Michael Youssef: A Troubling Question

As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Americans who remember that day also remember its aftermath. Along with the shock, horror, suffering and death, there was resolve: We would never forget what happened. And we would never let it happen again. Thankfully, nothing on that scale has happened since. But too many Americans seem less alert to the threat of radical Islamism. A for-profit sharia finance industry operates across America. A North Texas school was established and staffed by relatives of convicted Hamas operatives. And New York’s current mayor has been photographed with an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. For those of us who remember the terror of 9/11, these developments are almost unbelievable. And they’re frightening. Because we know what happens when people forget the past. They risk repeating it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Some people did something,” one prominent Islamist member of Congress put it.  An Islamist candidate for US Senate wrote: those we killed in our response to 9/11 were equally to be mourned as victims just as the Americans killed on 9/11 were. He has also campaigned with a popular broadcaster who claimed the US deserved 9/11.  The Islamist Mayor of New York has posted on X there is no moral difference between those who were killed on 9/11 and those we killed in response. This is how we lose the distinction between good and evil which, many thought, would never be confused again after 9/11. Elie Wiesel wrote, “history is to civilization what memory is to individuals.”  For those of us who remember 9/11 accurately, we can never forget it, nor the fact that vast numbers of people with a medieval ideology still want us dead.  Those engaging in moral equivalence about it are the handmaidens of hate. If ignored, they will be the authors of our destruction—which, Abraham Lincoln reminded us, can only come from within.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

September 11 is not a normal day on the calendar. Nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered by Islamist terrorists. Yet 25 years later, retired Port Authority police officers are asking Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stay away from the commemoration at Ground Zero. Thirty-seven Port Authority officers died that morning. Now their surviving brothers are pleading: “Please allow us to remember in peace.” Hochul angered the 9/11 community by illuminating One World Trade Center for Muslim American Heritage Month. Mamdani faces a petition opposing his attendance signed by more than 96,000 people—including grieving families. Both intend to attend anyway. Ground Zero—especially on the 25th anniversary of that dark day—does not belong to politicians. It belongs to the dead and their families, the cops and firefighters who walked into hell while everyone else ran away. They do not owe elected officials a backdrop or a lesson in tolerance. One day. One place. No politics. They’ve earned that. Let them have it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Now, you probably grew up knowing that socialism doesn't work. It sees its control and most importantly seeks to replace God with government. But this ideology is now moving to the very center of our nation's political life. I was born under socialist Islamist regime. I remember when my father's company was taken over by the government. I couldn't wait to turn 18 and escape and find freedom in the West. As these ideologies gain an even stronger foothold in America, we must respond with calm courage and biblical conviction. Silence in the face of evil is not faithfulness.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is among the leftist Democrats who seems to have learned nothing and forgotten everything. Last week, Hochul visited the Islamic Cultural Center School of New York — whose imam blamed Jews for destroying the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks. What’s more, Hochul appeared wearing a hijab. Perhaps she thought she was just respecting a religious tradition but she’s dangerously misguided. The hijab is a symbol of female submission, reflecting the view that women’s bodies are sinful and must be covered lest men be tempted. Our Constitution protects religious liberty, so Muslim women are free to wear hijabs. But it’s ironic and outrageous that left-wing women — who accuse conservatives of plotting a real-life “Handmaid’s Tale” — embrace a symbol of the very female oppression they claim to fear.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. And the IRGC may have never faced a situation as desperate as its predicament at the moment. Yes: The conflict with Iran has gone on longer than Donald Trump anticipated. The shock and awe campaign in March did massive strategic damage, but the regime has managed to survive. Diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict have gone nowhere. Trump finally landed on the most rational approach left. The naval blockade has eliminated Iran’s income from black-market oil. Scott Bessent’s economic D-Day has stripped the IRGC of any other financial resources. The Iranian rial has collapsed. Domestic discontent with the regime will keep increasing to existential levels. The siege of Iran provides the best chance for success in eliminating a regime that has waged war against the US for 47 years. Trump needs to exercise strategic patience to see this strategy to a successful conclusion – and so do the American people.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

UPS will not ship human embryos. But it will ship the drug designed to destroy those innocent human lives. A shareholder proposal asks UPS to examine the legal, regulatory, and reputational risk of distributing abortion drugs, particularly mifepristone. The company's answer is that a carrier cannot know what is in every package. UPS ships firearms under dedicated accounts, contractual agreements, shipper verification, adult signature, and direct-delivery rules. It plainly knows how to identify a product category and apply scrutiny when it decides to. The Comstock Act has been federal law since 1873, and bars common carriers from transporting drugs intended to produce abortion. More than twenty states now restrict these drugs, including Georgia, where UPS is headquartered. Firearms are constitutionally protected. This shipment of abortion drugs is already addressed by federal statute. What a strange moral code. UPS needs to get out of the abortion business.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Islamic Republic is reeling as summer closes. Operation Economic Outcast is squeezing an already flustered and failing regime. As that regime grows increasingly desperate, there are warnings that Iran may well be considering one or even many “October surprise” attacks on Israel, the United States or anywhere that its weapons or terrorists can reach. America’s military is certainly prepared—but the public ought to be braced, too. Aging revolutionaries in Tehran whose dreams and fantasies lie in ruins around them are unlikely to surrender power and go quietly into exile. So: the idea of a grand gesture through suicidal attacks has to appeal to the remnants of the once powerful but now nearly spent regime. Fanatics with nothing to lose pose a specific kind of threat—and it’s not a rational one. Americans should support Trump, the efforts of Operation Economic Outcast and the military as the Islamic Republic plays out its last few, desperate moves.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Since the election of the first Islamist to Congress eight years ago, few have wanted to speak candidly out about what Ilhan Omar was saying and stood for—lest they be labeled Islamophobic. Since that time, political Islam, Islamism, has grown and grown—from the election of a mayor in New York City to several congressional candidates from the East to West Coasts, some of whom win their elections this year. This includes a congressional candidate from Flight 93 Todd Beamer’s hometown who was the righthand man to the Blind Sheikh.  In Michigan, Democrats have nominated an Islamist, looking to serve as U.S. Senator. El-Sayed has defended Sharia law in America, campaigned with Hamas supporters, and is speaking at a Muslim Brotherhood aligned conference next month. Islamophobia is the irrational fear of Islam. We do not fear a religion whose adherents give this country their effectual support, as George Washington put the test of religious tolerance. But there’s a growing number who wish to exploit our political system for their Islamist subversion. That fear is not irrational.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While I was visiting the Middle East several years ago, a highly placed government official who's a Muslim himself asked me a troubling question. Why is the Muslim Brotherhood outlawed as a terrorist organization in Saudi Arabia, in Bahrain, in the United Arab Emirates, in Jordan, in Egypt, and yet allowed to flourish in America? Founded in Egypt in 1928, the brotherhood's history is drenched in blood. It was spawned and inspired groups like Hamas, Al-Qaeda, ISIS. Now Congress designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity. This designation act would finally name the brotherhood for what it is and disrupt its financial networks. Contact your representatives, senators, ask them to support this bill.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.