A fortress is not always conquered by an army battering down its walls. Sometimes it is lost because those entrusted with guarding the gate fail to recognize the motivation of the one asking to enter.
That is the danger confronting America in 2026.
Not because God’s throne is in danger. He remains sovereign over every ruler, every nation, and every election. Not because a political party can redeem America. No party died on the cross. No candidate rose from the grave. Jesus Christ alone is Savior and Lord.
The importance of 2026 lies in this sobering reality: Islamist political influence is moving from agitation to organization, from protest to electoral power, and from temporary coalitions to institutional footholds.
Listen carefully. The concern is not that Muslim citizens vote, organize, donate, or run for office. Those are constitutional rights, and Christians should defend them. Many Muslims came to America to escape the very Islamists about whom I am warning.
The issue is not Muslims.
The issue is Islamists.
Biblical authority and Constitutional duty
The Constitution is not supreme over the Bible. For the Christian, God’s Word is our final authority. When government commands what God forbids — or forbids what God commands — the Biblical answer is clear: “We must obey God rather than human beings!” (Acts 5:29).
At the same time, the Constitution is the highest human civil charter governing the exercise of American public office. An officeholder who swears to support it is not declaring it divine. He is promising to discharge his office truthfully and not secretly substitute another legal order for the one he has sworn to uphold.
Biblical Christianity therefore holds two Truths together: God is supreme over government, and God commands believers to honor lawful government.
Jesus said, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:21). Caesar has real authority — but limited authority. Government may punish wrongdoing, preserve public order, and protect the innocent. It may not claim worship, command sin, or silence the Gospel.
When Daniel was forbidden to pray, he did not pretend to comply while praying secretly. He opened his windows. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were commanded to worship an idol, they refused publicly. When the apostles were ordered to stop preaching Christ, they answered openly and accepted the consequences.
That is Biblical civil disobedience.
The Christian does not conceal his convictions. He does not infiltrate government under false pretenses. He does not lie for the Kingdom. Paul declared, “We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception” (2 Corinthians 4:2). Christ’s Kingdom advances through Truth, proclamation, prayer, service, sacrifice, and the Holy Spirit — not through forced conversion, concealed infiltration, or the sword.
This is precisely where Biblical Christianity and Islamism part company.
Political Islam seeks to unite religious, political, judicial, and social authority beneath Sharia. In its entryist form, it may use constitutional freedoms as temporary instruments for acquiring the power necessary to reshape the constitutional order itself.
Entryism and Taqiyya
Entryism is the strategy by which an ideological movement enters a larger party, coalition, school system, civic institution, or government body without fully disclosing its final objectives. The entryist adopts the language of the host institution, gains confidence, places personnel, acquires influence, and redirects the institution from within.
Entryism does not begin with a candidate announcing, “I intend to replace the Constitution with Sharia.” That would expose the objective.
It begins with language the secular West celebrates: inclusion, representation, social justice, civil rights, tolerance, and pluralism. These words may express legitimate concerns. But in the hands of an entryist movement, they become the key that opens the gate.
Taqiyya is the doctrine of concealment, historically developed most prominently among Shiite Muslims living under persecution. Islamist movements have operationalized its logic politically: conceal or soften the ultimate objective until sufficient legitimacy, access, and power have been accumulated.
Entryism is the strategy. Taqiyya is the mask.
This is not conjecture. In a 1991 internal memorandum later introduced in the Holy Land Foundation prosecution, Muslim Brotherhood figure Mohamed Akram described the Brotherhood’s work in North America as “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”
This does not mean every Muslim practices deception. It means that when an Islamist movement repeatedly uses dual messaging, concealed relationships, and strategic ambiguity, we should call the method what it is.
Pattern recognition is not prejudice.
Europe has already shown us the playbook
Europe is not a hypothetical warning. It is the precedent.
