Over the course of the last several days, Americans have been thinking about big issues, big questions on the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks of 9/11. And one of the things we talked about here on the American side of the ocean is the fact that there has been a studious effort on the part of many people to say the issue is not Islam. The issue is Islamism or some distortion of Islam, some form of radical Islam. They will try to make the case that Islam is not a contributing cause here and that most Muslims would not support these terror attacks, but they also have to deal with the fact that there is so much of Islam that actually does call for bringing the world under domination in terms of the rule of Sharia law and does separate the world into the world of Islam and the world of war, the war being to bring the world under submission to Sharia law and Quranic rule.

All right. Well, the issues here in the United States had to do, at least historically, with the fact that President George W. Bush at the time, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was at great pains to say, “This is not about Islam. This was not an attack by Islam. This was an attack by Islamist terrorists.” And thus, you also had President George W. Bush 25 years later in a conversation with former national security advisor and former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush went back, now former President Bush went back 25 years to say that that was one of the things of which he was most proud, that was one of the most important issues was that he had clarified this is not about Islam, but Islamism or Islamist terrorism. 

Well, at the same time, the 9/11 anniversary has caused some people on the other side of the Atlantic to ask some of these basic questions, “What do these things mean?” And one of the most interesting issues now comes out as the cover story in The Economist. It’s the cover story of September 12 through 18, 2026. What makes this really important is that in the English-speaking world, on the British side of the sea, The Economist is one of the most influential periodicals, period. And it has long been associated with the political elite and those in control, very much in government there in the professions as well in Great Britain. Okay, the cover story, “Islam in Europe, the truth and the lies.” Okay, like so many big issues undertaken by The Economist, it really comes in two parts, kind of an investigative report and also an editorial statement. It’s not identified as that, but that’s basically what it is. Two articles in this package, this cover story. The first is “Islamism is a Threat to Britain. Islam is not.” The second headline, “The Truth and the Lies about Islam in Europe.” Now, when you’re talking about Britain, you’re talking about actually a situation in which the headlines might mean even more there than here right now in the contemporary, cultural, social, and political context. And that is because given the history of imperialism, the British Empire, given the history of migration patterns, given the very large Muslim population in Great Britain, this is not only about what The Economist thinks is so, it’s also pretty revealing. This is what the editors of this magazine certainly hope is so. So let’s take these two articles in turn. 

First of all, “Islamism is a Threat to Britain. Islam is not.” We are told that there is anxiety. “Some of the anxiety comes from the speed of change over the past 25 years. Britain’s Muslim population has more than doubled to 7% of the total population.” So in the course of the last 25 years, the Muslim population in the UK has gone up to 7% of the population. That’s a doubling in that 25 years. “About 38% are of Pakistani heritage. Bangladeshis make up about 15% and the rest are a mix from South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Half were born in Britain, but over the past five years, roughly as many Muslims have immigrated to Britain as in any previous decade.”

And then The Economist says this, “Scandal has bred suspicion. Synagogue attacks and the abuse of British girls by gangs of men of predominantly Pakistani heritage have amplified worries about Islam’s role in the country.” The statement goes on, “The idea that Muslims pose a threat is unfounded, but Islamism,” says the article, “In Europe, a fringe ideology that believes government and society should be guided by Islamic principles is indeed a threat. It is an attempt to administer Islamic principles through state institutions for Sharia to become the law. It is an authoritarian ideology that rejects integration and opposes pluralism, free expression and equal rights. This can lend itself to violent tactics, but jihadists are just one type of Islamist. Others seek influence through lobbying and protest. Nonviolent Islamism is an issue Britain has struggled to deal with.”

Okay. I’ll just say that for The Economists, this is an uncharacteristic mass of gibberish. This is a statement followed by another statement followed by another statement that don’t exactly flow. And I think the context of this is very political. The context is that in Great Britain right now, as in much of America as we have seen, there is a decided determination on the part of so many in the political elites to insist that Islam is not a threat, that Islam is not a challenge. It’s not Muslims and it is not Islam. It is rather a distortion, they will say, of Islam that is Islamism. 

