#dan burmawi

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Dan Burmawi: If you think that Israel is costing the United States a lot of money and a lot of blood because we are fighting in an Israeli war, I have a message for you.

Israel is fighting a war that you will be fighting eventually, whether you like it or not. Because Israel is a symbol and we are all Israel, but you don't see it yet. Israel is under attack now not because of what Israel does, but because of who Israel is.

This war of attrition and Israeli self-defense, which is portrayed as genocide, is the vehicle to smuggle the same ideology that has kept Israel busy in war for 80 years into the West.

There's an operation that is going on to rebrand Islamic Jihad under different banners. Islamic Jihad, the expansionist, conquering Islamic Jihad, is being sold to the American people as liberation movements, a response to imperialism, resistance. And this is the result of 50 years of indoctrination.

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The reality-disconnected belief that jihad is a response to "oppression" or "colonialism" or Western imposition is also a performative religious act of pious self-flagellation.

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Reminder that the Kaaba is – or was – not unique.

And it was always a pagan site. Muslims still practice those same pagan rituals, such as tawaf – that is, circumambulating the Kaaba.

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Jeremy Boreing: We have a long tradition in this country of freedom of religion and that the state doesn't engage in critiques of religious theology.

Dan Burmawi: That's the problem. You think Islam is a religion. Islam has a religion. Think of it as your house. It has a kitchen, but your house is not a kitchen. Islam has a religion. It's not a religion.

Can Islam coexist in such a system where consensus is going to determine the laws of the land? The answer is no, because Islam doesn't accept criticism. Wherever Islam has the upper hand, no one can criticize Islam. If they do, they get killed or jailed immediately

Wherever Islam doesn't have the upper hand, like the West, what happens? They try to smuggle the blasphemy laws through different doors. One of the doors is self-censorship. They use your kindness, your tolerance to force you not to criticize Islam.

But once they have the upper hand, you get the same treatment as Salman Rushdie. You get the same treatment as the people who Muhammad ordered to be massacred immediately because they just criticized him.

And this is what happens today in Egypt, in Pakistan. If a Christian is accused of blasphemy, of criticizing Muhammad, they don't only burn his house and kick him out of the village or whatever. They confiscate their lands, their businesses. But when they don't have the upper hand, they say, "we just want respect."

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Part of the symbolism is that the American flag is touching the ground when it's not supposed to. That's deliberate.

The jihad is coming from inside the house. This is what civilization jihad looks like.

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https://x.com/i/status/1994600881359122471

Islam in the West is the Ring of Power in The Lord of the Rings

By: Dan Burmawi

Published: Nov 29, 2025

Everyone thinks they can handle it. They think they can use it, moderate it, integrate it, tame it, or negotiate with it.

The Ring serves only one master, and it is not the one wearing it. As long as the West thinks it can use Islam, Islam ends up using the West.

Just like the Ring amplifies the worst impulses of the one who carries it, Islam reshapes whatever institution allows it inside:

Human-rights language becomes a shield for illiberal politics. Free-speech norms become a platform for anti-free-speech doctrines.

Religious liberty becomes legal cover for parallel legal systems. Democracy becomes a staircase to end democracy.

This is the rule of the Ring: Whoever tries to wield it eventually becomes its servant.

Even the well-intentioned fall.

Especially the well-intentioned.

The West keeps trying different strategies:

"Support moderates, integrate communities, counter the extremists, not the ideology, dialogue will soften them, maybe they don’t really mean what they say, economic uplift will change their worldview, second and third generations will modernize."

Every one of these is the Council of Elrond arguing that maybe someone, somewhere, might use the Ring differently.

But Tolkien’s world and Islam world share the same truth:

You can't reform an object built for domination. You can't tame an ideology constructed for supremacy.

The Ring can't be debated, reasoned with, or negotiated into moderation.

It was forged for one purpose, and it retains that purpose regardless of who wears it.

Islam is the same.

The only way to destroy the Ring is to take it back to the place where it was forged, the fires of Mount Doom, and burn it in its original source.

The same is true for Islam:

You can't defeat it with counterterrorism alone. You can't defeat it with border policy alone.

You can't defeat it with intelligence operations alone. You can't defeat it through elections, speeches, or interfaith dinners.

You must go to its Mordor, its theology, its texts, its jurisprudence, its political creed, its doctrinal foundations, and you must burn it there.

Confront the doctrine of jihad. Expose the political blueprint. Discredit the historical narrative. Challenge the legal theory that divides humanity. Break the ideological architecture. Expose it's master.

Only then does the Ring lose its power. Everything else is delay.

The danger is not in extremism. The danger is in believing you can harness extremism for your benefit.

