America’s growing embrace of politicized Islam is “perplexing” to those with first-hand experience of its oppressive system, confessed Pastor Shahram Hadian, an Iranian Christian convert from Islam, at Family Research Council’s 2026 Pray Vote Stand Summit. “America is trying to give it a hug. We’re going on dates with it. We’re romancing it. We’re trying to find out, ‘Are we compatible? Can we get along? Can we get married?’ This is insanity!”

“Iran fell in 1979 and became an Islamic theocracy under Sharia,” Hadian said. “The Iranian people … have died this year alone by the tens of thousands to liberate themselves not just from this regime, but from Islam. … They’re still trying to fight for freedom. And America is going down without a fight.”

Courage and Cowardice

A recent illustration comes in the race for U.S. Senate in Michigan, where strict Muslim candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D) has refused to condemn the Islamist regime in Tehran. At a recent townhall, a University of Michigan student from Iran, Iman Dashti, confronted El-Sayed about this decision. “My cousin was hunted in the streets of Iran by the IRGC because her hijab wasn’t on right. My uncle was sentenced to die, received 50 lashings by Ali Khamenei’s government … I wanted to ask if you stand unequivocally against the IRGC, against the Islamic Republic of Iran that has killed 50,000 protesters.”

Dashti’s courage to speak out against the evils of Islam is rare. If he were not Iranian, he might have thought twice about saying anything, because he might have been accused of racism (even so, Dashti has encountered significant personal consequences for speaking out).

“Most people don’t want to say anything about Islam because they’re scared to death of being called a racist. We need to get over that,” former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann urged. “The people that have come into the United States, that are Muslim … are pushing Sharia law … are pushing dominance. … That’s the goal: it’s dominance, and it’s takeover.”

“Minneapolis was the first city in America that allowed the Muslim call to prayer,” Bachmann explained. “I called up one of our freedom organizations in Minnesota. They wouldn’t touch it because they didn’t want to be called racist. So, we tried to get pastors to do something. They wouldn’t do anything because they don’t want to be called a racist.”

“We have to get real. We’ve got to wake up and realize what this is,” she insisted. “In Congress, we were taught a fantasy view of Islam that has never existed in the history of the world. The fantasy that says Islam is a religion of peace. That’s the mantra we were all told to repeat. It doesn’t exist anywhere in history.”

Religious Freedom

A second factor that deters criticism of Islam is more flattering to the American spirit. “As soon as you bring this up, somebody’s going to say, ‘Well, we have religious freedom in this country,’” observed FRC President Tony Perkins.

While that is true, “we have to have a national discussion about the nature and parameters of religious freedom,” suggested Jihad Watch Founder Robert Spencer. “Several years ago, two Muslim doctors in the Detroit area … were put on trial for carrying out female genital mutilation. … A judge struck down the law and said this was a local criminal matter. … He did not address the most important aspect of the case, which was that the doctors had argued that they should be free to do this because it was part of their religion.”

“It still hasn’t been tested in American courts,” Spencer added. “And so, this is the national conversation we have to have: does religious freedom give you some kind of license to break other laws?”

Spencer suggested the Supreme Court 1890 precedent against Mormon polygamy provides a roadmap to answer this question. “The Supreme Court was assuming that there was a limit to the religious freedom based on the freedom and rights of women not to be treated as commodities in a polygamous marriage,” he pointed out. “So, it would seem to me the same kind of idea could be applied to Sharia, in all its dehumanizing aspects and discriminatory aspects against non-Muslims, and women particularly.”

Hadian approached the question from a different angle, arguing that Muslim-dominated governments do away with religious freedom. “Where I became a Christian in America, I was able to leave Islam and follow Christ,” he explained. “If I was in a Muslim country, that is a death sentence under apostasy laws. … If they can’t get you for apostasy, they get you for blasphemy because you’ve dishonored Islam.”

“There is a very famous tradition where Muhammad is depicted as saying, ‘When you meet the unbelievers, invite them to accept Islam,’” Spencer concurred. “So far, that’s somewhat akin to the Lord saying, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations’ [Matthew 28:20]. And then it departs significantly. … Muhammad goes on to say, ‘and if they accept, then accept them as brothers in Islam. But if they refuse, then invite them to pay the jizya,’ which is the tax that the Quran specifies for the non-Muslims, particularly Jews and Christians. … ‘And if they refuse both, then seek Allah’s help and fight them.’”

Islam may begin with a non-threatening “invitation” to convert, but it will not take no for an answer.

