Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shlemon - Islam’s Rising Influence

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Muslims are increasing in numbers and influence in the United States. Alan explains the Islamic strategy but also gives Christians a proper perspective on how to view this new reality.

What does the election of the first Muslim mayor of New York mean for the advancement of Islam? And how should we Christians respond? Well, I want to answer that question in the latest episode of my podcast, Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shleiman. On September 11, 2001, 19 Muslim terrorists hijacked four airplanes and used them as missiles to attack the United States. In the process of their efforts, of course, they destroyed the World Trade Center, they damaged the Pentagon, and killed 2,900. 177 innocent civilians. Now, just 25 years later, that same city has elected Zohan Mamdami, who is a Muslim, as their next mayor.

Now, what's interesting about this is that after 9-11, there was a lot of anti-Islamic sentiment, like there was Americans and even Christians who perceived Muslims as the enemy, right? Like, they were the bad guys. But today, you know, 25 years later, New Yorkers have. voted a Muslim to lead their city. So obviously things have changed, right? Now, I think the election of Mamdani has, raises a lot of questions. And so I just wanted to address a few things regarding that. And I wanted to first begin by just addressing what I think is a concern, specifically about the nature of Islam. And that is that in Islam, they do not separate their religious ideology from their

political ideology. Right. In other words, There's no separation of church and state or there's no separation of mosque and state. These two things are sort of one of the same. And in fact, everywhere you look where you've had Islamic rulers, they will typically try to impose Islamic principles or Islamic laws, basically Sharia in the jurisdictions in which they govern. And of course they would do the same thing, even in the United States. Now, even if Mamdami has no aspirations,

himself to do that. There's no reason why other Muslims wouldn't. They might say, okay, well, sure, but what does Islam or what do Muslims think about the world? Like, how do they view the world? What's their perspective? And so let me just give you a brief overview of how historically Islam has viewed non-Islamic lands in the non-Islamic world. So according to Islamic jurisprudence, Islam divides the world into two houses. There's Dar al-Islam and there's Dar al-Harb. Dar al-Islam literally means house of Islam or house of peace. And this refers to lands that are currently under Islamic control.

They've been subjugated by Islam. And there's typically an Islamic government or Islamic authority. Sharia law can be implemented. Muslims are free to practice their religion. however they like. And non-Muslims are what's called dimmies, or they're under this status, almost like a second-class status.

And even historically, non-Muslims in Muslim's lands were forced to pay a tax called a Jizia. And this tax kind of gave non-Muslims permission to practice their religion, you know, whether they were Christian or Jewish or pagan or whatever. but they had to pay a tax and they were kind of given a second class citizen status. But the tax did protect them from foreign invaders. And so Islam would say, hey, look, we'll protect you.

But you'll always have to pay this sort of tax in order to live in our land. Modern day examples of Dar al-Islam would be like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Malawi. Asia, so and so forth. Okay. So that's Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam or the House of Peace. The other type of lands that are not part of Dar al-Islam are called Dar al-Harm, which means the House of War. And these are all other lands in the world that are not subjugated by Islam, that Islamic rule still needs to be established to that place. They typically have a non-Muslim government, and typically Muslims aren't able to practice their religion as freely as they would. in a land that's subjugated by Islam.

And in these lands that are not Muslim, of course, jihad would be considered permitted for, and they would say, self-defense. Now, what they mean by self-defense, of course, needs to be unpacked and clarified, and of course, that's a whole discussion in itself, which I'm not going to get into right now. But I do want to speak specifically to the concept of jihad,

which, as many Muslims will tell you, you know, the word jihad just means struggle, right? So there is a jihad, for example, of the heart, which is a struggle to make sure that the Muslim has pure intentions and motives. Or they might even talk about a jihad of the tongue, which is a struggle or striving to make sure that what you say is true and noble and good, right? But there is no question that there is also a jihad that entails fighting for the causes of a law. Okay. Now, this can take different forms, but let me just give you a nice summary by a prominent Muslim. His name is Ustadda Muhammad. He's a British Muslim evangelist. And by the way, he's not some sort of random Muslim that I just picked out of nowhere. He's not uneducated. He's got his education from the Islamic University of Medina. And Medina is the city in Saudi Arabia where Muhammad, primarily lived and eventually died. So this is like the heart of Islam, right?