Like the Ring, Islam corrupts even those who oppose it. It drags the center toward its worldview. It forces institutions to accommodate its demands. It shapes the political discourse through intimidation, guilt, or demographic leverage.

The Ring does not want to be hidden.

It wants to be worn. Islam does not want to coexist. It wants to rule.

There is no path to victory that avoids the mountain. There is no shortcut around theology.

There is no peace purchased through appeasement. There is no safety in pretending the ideology is harmless.

There is no future if you refuse to confront the source of the problem.

The West keeps walking in circles around Mount Doom, hoping for an easier route. But there isn’t one.

If you want to destroy the Ring, you must go to Mordor. If you want to destroy Islam, you must confront its theology.

That is the fire in which the ideology was forged. And that is the only fire in which it can be destroyed.

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The Arab world wasn’t always veiled in black. Not long ago, cities like Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad pulsed with modern life. Women wore elegant dresses, walked freely in public, and attended universities alongside men. Intellectual discourse flourished. Secular governance, legal reforms, and cultural expression were on the rise. The roots of aspiration toward enlightenment and progress were planted in these cities.

[ Cairo, 1960s ]

This shift was largely due to the British and French mandates, which introduced secular systems and laid the groundwork for modern governance. These changes set Arab nations on a trajectory toward modernity. However, that trajectory was short-lived.

Thinkers like Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutob, Abul A'la Maududi, and Mohammad al-Ghazali saw the rise of secular laws, women’s liberation, and Western-style education as a calculated attempt to dismantle Islamic identity and replace it with Western moral and cultural norms, so they launched an ideological war against secularization. Movements like the Muslim Brotherhood embodied this resistance; however, in the early stages, they were aggressively suppressed by nationalist Arab regimes that saw them as a threat to state power. Chief among these regimes was Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt.

[ Sayyid Qutb ]

Nasser didn’t only reject theocracy, but also monarchism. His growing popularity and ambition to lead a united Arab world posed an existential threat to the conservative monarchies of the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia recognized that he and the Muslim Brotherhood shared a common enemy. Under the guise of defending Islam and combating communism, he extended support to Brotherhood figures who had been imprisoned or exiled by Nasser’s regime.

In 1962, King Faisal convened the General Islamic Conference in Mecca, which led to the creation of the Muslim World League, a Saudi-sponsored institution designed to counter Nasser’s pan-Arab secularism with a pan-Islamic ideological front. It became the engine of Saudi-backed Islamic revivalism. What followed was the launch of what would later be known as the Islamic Awakening, an orchestrated campaign to re-Islamize the Arab world.

In 1967, with the Six-Day War, Nasser’s crushing defeat dealt a fatal blow to secular Arab nationalism. His ideological grip on the region dissolved almost overnight. With Nasser weakened and the Islamic Awakening's infrastructure in place, the Arab susceptibility to maintain the modernization brought by the mandates was shattered in real time.

[ King Faisal and Gamal Abdel-Nasser. ]

With billions in petro-dollars, Saudi Arabia funded thousands of schools, mosques, and Islamic publications across the Arab and Muslim world. Clerics, armed with state-sanctioned messaging, replaced intellectuals. Secular curricula were gutted and replaced with rote memorization of doctrine. The hijab, once a rarity in places like Cairo and Beirut, was reframed as an Islamic obligation. Gender mixing, freedom of thought, even music and cinema were labeled Western degeneracy. Within two generations, Arab women lost the freedoms their mothers had enjoyed. Universities became pulpits. Religious dogma shaped civil institutions. Entire societies that once flirted with secular modernity were now enforcing religious orthodoxy. The transformation was rapid, deliberate, and well-funded.

[ School teachers posing for a photo with the Minister of Education in Egypt, 2025. ]

Today, the very engine that reshaped the Arab world is no longer confined to the Middle East. It’s making its way into Europe. Europe now stands at risk of repeating the Arab world’s fall because of ideological infiltration. The same model used to Islamize the Arab world is being applied to Europe. Gulf-funded mosques and Islamic centers are spreading across major cities. Religious schools, community centers, and lobbying groups push for Sharia-based “accommodations” under the language of multiculturalism. Separate swimming pools, halal-only cafeterias, calls to prayer in public. Free speech is being eroded under the guise of hate speech. Secularism is demonized as intolerance, while religious conservatism is portrayed as empowerment.

The same social pressures and ideological tactics that once transformed Cairo and Amman are now visible in Brussels, London, and Berlin. The question now is whether Europe can learn from the Arab world’s fall, or whether it too will walk willingly into ideological submission. The veils, the censorship, the religious courts—they’re not distant cultural artifacts. If Europe doesn’t act, it will wake up to find that the monster didn’t stop at the Arab world’s borders. It just took its time crossing over.