It is what we witnessed growing up inside Islamist societies. We sat in their schools, heard the conversations, and saw the hostility directed at the United States of America with our own eyes.
They hate America for a reason. The United States has demonstrated, in full public view, that a society can reject the core demands of Islamist Sharia rule and still become the world's most powerful, advanced, and prosperous country. This single fact demolishes the central promise made to their own people: Submit to our version of Allah's law, follow the leaders who claim to represent Allah, and you will receive prosperity, dignity, and success. America stands as daily proof that the opposite is possible. You do not need their system. You do not need to be dominated by it. You can flourish without it. That is intolerable.
Just about everything America stands for runs directly against their framework. Freedom of speech is not a value it is possible to accept. Independent speech does not exist; only listening and obedience to the leader—whether supreme guide, imam, or sheikh—who is treated as the authorized voice of Allah. Questioning is forbidden; it is deviance.
Individualism is equally banned. You are not a person free to chart your own course within the bounds of mutual respect. You are expected to submit. You are a subject. Daily life exists only under a system that enforces Islamist Sharia law. In many Islamic countries, clothing is regulated; eating in public during Ramadan is policed, speech is constrained, movement and associations are watched and suppressed. Women are placed in inferior legal and social positions. Leaving the faith is a capital offense. The late Egyptian unofficial leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi -- who was forced to flee to Qatar, openly stated on television, "If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment, Islam would not exist today."
Iran's late Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei declared on Twitter in 2019 that the death penalty against the author Salman Rushdie for publishing a work of fiction, a novel, The SatanicVerses, "was solid and irrevocable."
America's operating principle is the reverse: wide personal freedom is respected and limited only by the requirement not to violate the rights of others. This difference is fundamental. America has shown the Muslim ummah (nation) that a country can become prosperous without following their Islamist Sharia law. A society can preserve its moral foundations without forcing everyone to follow Islamist interpretation. Because America has succeeded while living that difference, its very existence functions as a permanent rebuttal. It tells their ideology: you are wrong, you produce backwardness and suffering, and people can do better without you.
For this reason, the United States is not just another country. It is the number one target. Even if Americans stayed completely out of Islamic affairs, just the grating presence of its success would keep this hostility alive. They cannot leave America alone and still maintain the claim that their system is the path to human flourishing.
That perceived rebuke to Islamic ideology is why constant vigilance is required. These movements have shown themselves to be strategic, patient, have absorbed regions before. They understand how to operate inside open societies — sometimes through overt activism, sometimes through covert and quieter organizational work that presents itself as charity, faith community, or civil-rights advocacy while advancing a political-religious project. Open societies that treat this as harmless or unmentionable have paid a huge price for the mistake -- as we are now seeing throughout Europe.
American citizens and the broader Western world need watch the ideology and the networks that advance it, both outside countries and inside them. Do not grant positions of governmental power to those who remain committed to Islamist Sharia-derived rule. Examine every appointment with clear eyes. Do not grant positions of governmental power to those who remain committed to Islamist Sharia-derived rule.
Countries that relaxed their attention have discovered too late that the project of "exporting the revolution" does not stop on its own.
America is the living proof that a nation can become the most advanced and most prosperous on earth without Islamist Sharia law -- by practicing the opposite of what Sharia demands. They will not rest until they take the lead in the United States. Great countries, civilizations, and empires once laughed at the idea that these Islamist movements could ever overrun them. They laughed—then they fell. Do not make the same mistake. Do not become complacent. Do not take America's freedoms you inherited for granted. Watch them constantly—outside the country and inside it. Be on guard at every level. Expose what they do. They are relentless. They will not stop of their own accord. Stay awake, stay informed, keep watching.
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a political scientist, Harvard-educated analyst, and board member of Harvard International Review. He has authored several books on the US foreign policy. He can be reached at dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu
