Policy Issues / Healthy Communities

Primer: The Islamist Threat to American Communities

by Nathan Pinkoski

May 7, 2025

It is imperative to build communities that reflect people’s most deeply held convictions. America’s rivals and adversaries are doing the same.

In March 2025, the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) drew the Texas state government’s attention. EPIC had recently bought more than four hundred acres of property in Collin County in North Texas, and announced its project for a proposed development called “EPIC City.”¹ Living up to its name, the proposed development would include more than one thousand homes, parks, shops, other retail areas, and a school. Catered specifically to Muslims, EPIC is centered around a mosque. Unusually for real estate development, the project operates on a not-for-profit basis. While outside investors are promised a return, proceeds from the sale and development of houses go to support the Islamic Center itself.

If EPIC were simply an intentional community, whereby those sharing the same religious commitments plan to live together, there would have been no trouble. Such communities of religious minorities would merit constitutional protections under America’s “First Freedom.” However, as with any new community, the long-term question that policymakers and statesmen need to ask is whether they are poised to perform their social and civic duties well, supporting the American constitutional order.

That’s the question that George Washington asked of the Quakers in 1798, when this religious minority was again under scrutiny. Because the Quakers dissented from military service, the issue was whether they were fulfilling their other civic responsibilities. The president concluded that they were, and admirably so. “There is no denomination among us,” he wrote, “who are more exemplary and useful citizens.”² Washington’s considered assessment of the Quakers is important because his analysis goes beyond simply stating that religious minorities have rights to worship how they see fit. 

Washington’s premise is that while the constitutional order protects the exercise of religious freedom, it does not prevent examining whether some cultures, religious or otherwise, really do contribute to the American civic culture that underwrites the Constitution. The Constitution shields religious worship, but there must be an inherent and implicit understanding that it does not shield hostile and invasive ideologies that pervert civic responsibilities in a manner designed to destroy the very society necessary for our constitutional order to flourish. Ideologies that aim to replace the constitution, including the civic culture and the civilization that sustains it, with something else, are not immune from governmental confrontation. For over a hundred years, the danger of anarchists has prompted law enforcement to monitor and investigate anarchist networks, and the state has deported noncitizens associated with anarchism.³ The government has legitimate powers to minimize these threats: the Constitution is not a suicide pact.

Happily, Washington saw that the Quakers were performing their social and civic duties well, strengthening American constitutionalism. They could, under America’s “First Freedom,” deliberate further with local and state governments to secure exemptions and other reasonable accommodations. Because the Quakers were law-abiding citizens who contributed to America’s constitutional culture, they passed Washington’s test. Does EPIC?

EPIC attracted the attention of the government in the first place because it was not following Texas law. After reports of irregular activity and numerous legal violations, including a funeral home associated with EPIC operating illegally and building contracts not being properly reported, the state of Texas launched an investigation. A dozen state agencies are now involved.⁴ It’s also an open question whether EPIC is hiding behind religious freedom protections to create an ethnic enclave, in violation of the Fair Housing Act. The Department of Justice may open a case.⁵ 

Further investigations will bring clarity. But this kind of project should come as no surprise. It bears all the marks of a typical strategy of Islamism that has been in operation for decades throughout other Western countries. Unlike the Quakers, Islamists strategize to subvert the American constitutional order and replace one civilization with another. Over the coming years, as the Muslim population grows in the United States, projects like EPIC will likely become more common throughout the country. We need to understand what Islamism is, what its growth strategies are for the United States, and what measures can counteract it.

What Islamism Means

Islamism is best understood as a political ideology, a global project that aims to subordinate all aspects of government and civil society to Islam. In Western countries, Islamists lay the groundwork for the Islamization of state and society through the use of financial, demographic, communicative, and political power. 

 To be sure, many Muslims are not supporters of the Islamist ideology. But, according to public polling data, a majority are and are likely to sympathize with many of its tenets, including those that are exceedingly violent and extremist in nature.⁶ Islamists work overtime to convince fellow Muslims that Islamism represents the authentic practice of Islam. Particularly in Western countries, they’ve been remarkably successful at using their organizational structure (dawa) and taking control of Muslim civil society, reorienting Muslims toward Islamist activities.⁷ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, one of the most astute analysts of Islamism, draws from her experience growing up as a Muslim in Somalia to clarify how Islamists and Muslims relate. She concludes,

There is no point in denying that this ideology has its foundation in Islamic doctrine. However, “Islam,” “Islamism,” and “Muslims” are distinct concepts. Not all Muslims are Islamists, let alone violent, though all Islamists—including those who use violence—are Muslims.⁸

Hirsi Ali helps us make two distinctions. First, although not all Muslims are Islamists, Muslim societies and organizations are uniquely vulnerable to Islamist capture. That capture has been the clear historical trend. Second, she notes correctly that Islamists do not always rely on violence to spread their ideology.

