The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Thursday, October 15, 2026

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:14 – 12:27)‘Londonistan’ and Britain’s Growing Rift With Washington by The Wall Street Journal (Dominic Green)The Islamification of Texas by The Spectator (Lionel Shriver)The Islamist Threat Isn’t Only Terrorism by The Wall Street Journal (Lorenzo Vidino)Part II (12:27 – 13:18)Part III (13:18 – 24:48)Can Democrats flip a GOP Senate seat in Kansas? They actually might by USA Today (Jay Stahl and Terry Collins)Talarico says he ‘missed the mark’ as he backtracks on controversial woke statements by Fox News (Brooke Taylor, Peter Pinedo)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Thursday, October 15, 2006. I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Sometimes we need to step back and ask ourselves a question, how should we talk about this? How should we think about this? Why has there not been so much previous conversation about this issue? And so let me just refer to a headline. This headline's from Dominic Green, and he's a contributor to the Wall Street Journal. Here's the headline, Londonistan, and Brisbane. Britain's growing rift with Washington. Similarly, Lionel Shriver wrote a piece published at The Spectator. The headline is The Islamification of Texas. So there hasn't been much conversation throughout most of American history of whether or not the United States and our constitutional system of government is compatible with Islam. There hasn't been much of a conversation because there's been no need for such a conversation.

Throughout most of American history, the idea of Islam was something rather exotic and alien and far, all that has begun to change with a significant amount of immigration into the United States from the Islamic world and frankly the increased public visibility of Islam in some American communities. And by the way, this is controversial now, not just in places such as cities in Michigan like Detroit. It's also a matter of a lot of headline news in a place like Texas. And so Texas, more recently than Michigan, but still we're talking about here the heartland of America. And we're talking about some issues that defy easy explanation and easy consideration. And that's because we are looking at a collision between two different major ideas.

And the first idea is one that most Americans will come up with, and that is simply the assertion of religious liberty. Our constitutional order, which offers religious liberty to everyone. And then the second issue is also national security and the continued functioning of the American constitutional order. And so you look at those two things and you realize that we have to have a conversation we really haven't had before. And that conversation is not evenly distributed across the United States of America. I don't expect the same conversation to emerge from rural Alabama as I do from right now, especially in suburban and metropolitan Texas. But we are talking about an issue that's going to require a lot of careful Christian thinking and some very careful constitutional thinking as well.

You know there's a big issue behind this that we eventually have to get to, and that is, is how much affirmation can the Constitution receive from someone who's fundamentally committed to a very different understanding of the ordering of society? And that's just a blunt question. You have people who come to the United States precisely because of the peace and the freedom and the security of our constitutional order, but at least some of them are rather open about the fact that they think there ought to be a different constitutional order. And of course, we also have the great concern that there are many people whose associations would at least lead us to believe maybe they want a different constitutional order, whether or not

they are open about that or not. That's actually an issue that is emerging in the Michigan Senate race right now. Now, Dominic Green's piece, he writes a lot of really interesting pieces. This one's published, as I say, in the Wall Street Journal, Lindenistan, and Britain's growing rift with Washington. The very use of the word Lundinistan as a way of identifying London tells you something of his concern. He's very concerned about the fact that a great deal of Islamic immigration into the United Kingdom, in general, into London in particular, has led to Islamic neighborhoods and at least some places where there is pretty well documented a pattern of subservience to Islamic Sharia law. And so you also have increased Muslim presence in society and Muslim

pressure on the political process. And this is where Dominic Green is really interesting, because he makes very clear it doesn't require a majority of Muslims anywhere for this to happen. All it requires is a sufficient percentage and level of Islamic energy, and it has very much the same effect. Now, let me just mention something about this. This is something that has been talked about in the West, that is to say, in Western civilization, for a matter of centuries now. And that is the open statement that a Muslim minority can control a non-Muslim majority. And so under most thinking, conventional, political thinking, you think that a majoritarian movement is going to control the society, but the fact is, that's not always true. And throughout history, you just look at the

