is because I wasn’t a Muslim. If I were a Muslim, I wouldn’t have been victimized. I was being victimized because my people rejected being slaughtered; because they rejected the policy and ideology of Islamization.” That gentleman didn’t understand what I told him, even when I mentioned bin Laden and Sheikh Abdulrahman.

Jihad has come to America, and America isn’t fighting it. It enslaved me and hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese people, and I have spent more than 35 years warning the West what’s coming.

This evil started small, but—mark my words—a decade from now, America, you are going to be surprised. Ten years from now, you will ask yourself, “How did that happened?” The answer is it happened because you didn’t take the words from the mouths of the victims seriously.

I served in Gaza, Judea, Samaria, and Lebanon in the 1990s. I patrolled the alleys of Gaza, manned checkpoints across Judea and Samaria, cleared roads of explosives in Lebanon, and stood face-to-face with young jihadists who threw stones and firebombs at us long before the world demanded the creation of something called a “Palestinian state.”

I packed up the last IDF base in Gaza City under the Oslo Accords. Today, during this war, I’ve spent nights on the hilltops of Judea protecting Jewish communities so there won’t be another October 7-style invasion.

This experience is why I view Trump’s new “path to a Palestinian state,” now adopted into a U.N. Security Council resolution, with deep concern.

Because whether Trump intends it or not, the message it sends into the Arab Muslim world is unmistakable: Mass murder works. Terrorism pays. Kill Jews, and the world will reward you.

Trump may be trying to bring “stability” to the region; but jihadist movements do not interpret signals the way Western diplomats do. They interpret them the way a 1,400-year-old ideology teaches them to: Concessions = weakness. Diplomacy = victory. Recognition = divine approval.

Even a conceptual path to statehood, filled with impossible conditions, is read as vindication, because they live to wait patiently and try to kill us and destroy us on another day.

The Western Misunderstanding: I Watched it for Decades

When I patrolled Gaza in the 1990s, the youth attacking us weren’t reacting to “occupation.” They were raised on jihad. Raised to hate Jews. Raised to believe that killing us was a sacred obligation.

I saw the same thing in Shechem. In South Lebanon. Everywhere I served. And the data today are even clearer: Majorities of Arab Muslims in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria openly support the October 7 atrocities. Not fringe elements. Not “radicals.” Majorities.

There are endless videos from UNRWA schools of children dreaming of becoming martyrs. Schools named after suicide bombers. Hamas terrorists calling parents on October 7 to brag about killing Jews—and the parents celebrating.

As we’ve heard directly from the hostages who returned from Gaza, the fantasy of “innocent civilians” simply does not exist there. The people of Gaza were not bystanders. They participated in the atrocities of October 7, they celebrated the slaughter, and they assisted in the captivity and torture of our people. Not a single Gazan came forward to claim the $5 million reward offered for information about even one hostage. Not one. Instead, the streets filled with cheering crowds—men, women, and youth, beating our captives, whether dead or alive, and proudly parading them through Gaza like trophies.

This is the truth the world refuses to confront: a society that raises its children to hate Jews, glorifies murder, and participates in terror is not a population of “innocents.” It is a population complicit in evil. Only when we stop pretending otherwise can we truly protect ourselves, speak honestly, and defeat this jihadi enemy once and for all.

This is not a population ready for peaceful coexistence. It is a culture built on a genocidal ideology the world keeps funding.

So what does a “path to statehood” communicate? “Your strategy is working—continue.”

What No One Wants to Admit: Only Israel Will Disarm Hamas

International forces will not disarm Hamas. Arab states will not disarm Hamas. The U.N. will not disarm Hamas. The United States will not send soldiers into the tunnels. And we don’t want anyone else to do it anyway.

Only the IDF will do this job. Which means one thing: Israel will inevitably have to return to all of Gaza militarily, permanently. And not just Gaza.

Hezbollah has made it clear it will never disarm voluntarily. Even with American pressure, the Lebanese government cannot and will not disarm Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. Which means: Israel will eventually have to return to Southern Lebanon as well, and remain there permanently.

And Iran, the command center, is accelerating its war build-up in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and at home. None of those fronts are over. 

Trump talks about peace in the Middle East. But the Middle East is preparing for the next war. And the jihadists see Trump’s plan not as diplomacy… but as opportunity.

The Story That Reveals Everything: From Tzvi Yechezkeli’s Book “I Told You it’s Jihad

After the U.S. captured Baghdad, General David Petraeus sat inside Saddam Hussein’s former palace, now an American military headquarters. U.S. officers were confident. They believed they had won decisively. Then an Iraqi Muslim leader walked in and asked a simple question: “Who won the war?” The Americans were stunned: “What do you mean? We won.” The Iraqi was genuinely confused. He explained: “In our worldview, victory means expelling a population and taking the land. Tanks entering a palace means nothing.”

Years later, after the U.S. withdrew and Iraq collapsed into chaos, American officers saw this Muslim militant leader and admitted: “You were right.” He admitted that the U.S. never understood the region—let alone the man’s religion. And today, Western leaders still don’t.

A Real Path to Peace: Not the Fantasy Being Sold

A real path to peace would say:

• Gaza will never again be a terror launching pad.
• Hamas and all jihadi supporters will be uprooted entirely.
• Gaza will remain permanently demilitarized.
• Israel will remain in control, forever.
• Jews will resettle Gaza again, as they did for centuries before the modern State of Israel.
• Jihadist aggression will result in loss of land, not political reward.

This is the only language understood in the Middle East, because it is the only language that works in the jihadi Muslim world.

The Part the West Still Refuses to See

The jihadi Muslims threatening Israel are of the same ideology destroying Western countries: Europe collapsing from within. Canada swallowed by imported jihadist networks. The United States dealing with jihadists embedded in universities, politics, media, NGOs, and even in local, state, and federal politics. It is the same 1,400-year war, just in different stages and different languages.

Israel is not fighting a “local conflict.” Israel is the frontline of the entire freedom-loving world. And here is the truth no Western politician wants to admit: Money, diplomacy, and business deals cannot stop a worldview whose explicit goal is global domination in the name of Allah.

If the West wants to survive—if America wants to remain America—it must support the one nation standing between civilization and barbarism.

That frontline is the Jewish State of Israel. Supporting Israel is not charity. It is self-preservation for the free world.

My name is Hooman Khalili. I was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1974—into a Muslim family, into a nation already trembling on the edge of collapse. By the summer of 1978, the cracks in the Shah’s regime were visible to anyone paying attention. My mother, like so many others, could see the writing on the wall. She knew that if we didn’t leave immediately, we might be trapped in a civil war that would redefine the country—and our lives—forever.