Islamism’s Sharpest Swords

In our inaugural piece for the Restoration Project, I laid out Yuri Bezmenov’s theory of Soviet subversion and how I believe that theory can help explain today’s discontents. The West’s enemies – though no longer masterminded by the Soviet apparatus – have successfully learned, adapted, and applied the secrets of subversion to great effect. As a result, the countries of the West are subject to relentless subversive activities. We are in now in a demoralized state in the key areas Bezmenov outlined. There is a whiff of destabilization in the air as well.

There are two channels through which modern subversion advances, one imported from abroad, the other raised domestically. These are, respectively, the rising tide of Islamism, and the resurgence of communism through its various woke avatars. These two forces have been so successful because they ruthlessly exploit time, discontented demographics, technology, and Western constitutional and legal frameworks. What is more, even though these two forces seem ideologically polarized, they collude in their stated objective to deconstruct the ideas and structures of Western societies. Green and red, hand in hand, against a mutual enemy.

In this piece, I will focus solely on the threat of political Islam or “Islamism.” Though I’m sure what follows will be deliberately misinterpreted by naysayers, I want to issue the by now familiar disclaimer that not all Muslims are Islamist. I refer purely to the threat posed by those Muslims who subscribe to the political agenda of Islamism: A theocratic agenda that seeks to replace our existing liberal, secular order with an alternative one based on Islamic law.

Time

Islamists are playing the long game. Through the process of conversion or missionary work and the gradual Islamization of institutions, the Islamist is committed to the transformation of Western society. How long does he hope it will take him to get Sharia established in Europe and North America? The answer to this question differs from Islamist to the next.

In the past, Islamists sought to physically and psychologically harm the West through acts of terrorism. They beheaded civilians, attacked crowds of people, and in their most visible act, flew planes full of passengers into buildings, hoping to strike fear into the heart of Western democracy. These attacks continue to have a huge impact on the psyche of the West. Countries like the U.K. and the United States sacrificed significant personal liberties for a degree of security; liberties which they have yet to recuperate.

 

It is important to recognize that by and large this tradeoff (of liberty for security) has worked. The United States resolved to never let something like the attacks of September 11th, 2001 happen again, and so far, they haven’t. Western omnipresence in the Middle East combined with pervasive surveillance networks at home ensured that Islamic terrorists never came anywhere close. Though smaller attacks persisted for some time, the threat of Islamic terrorism has mostly faded into the background, along with some of the fear. In the 2016 Presidential election, terrorism was the second biggest concern for Americans, only four percent behind the economy. In 2024, Islamic terrorism doesn’t even register in polling.

It would be a shortsighted mistake to say we defeated Muslim terrorists, however. Given the sustained and withering military operations the West inflicted upon them, I think it is more realistic to say that the Islamists who argued for gradualism and the methods of subversion defeated those who sought to fast track the imposition of Islamic law on the West through Jihad or coercion. In other words, the prevailing Islamists have simply altered their methods in favor of domestic subversion.

What 9/11 made clear is that the terrorists successfully built up a massive network of operators within the U.S. who were hard at work gradually radicalizing vulnerable targets. What is most interesting about this form of subversion is that it no longer requires direct contact between a source and a target. The perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing, for example, had no clear links to a terrorist cell but were radicalized by osmosis, including through their mosque and through Islamist social media. These agents of radicalization are now telling their audiences to work within and through the system. Convert one person at a time; bring sharia law to one community at a time. Win one election at a time. Change and capture one institution at a time; and do so legally, without firing a single shot. Large, spectacular attacks weren’t the most efficient way. Perhaps this is.

Islamists have successfully implanted themselves within mosques, activist groups, educational institutions, and social media such that they can flood the ambient environment with pro-Islamist content. The effect has been to gradually subvert Americans and immigrants alike to support Islamist political objectives. The most obvious example of this is the seismic shift in public opinion on Israel among the youngest generations. No other issue in our time has seen so big a shift so quickly.

The rise and spread of Political Islam must be seen within the bigger picture of Western decline. Islamist ideas can only flourish in a society that is too feeble to defend itself. As I mentioned previously, Islamists have been able to exploit several assets to their advantage. The first is time. Like the Soviets, Islamists have learned that the attention span of American democracy is very short. We suffer from the myth that our domestic problems can be resolved in the next election with a reshuffling of the White House. Subversives know that weakening a nation is a generational prospect.

