Summary
The argument presented is that Islamist movements pursue a sustained ideological campaign against Western societies by exploiting open institutions, civil liberties, and political blind spots. It contends that jihadist ideology, rather than territorial grievance alone, drives groups such as Hamas and their state sponsors. The failure to recognize this dynamic has shaped misguided policies toward Iran, Palestinian leadership, and Islamist organizations operating in the West. A more effective response would require ideological clarity, institutional safeguards, and firm conditions on engagement.
Key Takeaways
- Liberal freedoms can be exploited by ideologically driven movements that seek long-term societal and institutional subversion rather than immediate military confrontation.
- Jihadist organizations and state sponsors pursue a dual strategy that combines violence, political warfare, disinformation, and institutional influence in the West.
- Misinterpreting ideologically motivated conflicts as purely political or territorial has hindered effective policy responses and delayed recognition of broader strategic threats.
- Liberal freedoms can be exploited by ideologically driven movements that seek long-term societal and institutional subversion rather than immediate military confrontation.
- Jihadist organizations and state sponsors pursue a dual strategy that combines violence, political warfare, disinformation, and institutional influence in the West.
- Misinterpreting ideologically motivated conflicts as purely political or territorial has hindered effective policy responses and delayed recognition of broader strategic threats.
The United States was founded on Enlightenment principles following a revolution to overthrow the British monarchy’s political oppression and economic mercantilism. The American Republic’s Constitution enshrined individual rights to freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and thought, regardless of how radical or extreme. Yet these uniquely American liberties have been exploited by its enemies to subvert the United States and the West from within. Americans, who embrace freedom of religion and speech, have largely been willfully blind to recognizing that enemy ideologies alone, without tanks, armies, or navies, can eventually undermine U.S. national security and destroy its societal fabric. American scholars have noted this fact in relation to Soviet and Chinese ideological subversion during the Cold War. The question remains: Why does America continue to struggle to recognize jihadi subversion by Islamist organizations and actors?
America’s Islamic enemies have publicly declared their intention for decades: The 1991 Muslim Brotherhood Explanatory Memorandum, discovered by the FBI in 2004 and entered as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial, the most consequential in American history, reveals this strategy in detail. Authored by Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Akram, the MB blueprint details a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” to destroy Western civilization from within and establish Islamic governance in North America. The MB memorandum reveals the organization’s aims unambiguously: “The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its [the West] miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers.”
These are not metaphors. They are declarations of war.
The 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial itself revealed the depth of the infiltration. This largest terrorism financing prosecution in U.S. federal court history exposed a web of organizations funneling money to Hamas while presenting themselves as legitimate charities. Yet even this watershed event failed to catalyze broader American awareness of the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic penetration of American institutions. As the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy has documented, Qatar alone, whose royal family serves as patron to the Muslim Brotherhood, has funneled over $100 billion into American universities and institutions, fundamentally reshaping academic discourse on democracy, the West, Israel, and the Middle East.
Hamas itself embodies the success of this dual strategy of violent jihad and state subversion. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood are the ideological-theological “godfathers” of this global assault. The Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Quds Force supplies Hamas with weapons, training, and operational support. Qatar’s Muslim Brotherhood regime leads the media and political jihad, promoting disinformation to the West. American university campuses erupted into sometimes violent, pro-Hamas, “dismantle Israel” protests following October 7, many organized and funded by groups with documented ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatari financing—though they were portrayed as organic, grassroots, and peaceful student activism. Qatar supplies Hamas with sanctuary, billions in funding, and religious guidance from figures like the late Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, who blessed Hamas’s operations and counseled its leadership, including Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar.
Hamas leaders have revealed the universal scope of their jihadi ambitions. They have declared their intention to target Rome and Andalusia (Spain) after “liberating” Jerusalem—underscoring that their global ambitions extend beyond Israel to encompass the West. This echoes the foundational doctrine of Islamic warfare as described by Dr. Harold Rhode in his book Modern Islamic Warfare, which explains how jihadist movements view their struggle as a cosmic battle that cannot cease “until the world be all for Allah.” Among both Sunni jihadists of different sects and “Mahdists”, the messianic variety of Shiite jihadists that dominate the Iranian regime leadership, the West represents an adversary to be subdued, and Israel is merely the first, local hurdle in conquering the world for Islam.
The historical record abounds with examples of jihadi extremism that broadcast largely ignored warning signs to America and other Western nations in the years preceding the September 11, 2001, attacks. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden issued explicit declarations of jihad against the United States, calling for the murder of Americans worldwide. His 1998 fatwa, or religious ruling, stated clearly that killing Americans, civilian and military, was the “individual duty” of every Muslim. After 9/11, bin Laden’s “Letter to America” laid out his ideological grievances, framing the conflict in explicitly religious terms as part of a global jihad. Yet even these unambiguous declarations were often misinterpreted through the lens of political grievance rather than recognized as expressions of theological commitment to Islamic supremacism.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979 provided another clear signal. Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s declaration that America was the “Great Satan” and Israel the “Little Satan” resulted in the seizure of 53 American hostages who were held for 444 days. These were not mere acts of political protest. Rather, they were manifestations of a revolutionary Islamic ideology that condemns what it calls “Western corruption, arrogance, and dominance.”