Violent actions to terrorize a population, such as Hamas’s kidnapping and murder of innocent Israeli civilians on October 7th, 2023, may be part of the Islamist strategy. These shocking events grab the most attention. But equating Islamism with this kind of terrorism misses the complexity of Islamist operations. To better understand Islamism, look to the organization that started Hamas: the Muslim Brotherhood.

Founded in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood now has affiliates in over 70 countries. Some of these (such as Hamas) are recognized by the US government as terrorist organizations. These affiliates are often loose, informal, and difficult to trace, not least because members adopt a secretive cell structure. Nevertheless,  they have been very successful at establishing the groundwork of Islamization throughout the West. A 2015 British parliamentary investigation showed how the Brotherhood had, in the 1980s and early 1990s, developed a new strategy of domestic engagement with Western countries. By the 1990s, they had launched in Great Britain public-facing, national organizations to advance their views.⁹ The U.S. Department of Justice has traced back similar evidence of Islamist infiltration of the United States to the 1990s. While this is but another piece of evidence for the Brotherhood’s pernicious worldwide activities on behalf of Islamization, one early blueprint stands out. A remarkably candid document, it shows without prevarication or hesitation what Islamists want to do in the United States.¹⁰ The objective is not to form intentional communities united by the same religious creed; the intention is to launch a counter-civilizational movement.

 In 1991, the Muslim Brotherhood issued a confidential memorandum that outlined the strategy for the group in North America.¹¹ It details a plan for the “Enablement of Islam in North America,” understood as “establishing an effective and a stable Islamic Movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood which adopts Muslims’ causes domestically and globally, and which works to expand the observant Muslim base, aims at unifying and directing Muslims’ efforts, presents Islam as a civilization alternative, and supports the global Islamic State wherever it is.”

The aim of Islamists is neither integration, defined as participating in and strengthening American constitutional government alongside other citizens, nor indifferentism, defined as withdrawing from participation in the wider society to form an insulated community. In other words, the aim of Islamists is not integration into our society, nor to isolate themselves within their own enclaves, but rather to energetically integrate America into Islamist culture. Far from a Muslim “Benedict Option,” the Islamist strategy is political and confrontational. Islamists divide the world into the House of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and the House of War (Dar al-Harb). When Islamists build a mosque, they see it as sanctifying a hitherto unholy place, transforming it into the territory of Dar al-Islam. The mosque and Islamic center are not a refuge to withdraw into prayer and worship, but an outpost in hostile territory, a stronghold to reform the surrounding world, and a place for chastising unscrupulous Muslims and driving out unbelievers. In Ruling in the Name of Allah, the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal explains how this duality shapes many Muslims’ perception of all of reality: “There is the world of Islam that must be protected and there is the world of evil in which war must be waged.”¹²  As the memorandum indicates, this project extends beyond simple ethical reform or a largely invisible spiritual battle. The objective is spiritual and temporal: to complete the total overhaul and reorganization of society, culture, business, commerce, finance, law, and government. This is why Islamists claim to offer “a civilizational alternative” to the West. They provide a comprehensive human association that is intended to challenge and replace other civilizations.

Informed by such an ambitious and wide-ranging project, Islamists oppose the American sense of nationhood and form of government and seek to replace constitutional and national governments with the global Islamic state.

Projects such as EPIC rely on an unusual business scheme. Set up as a charitable enterprise, they’re not really businesses at all. They subordinate commercial activity to growing and expanding the Mosque and Islamic Center, in order to Islamicize the surrounding area. This distinction is important and tracks with the way Islamist operations function. From a typical American perspective, real estate represents a for-profit business, a “secular” activity distinct from religious or charitable activity. But from the perspective of Islamists, using a charitable organization connected to a mosque as the umbrella organization for real estate development is logical. The goal is not to run an economically profitable enterprise but to increase the resources and influence of the mosque. Far from making the venture financially unsustainable, the norms of Islam make it even more likely to succeed and provide a fund for other activities. Zakat, the third pillar of Islam, is the duty to donate at least 2.5 percent of one’s income to charity. Islamists take advantage of the legal charitable frameworks to give Muslims an avenue to donate to an authentically Muslim charity, which is then used to fund Islamist activity. Declaring commercial activities such as buying or maintaining a housing development to be charitable activities is a clever strategy to increase one’s opportunities for charitable giving in a Muslim community and therefore expand a mosque’s revenue stream. In this way, a real estate business could be transformed into a way to funnel funds to Islamist activities.¹³

As they grow in strength and number, Islamists will continue to create distinct organizational structures, mosques, and community centers. After building out Islamic organizations and housing, the next step is establishing Islamic schools, sports, and social clubs (all of which are planned for in EPIC City). In short, the Islamic center is envisioned as an “operation room” for further expansion, exercising greater influence and control over surrounding communities.¹⁴ Islamists are now poised to do this in the United States. Demographic and financial trends in America make this strategy even easier to pursue than it was in the early 1990s when the Muslim Brotherhood’s memo was written.