Fundamentally Political Religion

This highlights a fundamental distinction between Christianity and Islam. Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting” (John 18:26).

By contrast, “Islam is a political system cloaked in a religious garb,” as Perkins put it, “and it is profiting and benefiting from America’s religious freedom that we extend.” Or, as Spencer said, “Islam is not a religion of peace. In fact, Islam is the only religion that is considered to be one of the world’s great religions that has a developed doctrine, theology, and law mandating warfare against unbelievers and their subjugation.”

“There is no separation” between Islam the religion and Sharia the political system, Hadian insisted. “Islam is Sharia. Sharia is Islam.”

Sharia is not only a political system, it is one that Muslims believe applies to “every aspect of life, for non-Muslims as well as Muslims,” Spencer argued. “When we talk about allowing for Sharia in the United States, a lot of people assume that we’re talking about benign religious law. … Abdul El-Sayed recently compared it to the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church. Well, if you’re not a Roman Catholic, canon law … doesn’t pertain to you, and it will never bother you. But if you are a non-Muslim, Sharia does pertain to you. And that’s the problem.”

The Islamic political system is “antithetical to the Constitution” of the United States, and the rights recognized therein, Hadian added. For one thing, public calls to prayer or public prayer zones are a publicly-backed establishment of religion, in violation of the First Amendment. In a lesser example, the New York City Police Department is “going in mosques and recruiting for Muslim police officers,” he shared. “Can you imagine if we went into this church and a sheriff’s department came in … and said, ‘I’m here tonight to exclusively recruit a Christian police officer’? There’d be lawsuits before the night was up.”

Furthermore, “under Sharia there is no concept of the equality of rights of all people before the law,” Spencer added. “That does not exist. If you are a non-Muslim, you are denied basic rights that Muslims enjoy. And Muslims occupy a superior position in the society. If you are a woman, you also occupy an inferior position in society that involves a denial of basic rights.”

Bachmann said that Sharia law is “100% incompatible” with the Constitution “because Sharia is the Constitution for the Muslim.”

The ‘Upper House’

“Islam operates in a duality,” Hadian explained. “When they don’t have power or control,” Muslims “claim plurality in religion. ‘We’re just a religion. We can operate like any other religion.’” This is the “lower house” or “House of War.”

The “upper house” or “House of the Surrendered Individual” is what happens when Islam becomes the dominant religion. “You submit to it in the upper house. There is no plurality. … When they take over, Islam has to be the final religion.

“Parts of America are in the ‘upper house.’ The Islamic call to prayer is the surest way to know they’ve already declared the upper house, because … they are broadcasting their supremacy,” Hadian warned. “What is that prayer? ‘There is no God but Allah, and that Muhammad is the prophet of Allah.’ So that is directly saying, ‘We’ve now subjugated you.’”

“They allowed the Islamic call of prayer in Paterson, N.J.; Dearborn Heights, [Mich.]; Hamtramck, [Mich.]; Minneapolis, [Minn.],” he listed. “Where are the Christians that said, legally, this is unconstitutional?”

“They don’t need the entire country. … They’re so emboldened that they’re building their own Muslim-centric cities” like the EPIC project in Texas, Hadian continued. “Texas is fighting … but the problem was all of this was passed at the local level. They wooed the city council, the county commissioners. And they got all the zoning permit[s], everything. So they’re not even just talking about a mosque. ‘We want to build an entire city that is ours.’”

In Minneapolis, Bachmann chimed in, the city effectively invited the influx of Muslims through taxpayer handouts. “We have a huge Somali population in Minnesota,” she said. “They come in with their four wives. And the taxpayers of Minnesota buy an apartment for each of the different wives and a minivan for each of the wives. And so, we’re paying for the Islamic way of life.”

This has contributed to “a level of arrogance that I’ve never seen before in Minnesota,” she added. “Jaylani Hussein, who is the head of CAIR Minnesota, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim Brotherhood front group … said, ‘We were shocked how easy this was,’ and, ‘this is a blueprint,’” Hadian lamented.

Urgency and Apathy

Another difference between Islam and Christianity makes the growth of Islam especially troubling. “In Islam … there is no guarantee of salvation, but one … if you are martyred,” said Hadian. “In the Hadith, which is supplementa[l] to the Quran, they have seven blessings for the martyr. We focus on the sixth one, which is the 72 virgins. … The seventh one … says the shedding of the blood of the martyr — he intercedes for 70 of his relatives, meaning he becomes the superstar.”

“Now you understand jihadist mentality: when your son is martyred, your whole family goes to heaven,” Hadian summarized.

