The Hottest Pumpkin Spice Accessory Is Your New Jihadi Boyfriend

DW Opinion

The Hottest Pumpkin Spice Accessory Is Your New Jihadi Boyfriend

The ladies are trading their Lululemon leggings for new keffiyehs.

Ben Domenech
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3 min

First, a few questions: Are you a single white woman in America in 2026? Is the only correct take on Lindsay Clancy the one you have adopted after scouring TikTok like the world’s greatest true-crime detective? Do you own one or more items of “Hot Girls For Zohran” flair?

Then this message is for you: This pumpkin spice season, don’t miss out on the must-have accessory of the season — your new jihad-adjacent boyfriend. He’s intense, he’s problematic, and his opinions on 9/11 are sure to anger all the relatives you hate the most over the holidays.

Kathy Hochul showed the way when she rocked that hijab in exchange for a group of very important Muslim men having to suffer the rare experience of listening to a woman talk. It’s a natural progression – you go from hashtagging for Gaza to embracing this inventive new idea called socialism to realizing that sure, Luigi murdered a guy, but have you noticed he’s hot?

The speediest path to Karen-izing Islam in the West is personalizing the narrative, and you have the power to do it. And trust me, the internal satisfaction of this accessory boyfriend will be immense. It comes when you post your orchard-infused Uggs-resurgence Instagram story about taking him apple picking for the first time. (For the record, you’ll be doing all the picking). It comes when you tell your mother no, it’s not that you don’t like Leinenkugel’s anymore; it’s just that it’s haram. It comes when your uncle storms out of Thanksgiving muttering about Ann Coulter (who?) and turning the Middle East into a “sheet of glass,” whatever that means. Probably something racist. Come on. It’s twenty-five years after 9/11, and it’s time people just grow up and let it go.

The best part about this move isn’t just that you’re trendsetting; it’s the emotional rush of getting ahead of where everything is going and gaining the moral authority to pass judgment on all of it. Let the weirdo right-wingers eat each other on X arguing about the cost of burritos and welfare for tradwives and the Latin Mass. You’re staking out ground that will infuse the next iteration of America’s human resources departments as part of a new protected class. And what’s the personal cost for you? Some hijab-prompted dermatitis? Big deal, your hair was shedding from the SSRIs anyway.

Some of your best friends will judge you, but that’s how you know this is so right. Someone posted a beautiful quote you saw the other day – it was from a French author; you haven’t read the book, but it’s a good summary: “the summit of human happiness resides in the most absolute submission.” Don’t you have the right to be happy? They’re just jealous they don’t have a man who believes in anything beyond prediction markets and Patagonia.

So this decorative gourd season, don’t just run things back with all the tired old tropes you embraced the past few years. Head up to a rally in Michigan. Be the first in your friend group to get that new must-have accessory. Sure, sometimes he can seem a little bossy. But what’s the worst that can happen?

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