Muslim expansion in the medieval world. You look at the Muslim confrontation with the modern world. And one of the things that's noticed, even in cities right now, like Paris and London, is that if you have a population of Muslims that can be as small as four to seven, eight percent of the population, the sense of the presence of Islam can become almost overwhelming. And that's because, Islam intends that. This becomes very clear when you think about, for instance, the fall of Constantinople and the establishment of what became known as Istanbul as the capital of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. And there you saw all the sudden noise filled the air in terms of calls to prayer and the sky dotted with minarets and the physical presence of Islam and then people

dressing in such a way that they identify with Islam such that it becomes such an overwhelming physical presence. And by the way, at that point, there was an open statement that this was going to be an Islamic empire. But what you have now in many Western cities are at least neighborhoods, if not entire cities, but most importantly, neighborhoods where the Muslim presence basically dominates. And that is not by accident. And thus you have Dominic Green, who is British, writing about Lundinistan. That's a pretty clear statement of his concern. He begins saying, speaking of the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. He says, quote, the only thing worse than being Britain's enemy is being Britain's friend. For decades, a pillar of the Western Alliance, the

UK is becoming an unreliable ally. The foundation of the British American Alliance is its sentiment but security cooperation. The unraveling of Britain's post-imperial strategies for managing the domestic front while maintaining its international status is damaging that cooperation and harming American interests, end quote. So again, he uses the term Lindenistan. What is referring to here is the fact that Britain now has a significant population of Muslims. And that's true not only of its major cities, Lindenistan, of course London being referenced here, but other cities in Britain as well. And as you look at this, he's saying, look, out of political concerns, out of political expediency,

the British government is basically coming to terms with this Islamic presence in such a way that's going to undermine American security and even the relationship between the U.S. and Britain. Now, that's a very telling argument. It's very revealing. You just think about that argument being made 20 or 30 years ago. No one would have taken it seriously. Now it's taken so seriously that it's given prominent editorial space in the Wall Street Journal. We're talking about establishment journalism here. I think a lot of Americans aren't really aware of this. One of the things he points out, listen to this. Quote, meanwhile, Britain's labor government stalled on corroborating its allies' assertions while labor held its annual conference and rallied to a new prime minister. Andy Burnham, on September 24th, three days before the Fairford arrest, that's the arrest of those Muslim men suspected of planning a terror attack on a joint UK-USA airbase. He says that on September 24, three days before those arrests, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband posed shaking hands with Iran's foreign minister, quote, in a meeting at the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Milband, who earlier in the month had announced sanctions on Jewish-owned businesses in

Judea and Samaria, that's the West Bank, avoided meeting any Israeli officials. I think the average American would be shocked to know that the U.K.'s foreign minister met with an Iranian authority and didn't meet with even an Israeli authority. You are looking at a significant political shift, and I think Dominic Green's absolutely right to point it out. And he says that the U.K., the United Kingdom, is now a hub for Iranians, which he says has turned Britain into an unreliable ally for the United States. He mentions some recent arrests and investigations, and then he says, quote, the story reeks of Spycraft gone wrong and the use of the courts to hush it up. The reality says behind the James Bond myth is that post-imperial Britain boosted its

stature by making itself useful to the U.S. The noble legacy of hosting Europe's dissident liberals, the ignoble imperial game of divide and rule, and the tradeoffs of the Cold War, cat and mouse game, basically, quote, declined into an amoral willingness to cultivate terrorist funders such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, even to host the West's enemies. French intelligence services nicknamed Britain's capital, Lindenistan, decades ago. So that tells you something.

