Not All Muslims Are the Same. Radical Islamism in the U.S. Must Be Stopped

Newsweek

08-05-2025

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There is a grave difference in ideology among persons claiming to be Muslims in America. Islamists are dangerous extremists. Muslims following Islam but rejecting Islamism are nether radical nor extreme.
Take Imam Yasir Qadhi, the spiritual leader behind Texas' East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) City housing project. He is an admirer of Yusuf Al Qardawi—the Muslim Brotherhood ideologue. Qadhi also defended convicted Islamist extremist Aafia Siddiqui, who is now serving 86 years in federal prison for providing material support to Al-Qaeda.
Aligning with Islamist misogyny, Qadhi dismissed the Women Life Freedom movement in Iran. His speeches indicate he is at least an Islamist apologist, but more accurately a hardcore Muslim Brotherhood Islamist and staunch Hamas supporter.
The dome and minaret of the Crescent Islamic Center near Dulles International Airport stands out against the evening sky.
The dome and minaret of the Crescent Islamic Center near Dulles International Airport stands out against the evening sky.
Getty Images
Qadhi has addressed the Islamic Circle of North America and Muslim American Society conferences—both reportedly Muslim Brotherhood organizations—and in these meetings refused to condemn the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
In their own promotion, EPIC City aims to build a mosque, school, kindergarten, and community college and facilities for the elderly—capturing generations of Muslims from cradle to college, isolating them from wider society.
Some Muslims state over 75 percent of EPIC City's housing association fees will finance the local mosque, purposefully deterring non-Muslims from moving in—an intrinsically discriminatory practice. Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn has asked the Department of Justice to investigate EPIC City's developers.
This is an opportunity to examine not only the EPIC City project but radical Islamism's potential to threaten the fabric of American society.
Extensive investigations into the covert activity of America's Muslim Brotherhood have been documented. The cudgel of Islamophobia silences critics since Islamists portray themselves as persecuted Muslim minorities. Islamists—seen through the lens of creed—benefit from the protection of the U.S. Constitution, which enshrines the right to religious freedom for all, failing to recognize Islamist beliefs as political totalitarianism. Yet American democracy is not safeguarded from encroaching Islamism.
As an observant Muslim, I have no objection to Muslims building mosques, but developments intended to silo Muslims are certain to result in not parallel but closed societies, fueling Islamism.
Segregating society along religious lines is not only un-American, but it is also antithetical to the Quran's pluralism, including the exhortation mankind might know peoples of all tribes. Segregation weakens society, even one as strong as the United States. Islamism—not Islam—corrals both public discourse and political legitimacy over all Muslims.
Islamists manage all aspects of any interaction of the Muslim with the wider secular society, seeking to drive a wedge between a religious minority—the Muslims in America—and American society at-large.
The Islamist's aim is neither to enhance the lives of Muslims in the United States nor to seek a political coup (as some histrionic observers might claim), but instead to weaponize democratic privileges while seeking to subjugate both American democracy and the lives of pluralist Muslims living full American lives.
Western Europe reveals the devastating outcomes of unchallenged Islamism.
Elham Manea, a scholar of Islamism, has called significant attention to this danger.
In Britain, Sharia courts alongside Jewish halacha courts—Beit Dins—long exist, always in deference to British law. Under Islamist influence, Manea's research shows, Britain Muslim women and girls living in sealed Islamist-dominated Muslim communities are denied knowledge of or access to the British legal system (beyond forementioned Sharia courts) by their own communities. Despite being British citizens, Islamists ensure fellow Muslims are denied the rights Britain accords them in marriage, divorce, custody, or inheritance.
In Germany, Islamist Muslims openly demand the democratic right to formulate a Sharia caliphate within Germany. Sweden (known for its generous asylum policy) permitted migrants to reunite with family already settled, allowing migrants to choose their place of migration entrenching rapid ghettoization and environments ripe for incubating Islamism and virulent Islamist antisemitism—Malmo being a notable example. Juvenile gang-related crimes have become rampant. Sweden has itself announced it has lost autonomy over violence.
Rich and once powerful democracies are weakened in climates favoring Islamism. France is at an even greater precipice of alienation between its Muslim population and its non-Muslim citizenry. These fissures are where Islamism leaps in to segregate, cohort, and indoctrinate with antidemocratic illiberal Islamist values forming the milieu ripe for radicalization, including terrorism and evolutionary jihad.
Muslims who have long warned against Islamism have paid a very heavy price. The consequences can be lethal. Boualem Sansal, Algeria's most acclaimed writer since Nobel Laureate Albert Camus, is now sentenced to five years in prison for criticizing Islamism in both Algeria and France—a victory for Islamists and a warning to Muslims defending themselves and their democracies from Islamists.
Knowing the distinction between Islamism and Muslims following Islam is critical, not only in the singular example of EPIC City in Texas, but for policymakers across America to safeguard all citizens, including Muslims, to live free of Islamists' destructive extremism.
Dr. Qanta Ahmed, MD, is a life member at the Council on Foreign Relations, senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum, and author of In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom. Her X account is @MissDiagnosis.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.