Growth of the Muslim Bloc in the United States and Opportunities for Islamist Expansion

In the last fifteen years, the Muslim population in the United States has tripled.¹⁵ While it is still smaller than that of the United Kingdom or France, the American Muslim population is much wealthier than its Western European counterparts.¹⁶ Some of the fastest-growing industries in the United States are Muslim-specific, such as the halal industry.¹⁷ As in the case of EPIC’s organization, a Muslim middle class with disposable income can easily organize to fund Islamic groups and activities through charitable donations, opting to use a 501(c)(3) or (4) rather than a for-profit model. The proliferation of this not-for-profit network enables Islamists to tap into larger funding sources and direct them toward Islamist causes.¹⁸ 

This growing economic power is rapidly translating into considerable political influence. There are now well-established organizations such as the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network that promote causes that resonate with Muslims, encouraging them to organize, act, and vote. This presence is now decisive enough to swing national elections. In 2024, Muslims in Michigan were encouraged to punish the Biden–Harris administration for its ambiguous stance toward the conflict in Gaza by withholding their votes.¹⁹ This represents the beginning of sectarian politics similar to those commonly found in Britain and France, among other countries.

Many downplay these trends, arguing that Muslim immigration will follow the patterns of prior waves of immigration and that Muslim voters may perhaps even trend conservative.²⁰ As Muslims become wealthier, we are assured, they will become less religious and therefore less vulnerable to Islamist indoctrination.²¹ They will, moreover, give up attachment to their old communities in fraught conflict zones and integrate into their new American municipalities. 

Alongside the outsize influence Muslims play in Michigan politics and the power that Somali enclaves exercise in Minneapolis, the EPIC project represents another clear sign that this assimilation is not happening. In this case, a Muslim group aims to capture part of the suburbs, enhance their prosperity, and endow the neighborhood with a specific religious ethos rather than let it be shaped by the community around it. This is to be expected. It is false to associate religiosity with the experience of poverty. In the case of Islam, prosperity helps it grow and thrive.²² Moreover, the model of new immigrants gradually forgetting their traditions, languages, and ties to the old country and being reshaped by the life of American communities is arguably outdated. The digital age means the annihilation of distance. Thanks to the internet, Islam’s reach and networks have globalized. Immigrants talk regularly with relatives on the other side of the world and establish international revenue streams. This new technology presents Islamists with an opportunity they never enjoyed a hundred years ago. Those advocating for stricter Islamic practices can use the power of digital connections to reach and reeducate Muslims around the world. Videos from conflicts in far-off places can be broadcast instantly to millions of Muslims in the West, encouraging them to see themselves as participants in the same struggle. The 1991 memorandum indicates how Islamists exploit this situation by encouraging Muslims to think of themselves not as members of a Western polity but as internationally interconnected engineers who are building one global Islamic state. Islamists will not permit Muslims to blend into America’s purported melting pot.

The mere fact that Muslims are doing business, forming charitable organizations, voting, and exercising political influence is not a problem; such activities are legitimate exercises of American citizenship. The problem is that Islamists are deliberately shaping the opinions of Muslims, leading them to adopt anti-American and anti-Western positions and politics, using the West’s own tools and institutional frameworks to undermine it.²³ In these efforts, Islamists have well-financed support from political progressives, who either share their anti-American sympathies and objectives or see their strategies as politically expedient. In fact, Islamists’ universalist ambition—the goal of creating a global Islamic state—has much in common with the universalism of the globalist left. Many in both groups agree that it is essential to dismantle American constitutional government and the nation that supports it. Whatever their larger disagreements, Islamists and leftists are allied by their common enemy, as they were during the campus protests of 2023–2024. According to Kyle Shideler, the Director for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C:

On the left-wing side, you have a broad variety of revolutionary leftists, who serve as rent-a-mobs, providing the warm bodies for whatever the leftist cause of the day is. And on the other side you have the Islamist and Palestinian networks: American Muslims for Palestine and their subsidiary Students for Justice in Palestine, CAIR, the Palestinian Youth Movement. We’re seeing a real mixture of different kinds of radical foment, and it’s all being activated at the same time.²⁴

Therefore, as Muslims’ power increases and they continue to be backed by the financial and political networks of the left, Islamists are well-positioned to direct this alliance toward their objectives. Their power is set to increase dramatically over the next decade unless decisive action is taken.