And the Islamic University of Medina is kind of like one of the most prestigious Islamic schools in the world. It's like the Harvard University of Islamic Schools. And this guy holds a specialization in the six canonical books of Hadith. And Hadith is simply books that contain what Muhammad either said or approved of. right so he's an expert in that he's an expert in dawa which is the the process of evangelization and listen to what he said this is a public statement it's not like you know i've you know you can't find it somewhere you can find this easily anywhere listen to what he says about the nature of jihad and the goal of

islam he says quote allah is not shy of the truth says we don't say that islam is here to live to coexist with lots of different religions and all of us can just hold hands be friends. This religion was sent to dominate the world. It was sent to be superior, to extinguish the light of every other religion, and to be superior to it. We're not shy to say it, and we don't find that to be something we should be shy to say, that this religion has been sent to dominate, to wipe out, to take out every other religion, to eclipse it, to be superior to it, to have the people leave every religion and to accept Islam. And if that requires fighting to achieve it, then it requires fighting to achieve it.

Because the greatest purpose for which jihad was legislated is to make the word of a law the highest and the word of those who disbelieve the lowest, end quote. Okay. So notice what he says about this. And by the way, this is not atypical of other people who are preaching and teaching other Muslims about the nature of jihad. All right. Now, historically, Islam has advanced and taken over various lands through military jihad, through violent conquest, right? In fact, during Muhammad's day, this was the case, and even after Muhammad's death in 632, Islam expanded primarily through military conquest. In fact, this is just a matter of the historical record. Like you can look and see from the writings of people from different parts of the world how Islamic military forces came and overtook mass swaths of land. Between Muhammad's death in 632 AD and just 100 years after Muhammad's death,

I want you to consider how much land Islam conquered. So 632 Muhammad dies, they immediately take over all of the rest of the rest of the the lands of Saudi Arabia. Military forces advance into Israel. They conquer Jerusalem and Israel and all the Middle East. Then Muslim forces advanced eastward all the way to the borders of

India and China, conquering all the lands to the borders of India and China. Muslim forces also advance westward. They conquer all the lands of North Africa. Then they eventually cross the strait of Gibraltar. It advanced into Spain. They conquer all of Spain. And then finally, Islamic forces are advancing into France, and they're finally stopped by the military forces of Charles Martel, who is known as Charles the Hammer, who he himself and his forces stopped the invading Islamic forces.

So notice, this was military conquest, and it took military assets to eventually stop the conquest. So, again, I mean, they call it self-defense, but, you know, you kind of wonder, what is what is it? that really entail. Now, this was happening all in kind of the early days of Islam, but my suspicion is that many Muslims can't continue to advance militarily for the cause of jihad in this way anymore. And that's because too many countries have vastly superior military forces, right? I mean, you've got countries like Russia and China, in Japan, in England, and the United States, and you can't just now have Muslims, you know, advance into these lands and take them over, right? So it seems like they're taking a different route.

They're saying, all right, let's still use jihad, but not military jihad. Let's advance a different form of jihad. And this is sometimes called political jihad or civilizational jihad or stealth jihad. But in essence, this type of other jihad entails what I identify is three steps. three broad steps. And the three steps are immigrate, populate, legislate. Again, it's immigrate, populate, and legislate. So first step, immigrate. Yeah, Muslims will immigrate to non-Muslim lands. Then they populate, meaning they increase their numbers through reproduction or through additional immigration. And then eventually they legislate, meaning they progressively