Migration

The second asset is discontented demographics, by which I mean the swaths of disaffected people, mostly young men, who are ripe for radicalization. These can be either the domestic population who feel largely alienated from their communities, or immigrants from developing countries who struggle to assimilate. The friction these groups feel with the rest of the society makes them prime candidates. In rich societies with welfare states, immigrants are put in the position where they are dependent on welfare and are not incentivized to participate even in the economy. Simultaneously, it is becoming more difficult to bring families, such that the immigrant population is heavily skewed towards young men. In Canada, for example, the population ratio between men and women ages 25 to 44 is widening, fueled entirely by immigration. Among the 20-24 year old age bracket, there are now 110 men for every 100 women, a disparity approaching China’s own much-reported male surplus.

Whereas the alienated domestic population might find meaning in wokeness or other para-religious movements, young immigrant men – alienated, angry, idle, and bored – enter the mosques and become radicalized. Sometimes these disparate groups interact, such as when we saw “Queers for Palestine” banners march to the tune of “from the river to the sea,” up until an avowed Islamist would confront them and knock them down. This is a recipe for disaffection. Such a society has sown the seeds of its own destruction. As for wokism: it is a pointless pseudo-religion and the Islamist knows this very well. Many converts to Islam first went woke and, when predictably they come out spiritually and morally empty, the Islamist is there inviting them into the warm embrace of the Muslim Umma.

 

Leaders in open societies have overlooked the fact that the advanced economies of the West have little-to-no socio-economic and socio-cultural mechanisms for assimilating large numbers of immigrant men with barely a high school diploma from developing or broken societies. These regions of the world, often tribal, do not have the same institutions, culture, or morals of the West. It is irresponsible to assume that all immigrants to the West will fully adapt to our way of life because they come here voluntarily. True, that was the case when large numbers of people fled European wars and economic stagnation in the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries. In a matter of one or two generations they were fully assimilated. Even though it took a little longer, the same can be said about immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and even parts of Africa.

It is obvious, however that immigrants who are predominantly Muslim struggle to fit in. Even when they flourish economically, as they have done in America, they are confronted with the insurmountable cultural differences between Islam and the West. Of course, many Muslims do manage to find a way of balancing their faith with their citizenship. But it is harder, and, unfortunately, a growing number of American, British, French, and other Western Muslims choose to turn to the Islamists instead.

Tech

Their third asset is technological. Here, the Islamists have deployed the techniques of subversion with much success. The earliest and most obvious example was the use of communications and social media to isolate and radicalize individuals, often for violent terrorist action. With the rise of mass social media consumption on sites like TikTok, Islamists have been able to inspire large swathes of young TikTokers to flirt with Islamism. As I mentioned previously, the most notable example of this is found in the rapid shift of opinion against the state of Israel among young people. Concurrently, we also see the stunning resurgence of antisemitism among the same population and the compulsory urge to attribute everything wrong in the world to Western action, and particularly the U.S. Just the other day, The Free Press obtained video of activists at the Teamsters Union headquarters being taught to chant “death to Israel” and “death to America” in Farsi. Yes, in Farsi.

 

It is important to call out what is happening on social media for what it is: It is reinforcing indoctrination that has happened at school or in the mosque. Maybe, these young people do not understand what they are saying or that they are being used. Maybe, they go along with whatever they are told to believe because it is exciting, or maybe it gives them a sense of belonging to a movement that fights for justice. Few  of them can properly describe how what is going on in Gaza constitutes a genocide, as my friend Douglas Murray recently teased out of an Eyewitness News anchor. Technology provides the most effective means for priming the masses yet devised, and we are rapidly losing the next generation to subversion.

Law

The fourth and final asset, paradoxically, is Western constitutional and legal frameworks. This gets to what I said in our inaugural piece about the West being too tolerant of intolerance. Islamists have been able to wield legal institutions against their enemies. All they have to do in many cases is claim Islamophobia and any obstacles to their objectives clear themselves away. The fear of a discrimination lawsuit is enough to send nearly any person or organization running for the hills. For example, American universities are terrified of reprimanding Muslim students who antagonize other students and faculty. Just last week, pro-Palestine protesters disrupted a dinner for UC Berkeley law students hosted in the backyard of a leftist Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife, Professor Catherine Fisk. Chemerinsky and Fisk are extreme progressives, but those credentials seemed not to override the fact that they were Jewish. When Fisk went to confront one dinner-guest-turned-protester, physically gripping her mic, the protester invoked Islamophobia and her First Amendment rights.