Strategies to Counteract

Western governments have picked up the wrong weapons to strike at Islamism and have unsurprisingly failed to hit their target. Since 9/11, many have associated Islamism with terrorism and reduced the former to the latter. This has led to a mistaken view that responding to Islamism means simply adopting tighter anti-terrorism measures. But since the problem concerns the spread of an ideology that may or may not resort to violence, these measures are inadequate to address the actual problem: the imposition of an Islamist civilizational alternative that erases the Western and American way of life. Islamists can, will, and do use nonviolent techniques to gain political control over local communities and governments. Anti-terrorism measures do little to counteract that threat. 

The first strategic failure is to fight Islamism by anti-terrorism alone; the second failure is to fight Islamism by substantive neutrality alone. This approach treats all ideologies opposed to constitutional government the same. Government leaders often speak in neutral, unclear language about “extremism” or threats to “liberal democracy.” To give content to these anti-extremist programs, they end up focusing on the psychology of extremists, extrapolating a list of behaviors, attitudes, or dispositions that could affect nearly anyone and betray their own progressive ideological slant. The British have been caught in this cycle for years. In the first place, their “neutrality” is a fiction, since their motivations have mainly been to show they are not guilty of any anti-Muslim sentiment. In that spirit of signalling their friendliness to Islam, the Conservative Government tried to adopt substantively neutral language to address the problem of extremism. As expected, its vagueness satisfied few. ²⁵ Following their electoral defeat in 2024, the new Labour Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, ordered a review of anti-extremist policy. The UK government now  defines extremism in terms of behaviors that include “spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories” and participating in “an online subculture called the ‘manosphere.’”²⁶ 

The battle against Islamism is not a battle against terrorism or extremism per se; it’s a battle against a pernicious political movement, which in its long-term struggle to provide a civilizational alternative seeks in the short term to displace the moral culture that undergirds self-government. The Founders understood the crucial connection between that culture and the form of government. In his Farewell Address, George Washington emphasized the importance of this culture, arguing that “virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” The Virginia Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason, argues that “no free government” can last without “firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue.” 

This is also the context in which we should assess religious freedom. Americans have a proud tradition of welcoming religious minorities and appreciating how they are good citizens. Like Washington with the Quakers, when they see examples of good citizens, they can deliberate over reasonable exemptions from civic duties. This is the sign of a healthy constitutional order and a healthy constitutional culture. But unlike Quakers, Islamists are not acting as good citizens. The culture they promote is hostile to the Constitution and to its “First Freedom.” Muslims are free to worship, but they are not free to spread an Islamist culture throughout the country that aims to replace Western civilization with something else.

To limit Islamism’s growth and break up its networks, all levels of government need to use the tools available to them: first, to limit Islamism’s growth and roll back its political, cultural, economic, financial, and demographic gains, and second, to strengthen American culture and communities.

Local and State Governments: Weakening Islamism’s Political, Cultural, and Economic Strong Points

To stop Islamist expansion requires municipal and state governments to support the culture that underlies the American constitutional order. Local ordinances are well placed to promote American heritage and Christian culture while restricting the spread of Islamist networks and culture. Majority communities can and should express the love of one’s religion and culture in local ordinances and activities; no one wants to live in a place that is stripped of its ethos and identity, and the future of constitutional government requires the public promotion of a certain set of morals. Communities can pursue these measures to strengthen the regional and national culture without running afoul of constitutional liberties. 

1. Care and attention to local sentiment, attitudes, and preexisting culture should be considered when zoning or granting building permits. A county or local government may place constraints on development and offer bylaws on how certain properties can be used. These tenets should be considered when dealing with permits for mosques, Islamic centers, and other associations, as well as monuments, especially if the plans resemble provocations and are particularly ostentatious in size or scope.²⁷

2. Local laws and ordinances can legitimately restrict certain kinds of businesses or operations or place certain conditions on their operations. For example, dry counties proliferate throughout the country, and to limit the spread of “gun culture,” blue counties restrict businesses that sell firearms and ammunition. To limit the spread of Islamist culture, counties and smaller municipalities can tighten restrictions on animal slaughter or sacrifice. Since these practices go hand-in-hand with halal industries and other kinds of markets, they need to be examined for ways they might already be in violation of animal welfare and other agricultural and environmental laws.²⁸ State law can also place conditions on businesses contracting with government entities that screen for Islamist beliefs. For instance, the state can verify that large contractors do not pursue or participate in anti-semitic or anti-Israel boycotts. Both contractors and local and municipal governments should be held to account for their financial activities and who these activities might support.²⁹

3. Mindful of demographic trends in some areas, counties can prevent the rise of Islamist sectarian public schools by either limiting zoning permissions for new schools or redrawing school districts so that they do not become Islamist or ethnic enclaves.

4. Counties and local governments can promote and build monuments, statues, and other displays that commemorate American and Christian history, reassuring Americans that their cultural and religious inheritance will remain an enduring part of the landscape.