take control through political means, right? They leverage democratic policies and democratic institutions. Back in 2006, the former Libyan leader said something that became a very popular quote, kind of exemplifying this sort of civilizational jihad approach. And he said this, quote, there are signs that Allah will grant victory to Islam in Europe without swords, without guns, without conquests. He says, the 50 million Muslims of Europe

will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades. End quote. Now, I think Qaddafi was wrong about there being 50 million Muslims back in 2006 in Europe. But that point aside, the point he's making is that

there's no need for a military conquest of Europe. We can just simply immigrate into those lands, slowly populate and eventually legislate our own policies and Sharia into those countries, which is what they're exactly doing. We see many teachers, Islamic teachers in the United States also expressing the same concept and emphasizing this new approach. I mean, I could quote you probably hundreds, but I'll just mention one real quickly here. Yasser Kadi, who's a well-known Islamic theologian and preacher,

over in Texas area. He's the dean of the Islamic Seminary of America and a resident scholar of what's called Epic, which is the East Plano Islamic Center, which is basically a large community of Muslims east of the Dallas area of Dallas, Texas. And listen to what he says about this very point. He says, quote, I used to say that democracy is haram, which means forbidden. He says, now I say participation in democracy is our jihad. That's our jihad. We're going to fight not through the bullets, but the ballots, end quote. In other words, there's not necessarily any need to fight militarily here in the United States. We can just simply fight through legislation, right? And the way to do that,

of course, is to have more Muslims come into any given city, any given jurisdiction, increase their numbers, and then eventually vote Muslims into office or vote for Muslim policies, and eventually that will transform that particular area. Now, it seems like when you look at census data over the last several decades, you see this process actually taking place and not only in Europe but even in the United States. So probably the first example of this is Hamtramic, Michigan.

So Hamtramic, Michigan, which is outside of Detroit, back in the 1970s, was or had a 90% Polish Catholic population. 90%. So in fact, it was dubbed Little Poland when Pope John Paul II, who was a Polish Catholic, of course, when he

came to visit the United States in 1987, where did he go? He went to Hamtramack, Michigan, right? Because that's where all the other Poles were, right? Anyways, that was 1987, right? 90% Polish Catholic. Today, it's only 5% or 8%

Polish Catholic, and it's nearly 70% Muslim. This is a massive demographic swing, okay? They, in 2004, because there were so many Muslims that they could vote these kind of policies into place, they voted to legalize the Adon, which is the call to prayer. So you can now broadcast the call to prayer through loudspeakers across the city. In fact, I remember myself going to Hamtramic and walking it around, and one of the call to prayers was happening, and I could hear being blasted across the whole city, right? Today, in Hamtramic, the mayor, the chief of police, and every member of the city council of Hamtramac is a Muslim and a man. And by the way, it'll always be men, because that's the way it's going to be, right?

So Hamtramac was one of the first Muslim majority series. cities in the United States. Minneapolis, in terms of major cities, is probably one of the first to also have a radical demographic shift. Back in the 19, and the reason is it is because back in the 1990s, the, I think is a state of Minneapolis, but it could have been a federal, I think it was a federal program. But in 1990s, they had a federal program where they were going to take in, they're going to do a refugee resettlement program.

And so, of course, people from parts of the world were allowed to come and resettle in Minneapolis. And a large number of them came from Somalia. And so much so that eventually in 2006, Minnesota voted in Keith Ellison, who became the first Muslim to be elected to the United States Congress. I think now he's the Attorney General for Minneapolis. Or for, I'm sorry, for Minnesota. And then 2018, Ilyan Omar became the first hijab-wearing Muslim woman to become a member of United States Congress. In 2020, the Minneapolis mayor legalized the call to prayer in the city of Minneapolis, but only for a certain period of time. So the call to prayer normally happens five times a day.