Anyone who knows even the most basic facts about the First Amendment knows that it doesn’t cover screaming at people in their own homes. Nonetheless, that didn’t stop this law student from doing so. The Bay Area chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement even went so far as to call Fisk’s actions “assault,” and credited them to “Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, and religious discrimination.” This incident also harkens back to Bezmenov’s description of subversion’s “death wish.” It doesn’t matter that Dean Chemerinsky and his wife are leftists or that they have no power over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It doesn’t matter that protesting them in their own home violates the law. All action is justified under the principles of subversion.

Berkeley hasn’t announced any disciplinary measures against the students yet. I’m doubtful they will, but I’ll be pleasantly surprised if they do. If measures are announced, the students will just lawyer up, and in the morally bankrupt California legal system they might even avoid punishment. What makes the concept of Islamophobia so dangerous is that the very effort to explore this question is deemed Islamophobic. There is no ability to probe the bounds of what counts as Islamophobia. Just the accusation is a death sentence in some circles.

 

France has embarked on an effort to insulate its legal structures from subversive Islamist influence. French President Emmanuel Macron, for example, recently announced an “uncompromising” campaign to ban abayas  — the black full-body dress worn by Muslim women — in schools across the country. This move is part and parcel of a broader campaign to tamp down on the Islamist threat within the country and promote assimilation. In 2017, France enacted a sweeping anti-terrorism law which, among other things, allowed police to shut down mosques or other places of worship if preachers are found to be promoting radicalism. And in 2011, France also banned the niqab face covering, the first ban of its type in Europe. Granted, these actions fit into the language of the pre-existing concept of Laïcité, otherwise known as the constitutional principle of secularism in the public square. Countries like the United States have no sweeping legacy of secularism, instead granting maximal deference to the principles of religious freedom. However, even with France I fear this effort is too little too late. Islamization through demographic change will outpace any top-down campaigns to halt it.

In sum, we can see the outlines of the Islamist strategy for subversion. Absurdly high levels of open immigration have allowed Islamists to establish beachheads within Western societies with almost no filtering from immigration authorities. The conditions in the host country are such that assimilation can be avoided, while disaffected young men are gradually Islamized in their communities and through technology. The same process occurs for the young domestic population, which is indoctrinated through similar channels. Islamists infiltrate every institution and organization, cloaking themselves in the language and legacy of historic civil rights movements. Whenever they are confronted with objections to their activities, they are able to effectively wield the law against the host country.

I fear the window to address the Islamist threat is getting worryingly narrow. Many European countries are moving in a direction that would make vocal dissent either highly discouraged or formally outlawed. Most of Europe now has some system of censorship on the books. Scotland, a country known internationally for its free spirit, just joined the ranks of such countries, enacting a new hate crime law that aims to tackle “hatred and prejudice,” two notoriously unclear and ambiguous concepts. In Canada, Justin Trudeau has just introduced what journalist Matt Taibbi has described as a “blueprint for dystopia in a horrific speech bill.” This so-called “Online Harms Act” would allow administrative panels, not judges bound by rules of evidence, to fine or imprison citizens for internet posts they made in the past – in some cases, for life.

In Germany, Marie-Thérèse Kaiser, a politician in the Alternative for Germany Party, cited the government’s own statistics in an argument against resettling yet more Afghan nationals in Germany. Afghans in Germany commit rape at very high rates. Along with other migrants from places like Turkey and Syria, they commit half of gang rapes – despite being collectively only 14% of the population.  She did not make up these numbers. They are, again, the government’s own. Yet, under German hate-speech laws, she has now been twice found guilty and fined thousands of Euros. It boggles the mind that you can get a criminal record in Germany for citing government-produced facts.

Forces in the United States hope to do so as well, though that remains a more distant threat for the moment. Still, the direction of travel is unmistakable: the Islamists are here, and they are winning.

Future articles will further detail specific events that illustrate the creeping threat of Political Islamism. In a later article, I will address the resurgence of communism, its kindred spirits, and show how it too is copying the subversive playbook to great effect. Yet, in the war for restoration, not all hope is lost. The West has its own unique set of assets that we too can deploy, if we have the will to do so. More on that too to come.