Federal Government: Financial and Demographic Strangulation of Islamism

The tools available to the federal government are best suited to ensuring that new projects suspected of forming ethnic or Islamist enclaves are scrutinized under antidiscrimination law and tax code compliance. Measures to strengthen border control and reform vulnerable points in the U.S. immigration system are also necessary to prevent further Islamist infiltration. The ultimate goal of immigration policy, including refugee and asylum policy, should be to prioritize those who are willing and able to assimilate into national life and support our constitutional order.

1. The provisions of the Fair Housing Act should be enforced under their original public meaning, punishing discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity.

2. The Department of Homeland Security’s administrative discretion should be expanded to scrutinize relatives of those engaging in activity that renders one ineligible for visas, and the period of ineligibility based on past activities should be extended.³⁰ These provisions should be designed to provide additional screening, hindering the Islamist practice of taqqiya (deliberate deception of infidels).

3. The federal government should not only designate terrorist groups but also define the ideologies used by enemy aliens, including Islamism. Questions should be posed to all visa holders, scrutinizing them for adherence to Islamist tenets. The executive branch should intensify scrutiny of visa sponsors, including universities and other educational associations, and immigration lawyers, in order to identify those with ties to Islamist networks. This scrutiny should extend to government lawyers and the federal bureaucracy itself, which has in the past promoted or sponsored Islamist actors.³¹ While Muslims have a right to participate in the political process and serve in government, Islamists themselves cannot be both Islamists and also take an oath to the Constitution. This new anti-Islamist framework should be applied through precise executive orders and ultimately codified through statute. This framework will make clearer the expectations for visa holders, resident aliens, and permanent residents when they study, work, or live in the United States by specifying which actions constitute breaches and are therefore legitimate grounds for revoking visas and residency status. 

4. Greater scrutiny for 501(c)(3) and (4) organizations should be exercised to ensure that their funding streams and expenditures comply with U.S. law and that they are not being used as fronts for commercial gain.

5. Asylum and refugee law should be nationalized. In many Western nations, judicial activists have used the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention (the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees) to expand the scope for asylum seekers and refugees. The Obama administration supported a UN measure designed to expand the application of the convention by encouraging national governments to partner with private actors to facilitate the entry of refugees. This measure became the basis of the Biden administration’s “Welcome Corps” program, announced in 2023, which opened the door for individuals already in the United States to sponsor refugees of their choice.³² The Refugee Convention is out of date, is too easily weaponized for progressive causes, and does not meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, especially those posed by Islamist growth. The United States should withdraw from the convention’s protocols. The Immigration and Nationality Act should be amended to prohibit linking asylum policy to any international agreement. The country should draft its own statutes to handle refugees and asylum seekers, pending a new international convention.

6. All existing partnerships, grants, and other collaborative arrangements between the U.S. government and mosques, other Islamic centers for integrating Muslim immigrants into the United States, and those working with universities and Muslim student organizations should be terminated. As the evidence from other countries shows, Islamic centers, mosques, and university organizations tasked with working with foreigners are too easily infiltrated by Islamist networks.³³ Resources should be reserved for the few organizations that have a proven track record of supporting immigrants and successfully integrating them into the United States.

7. Refugees, asylum seekers, and resident aliens who formerly held refugee or asylum status should be voluntarily induced to repatriate or to participate in regional resettlement programs near their country of origin.³⁴

Building for America’s Future

These proposed measures are important, but they are purely reactive. They represent a strategy to limit the rise of Islamism in the United States before the problem becomes as severe as that in Western Europe. A more proactive strategy requires attending to the root problem: the hollowing out of communities that express and manifest our deepest convictions. Americans have been told to shelve their deepest commitments not only in politics but in their social life. This has created a vacuum that foreign cultures and groups are able to fill. The long-term response is to shore up our own civilization and culture by building communities that express a thick conception of the common good. To do so requires making it easier for Americans to build intentional communities, where they can live next to those who share their deepest convictions. Realizing this strategy requires changing our mindset, abandoning obsolete visions of what an ideal American neighborhood looks like, and removing obstacles to the exercise of religious freedom so that it is not potentially illegal to sell houses and properties to those of the same faith.

It is important to recognize why the public-facing rhetoric of the EPIC project is appealing to Muslims. There is nothing unnatural in Muslims’ desire to form their own communities. People want to live in communities where they trust their neighbors to share similar morals and virtues. The sad reality of the contemporary United States is that the country is no longer the high-trust society it once was. This decline in trust has helped fuel the so-called “Big Sort,” where Americans have moved to be closer to those who share their politics, philosophy, worldview, and religion—to be closer to those whom they trust. But while many Americans think in terms of simply being in a state that reflects their values, moving from blue to red states accordingly, many Islamist-minded Muslims are thinking ahead. They are looking to form smaller, tightly knit neighborhoods, places where family formation and the transmission of values occur. Americans with deep cultural and religious formation should be encouraged to do likewise, to defend our culture, our societies, and the civilization necessary to uphold our constitutional order.