And yet, you look at this and you recognize all of a sudden they kind of back off their own categories. We were reading from just one consistent presentation here and they back off the categories. They say Islam is not a threat, but Islamism is, they define it as a fringe ideology, the belief’s government and society should be guided by Islamic principles. Okay, that’s actually true. The problem for their theory is that that is actually central to Islam. Bringing society civilization under the rule of the Quran is central to the Quranic project. It’s not a periphery. It’s not a misreading. It’s not some kind of small group. You go to most of the Muslim dominated world and people talk about this as the essence of Islam and people are going to say absolutely so. Now, you’ll often hear the statement that Islam is a religion of peace. And, of course, it is in the sense that it is aiming for the peace that they say will follow the world being brought under the common rule of Sharia law, of the Quran. And that means the entire world being either Muslim or in a situation subordinated to Islam.

And so you look at that and you say, okay, now you have elites in the United States and in the United Kingdom on both sides of the Atlantic, elites that seem to be absolutely determined to say Islam is not the problem, but then they back off of some of the assertions they make. They also say, I thought this was very interesting, “Jihadists are just one type of Islamist.” And then they say, “Others seek influence through lobbying and protest. Nonviolent Islamism is an issue Britain has struggled to deal with.” It’s an incredible admission after some of the statements before this. Now, they’re talking about nonviolent Islamism, but what is that? Well, by their own definition, it is the attempt to enact Sharia law without violence, simply doing it by policy.

Okay, this is a huge issue in worldview analysis on both sides of the Atlantic. And it has to do with the fact that when you look at Islam, you are looking at a civilizational project. It is not just a religion, it is a civilizational project. Now, I think some people would say, “Well, isn’t Christianity a civilizational project?” Yes, it is, but it is not based in the kind of structure that you see with the Quranic rule in Sharia law. 

The values of Islam and Christianity of course share some components. For one thing, the very history of Islam is that it presents itself as a successor to both Judaism and Christianity. This is in the logic of Islam, Judaism and Christianity are anticipating the fullness, they would say, of the revelation that came to the Prophet Muhammad and is found in the Quran and other writings too, but in the Quran most centrally. And the Quran says that the very purpose of civilization is to be ordered by its principles. And that means the application. As you see throughout most of the Muslim dominated world, you really don’t have to wonder what Sharia looks like. You don’t have to wonder what an Islamic civilization would look like. You could just look at nations. It’s just in a large part of the earth’s surface where Islam has this kind of control. And, of course, there are variants. There are Shiite Muslims and there are Sunni Muslims and thus you have Iran and Saudi Arabia.

But when it comes to understanding at least the goal of total Quranic rule, they’re committed to the same thing. And thus you look at the fact that there are other nations like Pakistan and even Turkey, which is Muslim dominated. And Turkey operates in some ways as a modern, well advanced country when it comes to technology and so many other things. And it is an extension of Europe, at least in part of its landmass. But the reality is that what you have even in Turkey is a live political conversation about how Turkey is rightfully to operate as an Islamic culture, society and government. 

So I just want to draw attention to the fact that we have a worldview collision that’s been going on for centuries and certainly has been front and center in the headlines, especially after the last 25 years after the 9/11 attacks. But you have on the part of so many in Western nations, and I think part of this is just due to the secularization of these elites. They want to say this can’t be theological, this can’t be what it looks like. And I just want to point to this cover story with the two articles in The Economist to say they’re at absolute pains to try to make their argument. Listen to this, “It’s hard to estimate the prevalence of Islamist sympathy. A new poll commissioned by The Economist finds that 52% of Muslims in Britain think same-sex relationships are morally wrong compared with 13% of the general public who oppose same-sex relationships in a 2021 British social attitude survey. A majority, 62%, say that a woman should wear the hijab, that’s a headscarf, in the presence of men other than their husband or close relatives. 20% say that it’s not a matter of personal choice.” 

So let’s look at this. We’re not talking about, let’s just say some kind of a classroom of Islamist doctrine. We’re talking about policy. And after we were told that the issue is not Islam, it’s Islamism, we are then told that just asking Muslims in Britain what they think about, well, the issue here is same-sex relationships, 52% say it’s wrong. Now, I’ll simply say they’re right. It’s wrong.

But the point is that in this particular context, that’s a bit difficult to explain if indeed the confrontation with the modern world isn’t what it appears to be in terms of Islam. 62% say a woman should wear the headscarf over her head in the presence of men other than her husband. That’s a radical contrast with Western civilization, a radical contrast with British culture. And now, we’re talking about not a small group that they say are the Islamists who don’t represent Islam. The number here is 62%. Let’s just state the obvious. That’s a big majority. 

The same poll indicates that 33% of Muslims, let’s just say as a rounding number, that’s one third of Muslims think that “Islamic principles should guide public life, laws, politics, and government.” Wow, they just said that they want to contrast Islamism with Islam, but now you have at least a third of Muslims in Britain saying that they believe Britain should be brought under Quranic rule. That’s absolutely what they say out loud. And The Economist publishes it in text, but then attempts evidently to try to avoid the obvious conclusions.

The same poll, by the way, the same survey undertaken by The Economists, we’re told 29% of British Muslims think Sharia should play some role in British law. Again, you can’t say it’s a fringe group when you’re talking about numbers like 62%, 33%, 29%. 20%, we are told, think Islamic teaching should take priority over British law if there is a clash. Again, you can’t say this is a fringe group when by your own survey, one out of five says that if there is some clash between British law and Quranic rule or Islamic teaching, Islamic teaching should win. 32% of those surveys said that violence can be justified if someone insults the prophet Muhammad. Again, you’re almost a third of the population of the Muslim population. 76% believe it should be against the law to deliberately damage a religious text. So there you go. You’re looking at astounding numbers here, quite frankly. And I just look at this cover story on Islam in Europe, the truth and the lies, and I’ll tell you that The Economist tells the truth with the numbers, but I think the context in which they seek to interpret this is just, it’s not straightforward at all. 

But then listen to this. “According to Sir Ken McCallum, head of MI5, Britain’s domestic security service, some 75% of its counter-terrorism workload concerns Islamists.” So this is Britain, this is the United Kingdom. And we’re told that 75% of the workload concerns Islamism or Islamists when it comes to counter-terrorism, “But most Islamists are not violent. They prefer a strategy of ‘entryism,’” that’s put in quotation marks. This should have our attention. “A strategy of entryism, the idea that a small group of ideologues can wield outside influence by occupying positions of power.”

Okay. Wow, this is a very big issue. And if you follow the kinds of issues where you see collisions of worldviews, let me give you a couple in which there is just very demonstrated parallelism here. Okay. Number one, Marxism, communism. One of the theories of communist organization, was that society could be transformed through the creation of what were called communist cells. And these cells would seek to work and they would work towards a Marxist revolution. Well, would you have to have a majority of people in the society Marxist to have a successful Marxist revolution? No, no. Marxist doctrine and ideology said that even a Marxist minority can bring about a Marxist revolution if indeed they grab the levers of power because their particular networks, their particular communist cells will be far more dedicated to communism, than the anti-communists would be dedicated to anti-communism. So they made the very clear statement that highly organized, highly ideological, highly motivated Marxists or communists could actually lead a revolution. You don’t need the majority. 

Okay, that’s example number one. Very clearly like that, you had some of the social theorists in the United States in the 1960s looking at campus unrest and all the rest. And by the way, we’ll be back to that in just a moment. They looked at all of this and said, “What’s really interesting is that it’s not a majority of students who have to be involved in these protests in order to get the headlines in order to bring about social change. All you need is a critical mass.” That was a term, but you need a critical mass of highly engaged, highly ideologically committed young people. And then you could even convince the nation that this is an entire generation in revolt, because they will be loud and loud wins. You don’t have to have the numbers, you just have to be loud.