It is the French who's seeing this Islamic influence and frankly identifying what they saw as a weakness in the UK's foreign and domestic policy that they renamed London, Lindenistan. Now that's just very interesting. It's a story we're going to have to watch. But ideas do have consequences. And religious ideas have political consequences.

theological principles and convictions have political and social consequences. And this is known neighborhood by neighborhood throughout some of the West now. But when it comes to Islam, the issue is this is a much bigger conversation than people think, and it's going to get larger and larger as time goes on. Lionel Shriver, as I mentioned in that article in The Spectator, wrote about what she calls the Islamification of Texas. And she's not really saying that Texas is about to become a majority Islamic. That's not her point. And as a matter of fact, she says that fewer than 500,000 people in a population of 32 million,

the number of Muslims in Texas is proportionately small at roughly 2%. Listen to this. Yet their numbers have more than tripled this century. The state now sports 350 mosques in Islamic centers, about 50 mosques having opened in only the last two years. Brits know as well as anyone that Muslim immigrants tend to clump, that's the word used here, quote, which intensifies the impression of territory being claimed. Lone Star Muslims are heavily. concentrated around Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth. Lionel Shriver mentioned some of the political controversy in Texas related to Sharia law, and she just points out the obvious, and that is, in truth, you don't have Sharia without Islam, and you don't have Islam without Muslims. Sharia, she says, is a fig leaf, meaning that the issue is actually far larger than just the actual

imposition in a formal sense of Sharia law. The very presence of Islam has social and sociological consequences. That's the point she's making. She speaks of the British context and says there, the question dominating multiple British podcasts, is the question are Islam and the West compatible? She says that question at this point simply doesn't feature in the U.S. She says Americans are behind. Quote, and we are not prepared for this issue. With our nation of immigrants propaganda, proud dedication to religious liberty, and under-examined more-the-marrier vibe, most Americans are uncomfortable finding fault with what they perceive hazily as a race. or ethnicity rather than a political ideology. Putting barriers up to folks of certain faith seems

un-American. I'm continuing to quote her here, quote, Yanks conceive of foreign cultures mostly in terms of food, not as typified by, say, female genital mutilation, cousin marriage, doctrinal contempt for outsiders, rape, gang, sexual abuse, real misogyny rather than the fake sort of the down with the patriarchy crowd, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and a particular propensity for blowing things up, end quote. Now, every once in a while, I see a paragraph and I say, you know, that bears repeating. I think if you heard it, you understand it does bear repeating. Her point exceedingly clear. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal ran a news report just a few weeks ago by Lorenzo Vodino entitled, The Islamist Threat Isn't Only Terrorism. The Subhead groups try to push their agenda through politics, schools, and grassroots activism.

Again, we're not talking about some kind of website just out there somewhere. We're talking about the Wall Street Journal. And sadly, I think most of the people, Americans, and that includes, I think, most American Christians aren't thinking much about this issue. But sooner or later, I think this is a really safe prediction. Sooner or later, this question becomes unavoidable. All right, next while we're thinking about this issue, we do know there are some huge electoral issues before the American people. And that's also state-by-state congressional district by congressional district.

In terms of the statewide vote there in Michigan, one of the biggest questions, of course, is Abdul al-Said, who's the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat there. He is raising just by who he is and who his associations have included and all the rest, even some of the proposals he has made, some of the comments he makes, he's raising a host of issues about how exactly a very committed Muslim would function in the United States Senate on any number of issues. And there are people who are going to say, well, the freedom or religion means he can run for office. Well, he is running for office. But it also presents the people of Michigan with a choice. And there's just no way you can remove the Islamic identity issue here from the political commitment. that Abdul Osayyid has made very clear. But then you go to Texas and you realize the Senate race there, too, is very, very close. And James Talarico, of course, is the Democratic nominee for the seat that is currently held by Senator John Cornyn. And then you have, of course, Ken Paxton, who's the Republican nominee. And let's just say it's a very problematic electoral picture for all kinds of reasons. But I think the big question for the people in Texas, especially for conservatives, is going to be if they can live with a Democratic senator like, James Talarico and with a Democratic majority in the United States Senate. That's culturally speaking, just a huge, huge issue. But the big issue here is that James Talarico, of course, who's so closely identified with the fact he's a Presbyterian seminarian and all the rest. And I think he is in many ways nearly a tight cast figure when it comes to the liberal Protestant identity in the United