There are two obstacles to this approach. First, many Americans remain understandably attached to the postwar model of development, which assumes economic goods are more important than moral and political ones. Legacy conservative institutions often treat the “Big Sort” phenomenon as reducible to cost-of-living questions, cheap housing, and low taxes. While this is part of the calculation people make, it is not as important as their quest for real, substantive communities. Building the latter requires reimagining our model of urban development.

Most Americans want to own houses, which means they often look to move to the suburbs of major cities. Yet, suburbs are often zoned in such a way as to limit interactions with one’s neighbors. Grocery stores and other shops, daycares, schools, and churches are placed far away from residential areas, which have increasingly self-selecting members. By design, the suburbs put people of the same economic status together. They are zoned for wealth. They prioritize economic sameness. However, substantive social interactions happen in places at a distance from where one lives, an arrangement that helps people to avoid uncomfortable conversations with their neighbors.

The suburbs were well suited to an older civic bargain in which Americans agreed to compartmentalize their politics and their religion. This was not a necessary offshoot of prosperity; it was a political and theological choice taken by postwar Americans and Christians, a strategy to avoid conflict with one’s neighbors who may have disagreed on matters of faith and politics. At the time, this choice was justified in terms of adapting to the requirements of pluralism. Yet it was only possible because, for much of the postwar period, Americans still shared similar beliefs and commitments with their neighbors. “Agreeing to disagree” or to not talk about controversial questions is not a natural or instinctive attitude; it’s the product of a particular set of norms.

This model has broken down. The suburbs are communities arranged around economic livelihood, but defining life and community in these terms is insufficient. A gaping hole in civil society has opened up. It should not be surprising that foreign creeds and cultures with more substance and content are rushing in, taking control of neighborhoods and redefining them accordingly.

The second obstacle is the progressive weaponization of the Fair Housing Act. Under both the Obama and Biden administrations, the Fair Housing Act has been redefined according to the immoral and unconstitutional logic of disparate impact. By redefining segregation to include any concentration of members of a particular religion, this has made majority-Christian communities presumptively illegal in the United States.³⁵ Americans who intend to build thick communities, particularly patriotic, culturally Christian communities, risk running afoul of these provisions.

Should a Democrat return to the White House, these provisions could be revived with the stroke of a pen. A woke and weaponized Department of Justice would then have the legal justification it needs to go after Christians and Americans trying to organize their own communities and develop real estate accordingly. Since the left would never use these tools against sectarian Muslim enclaves but may well turn them against Christians and similar intentional communities, these powers should be taken out of the hands of the federal government. Paradoxically, the best long-term strategy to outmaneuver and outbuild Muslim and Islamist enclaves in the United States would be to strengthen the religious exemptions already permitted through the Fair Housing Act. Through these legislative initiatives, Christians who want to sell houses to other Christians who share their commitments won’t potentially run afoul of ever-changing antidiscrimination provisions in doing so.³⁶

While this change might make it easier for Islamists to form communities, enforcing the provisions of the Fair Housing Act that prevent the establishment of racial or ethnic enclaves would limit its effects. Unlike American Christianity, Islam remains extremely tribal.³⁷ Communities are arranged on fiercely protective racial or ethnic lines that are potentially illegal.

Many Muslims are taking advantage of American laws and deciding to build neighborhoods among their own tribe and religion, even as Americans have lost their shared commitment to secularism to keep religion in the private sphere. Nor should they try to restore such a commitment. It is imperative to build communities that reflect people’s most deeply held convictions. America’s rivals and adversaries are doing the same. As the United States completes the “Big Sort” over the next generation, every neighborhood is poised to adopt an explicit religion, civic, or otherwise. The question is which one it will be.

Endnotes

1.  “Epic City,” accessed April 24, 2025, https://epicccp.com/.

2.  “From George Washington to the Society of Quakers, 13 October 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0188.

3.  E.g. “Anarchist Extremism: A Primer,” Federal Bureau of Investigation. November 16th, 2010. https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2010/november/anarchist_111610/anarchist_111610 Archived material.

4.  Kevin Reece, “Texas Gov. Abbott and Ken Paxton Announce Investigations into EPIC City,” WFAA.com, updated March 31, 2025, https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/collin-county/texas-greg-abbott-ken-paxton-announce-investigations-into-epic-city/287-a4a1bcc1-ea85-4cfe-a75e-d5741b719180.

5.  Rachel Snyder, “Sen. John Cornyn Calls for DOJ Probe into Proposed Muslim-Centric Development in Collin County,” WFAA.com, April 14, 2025, https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/collin-county/sen-john-cornyn-calls-doj-investigation-epic-city-texas-officials-expand-investigation/287-ee9ca8b6-282d-44aa-b46f-93fe1601972c.