That is a very similar kind of understanding here. In biblical terms, a little bit of leaven leavens the whole loaf. In other words, there’s a theory here that it just takes a small amount, but if they’re absolutely committed, it can be fundamentally transformative. That is the way Islamism thinks. Now, it’s even to the point that in the theory, in the mind of some historic Islamic thinkers, the magic number is 7%. If you have 7% of the population, you can have much more influence than 7% would indicate. And Islam has ways of making its dominance, even just neighborhood by neighborhood, very clear. I mean, you’re talking about the minarets, you’re talking about loud calls to prayer, you’re talking about differences in dress. Remember the strange thing we just looked at where it was an enormous percentage of Muslims in Britain who believe that a woman should wear a hijab.

And that was 62%. So we’re not talking about some kind of small group here. 62%, according to their own survey by The Economist of Muslims in the UK were for it. Now, what is the significance of that? It is that it’s a public statement about Islam. And thus, if you have women dressing this way, you have men dressing in characteristic ways, you have the minaret, you have the call to prayer, what you have is an opportunity to leverage a fairly small percentage against a very large society. And that’s one of the ways that Islam has pushed its way forward. 

It is really interesting looking at this Economist package. As I say, all this is in there. And entryism, by the way, is just a fascinating term because The Economist named it right out loud, put quotation marks around it. “‘Entryism’ is the idea that a small group of ideologues can wield outsize influence by occupying positions of power,” Mayor Mamdani. 

Now, to the credit of The Economists, they did quote a professor, Hazem Kandil of Cambridge University who said that, “Decision makers don’t understand that a lot of the Muslims they come across in these spaces represent Islamism and not Islam.” Okay. Now, you might say, “Well, you just quoted him as saying that they confuse. So many people in Britain confuse Islamism and Islam.” But the point is he’s talking about numbers. A lot of Muslims they come across in these spaces represent Islamism. Well, in other words, he’s saying there are a lot of Muslims who are committed to Islamism and are very much a part of this conversation. Okay, now listen to this. This is right out of one of the pieces in The Economist. “Hannah Stewart, director of the Counter-Extremism Group, a think tank, worries that nationally, Islamist framings are too often allowed to dominate policy debates notably around ‘Islamophobia.’” That’s put in quotation marks. That’s what you hear in the United States and in Great Britain. If you talk about Islam in I think what are theologically honest terms, you’re going to be accused of Islamophobia. 

“She points to the government’s recently published definition of anti-Muslim hostility, which critics, including many Muslims, argue undermines free speech by conflating criticism of Islam with bigotry against Muslims.” Now, listen, The Economist puts the next sentence in the report, “Some suspect it was drafted with input from Islamist leaning organizations.” Wow. They put that right in the article in which they begin the whole thing by saying the problem isn’t Islam, it’s Islamism. But then they come back and say, “Well, there turns out to be an awful lot of Islamism.” 

But then listen to this, “Nationally, Muslim segregation is falling,” that is the segregation of Muslims into separate neighborhoods. But then listen to this, “But averages can obscure local trends. Using census data for England and Wales, we calculate that in 2001, just 66 neighborhoods had a Muslim population of over 70%. By 2021, that had risen to 237 out of a total of 35,000. Arguably, Islamists have more space to work in than ever before.” So they start out by saying Muslim segregation is failing. Then they say, “However, over the last several years, 66 neighborhoods that had a Muslim population has now risen to 237.” That is not an insignificant fact. Now, I want to back off of this for a moment. The second of the articles goes to make the same point, and by the way, does so in a more editorialized way. 

But one of the things I want to point out is that I think Christians looking at the contemporary world, had better recognize that there are two main competitor worldviews to Christianity, and both of them are pressing hard. The first of these is the worldview of secular Western intellectuals. I’ll simply say some form of secular humanism on steroids. The other is Islam. 