Sunrise, noon, around mid-afternoon, sunset, and then just before. before they go to bed. Well, the sunrise and just before they go to bed times are usually at times when a lot of people might be sleeping. And so to have these loudspeakers blasting it would be not permitted. So in 2020, the mayor, Jacob Fry permits the call to prayer for limited period of time. Two years later, he expands the times of which it could be happening. And then now in 2023, the ad dawn was permitted during any hour. So Minneapolis becomes the first major U.S. city to legalize the call to prayer to be broadcasted by any mosque they want throughout any time that the call to prayer would normally happen. And then, of course, New York is another example of this demographic shift.

Back in the 1950s, there was probably only a few thousand Muslims living in New York. But again, 25 years later, current estimates put the number of Muslims in New York to like 950. thousand, which would be about almost 10% of New York City's population. So again, what's their strategy? What's the Islamic strategy? Well, it's to simply exploit existing constitutional systems to gain power. And this is, there's nothing illegal about that per se. It's just part of the U.S. democratic system, which is that policies and leaders will be reflected by the demographics of the local population. There's a German scholar named Christine Schermacher,

and she's an Islamic academic, and she's often tapped by the German government to advise on Sharia law or Middle East or Islamic Affairs and so on and so forth. And she's an expert in sort of this understanding how political or civilizational jihad happens. And I want you to notice what she says. She writes, quote, Islam exploits democratic mechanisms and freedoms for its own cause

in order to conduct what we might call a march through the institutions more than to present a direct declaration of war with the aid of armed force. So in the words, you know, this new jihad, again, as I've been saying, is not necessarily about fighting to military force, but rather to use the existing institutions, the democratic institutions to gain power to gain leverage and then to make, you know, that particular area more Sharia-like than it was before. Okay. Now, I know some people might be thinking, wait a minute, now, this, you sound like this conspiracy theorist or an Islamophobic person or like, what happened? Like, how come you're making this sound so alarming and whatever? I assure you,

that's not the case. I'm, I don't have an unhealthy or, uh, or, uh, exaggerated fear of Muslims or think that some new strategy has taken place or bought into some new thinking. The reason why I'm saying any of this is because I talk to Muslims on a regular basis. Like this is what we do. I take Christians to mosque. We engage Muslims both in the United States and in the Middle East. And so this is just simply from me studying Islam and talking to Muslims and listening to what they say about what their plan is. And as Ustad de Muhammad said, this is not something that they're shy to say. they often are very open and candid about it.

Now, of course, your average ordinary Muslim that you talk to down the street might not believe in that or think that, but it doesn't matter. That's the plan that Muslims have. Now, at this point, I've only sort of offered my thoughts about Mamdani's election from the perspective of an American, but I want you to realize a very important truth, and that is as a Christian, we have dual citizenship.

I mean, yes, I'm a citizen of the United States, and you might be a citizen of whatever country you live in, but as Christians, we're not only citizens of the particular country that we live in, but we're citizens also of heaven, right? Philippians 320. And so as a Christian, I have an additional perspective on the election of a Muslim to a major, one of the most major U.S. cities.

And that Christian perspective obviously has to take into account that God is sovereign. And that's never going to change, right? God is sovereign, and so we have nothing to fear. Jesus promised that he'll establish his church and that the gates of hell, hell will not prevail against it. And so really, I see this sort of rising tide of Islam that's growing in the United States really as a unique opportunity that we have as Christians to reach Muslims with the gospel.

And it turns out, by the way, Muslims are the largest unreached people group on Earth. Right. So we estimate there's probably around two billion Muslims in the world. Now, as a percentage of the people on Earth, two billion Muslims means that nearly one in four people on the planet is a Muslim, right?

Nearly one in four people on the planet is a Muslim. That's a lot of Muslims. And when you consider it from an eternal perspective or from a Christian perspective or from an evangelization perspective, if you were to try to take the demographics of various Muslim countries and the death rates in those countries and factor in all these things to try to get a number, what you discover is that we estimate that maybe about 40,000 Muslims will die every single day and enter eternity without Jesus. So 40,000 Muslims a day die without Jesus. That's a lot of Muslims dying without Jesus. And so, you know, Muslims, look, they're already in most cities in America.

