The West Must Defeat Islamism

It has been over a month since Hamas unilaterally launched its offensive pogrom of terror and savagery against the Jewish people of Israel, as more than 1,400 Israelis perished and 240 were taken hostage into Gaza from their homes in Israel. These acts of terror were no doubt intended to strike fear into the hearts of Jews and all free people allied with the state of Israel across the planet. After 9/11 when Al Qaeda attacked our homeland in a surprise terror attack against civilians, I wrote in the opening sentences of my 2012 book, A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save his Faith: 

In many ways, I believe that history will view the 9/11 attacks as far worse than Pearl Harbor, as terrible as it was, it was military in nature and largely targeted our U.S. Navy, those whose duty it is to serve and protect their country. While 9/11 was an attack by terrorists upon civilians and it was executed by men who claimed to do so in the name of God. As a Muslim it is hard for me to put into words just how horrific this is, how deeply I believe it betrays my faith and the depth of sorrow I feel for the victims. Like all Americans, I feel that that day will always be with me, and as a Muslim it forced me to confront certain realities. Once the shock of the attack wore off, my next response was pure rage. I wanted to get even with the bastards who had done this, and what added to my fury was that they had done this in the name of my faith of Islam…

On October 7, 2023, as proportionally far more Israelis lost their lives than Americans on 9/11, my emotions were even more amplified by orders of magnitude as this happened to the Jewish community 22 years later, “eyes wide open” for all of us. The Red-Green alliance of progressivists (neo-Marxists) and Islamists on social and traditional media were now put on steroids spewing the Islamist and nauseating apologia and lies about the unspeakable horrors that actually happened on October 7. To see the magnitude of such genocidal atrocities inflicted door-to-door upon a people because of their faith by militant savages from another faith, supposedly my faith again, only to be followed by denials rather than unwavering resolve, highlights just how vital the defeat of anti-Semitism in all its forms is as a priority for all mankind from the Islamist to the neo-Marxist to the fascists. 

To whatever extent there is a collective legacy for Muslims across the world it should now be painfully clear to all those of conscience that if “Never Again” is to be truly “Never Again” for the Jewish community, it is vital that our legacy as Muslims of conscience be the indisputable defeat of Islamism (political Islam) into the dustbin of history. As I have written and spoken about extensively, and many of us have dedicated our lives in the Muslim Reform Movement and the Clarity Coalition we recognize the priority of reforming all the ideas that underpin Islamism and its Sharia supremacism.

Twenty-two years after 9/11, a lot has actually changed in the public discourse, which now more readily recognizes Islamism as the problem and root cause of all Jihad from the savagely violent to the non-violent, owing in no small part to the tireless work of many Muslims and non-Muslims alike in the counter-Islamism and counter-Jihad space. Many have finally begun to understand the root conflict between Islamism (Sharia supremacism or theocracy) and Western secular liberal democracy. But, alas, convincing most in the West of the actual urgency of developing an offense for liberty and against Islamism and its Jihad has been anemic to say the least. Now, it could never be more clear that for the sake of the Jewish people and for all of humanity, these small victories are nowhere near enough. The forces of Jihadi evil are gaining ground exponentially because the forces of good refuse to go on offense against Jihad. 

Yet, even those of us steeped in this work against Islamism and its Jihadi byproduct and who warned tirelessly now for decades about how deep this cancer went into Muslim populations domestically and abroad along with their progressivist sympathizers, are still also in shock to see how actually unhinged, how frighteningly normalized, and how pervasive is the anti-Semitism and, make no mistake, actual sympathies for Hamas’ savagery are across the West, let alone among Muslim tyrannies. So-called institutions of higher learning are now parroting the conspiracy theories and bigoted lies about Israel and Jews previously thought to be only the domain of radical Islamists. With this on full display in the streets and campuses is proof that the Islamist problem of hate is a rampant ideological virus that has infected not only the minds of Muslim theocrats and supremacists but has been coinfected by the virulent toxin of progressivist/leftist anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and anti-freedom collectivists across the planet. 

No more can there ever be an excuse for ignorance regarding the pervasiveness of Islamist apologia. It is incumbent upon every sentient human being to understand the real cancer that creates the Hamas’s, Al Qaedas, ISISs, and Hezbollahs of the Islamic world. Let us make it painfully clear. These are all natural outgrowths of Islamism. 

No matter the pain and suffering of a human being, there is no divorce of their being from their own moral agency and being individually held accountable to themselves, their families, communities, and especially to God of what is right and wrong. The Red-Green alliance denies this and their woke mentors blame America, the West and Israel for their so-called pepetual victimization. There is no divorcing oneself from individual moral agency. 

The implicit and explicit defense of Hamas actions on October 7 and pathetic condemnation of Israel’s right to defend itself from any future attacks by Hamas embedded in Gaza portends an inhuman divorce of that moral agency. It belies the fact that there can ever be a “just war,” which no other nation has been subject to, after an attack of such scale and horror. The only explanation is that at its core, Jihad is fueled by an unhinged and unvarnished anti-Semitism and Islamist supremacism and fascism. 