I think one of the most interesting things in worldview analysis about our time is that there are millions of Americans who do not recognize the secular worldview as a worldview. They just assume that is the default reality, and especially in the cultural elites on college, university campuses and in many policymaking circles, they just assume they don’t have a worldview. Religious people have a worldview, but their worldview is astoundingly consistent in terms of its secular shape. And that secular shape isn’t accidental. It is shaped over against historic biblical Christianity. 

On the other hand, Islam deserves credit for being far more honest. Islam deserves credit for being far more straightforward. Islam points to the Quran, and by the way, you can buy a translation of the Quran. You can read it for yourself and you can see exactly how this is to operate. And by the way, if you ask people on the Muslim street in the Muslim-dominated world, is Islam compatible with Western democracy? The vast majority of Muslims are almost assuredly going to tell you no. And you’ll also notice that even where they do have some form of, say, electoral government, it is basically leaving the Muslim leadership in place. And so you see that. By the way, in Turkey, the government even pays for the mosque. The government pays for the religious workers, the imams in the mosque. The taxpayers of Turkey are paying for this. It is a state project. 

So I’m going to step back and just say, the interesting thing here is that there’s this vast collision of worldviews, and I find it very, very interesting. I quote The Economist from time to time because it does really interesting stuff. And in this case, with so much cultural prestige and all the rest, they run a cover story, “Islam in Europe, The Truth and the Lies.” They declare “Islamism is a threat to Britain. Islam is not,” but then they come back with their own numbers and with their own quotes and their own reporting and say, “Well, maybe it’s a little more complicated than we thought.”

All right, we’ll deal with some related issues in upcoming editions of The Briefing. I want to come back to a very interesting headline in USA Today: “Research Says Subscription Spending is on the Rise.” Now, listen to this. Generation X leads consumers of entertainment and retail. Betty Lin-Fisher’s the reporter here. We’re being told that the part of the economy that is filled by subscription services is growing over the last year, 7.7% growth. Okay. We’re also told that Gen X is kind of at the center of all of this, but then listen to this, “And Gen Z showed the fastest subscription spending growth rising nearly 14% year over year.” So Generation Z is thus the part of the population, that’s the generation behind Generation X, young adults that showed the fastest subscription spending growth raising by a doubling of the amount of the rest of the economy, about 14%. 

Okay, so what’s interesting about that? USA Today and many other newspapers, this very same newspaper has been coming along with articles about the financial challenges of Generation Z. And I am not discounting the fact that that generation now of young adults faces some real economic headwinds. We have a housing shortage. We have a lot of other things going on, the disruption in the economy, artificial intelligence and all the rest. But the fact is that you also in every generation have a recalibration of what spending is to look like. And so you have priorities that become very, very clear. And so this is really interesting. Here you’re looking at a generation that says it’s having a very hard time buying a house. It’s having a very hard time paying off student debt. It’s having a very hard time say just in forward financial planning for retirement and all the rest.

And thus they’re saying the economy’s unfair. And in some ways the economy is always unfair at certain points on certain questions and you’ve got to work your way through it. But it is really interesting that the other articles come out saying when you look at vast spending on say entertainment subscriptions and gaming and gambling and many other things, it is very interesting that right here dealing specifically with the issue of subscription entertainment, it turns out that the fastest growth is among the generation that is saying it’s got the least money. 

Now, again, I am not saying they don’t face real economic headwinds. I am saying that it tells you something that when you look at younger and younger cohorts in the society, the expectation of the part of life that should be filled by entertainment goes up and up and up. In one year, by this measure, 14%.

I’m also not saying that other generations don’t face similar temptations, but it’s true that every generation that comes along faces new opportunities, new challenges, and we shouldn’t underestimate either the challenges or the opportunities. But this is the kind of statistic that lands on the front page of the money section of USA Today, and it tells us something that at the very least we ought to look at and take into account.