Over the subsequent four decades, the Iranian regime has reaffirmed its commitment to exporting the Islamic revolution in the service of destroying Israel and eliminating American and Western influence and presence in the Middle East. The most recent nationwide anti-regime protests that began on December 28, 2025, culminated in an unprecedentedly brutal and murderous crackdown by regime security forces around January 8 and 9, 2026, which left tens of thousands of Iranian citizens dead. The crackdown has revealed the extent of the Islamic Republic’s totalitarianism, now akin to North Korea’s, with a total internet blackout from the free world.
Iran now functions like a country-wide concentration camp under the Islamic Republic’s brutal force, fear, torture, intimidation, and mass arrests. Iran’s resources have been diverted almost entirely to sustain its ruling theocracy, its security forces (including the IRGC and Basij), military, and nuclear program, rather than benefiting its people, who seek freedom. Yet, the Iranian regime’s jihad also has its supporters: Russia and communist China have provided the Islamic regime with sanctions evasion and military and technical aid.
The West’s delegitimization, condemnation, and isolation of the Islamic Republic’s jihadist leadership has been late in coming. The United States has treated Iran’s proxy threats as political rather than theologically driven. Western willful blindness is rooted in its misguided belief that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is fundamentally a territorial dispute that can be resolved through a two-state solution. This conviction, still dominant in American policy-making circles and public opinion, represents perhaps the most dangerous manifestation of Western incomprehension of jihadi ideology.
The reality of Islamist warfare and jihad has spoken volumes. Since former PLO chairman and arch terrorist Yasser Arafat assumed leadership of the PLO in 1969, Palestinian nationalism has reflected an Islamic lexicon, points of reference, and imagery. Arafat invoked the Al-Aqsa Mosque, called for jihad, and employed religious terminology to frame what Western audiences were encouraged to view as a secular nationalist movement struggling for human rights and liberation. At the same time, the PLO’s original 1964 charter and Hamas’s 1988 covenant called for the annihilation of Israel through jihad. Hamas’s founding charter notes, “the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [religious endowment] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day,” and today it is Hamas whose doctrine and political popularity dominate the Palestinian Street, as proven yearly in polls. These are not stances subject to negotiation or territorial compromise. These are theological and ideological commitments that will premise any Palestinian state.
This jihadist strategy has been effective precisely because it operates through disinformation and deception, which the West has proven vulnerable to accepting since it believes actors are rational and utilitarian according to Western standards. The fact that many Americans still view the Palestinian cause primarily as rooted in territorial grievance rather than ideological jihad demonstrates the success of the campaign and the strategic deception that anchors it.
The invasion, massacre, and kidnapping of October 7, 2023, shattered this illusion. Hamas’s horrific massacre of 1,200 Israelis revealed the bankruptcy of the “land for peace” paradigm. Polling in Israel following October 7 reflects a fundamental shift. Israelis from left to right now understand that a Palestinian state led by movements committed to jihad poses an existential threat. Yet much of the American public and policy establishment has yet to internalize this lesson.
There is still room for optimism: The European Union recently designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization by 27 European foreign ministers, which represents a belated, if welcome, recognition of what some in the West have warned about for decades.
The path forward demands American leadership. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a December 2025 Fox News interview, acknowledged, “Radical Islam has shown that their desire is not simply to occupy one part of the world and be happy with their own little caliphate; they want to expand. It’s revolutionary in its nature. It seeks to expand and control more territories and more people … That’s a clear and imminent threat to the world and to the broader West, but especially the United States, which they identify as the chief source of evil on the planet.”
Reflecting Rubio’s approach, on January 13, 2026, the U.S. State and Treasury Departments designated three Muslim Brotherhood branches terrorist entities, labeling the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood (al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah) a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO, a State Department designation that criminalizes material support) and an SDGT (Specially Designated Global Terrorists – a Treasury designation that imposes asset freezes and sanctions), and the Egyptian and Jordanian branches SDGTs. Muslim Brotherhood front organizations such as CAIR, American Muslims for Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Palestine Solidarity Committee must also be designated as terror-supporting organizations.
Yet, designating organizations is not enough. Increasingly, jihadi speech has provoked violence, and institutional capture now threatens democratic governance. American universities must fully disclose foreign funding and divest from authoritarian regimes that weaponize financial influence to reshape American discourse.
Second, any American policy toward Palestinian leadership in any case of independent governance must be conditioned on the explicit and verifiable rejection of jihad, recognition of Israel’s permanent right to exist, and adoption of educational curricula free of religious hatred and incitement.
Most importantly, the United States must recognize that Israel’s fight is also a battle for the future of Western civilization’s survival, safety, and security. Hamas, Hizbullah, their Iranian patrons, and the broader network of Islamist movements view Israel merely as the forward position of the West, which they openly declare their desire to destroy. The October 7 massacre was not only an attack on Israel—it was an attack on the U.S. on Israeli soil. It demands moral clarity and a united front between Israel and the United States to defeat jihadist terror and political subversion.
