America Has a Jihad Problem. How Will We Defeat It? 

Jihadists are not hijacking planes anymore. They are hijacking leftists.

Two years ago, Hamas terrorists committed the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. In one night, Hamas killed 1,200 men, women, and children; raped and assaulted countless women and girls; and took 251 hostages back to Gaza.

But on this year’s anniversary of October 7, leftists took to the streets of New York City clad in keffiyehs and waving Hamas’ flag, chanting praises for the massacre.

The scene from NYC was not spontaneous. It was another episode in a decades-long bloodless revolution. In a 1991 memorandum, the Muslim Brotherhood, a forerunner to Hamas, detailed its strategy for jihad in America. Brother Mohamed Akram wrote:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western Civilization from within. (Emphasis added).

The New York City rally is proof that, 35 years after Akram penned this plan, jihadists have succeeded in hijacking leftists.

Leading them are the Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA boasts 80,000 members and 400 community chapters, and notable members of the party include New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — who, on the campaign trail, posed for a picture with an unindicted conspirator in the deadly 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The DSA’s leaders explicitly say that their group exists to “eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within.” Francis Gill, an elected board member, said the DSA has “a unique responsibility to act from the heart of empire, the belly of the beast” to take the “empire down from within.”

Ahmed Husain, director of activism for the DSA, said in a web seminar: “We’re inside the home of empire … As they [Hamas] fight there, we fight here … we’re doing our part our duty in this fight against empire.” Sounds familiar.

In June, leader Mirah Wood tweeted: “Death to Israel, death to America.”

This leftist-jihadi alliance makes almost no sense — American leftists should recognize the glaring illiberality of radical Islam. In Afghanistan, for example, women cannot speak or show their faces in public; and, in the Middle East and North Africa, 700,000 child brides marry Muslim men every year. Add to that rape culture, pervasive and violent persecution of Christians, and the death penalty for homosexuality.  

But, for leftists, logic doesn’t matter as long as America is dismantled. The ends justify the means, and as the proverb goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Hand in hand with leftists blinded by Marxism, jihadists have set in motion their “Civilization-Jihadist Process”:

In Dearborn, Michigan, residents hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day and Islamists flood streets waving foreign flags.

On college campuses across the country, radicalized students harass their Jewish peers and seize university property.  

And on the New York streets once darkened by the devastation of the 9/11 attack, leftists now praise the very jihad that inspired terrorists to fly two planes into the World Trade Center.

It is clear America has a jihad problem approaching hard and fast from the left. If the United States is to remain rooted in its founding principles — religious liberty, free markets, Christian ethics, and the dignity and equality of the sexes — Americans must resist the “global intifada” unfolding in our streets, universities, and halls of power.

How? Leftists embrace jihad because they hate America. Resistance, then, must be a patriotic love of America and her values: hard work, merit, marriage, family, service, worship, civic engagement, college football, daddy-daughter dances, Mom’s sweet iced tea, and borrowing eggs from the neighbors. The only thing Leftists and jihadists have in common is hatred for America.

That unity is shallow. But patriotism runs 50 states and 250 years deep.

Average Americans should love America. Professors and universities should teach love of country, and elected officials should serve the American people — not dismantle the country.

Good faith debate, civil disagreement, and the democratic process must stand. But they cannot bear good fruit absent a common affection for fellow man and country.

On 9/11, jihadists broke America — but only for a moment. From the ashes of that tragedy came a stronger American resolve and a unifying love of country.

Today, jihadists want to destroy America slowly, from within. But love of country can defeat jihadists again.

Hannah Lape is Legislative Assistant for the Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee, dedicated to promoting Biblical values and Constitutional principles in public policy.