You don't have to, you know, cross the ocean to do cross-cultural missions. You can just cross the street in many cases. And there's typically Muslims very close to where you live. If not, you can get to them rather easily. And so my question is, but are we as Christians, as a church, taking this opportunity? Now, I know there are ministries that reach out to Muslims, but I just want to share with you this quick story. I was having a breakfast with the pastoral team of a megachurch in the United States that's located near one of the largest Muslim communities in the country. And I was talking to the pastoral team about different ministries and whatever, and they have, you know, they're talking about how they have over 100 ministries.

And I was like, well, what ministries do you have or tell me about the ministries that you have that you use to help reach out to the Muslim community that's here in your community? And they said, actually, we don't have any. And I'm like, none? He's like, they're like, no, we don't have any. So I was just saying I was surprised, obviously, and disheartened by the fact that here's this massive church located amongst a large majority of Muslims. and they're doing nothing to reach out to that Muslim population. Now, I know that's not every church, but I'm just saying it was just surprising to me in that instance

that this church was doing very little to do that. And of course, I say that because I know what scripture says that we're called to do, right? And 2 Corinthians 5, 18, through 20, I think is a great passage that highlights the nature of our identity as Christians and our mission, right? So Segment 15, 18, to 20 talks about how we are all ambassadors

for Christ and we're called to proclaim the message of reconciliation. So our identity is that we're an ambassador for Jesus. We represent Christ. We represent God to the world. And our mission, in that representation, is to proclaim the message of reconciliation,

which is basically the gospel. And so when that comes to Muslims, we're called to share the gospel to Muslims. and, you know, if you wanted to get a, you know, have a word picture or a picture of what it looks like, well, how are we supposed to engage that mission? I think the answer is exactly the way Paul describes it. And that is, think of yourself as an ambassador. Like, if you think of a political ambassador that is assigned to go to a country to communicate some truth, what does that political ambassador do? Typically two things. They learn and then they engage. They first learn about the people

group they're going to go speak to, their culture, their language, their policies, or whatever it is, and then they go and then they engage that people group, right? And I think as Christian ambassadors, we should do the same. We should learn about Islam and then engage Muslims, right? That's what we're called to do. That's the second Corinthians 518 through 20. And I think now is the time that we need to take this more seriously. Again, I'm not saying that nobody's doing this. There are lots of Christians who do great work reaching out to Muslims, but I think more of us have to take this seriously because Islam is growing and it's growing fast.

Currently, the number of Christians worldwide is estimated to be about 2.3 billion Muslims. And the number of Muslims, wait, I say Muslim, sorry, 2.3 billion Christians. and the number of Muslims is about 2 billion Muslims. And if you look at the trajectory of the increase in Christians and the increase in Muslims, it's estimated that by around 2070 or so, Islam will surpass the number of Muslims there are than there are Christians. So again, again, this isn't about like trying to scare us into doing things, but I just wanted you to consider that there's a lot of people who are Muslim.

And as I've said elsewhere, Muslims are typically very open to talking about religious matters. So we have this wide open opportunity to do that. Now, again, I'm not suggesting that you feel apprehensive or scared. That's not the point that I'm saying any of this. I'm just trying to raise our awareness about the need there is to share the gospel with Muslims. Remember, as a Christian, we don't have to have the same fear that maybe a non-Christian would have about a potential, you know, increase in Islamic influence in our country, right? God is sovereign, Christ is still in the throne,

and no matter what happens to any country or nation, God's kingdom will still prevail. But in the meantime, we need to remain faithful to God, remain faithful to our convictions, and fulfill our role as an ambassador, right, sharing the message of reconciliation to all people, even Muslims. That's our identity, and that's our mission. All right, that's all I have for you today.

Thank you for listening. And if you've enjoyed this episode, I encourage you to share it with a friend. And if you haven't subscribed already to my podcast, I encourage you to do that so you don't miss any future episodes. And I look forward to thinking out loud with you next time.