6.  In the case of Afghans, for instance, 78 percent believe Sh Kr aria courts should operate in parallel to the existing legal system; 61 percent believe Sharia law should be applied to all citizens, including non-Muslims,; and 39 percent believe suicide bombing is often or sometimes justified. See also CRA Staff, “Primer: Afghan Culture is Prohibitive for Assimilation,” Center for Renewing America, September 13, 2021, https://americarenewing.com/primer-afghan-culture-is-prohibitive-for-assimilation/; “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” Pew Research Center, April 30, 2013, 

7.  The definitive book on this phenomenon in Europe is Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, Le Frérisme et ses réseaux: l’enquête (The Brotherhood and its networks: an investigation) (JACOB, 2023). 

8.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Challenge of Dawa: Political Islam as Ideology and Movement and How to Counter It (Stanford University: Hoover Institution Press, 2017), 2.

9.  “Muslim Brotherhood Review: Main Findings,” House of Commons, December 17th, 2025 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a817cdaed915d74e6232892/Muslim_Brotherhood_Review_Main_Findings.pdf

10.  C.f. The Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, writing in The Way of Jihad: “Jihad means the fighting of the unbelievers and involves all possible efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the enemies of Islam, including beating them, plundering their wealth, destroying their places of worship, and smashing their idols.” For further information on the Brotherhood’s activities, see “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Global Threat,” Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, US Congress, July 11th 2018.

11.  “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” May 22, 1991, https://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/20.pdf. 

12.  Boualem Sansal, Gouverner au nom d’Allah (Ruling in the name of Allah) (Gallimard, 2013). Sansal, who is also a French citizen, was arrested by the Algerian government for his criticisms of Islam and Algeria and sentenced in March 2025 to five years in prison.

13.  It also may function as a trick to get around the Fair Housing Act by declaring that it is not a commercial activity for the purposes of 42 U.S. Code § 3607 (a): “Nothing in this subchapter shall prohibit a religious organization, association, or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association, or society, from limiting the sale, rental or occupancy of dwellings which it owns or operates for other than a commercial purpose to persons of the same religion, or from giving preference to such persons, unless membership in such religion is restricted on account of race, color, or national origin.” (Emphasis added.)

14.  “An Explanatory Memorandum.”

15.  The Muslim population grew threefold from 2007 to 2023–2024, from less than one million to 3.1 million (0.4 percent to 1.2 percent of the population of the United States). These numbers may seem trivial, but they are similar to the number of Jews in the United States (1.7 percent in 2023–2024 of the population of the United States). At that rate of growth, Muslims will soon become more numerous than Jews. A minority may be small and still exercise significant cultural and political influence. See Gregory A. Smith et al., “Decline of Christianity in the U.S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off,” Pew Research Center, February 26, 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/decline-of-christianity-in-the-us-has-slowed-may-have-leveled-off/. 

16.  The memorandum notes, “If we examined the human and the financial resources the Ikhwan alone own in this country, we and others would feel proud and glorious. And if we add to them the resources of our friends and allies, those who circle in our orbit and those waiting on our banner, we would realize that we are able to open the door to settlement and walk through it seeking to make Almighty God’s word the highest.”

17.  Projected to grow at an annual rate of 9.7 percent, the halal food market was valued at $668.7 billion in 2024 and is set to reach over $1.5 trillion in 2033. See “United States Halal Food Market Size, Share, Trends and Forecast by Product, Distribution Channel, and Region, 2025-2033,” IMARC, accessed April 24, 2025, https://www.imarcgroup.com/united-states-halal-food-market. 

18.  Joseph Simonson, “This Progressive Dark Money Behemoth Could Face Criminal Charges over Anti-Israel Protest,” The Washington Free Beacon, November 13, 2023, https://freebeacon.com/democrats/this-progressive-dark-money-behemoth-could-face-criminal-charges-over-anti-israel-protest/.

19.  The estimated population of Muslims in Michigan is 241,000. Kamala Harris lost the state by 80,000 votes.

20.  This was the premise of the GOP’s strategy in the late 1990s. See Tom Hamburger and Glenn R. Simpson, “In Difficult Times, Muslims Count On Unlikely Advocate,” Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2003,

21.  This was an underlying premise of George Bush’s 2003 speech promoting free trade in the Middle East as a strategy to defeat extremism. See George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President in Commencement Address at the University of South Carolina,” Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, May 9, 2003, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030509-11.html: “Across the globe, free markets and trade have helped defeat poverty, and taught men and women the habits of liberty. So I propose the establishment of a U.S.-Middle East free trade area within a decade, to bring the Middle East into an expanding circle of opportunity, to provide hope for the people who live in that region.”

