Rod Dreher of The American Conservative predicts: “This is why I don’t share the anxiety many conservatives have about Islam in America (Islam in Europe is a different matter, for particularly European reasons). For better or for worse, post-Christian America is going to turn Islam into Moralistic Therapeutic Deism too.”

Are there secular Muslims in the United States? Of course. Are there Muslims who have adopted Western values in the United States? Certainly? Are there Muslims in the United States who have become less devout and observant in Islam? No doubt about it. Are there Muslims who have adopted the moral relativism and libertinism of some of their allies on the Left? Sure.

But will Islam itself be overcome in America, and become “Moral Therapeutic Deism,” such that there would be no cause to “share the anxiety many conservatives have about Islam in America,” i.e., no reason to be concerned about jihad terror and Sharia oppression of women and others?

Maybe. But there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Take, for example, American journalist Charles Glass, when he was kidnapped and held hostage in Beirut by Hizballah in 1987. “The guards,” Glass recalled, “were all young. They liked Michael Jackson and Madonna. One of them was disappointed when I told him Madonna was American, but he said he liked her anyway.” (Tribes with Flags, p. 468) They loved American pop culture, which Ismail Royer, quoted by Dreher below, might consider an example of “the crisis of advancing secularization in our community.” But their secularization didn’t stop them from working for Hizballah and holding guns to Glass’ head.

Another secularized Muslim was Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who murdered 84 people in Nice, France in a vehicular jihad attack in 2016. According to the Mailonline, Bouhlel “was an ‘unlikely jihadist’ who flouted every rule of Islam.” He “drank alcohol, ate pork and took drugs,” and “never prayed or attended a mosque.” Likewise the 9/11 hijackers were secularized enough to go to strip clubs before they flew jets into buildings. What Dreher doesn’t consider is that a Muslim could indeed become secularized and Westernized, and then try to cancel out his sins by doing a great deed for Allah. And what good deed weighs the most? Jihad. A hadith has a Muslim asking Muhammad: “Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward).” Muhammad replied, “I do not find such a deed.” (Bukhari 4.52.44) So if a believer goes on jihad, his good deeds will outweigh all his evil deeds. Thus if a jihadist knows he is about to wage a great jihad, he knows its value will outweigh anything evil he has done, and he can relax a bit, have a few drinks, etc.

Then there is the example of Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, who ran down nine people on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an SUV in 2006. Those who knew him recalled that Taheri-Azar was a “marijuana smoker and ‘most always high’ and that he drank heavily as well….Though, it is reported that in the past year he turned away from these habits and became more religious.” So Taheri-Azar was an example of “the crisis of advancing secularization in our community,” and then he recovered his religion, and embarked upon a jihad.

There are myriad other examples of the same kind of thing. Dreher fails to realize that it isn’t a flat Either/Or between Islam and Moral Therapeutic Deism. Muslims can easily move from one to the other, and some decide to wage jihad to rid themselves of the guilt that they may feel they have incurred by living in un-Islamic ways.

The American Conservative, a paleocon publication founded by Pat Buchanan, has never been much for recognizing the jihad threat; quite the contrary. Its executive editor, Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, has written several lengthy screeds attacking me, Pamela Geller, and anyone who dares oppose jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression for our “Islamophobia,” which is a propaganda neologism designed to intimidate people into thinking it is wrong to oppose jihad terror. She hates us with such burning intensity that she even published one after jihadis attempted to murder us all at our free speech event in Garland, Texas. Vlahos wasn’t upset with the jihadis, she was upset with us for provoking the poor dears.

And so Dreher, Vlahos, and other American Conservative writers will continue on their way, and if at any point they end up with a jihadi’s knife slicing through their necks, they can congratulate themselves in their last moments that they did all they could to save us all from Moral Therapeutic Deism.

Dreher didn’t even wake up when this extraordinary comment was posted under his article:

“Muslim Discipleship In Post-Christian America,” by Rod Dreher, American Conservative, December 19, 2018: