In the early hours of New Year’s Day 2025, a truck driven by an ISIS-inspired attacker plowed through revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14 and wounding dozens more. The perpetrator was not some misunderstood youth or victim of “poverty and alienation.” He acted in the name of the Islamic State, echoing a pattern that stretches from the streets of Paris and Manchester to the campuses of our own universities. Yet within hours, the familiar script unfolded: media outlets warned of a coming “Islamophobia” backlash, academics parsed the attack as “complex,” and advocacy groups pivoted to lectures on tolerance. This is not mere incompetence. It is a deliberate, radical campaign to normalize Islamic extremism in the West.
As conservative Christians, we refuse to join the lie. We are commanded to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1) and to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). The truth is plain: Islamic extremism is not a fringe distortion of a peaceful faith. It draws oxygen from core Islamic texts and history that celebrate jihad as both spiritual struggle and physical conquest. The Quran commands fighting “those who do not believe in Allah” until they pay the jizya[1] in submission (9:29). Muhammad’s own military campaigns and the doctrine of abrogation – where later, violent verses supersede earlier, peaceful ones – provide a theological blueprint that groups like ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah follow without apology. While millions of Muslims live peacefully, the ideology itself has never undergone the kind of Reformation that tempered Christendom’s excesses. It remains expansionist by design.
Yet the radical attempt to normalize this extremism did not begin with the New Orleans attack. It has been years in the making. Consider what has been occurring on college campuses. In February 2025, reports exposed Canadian universities openly tolerating Islamist extremism on campus, producing graduates who view terrorism as “legitimate resistance.” American institutions fare little better. After the October 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas, elite campuses erupted not in horror but in celebration – chants of “globalize the intifada” and open support for a terrorist organization whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish people and the establishment of Islamic rule. Professors and administrators, steeped in DEI dogma, rushed to protect these voices while marginalizing Christian students who dared quote Scripture about Israel or warn of creeping Sharia.
The media machine amplifies the deception. Following every atrocity – whether the 2025 Villach stabbing in Austria that killed a teenage boy or the Mulhouse attack in France where an Algerian man screamed “Allahu Akbar” while knifing pedestrians – the narrative shifts instantly from the killer’s Islamic motivation to Western “bigotry.” Outlets frame jihadist violence as mental illness, economic grievance, or “far-right provocation.” Meanwhile, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) commands airtime to pivot every conversation toward “Islamophobia,” even as its leaders have faced documented ties to Hamas and defended the October 7 atrocities as “resistance.” This is not journalism. It is propaganda designed to shame Christians and conservatives into silence while the threat metastasizes.
Politically, the normalization is even more brazen. Open-border policies under previous administrations flooded the West with unvetted migrants from jihadist hotbeds. Intelligence reports confirm ISIS continues to inspire plots in Europe and America, with teenagers radicalized online in record numbers. Yet progressive elites – Democrats and globalist Republicans alike – insist that vetting by faith or ideology is “discriminatory.” They welcome Islamist activists into the public square, partner with them in “interfaith” dialogues that demand Christians abandon the exclusivity of Christ (John 14:6) and equate biblical warnings about false religion with “hate speech.” Why? Because the true target is not extremism – it is the Judeo-Christian foundation of Western civilization itself.
This normalization is spiritual warfare, plain and simple. Ephesians 6:12 reminds us that our struggle is “not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Islam explicitly denies the deity of Christ, His crucifixion, and His resurrection (Quran 4:157, 5:116). It offers a works-based salvation through submission rather than grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). When Western elites treat this rival faith as morally equivalent – or superior – to Christianity, they are not practicing tolerance. They are surrendering the public square to a system that has historically subjugated Christians, Jews, and women under dhimmitude[2] and Sharia[3].
The fruit is already evident. Honor-based violence, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), grooming gangs in Europe, and demands for Sharia patrols are no longer hypothetical. In Britain, Sweden, and France, parallel societies have formed where police fear to enter. Here in America, we see the same pattern in Dearborn, Michigan, and Minneapolis enclaves where Islamist influence grows unchecked. Christians who speak out are branded “extremists” while actual extremists receive kid-glove treatment.
What, then, is the Christian response? First, we must repent of our own cultural compromise. Too many churches have traded the Great Commission for vapid “dialogue” that never mentions sin, judgment, or the blood of Christ. We must recover the courage of the apostles who preached the gospel amid pagan empires. Second, we must support policies that secure our borders, vet immigrants for ideological compatibility with constitutional liberty, and reject any alliance with groups that refuse to condemn jihadist theology unequivocally. Third, we must pray fervently for Muslims – yes, love them enough to tell them the truth. Many are leaving Islam after encountering the real Jesus in dreams, visions, or Scripture. The harvest is ripe. Christians must sow boldly.
Finally, we must stand unashamedly for the uniqueness of Christ and the superiority of the biblical worldview. The West was built on the premise that every soul bears God’s image, that government is accountable to divine law, and that truth is objective. Islamic extremism rejects all three. To normalize it is to invite cultural suicide.
The radical attempt to normalize Islamic extremism is not a bug in the progressive system; it is a feature. It advances by silencing dissent, rewriting history, and pathologizing common sense. But we serve a King whose kingdom cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:28). Let us therefore speak, vote, pray, and live like those who know the difference between light and darkness. The hour is late, the stakes eternal. May the church rise with the same resolve that once tamed pagan Rome – not by the sword, but by the power of the gospel and the courage of conviction.
[1] Jizya is a historical tax that levied in certain Islamic states on non-Muslim adult males (primarily Jews and Christians, known as People of the Book) who lived under Muslim rule
[2] Dhimmitude refers to the traditional legal and social framework applied to non-Muslims living in an Islamic state.
[3] Islamic extremists often distort and abuse Sharia to justify acts of violence, oppression, and terrorism, fundamentally misrepresenting its teachings and principles.