It is all about the Jihad. Full stop. This is about a global religious war waged by Islamists with ambitions not just for a Palestinian state but for Islamic states and their blunt legal instruments of Sharia law. The generational global goal is to recreate the Caliphate. These Islamists divide the world into the “Land of Islam” (Dar-Al-Islam) and “Land of War” (Dar Al-Harb). 

There is no easier, more viral, and toxic way to define the non-Muslim world of war than by demonizing Jews and weaving in cancerous, pervasive, and deeply anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that brainwash Muslims about the “evil Jew.” This gives Palestinian Hamas, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Al Qaeda, Iranian Hezbollah, Afghani Taliban, and Pakistani Jammat Islamiya the fuel to radicalize and target an easy foreign minority so they can rally the faithful Jihadi troops against the Jewish state of Israel. Jihad is central now especially after the Islamist failures of the Arab Awakening. Not only did the Palestinian cause get taken off most public discourse agendas, but they also lost or are on the verge of losing major elections, movements, coups, and wars from Tunisia to Egypt, Syria, and Iran, to name a few.

So they reopened and redeclared the regional and global triangular battle between Islamist movements, Arab dictators, and the West, which hatched in 2011. Chaos, death, and disruption are the kindling for Jihadi global growth as they seek realization of the Caliphate and Dar-Al-Islam. 

Defining the term “Islamist” is critical. This term does not define every adherent to the Islamic faith. Islamists are specifically theocrats whose movements, violent and non-violent, demand the establishment of Islamic states based in Sharia law (Islamic jurisprudence). Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood and Khomeinist types, hatched Hamas, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and ISIS to name a few of the thousands of terror groups. Make no mistake. Among the more than 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, there is a brewing civil war within the House of Islam. 

Unfortunately, the Islamists (violent or non-violent) are the dominant side due to their unity as a plurality but also due to the petro-Islamist establishment’s massive financing, media propaganda, and control of Islamic education. Hamas’ fueling by Iran, Qatar, and Turkey to name a few highlights why they were able to maintain control of all Palestinian civil and military institutions. The rest of the world’s Muslims divide up into many more secular political movements some of which, like the women’s revolution in Iran, demand a modern Western separation of mosque and state. 

So why would the Islamist terror group Hamas, fueled by the Iranian Islamist regime, launch these Jihadi terror attacks and commit these heinous atrocities now in late 2023? The fecklessness and weakness of the Biden administration’s appeasement policies across the region from Hamas to Iran and Afghanistan gave Jihadis the green light they needed to make their global religious war relevant again. They see America as no longer having the will to defend our ally Israel or defend freedom. 

But the overarching question remains: why? Why the mission against Israel risking certain destruction by Israeli power? The answer is that Palestinian Islamists were becoming increasingly irrelevant and have, with these evil acts of war, aggression, and terror, brought themselves back to the forefront and center of global Islamist leadership. They have resurrected the Jihad. 

And this time they are joined by the growing victim-mongering movement of the woke on the streets that came to fruition during the pandemic led by the likes of BLM. Their corrupt confidence has made them feel invincible that they will win in the jury of world opinion no matter what they do against the Jewish community and Israel in the name of Islam. 

Enough. 

They sought wide transmission of their inhuman war crimes. The more terrorizing and horrifying to humanity the better for their brand of fear and jihadi brethren. This conflict at its core is about the civilized against the uncivilized. But for Muslims like me, it is obviously about the Jihad. Until we divorce predominant interpretations of God’s scripture as we see it from any and all interpretations that are anti-Semitic and Jihadist, this evil will keep coming back. 

Previously, the Islamist movements were rendered irrelevant by the Abraham Accords Declaration, by populist revolutions in many Muslim majority nations, and their populist rejection of Islamism. 

Islamists waited for the right opportunity to light a fuse knowing that other Islamists and their sympathizers will answer their call for terror and asynchronous warfare against civilians amplifying their anti-Semitism and terror as just seen in the airport of Dagistan. The West became so defensive, so lost from its own identity, and with but a year left in the Biden appeasement programs, as billions were set to return to Iran’s Mullahs, the time was ripe for evil to strike.  

The West must understand and finally develop a generational strategy against this, joining forces with the likes of our Muslim Reform Movement and our CLARITy Coalition to counter their global Jihad and wokists from within. Islamists and Marxists have joined forces to try and destroy us from within, why shouldn’t we deploy the same against them?  This is as much an ideological war as it is a kinetic one or should be. 

Jihad must be confronted frontally and at its core. Defeat the idea of the Islamic state (Sharia state) and the idea of the Islamic military goes away. If the “Islamic” legitimacy of the state’s military goes away so too does the idea of Jihad. Thus, we must redefine ummah. We must de-ummahtize the Islamic ummah—removing the idea of the nation-state from the idea of faith community. Thus, Americanism is the only idea that can defeat Islamism and its Jihad from within the Muslim consciousness. Therefore, dispense with an exclusivist “Muslim ummah” (community or state), and Muslims can then redefine the need for a more modern, more inclusive “Human Ummah” based in a united legal construct (like our U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights) where our faiths are ‘a’ source of law and not ‘the’ source.

