It's Not a Christian Theocracy People Should Be Worried About

Wall Street Apes is a popular account on X with 1.4 million followers. Among other issues, the author frequently posts about threats to the United States and other Western nations from Islamic migration and uses interviews with Muslims (and ex-Muslims) themselves to bolster his arguments.

Earlier this week, WSA posted about a new 5,000-square-foot Islamic superstore in Richardson, Texas, called Modefa and included what looks to be a commercial produced for the store. Smiling Muslim men and women walk the viewer through various departments, highlighting the store's offerings, including "a huge selection of women's modest fashion," "a variety of beautiful hijabs," kufis and thobes for men, prayer rugs and Islam-themed home decor. The store also boasts of a family lounge and a prayer room.

WSA warns that this is just another step in the "Islamification" of America. He is not alone; others post similar warnings, including scholars Raymond Ibrahim and Robert Spencer, who point to Islam's history of infiltration, domination and, ultimately, conquest. One sees plenty of social media posts urging Americans to band together to prevent the construction of mosques, madrassas (Islamic schools), Islamic centers, mini-cities and retail establishments like Modefa that seek to "normalize" Islam.

Christians far outnumber Muslims here in the United States. According to polls, somewhere between 62% and almost 70% of Americans identify as Christians. Counting only adults (people 18 and over), that's nearly 180 million people. (Counting children in Christian families would add millions more.) By contrast, Muslims represent no more than 1.6% of the entire population -- somewhere between 4.5 million and 5.5 million people.

And yet we now have cities governed by Muslims: Dearborn and Hamtramck, Michigan, for example. The current mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, was videotaped at a mosque recently, saying, "If the Muslim community votes, if the Arab community votes, we will determine every single position in the whole city." (My friend Margot Cleveland, who lives in Dearborn, has sued the Muslim-dominated city government, alleging that it preferentially promotes Islamic religious displays while being "hostile to Christians and Jews" by forbidding the display of their religious holiday symbols.)

The Democratic Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, is Muslim. Rashida Tlaib, the congressional representative from Michigan's 12th district, is Muslim. Ilhan Omar, the congressional representative for Minnesota's 5th district, is Muslim; the 5th district has one of the largest Muslim populations in the country. And of course, Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, is a Muslim.

Why is such a small population having such an outsized impact?

One reason is because so many Muslims want Islam to be central to every aspect of their lives, and they make their decisions accordingly. Whereas American Christians -- despite their far larger numbers -- have grown comfortable with the idea that Christianity need not be central to every aspect of their lives, and they make their decisions accordingly.

Additionally, too many Christians are cowed by inflammatory headlines or silenced by pervasive viewpoints that link Christianity with ignorance and violence.

A perfect example is former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who said last year that white men "of a certain religion" (Christianity) were responsible for "so much damage." Author Jer Swigart called white American evangelicals "the most dangerous people on the planet." Charles Matthews has written in The Washington Post, "White Christianity is in big trouble. And it's its own biggest threat." Christianity is often falsely linked to "white supremacy," as when former President Joe Biden bizarrely announced that "white supremacy is the single most dangerous terrorist threat in our homeland." (Biden's administration wasn't just concerned about evangelical Protestants; his FBI went after Catholics who attend the Latin Mass, calling them "radical traditionalist Catholics," or "rad-trads," and painting them as "potential domestic violent extremists.")

And then there are the secularists' accusations that, left to their own devices, American Christians would create a "theocracy."

That is nonsense on stilts. This country was founded in opposition to that very idea. The goal is not government-mandated religion but a culture dominated by Christians who live their values in their daily lives, so that government, with its inevitably oppressive force, can be limited and people can exercise ordered liberty.

By their silence, Christians have allowed the culture -- our educational systems, our media, our entertainment industries -- to be purged of Christianity and Christian values. The result is crime and societal chaos. That, in turn, produces demands for more and bigger government, despite the fact that government policies created -- or exacerbated -- the chaos in the first place. Coupled with certain distorted attitudes about multiculturalism popular with the Left, the result is government and popular culture that is openly hostile to the Christian majority but treats Muslims as an oppressed minority deserving of special protection.

Thus does Islam grow in strength, while Christianity recedes.

The irony, of course, is that once Muslims have enough voting power, they will vote for government officials, governmental structures and public policies that impose Islam on everyone else. That is what their faith demands, as they are more than willing to say, and often do on social media and elsewhere.

If the trends we are seeing in European countries (England, Ireland, Germany, Sweden) take root here, those who oppose Christian-dominated culture and foment hysterical and baseless fears of a "Christian theocracy" will find themselves in an Islamic one.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Our willingness to pretend that secularism could preserve our way of life -- and to allow Christianity to be forced to the sidelines -- has created an opening for a tiny but passionate population that shows no such trepidation about their own culture and beliefs. The vacuum we have created will not be filled by banning Islamic stores and halal restaurants; we must instead redouble our efforts to strengthen Christianity in our personal lives, our families and our communities, and to insist that Christian values are powerfully and positively represented in our educational institutions, media, businesses and government. We have the numbers; we just need the commitment.

If Christianity is not the dominant cultural force in this country, something else will be.

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To find out more about Laura Hollis and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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