In Birmingham, England, investigators documented coordinated efforts to influence public-school governing bodies, install sympathetic leaders, marginalize resistant headteachers, alter curricula, and introduce a conservative Islamic ethos into schools that were not legally Islamic schools. The project advanced through appointments, personnel decisions, and institutional pressure — not through an openly declared Sharia platform.
Tower Hamlets revealed another stage of the method. Religious sentiment, communal loyalty, political patronage, and public grants were manipulated to consolidate electoral power. A letter signed by 101 imams told voters that supporting Lutfur Rahman was their religious duty; the Election Court found undue spiritual influence. Rahman later returned to office after his disqualification ended.
A court may expose the machinery without dismantling the machine.
France has investigated an ecosystem of political Islam operating through mosques, schools, charities, associations, and local partnerships. Germany has banned organizations openly promoting a caliphate and rejecting its constitutional order. British elections have demonstrated how concentrated electorates mobilized around Gaza and communal identity can overturn supposedly safe political assumptions.
The pattern is clear: recognition produces access; access produces influence; influence produces appointments and funding; dependency makes scrutiny politically dangerous; and when honest scrutiny becomes forbidden, freedom is already dying.
The pattern at America’s gate
The same mechanisms are emerging in the United States.
In New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, Adam Hamawy won a crowded Democratic primary after American Priorities, a new pro-Palestinian super PAC, announced an approximately $2 million effort supporting him. Hamawy’s Muslim identity is irrelevant. His historical associations are not.
As a young man, he traveled with and translated for Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh,” and later testified in his defense. He also performed humanitarian work through the Benevolence International Foundation, which the U.S. Treasury later designated as a financier of terrorism.
These facts do not prove that Hamawy knew of criminal activity or presently holds Islamist convictions. His later service as a U.S. Army combat surgeon is important. But unresolved associations, concentrated outside spending, and a path into Congress demand complete answers: What did he know? Did relationships continue? What are his positions on the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Sharia, apostasy, blasphemy, and freedom to convert?
In Texas, the attorney general has investigated an organization calling itself the Islamic Tribunal over allegations that it represented religious decisions as final judgments carrying judicial approval. The organization says its guidance is voluntary and nonbinding. The proper question is whether its conduct matches its public description. Were participants free to refuse? Were women pressured? Were religious rulings used to discourage access to civil courts?
Words must be tested by conduct.
The 2026 election is the most important election of our lifetime because it may determine whether Islamist entryism is confronted before it becomes entrenched—or normalized after it acquires institutional power.
For the Christian, ultimate allegiance belongs to God alone. For every officeholder, the civil test is honest constitutional fidelity: Will you protect the right to leave Islam, become a Christian, evangelize Muslims, criticize Muhammad, reject penalties for apostasy and blasphemy, and preserve equal protection under civil law?
Christians must love Muslim people, defend their liberties, and proclaim to them the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
But love is not blindness. Tolerance is not surrender.
Our weapons are not hatred, slander, fear, or violence. Our weapons are Biblical Truth, prayer, lawful action, constitutional vigilance, and the Gospel.
Europe has shown us the playbook. Entryism opens the institution. Taqiyya conceals the destination.
The question is whether those entrusted with guarding the gate will recognize it before the gate is lost.
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Michael A. Youssef, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist, bestselling author, and internationally respected Bible teacher who brings more than 50 years of insight to the global stage. Born in Egypt under socialist and Islamist systems, Dr. Youssef witnessed firsthand the realities of spiritual and political darkness. He later lived in Lebanon and Australia before immigrating to the United States, fulfilling a childhood dream by becoming a naturalized American citizen in 1984. This unique personal history fuels his distinct perspective on Middle Eastern geopolitics and current events in the West.
Entryism succeeds only when someone inside opens the gate. In my new book, An Unholy Alliance: How Progressivism Brought About an Islamist Invasion, I name who has been opening it—and why: a “Red-Green” partnership in which secular progressivism ushers political Islamism into our schools, our media, and our halls of government. I wrote this book for those entrusted with guarding the gate, and I offer a twelve-point plan for responding with Biblical Truth, courage, and the Gospel.
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