While we must first militarily defeat Hamas once and for all, if we do not have an active, offensive, and frontal anti-Islamist counter-information arm to combat Islamist supremacy and Jihad from within, it will come back again and again and grow even stronger like a hydra with or without Hamas. It is not just Hamas or ISIS or Al Qaeda that we are fighting but an entire Marxist-Jihadi anti-Western ideology of evil. 

Like it or not, the new Cold (come Warm) War across the planet is against the global Jihad to be waged by all those of conscience against the jihadis of Islamism. The state of Israel and the Jewish people are at the head of the spear. We can finally plan an offense ideologically or surrender to future losses of our national sovereignty. 

As I wrote on these pages just over a year ago: 

The link between Islamism and anti-Semitism is rather simple. It is self-evident that supremacists from within a particular faith community will create and exploit hatred toward another faith community in order to collectively rally their own followers against a common enemy. Islamists utilize anti-Semitic imagery as a tool for their own ascension into power among Muslim-majority communities and nations. Islamists often exploit both the Muslim Ummah and the Jewish minority in order to create a groupthink against the “other.” The demonization of Jews by Islamists is a key signal to all of us, not only because of its imminent threat to all Jews across the world from Islamists who may become violent or oppressive, but also because beneath that hatred lies a more global supremacism that treats all minorities from within the faith and outside the same, as obstacles to their own ascension. These theo-fascists use the demonization of minorities as populist tools to rally populations to their fascism.  

The hardest work against all of this is not only the hard power defeat of its byproducts militarily as targets of just war like Hamas and ISIS, but also the reinterpretation of deeply anti-Semitic interpretations of our scripture. It is high time for Muslims to finally be pushed to take a side about certain scriptures and stop ignoring the fact that they reside on the shelves of the vast majority of mosques. 

When will Muslims pervasively declare certain toxic Hadith fraudulent? For example, in the Hamas Charter it says that the Prophet Muhammad declared, “Kill a Jew behind every stone”. This must be declared to be a fabrication by the faithful and removed into history as inauthentic and never said by the Prophet. So much of the Hadith is used to radicalize Muslims since it was often wholesale verified by corrupted oral traditions and transmission and never directly written. The Qur’anic translations are not spared some anti-Semitism as the Saudis have finally begun cleaning up much of that poisonous interpretation. 

For example, Chapter 5 of the Qur’an (Al-Ma’idah, The Table) similarly needs reinterpretation regarding its implications to Jews. Similarly, an ideological offense for reformists may include finally not just the secular and realistic recognition of the state of Israel but the actual scriptural recognition by Muslims of the state of Israel since it is the only state mentioned in the Qur’an and it is mentioned as a Jewish state. The Islamist jihad will never be defeated without Muslims being held directly accountable for this and so much more when it comes to deep seated anti-Semitism bolstered daily across the planet by thousands of clerics.

Locally in Gaza, the only viable pathway forward for Palestinians will come when the Palestinians themselves marginalize and defeat the global Islamist movement’s stranglehold on their communities vis-à-vis Hamas, PIJ, and Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and their tentacles. Palestinianism as a national movement is just an incubator for Islamists. It is a natural front for Islamists to work hand-in-glove with Palestinianists who may even be Christian like Hanan Ashrawi for example. Yet, it matters little to any of them that the Islamists do not have a care in the world about the actual grievances of Palestinians as they, instead, simply create more grievances and then blame it all on “the Jews.” Islamists hijack the consciousness of Palestinians, use it for their own global purposes in Jihad and caliphism, and dismiss their own crimes against humanity and the radicalization of coming generations. 

Reformist Muslims, with our eyes on the target of the only cure, modern reform-based counter-Islamism, are harboring no illusions. The struggle against Islamism is generational but must be realized. 

Peace and real self-determination for Palestinians can only come after they have shed their Islamist masters. By destroying Hamas militarily once and for all, the IDF is actually doing Palestinians a favor, understanding full well that this comes with the unavoidable collateral deaths of innocents seen in all wars no matter what attempts are made to minimize. 

With the Arab Awakening that marched across the Arab world, many hoped that it would come to Gaza in protests against Hamas as well as Fatah. But unfortunately, the battle for the soul of Palestinians has yet to be realized. 

It is long overdue for us to develop a lasting strategy against global Jihad and global Islamism domestically and abroad. Jihadis wait out our fickle quixotic election cycles and return again and again to slaughter innocents and rekindle their mass hysteria. 

So, yes, Israel should execute and win this just war right away, in the short term, against Hamas and against the Jihadi enemies of civilization and free the hostages with as low a loss of non-combatant innocent life as humanly possible. But, for the love of God and civilization, we must finally develop a potent strategy against Islamism and its red-green axis of neo-Marxism and political Islam.

It is time to anchor the West, from America to Israel, against all forms of political Islamism and its Jihad, and defeat this toxic ideology once and for all.