22.  See especially Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon & Schuster, 1996), 94–101.

23.  As the 1991 memorandum puts it, Muslims 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 miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

24.  Cited in Park MacDougald, “The People Setting America on Fire,” Tablet, May 6, 2024, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/people-setting-america-on-fire-soros-tides-wespac. 

25.  Following Hamas’s October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel and the worldwide protests, the British Conservative government exemplified this approach. Michael Gove declared: “The United Kingdom is a success story – a multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy. It is stronger because of its diversity…The pervasiveness of extremist ideologies has become increasingly clear in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks and poses a real risk to the security of our citizens and our democracy. This is the work of Extreme Right-Wing and Islamist extremists who are seeking to separate Muslims from the rest of society and create division within Muslim communities.” 

26.  See Andrew Gilligan and Paul Stott, “Extremely Confused: The Government’s New Counter-Extremism Review Revealed,” Policy Exchange, 2025, https://www.academia.edu/128630048/Extremely_confused_The_Governments_new_counter_extremism_review_revealed.

27.  For instance, the planned “Cordoba House” near the World Trade Center site, the so-called “Ground Zero mosque,” was criticized by many, including some Muslims, as a deliberate provocation: “New York currently boasts at least 30 mosques so it’s not as if there is pressing need to find space for worshippers. The fact we Muslims know the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel. The proposal has been made in bad faith and in Islamic parlance, such an act is referred to as ‘Fitna,’ meaning ‘mischief-making’ that is clearly forbidden in the Koran.”

28.  A city could reasonably require a license or advance notification for animal sacrifice, or place requirements to block a sacrifice or slaughter from public view. Hamtramck’s ordinance proposed these until they were removed by the Muslim-control City Council. “Hamtramck council approves Islamic animal sacrifices at home,” Detroit Free Press, January 13th, 2023

29.  E.g. Texas Government Code §2271, “Prohibition on Contracts with Companies Boycotting Israel.”

30.  For example, in 9 FAM 302.6 (U), “Ineligibilities based on Terrorism-Related Grounds,” “(U) INA 212(a)(3)(B)(i) renders ineligible any applicant who” under provision (9) “is the spouse or child of an applicant who is ineligible, if the activity causing the applicant to be found ineligible occurred within the last 5 years.” This could read “parent, sibling, spouse, or child of the applicant who is ineligible, if the activity causing the applicant to be found ineligible occurred within the last 20 years.” The current provisions already include exceptions and opportunities for family members to disavow the actions or beliefs of their relatives, so there should be no concern about unfairly targeting those who are not connected to Islamist networks. See 9 FAM 302.6 (U), “Ineligibilities Based On Terrorism-Related Grounds,” INA 212(a)(3)(B), INA 212(a)(3)(F) and 8 U.S.C. 1735, https://fam.state.gov/fam/09FAM/09FAM030206.html.

31.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Challenge of Dawa: Political Islam as Ideology and Movement and How to Counter It (Stanford University: Hoover Institution Press, 2017), 54-55.

32.  G.A. Res. 71/1, “New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants,” A/RES/71/1, (October 3, 2016), https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_71_1.pdf;Ted Hesson, “Americans Can Sponsor Refugees Directly Under New Program,” Reuters, January 19, 2023,

33.  “But Muslim Brotherhood associates and affiliates here have at times had significant influence on the largest UK Muslim student organisation, national organisations which have claimed to represent Muslim communities (and on that basis have sought and had a dialogue with Government), charities and some mosques.” “Muslim Brotherhood Review: Main Findings,” House of Commons, December 17th, 2025 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a817cdaed915d74e6232892/Muslim_Brotherhood_Review_Main_Findings.pdf 

34.  See also Ken Cucinelli, “Primer: Refugee Programs Pose Risk to Americans as Afghanistan Collapses,”

35.  The Obama- and Biden-era rule “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” redefined segregation as “a high concentration of persons of a particular race or religion.” See CRA Staff, “Primer: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH),” Center for Renewing America, May 24, 2021, https://americarenewing.com/primer-affirmatively-furthering-fair-housing-affh/. 

36.  The Fair Housing Act could strike the italicized text below from 42 U.S. Code § 3607 (a): “Nothing in this subchapter shall prohibit a religious organization, association, or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association, or society, from limiting the sale, rental or occupancy of dwellings which it owns or operates for other than a commercial purpose to persons of the same religion, or from giving preference to such persons, unless membership in such religion is restricted on account of race, color, or national origin.” (Emphasis added.)

37.  Hamtramck, the first town in the United States to elect a Muslim-majority council in 2015, is according to the 2020 census split on ethnic lines. The largest group is from Yemen. 30% to 38% of Hamtramck’s residents are of Yemeni descent, and 24% are Asian, mostly of Bangladeshi descent. The mayor elected in 201, Amer Ghalib, is of Yemeni descent.