When immigrants arrived to the United States of America via New York Harbor between the latter half of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th centuries, they were greeted by the Statue of Liberty with the words that represent the American spirit: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” 

Today, however, the U.S. attitude towards newcomers has changed. The American people, as well as Europeans, have shown a growing concern over the obvious metamorphosis of nature and the types of immigration, which they consider a threat to national identity. Theirs is not a position against foreigners preserving some of their cultural or religious traditions in as much as the non-conformist mentality from migrants and refugees stemming from Muslim countries who insist in the public observance of the sharia.

Sharia literally means the “way” or “path.” Historically articulated, it is a shorthand term for an amorphous body of legal rulings, judgments and opinions, assembled over the course of many centuries after the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s death. It is based on the Quran and a copious number of hadiths (the sayings and acts of Muhammad) developed by the fuqaha (jurists) whose opinions enjoy an almost absolute authority over the faithful.

As a rule of law, it precludes the development of human reason as it is viewed as an expression of Allah’s inscrutable will. It is this same supremacy that renders sacred and permanent the concept of inequality between the Islamic community and the non-Islamic community, between the Muslim and the non-Muslim, and between man and woman.

Daniel Pipes said in 2004: “[O]ver the last 40 years, small groups of devout Muslim men have gathered in homes in U.S. cities to pray, memorize the Quran and discuss events of the day. But they also addressed their ultimate goal, one so controversial that it is a key reason they have operated in secrecy: to create Muslim states overseas and, they hope, someday in America as well.”

Such was the case of the Kenyan-born Yussuf Awadir Abdi, an Imam who is on a federal government terrorist watch list, delivered the opening prayer at a Utah Senate Session in February 2020. After delivering the prayer, Abdi took to Facebook to praise “Allah,” writing: “All praises is due to Allaah who gave me to mention his name and his prayer front of our state senators. Thank you UTAH Muslim Civic league for giving me this opportunity.”

Abdi is one of several muslims that The Utah Muslim Civic League has arranged to deliver the opening prayers at the Utah State Capitol. The Utah Muslim Civic League is an organization that seeks to get muslims in Utah involved in politics, including running for office.

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 of this to come. 

Back in the 1970s, the late-Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre had said: “As long a 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.” This could not better describe the Islamic phenomena we are facing.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis—a son of Jewish immigrants—said in his 1915 speech on True Americanism that immigrants seeking a home in America needed to do much more than learn English and have good manners. He argued that they “must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment.”

Undoubtedly, there are many Muslims who seek to flee from the draconian sharia rules in their native countries with the hope of creating a new and dignified life. This is an obligation that is owed to them. Consequently, there has to be some sort of effort to adjust to the laws and customs—so long as they are not immoral—of the land that has welcomed them. Yet the new wave of Muslims who refuse to adapt threatens to reshape our ethnic and religious composition of our nation, our democratic-capitalist tradition and our social values. 

This concern has been heightened by the fact that many Muslims have cultivated an autonomous sharia-based society in our homeland, such as

• in Dearborn, Michigan, where animosity towards non-Muslims has been constant and at times violent;
• the rise of pro-sharia feminists, such as U.S. House Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who called for a sharia punishment of flogging for her critics who have accused her of adultery for her affair with Tim Mynett;
• the terrorist-linked Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which vehemently lobbies for pro-sharia Muslims while simultaneously trying to intimidate secular Muslims, such as the Iraqi-born Dalia al-Aqidi who is seeking Omars’ congressional seat in the November elections. 

Islam, since its foundation, has always been transnational as it spread across the world when the nation-state and national identity were at best inchoate and more often non-existent. 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 in society with the goal of propagating Islam at the expense of others—such was the case of the aforementioned Imam Abdi. Reading the collapse of Western demographics, Islamists see our century as the time to make their move if they are going to have a realistic opportunity to Islamize the West.

I am sure that many who read this post will say, “This cannot and will never happen in America.” To that I respond, “Look what is happening around you.” Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition (Wood v. Arnold)—if four of the nine Justices feel the case has value, they will issue a writ of certiorari: a legal order from a high court for a lower court to send the records of the case to them for review—presented by the Thomas More Law Center to the case of. 

The  case involved Caleigh Wood, a Christian student in 11th grade at La Plata High School in La Plata, Maryland. Wood refused to take part in a school exercise she felt would deny her faith “by making a written profession of the Muslim conversion prayer known as the shahada—‘There is no god by Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.’” She received a failing grade for refusing to deny her freedom of conscience.

Such religious proliferation is not true freedom of speech or religion but a violation of it. A so-called religious institution forfeits its right to exercise its faith if it actively seeks to restrict of our religious freedom and promote hatred and violence, as with Islamic “No-Go Zones.” Stoppage of this is not achieved by dialogue but by action. As with the suppression of the Barbary Pirates by President Thomas Jefferson in 1805, sometimes action necessitates use of force, even if it is preemptive, in order to defend the innocent and protect society from sharia-religiosity. 

Regrettably, because of the political correctness in our culture, primarily instigated by the left-wing politicians and the mainstream media, one cannot even rationally address the Islamic dilemma, lest he or she be accused of Islamophobia. We should therefore not be surprised when Muslims collectively refuse to assimilate themselves, nor should we be startled that inadvertently at least, we have conformed ourselves to their demands.

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Mario Alexis Portella is a priest of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Florence, Italy. He has a doctorate in canon law and civil law from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome; he also holds a M. A. in Medieval History from Fordham University, as well as a B.A. in Government & Politics from St. John’s University.

* Sources no cited may be found in my book Islam: Religion of Peace? – The Violation of Natural Rights and Western Cover-Up.