States. This goes all the way back to his liberal pastor when he was a boy and the very liberal positions he's taken. It's also interesting to note how he is trying to address himself to some of the things he has said in the past. He's at least backtracking off of some of it, but you know, a lot of it is simply very difficult to back off from. An article that runs at Fox News said this, quote, Tala Rico also backtracked on several of his more controversial claims, including saying there are six genders and that God is non-binary. Okay, let me just say, I don't know how in the world you back off of that and maintain much credibility. And this is the problem that James Talrico has. When it comes to, for instance, the question about a national ban on gender surgery for minors, he has said that

he would be supportive of it. Absolutely. He actually said the word, absolutely. But he's actually voted the other way in terms of his public life and frankly made contrary arguments. So it's hard to know exactly where he is. He also said, quote, I've been consistent on the issue. And he said his opposition to a Texas bill to ban transgender surgeries on minors, he said he thought the measure was overly broad. Very interesting argument to make. He says, quote, if you go back and check, I voted for a major amendment to limit the bill to banning surgeries for minors. Presumably that means avoiding hormonal treatments and other things or leaving those. He says, as a lawmaker, my job is to try to sift through everything the bill does. And sometimes there's stuff in it that's really harmful and I have no

choice but to oppose the bill as a whole. And I'll just say that's a pretty transparent effort to try to rewrite history, or at least to rewrite the context of his vote. Listen to this. Quote, in 2023, as a member of the Texas House of Representatives, Talarico, voted against a state bill that's S-Bill 14, which prohibited certain gender surgery, puberty, blockers, and certain hormone treatments for minors. There were 18 amendments to the bill proposed by Democrats, all of which Tala RICO voted for and all of which ultimately failed. So very, very interesting. Watch the votes. don't so much listen to the words. Look at the votes. With reference to the fact he'd argued for

multiple genders among human beings, he said this, quote, I've missed the mark on some of my past statements. I'll be the first to admit it, he said, what I meant is that there are two sexes and then there's a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities. He goes on to say, obviously, didn't say it correctly. There are not six sexes. There are two. And I think the reason that politicians in that convention center across the street, meaning Republicans want to talk about six sexes is because they don't want to talk about $6 diesel, he said. Okay, interesting, interesting. I just think you're looking at someone whose positions are really difficult to defend. But nonetheless, at least according to those who are looking at the campaign, it is very tight if

Talarico's not ahead at this point. It's going to be very, very interesting to see where this goes. And of course, there's also a lot of attention right now, especially I think of interest to listeners to the briefing, an awful lot of interest in the Senate race in the state of Kansas, because there you have an incumbent Republican who's now running against the pastor of the largest United Methodist congregation in the United States, sometimes identified as the largest mainline Protestant congregation in the United States. We're talking about the Reverend Adam Hamilton. He's running as a Democrat. And the most interesting thing I want to point out is that he's running by trying to say he just

wants to be something in the middle. He just wants to take kind of a moderate middle court. and what I want us to note is that when it comes to so many issues, he has made his reputation in the pulpit, trying to make a very similar argument. But that put him at direct odds with conservatives who have now left the United Methodist Church. Because if you are going to say, let's just take a middle course, that means you do not define things such as human sexuality, abortion. You don't define those issues in what I think are very clear moral terms. Instead, you just talk about inclusion and all the rest. You know, eventually, if a little bit of

elected to the United States Senate, Adam Hamilton will have to come down on these issues. He's going to have to vote for or against legislation. And thus, when he's running as a member of the Democratic Party as the nominee of the Democratic Party, after, by the way, for a long time, he says being identified as a Republican, you look at Adam Hamilton or you look at James Talarico. The fact is that if they are elected, they're going to be a very interesting predicament, which is their party has pretty much already told them the party is far to the left of at least what they say are their position. but the party is supporting them. And so that tells us that at least the party thinks that if James Tolariko and Adam Hamilton are elected to the United States Senate, that's going to be a gain for the Democratic Party and its aims. And of course, it will be. A front page article in USA Today raises a very interesting question in this regard, and that is because Adam Hamilton has been very identified with mainline Protestantism, which is a very liberal Protestantism. And you don't normally think megachurch and theological liberalism. But I think sometimes you can look at a figure

and Adam Hamilton's one of those figures. And he's got evidently a very strong skill set. And, you know, he talks about being in the middle, a moderate course in all this. And that sounds like a middle way to so many people. And so you realize that that just means a liberal victory on everything. And honestly, that is what it means. A liberal victory on everything. And by the way, it might be for a liberal possibility first, but then it becomes a mandatory liberalism after that. But it's also very interesting that Robert Wethnell, who's one of the most well-informed observers of religion in the United States, he's done so much work. He's now a professor emeritus at Princeton University. He's done so much work in terms of liberal Protestantism, even writing a new book, which is entitled The Religious Left, what it does and how it can do better.