What a powerful incentive! What a cruel dogma. “In Islam, the false god of Islam says, ‘Die for me.’ In the Bible, the God of the Bible says, ‘I love you so much, I died for you,’” Hadian presented the contrast.

Yet, almost by its very structure, the U.S. government refuses to recognize the power of this teaching. In 2011, Robert Spencer was fired from teaching U.S. intelligence officers about jihadist terror after a group of Muslim organizations complained that he was “Islamophobic,” he explained. “Since then, even through one-and-a-half Trump administrations, there has been no mention of Islam. If you want to join the FBI, you’ll learn about terrorism. You’ll learn about right-wingers and white supremacists and so on. You will not learn anything about Islam or jihad.”

Bachmann said that members of Congress were equally blinded by censored training materials. During her time on the House Intelligence Committee, she shared, the FBI and CIA moved to remove 800 pages of briefing materials on Islamist terror. “I was the only member of Congress who read them,” she told the audience. “Every bit of it was removed, just as Robert said. It never went back.”

Now, the urgency of the question arises not only in conversations about national security, but also in those about national politics. “This fall, on the ballot is communism and the marriage with Sharia,” Bachmann declared. “You’re looking at two different forms of government. … It’s not freedom of speech. It is a complete revolution, a coup of our government, and an overthrow. … You have two totalitarian systems of government that want to take over America and get rid of the Constitution.”

Not that this alliance will end well for the communists, Hadian predicted. “The same thing happened in Iran. In Iran, the Marxists helped to overthrow the Shah and allow Khomeini to come in and take over Iran. In one year, Khomeini banned the Marxists, either killed them or kicked them out. All these foolish LGBTQ leftist feminists wear a hijab today. … The Iranian women are burning their hijabs because they’re saying, ‘We’re done.’”

The Church’s Response

Christians in America must think carefully and biblically about how to respond to surging political Islam in this country. “In Christianity, do we want to influence government? Absolutely. But we don’t mandate it. We don’t force people to become Christian. … No, we love them until they do,” said Perkins. “I want [Christianity] to be the dominant religion in our country. But I’m not doing it by the sword. It’s not by force, by power, by submission. It is by surrendering to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Perkins also shared his ambition not to box out the Muslim world, but to bring it to saving faith in Christ. “We have to be able to battle … political Islam that wants to kill the freedom that all the world longs for, but at the same time, love the people that are doing that and share with them the freeing gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said.

The way to do this is through “boldness,” Hadian declared. “There is no mixing it. There’s no common ground. There’s no interfaith [dialogue]. There’s no ecumenism with Muslims, even in our missions.” Some missionaries try to contextualize the gospel,” he said. “No. Proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. Islam is antithetical to the Jesus of the Bible. … There is one Lord, one Savior, one faith, one baptism, and we need to proclaim him to Muslims.”

“There is no reforming Islam. We need to stop wasting our time trying to reform it. The greatest reform for a Muslim is to become a Christian,” Hadian insisted. “When I became a Christian, [if] someone had taught me this [conciliatory approach to Islam], I would have never become a Christian.”

Instead of finding common ground with Islam, Hadian recommended bold confrontation, and he offered his own personal testimony to underscore the point. From the age of four, he had dreams of a “man in white,” which prompted him to ask his parents “about death, salvation, heaven. They were giving me the Islamic answer — not a good answer — until I met some bold Christians. Praise God. God gets all the glory for that.”

Hadian also pointed to the growth of Christianity in Iran, which he called “the fastest growing church numerically in the world, under great persecution,” yet with up to five million souls in its number.

“Islam gives Muslims a kind of vaccine against Christianity, and they think they know all about it and they think they know why it’s all false,” Spencer explained. “The Quran denies the divinity of Christ, denies the Trinity, denies the crucifixion, denies the redemption. … And so Muslims, when you come to them and you tell them these things, they think, ‘Oh, the Quran has already told me all this is wrong.’ But the Quran also says that Jesus is the word of God [and] was born of a virgin. Muhammad was not those things. … The hadiths say that Jesus will return at the end of the world, not Muhammad.” Spencer recommended that Christians use the special status of Jesus, even in Islam to prompt Muslims to ask hard questions about their own beliefs.

Ultimately, the confrontation with Islam “is a spiritual battle,” Hadian counseled. “We can pass legislation until we’re blue in the face,” but it will avail nothing “if we, as the church of Jesus Christ, do not rise up and understand.”

The “one message the Iranian people would have … for America and the American church,” Hadian said, is this: “wake up and fight for your liberties.”