Islamic Activists Learn from the Same-Sex “Marriage” Campaign

If you’re expecting American Muslim leaders to join in efforts to reverse the legalization of same-sex “marriage,” don’t hold your breath. Undoubtedly, we will hear some obligatory statements of disappointment and disapproval, but it’s unlikely to go beyond that.

It’s no secret that Islam is no friend to the gay lifestyle. The issue of gay rights is a non-starter in Muslim-majority societies. In many places, the big question for gays is not whether they will be allowed to marry, but whether they will be allowed to live.

Muslims, however, are only a small minority in the U.S. It would not be to their benefit to make an issue of the matter. Indeed, Muslim leaders in the U.S. probably understand that the Supreme Court decision will work to their advantage.

How so? In two ways. The first is that the legalization of same-sex “marriage” leads inexorably to the legalization of polygamy. The arguments used to justify SSM can just as easily be used to justify multiple-partner marriages. In making the case for gay marriage, the Supreme Court has wiped out the case against polygamy.

So in the long run—and it probably won’t take that long—the biggest beneficiaries of the court ruling will be polygamous Muslim men. Polygamy, in turn, will help to accelerate Muslim population growth, thus increasing the likelihood that a parallel sharia legal system will emerge in America (as it already has in the UK).

The second reason that Muslim activists are unlikely to mount a strong opposition to same-sex “marriage” is that the enablers of the marriage revolution are their enablers as well. The same people who silence the “hateful” and “homophobic” critics of same-sex “marriage” can be counted on to silence the “hateful” and “Islamophobic” critics of Islam.

The enablers include not only the educational, media, and entertainment industries, but also the government. It’s no secret that the White House has long been friendly to the gay rights agenda, but anyone who’s been paying attention will have noticed that the administration has been just as open to the Muslim Brotherhood agenda. The president who illuminated the White House in rainbow colors following the Court’s decision is the same president who declared that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

In his landmark Cairo speech in 2009, Obama demanded that representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood be present, even though the Muslim Brotherhood was at that time outlawed by the Egyptian government. Moreover, the administration did everything it could to bring Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, to power in 2012, and to restore him to power after he was deposed. Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the administration has worked hand in glove with Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups such as CAIR, ISNA, and the MAS—even allowing these groups to call the shots on how our troops and security officers should be trained (or, more accurately, not trained) to combat terror.

Just as the administration has given homosexuals everything they asked for, it has given Muslim activists everything they want.

Well, not everything—not just yet. What does the Muslim Brotherhood want? Or, better, what does Islam want? The answer is that it wants what gay activists want—in short, total submission.

Hold on, you may be thinking, let’s not get carried away: Muslims in America just want a fair shake, don’t they? That may be true of the average Muslim on the street, but the Muslim leadership, like the gay leadership, has a different agenda. Fair shake? Remember, that’s what people used to think about the gay rights movement. Supposedly, all that same-sex activists wanted was a little respect and a place at the table.

Now it appears that they want to be at the head of the table, and they want you, if you happen to be a Christian baker, to serve them wedding cake or else lose your business. Or, if you happen to be a Catholic priest, they want you to solemnize their wedding or else go to court. Meanwhile, social elites from the president on down have been throwing rainbow-colored pies in the faces of those who mistakenly thought the movement was all about equal dignity.

The gay rights leaders evolved in short order from victimized underdogs to intolerant overlords. All of a sudden, Christians are waking up to the possibility that Christian colleges may lose accreditation, churches may lose tax-exempt status, and pastors may face jail time for upholding Christian teaching.

Islamic activists want what LGBT activists want—not tolerance, but submission. As Omar Ahmad, the cofounder of CAIR, told a Muslim audience in California in 1998, “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant.” Since Ahmad’s aim is entirely representative of Muslim Brotherhood thinking, we can expect the “Muslim rights” movement to progress in the same way as the gay rights movement. What starts off as a plea for understanding and tolerance will morph into a demand for obeisance.

Although we don’t have any examples of gay-run societies in recent history, we do have plenty of examples of what happens in Muslim-run societies. Christians in Muslim-majority countries are treated as second-class citizens. In most places, they can practice their religion, but only under highly restrictive conditions. And they certainly can’t bring it with them into the public square. Just as Christians in America now risk legal repercussions for publicly criticizing the gay agenda, Christians in Muslim lands risk jail time, or even death, for criticizing Islam.

But wait a minute, you say. Muslims make up only one to two percent of the U.S. population—why worry? That sounds like an argument-ending factoid until you stop and consider that homosexuals make up only two to three percent of the population, and of that percent only a fraction are interested in marriage. Moreover, the number of committed gay activists is a still smaller fraction. Yet they have been able to set the marriage agenda for the whole nation.

They couldn’t do it, of course, without the backing of the courts, the colleges, the liberal churches, the media, and assorted big businesses that have suddenly discovered that rainbow is their favorite color. But these groups can also be relied on to throw their support behind Islamic activists. In fact, they already have. The media continues to keep alive the narrative that Islam is a religion of peace, the entertainment industry will ostracize anybody who says otherwise, liberal churches manage to find acres of common ground with Islam, and high schools and colleges teach a sugar-coated version of Islamic history. Gay groups and Islamic organizations even share the same donors. For example, the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress supports both the homophobe hunters and the Islamophobe investigators.

In short, to paraphrase Mark Steyn, the same people who brought you Heather has Two Mommies will be happy to bring you Heather has Four Mommies and a Big Bearded Daddy.

How about the silent majority of everyday citizens? Can they be relied on to resist Islamization? Here again, Steyn is instructive. In a piece about the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, he observes, “most of us are not cut out to swim against the tide…In the end, most people want to be like most people.” Most people just want to get on with their lives, and most don’t have the energy to argue 24/7 with those who are filled with passionate intensity. Indeed, polls indicate that more than half of Americans are already on board with the idea of same-sex “marriage.”

What happens if the tide turns in favor of Islam? When so many people cave so easily on an issue so fundamental as the definition of marriage, it’s difficult to imagine that they will be able to muster sufficient resolve to resist the next big fundamental change—especially when the penalty for being on the incorrect side of the issue may be considerably more serious than mere job loss.

This is not a call to despair, but a call to get realistic about both the marriage deconstruction campaign and the Islamist movement. In neither case should we assume that the parties will be content with their latest successes. Nor should we assume that they will let the rest of us alone as long as we keep our heads down. The goal in both cases is total cultural victory.

Of course, gay advocates and slay-the-gay advocates can remain fellow travelers for only so long. Eventually there will come a showdown—at which point the friends of the LGBT movement in the media and government will likely desert them. Some diversities, it will be decided, are more equal than other diversities.

Whichever way the contest between the two totalitarianisms plays out, Christians will be the losers. They should not indulge false hopes that supposedly moderate Islamist groups will be any less radical than the marriage revolutionaries. Christians were caught by surprise at how quickly and aggressively gays and their enablers moved against them. They would be wise not to underestimate how aggressively the Islamists will move once the time is ripe. One of the lessons to be learned from the left’s long march through the institutions is that compromise, concession, and “reaching out” do not work with true believers. Appeasement only whets their appetite. And, if anything, the Muslim Brotherhood are true believers.