Many in the West today are grappling as to how Islam has been able to get a foothold in our society.  We know of Islamists’ present-day means to get government officials to capitulate to their whims through lobbying and the mainstream media, presenting themselves as victims of the same Western society that has helped them.  But how have they been able to acquire such political leverage?  Apparently, there has been a willful lack of circumspection or foresightedness.  Back in the 1970s, the late archbishop Marcel Lefebvre had said:

“As long as Muslims are an insignificant minority in a Christian country, they can live on friendly terms, because they accept the laws and customs of the country that receives them.  But as soon as they become numerous and organize, they become aggressive and try to impose their laws, which are hostile to [Western] civilization.”

Protagonists such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar — both supposed allies of the United States and the European Union — have been able to forge or manipulate situations having politicians and the mainstream media to direct attention to military conflicts in the Middle East, such as Syria and Afghanistan, or by “exclusively” focusing on the Iranian regime as the principle source of terrorism.  As Ayaan Hirsi Ali explained, because of the West’s obsession with terror, we have become blind to the broader threat of the dawa, (Islamic proselytizing): the ideology behind the terror attacks — and what drives numerous Muslims to Islamize us.  In other words, by leading us to believe that the threat of Islam is only in far-off distant lands, Islamists have been able to conceal their ultimate weapons of Islamization: exploitation of  democracy and pluralism, immigration, and the multiplication of the progeny.

Since its foundation, islam has always been transnational as it spread across the world when the nation-state and national identity were at best inchoate and more often nonexistent.  This has impelled many Muslims, regardless of their views of democracy, to utilize the democratic instruments of pluralism and freedom of expression to insert themselves into society with the goal of propagating Islam at the expense of others.  The most salient example has been the election of Ilhan Omar to the House of Representatives.  Notwithstanding marrying her own brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, to get him a green card to the U.S., even before being sworn into Congress on a Quran, she successfully demanded that Congress reverse a 181-year ban on the wearing of any headgear — in her case she was able to wear the hijab: a religious attire, when lawmakers cannot even display a cross — on the floor of Congress.

Like a Trojan horse, Islamists have been able to  infiltrate, for example, the Western field of education, creating an environment of receptivity and understanding for the next generation of Americans to accept their sharia-based lifestyle.  Saudi money has financed institutions alongside multitudes of other Islamic organizations across the world and within the United States (80 percent of 1,200 mosques operating in the United States were built after 2003).  Qatar’s equal vision for America is being peddled through our children’s classrooms, targeting a pliable population and one with a long shelf life.