He says that this is a very interesting race from his academic perspective. And he's arguing, these are his words, quote, the religious left is stronger than the legacy media has usually acknowledged, end quote. Now, when I look at that, I thought, you know, that's interesting. I think I need to speak to that. I need to point to that because that's a rather astounding statement. The religious left is stronger than the legacy media has usually acknowledged. That's either true or false.

And when he just adds that modifier, then the nation's legacy media have usually acknowledged, Maybe you can say that's true. But let me just point out that when you look at liberal Protestantism, the fact is that those denominations in churches have declining membership. And in many cases, it's a catastrophic decline in membership and in attendance. But here's the thing. I think there is something to the argument. And that's because I believe that a significant number of Americans are pretty confused

when it comes to liberal Protestantism. And they hear talk about Christianity. they hear that James Talarico is a Presbyterian seminarian. They hear that Adam Hamilton's, the pastor of a very large Methodist church, and they think, well, this must be somewhere right down the center. And then they sound right down the center until they don't. And then you look at it and you realize this is actually a significant shift to the left. And you elect James Talarico as the senator in Texas.

Guess what? Guess what? You have just probably handed the Democrats majority control in the United States Senate. But you've really added someone whose statements, let's just say his legacy statements are not only liberal, but pretty radically so. And Adam Hamilton, I don't think you're going to hear such radical statements. I don't. I'll be honest. I don't think you're going to hear it. I think what you hear are efforts to try to shift slightly to the left and to identify just with a rather mainstream form of democratic identity. But you know, it's going to come down to binary

choices on bills and proposals and the Democratic Party, let's just remember, is really clearly positioned on those issues. Finally, there's one other dimension of all of this that also requires a bit of our attention. And that comes down to a very interesting reality. And that interesting reality is that if James Talarico holds to the positions he says he is now holding, and if Adam Hamilton holds to at least some of the positions on these issues, he says he's now holding, and if in the state of South Carolina, the Democratic nominee for the Senate seat, Annie Andrews, if she really holds to the positions she is now articulating, life will be very difficult for a Senator Andrews, a Senator Hamilton, or a Senator Tala Rico, among the Democrats also in the United States Senate.

This is a very, very interesting development. And it just goes to show that at least if you want to be elected to the U.S. Senate in states like Kansas and states like South Carolina, states like Texas, you can't sound like a far-left liberal. I'm not saying you can't believe like a far-left liberal. You can't eventually vote like a far-left liberal. I'm just going to say for at least six years, you've got to see once you are elected. And I can simply hope that at least a lot of Christians are thinking very clearly about this in these states. And of course, these aren't the only races in which this kind of electoral setup is now quite visible. We're running out of days before the midterm elections.

And I think there's a sense in which just about everyone in America is ready for them to be over. And one safe prediction is the day the midterm elections are over, mainstream media will turn to rather constant conversation about the 2008 presidential race. So you have been warned. It's coming. But all of this raises a big issue for Christians to keep in mind. When you ask the question, what does this candidate believe? and how will this candidate legislate and vote?

You don't really get the answer until after the candidates elected and in office. But in almost every case, you were sort of given the answer in the course of the campaign and given the background of the candidate. It's just a fact of life that many Americans seem to discount that until they actually get to one of these candidates being elected in an office. And all of a sudden they discover he wasn't who I thought he was. In most cases, in most cases, there was plenty of evidence to indicate exactly who the candidate is. Thanks for listening to the briefing.

For more information, go to my website at Albertmohar.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.bts. For information on Boyce College, just go to boyscology.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.