Craig Considine, sociologist and author of books focusing on Islam and the West, spoke to an August 12 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). His latest book, Beyond Dialogue: Building Bonds with Christians and Muslims, is scheduled for a January 2025 release. The following summarizes his comments:
Considine, a practicing Catholic, has worked for the past decade and a half to “bridge the perceived gap between these entities – the West and Islam – through the prism of Christian and Muslim relations.” His passion for civil rights led him to defend Islamist organizations and believe the network of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) affiliates’ claims advocating for social justice. Through a series of events, however, Considine realized he had been duped by these affiliates who subliminally use “left-leaning, liberal-talking points” as a ruse for advancing a dangerous political agenda.
In 2003-2004, Akbar Ahmed, former Pakistani High Commissioner to the U.K., introduced Considine to interfaith dialogue at the American University in Washington, D.C. As Considine’s career progressed, he intensified his advocacy. During the 2016 U.S. election campaign, he focused on combating “Islamophobia” and was drawn to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an MB affiliate that touted itself as a civil-rights organization. “I didn’t know that there was a lot of political baggage behind it, so that’s how it started.”
In much the same way that they claim to legitimately represent Western Muslims by propagating ideals of social justice, Islamists also exploit interfaith bodies “as part of a strategy to soften the playing field” of diversity. “One of the switches that went off in my head” was when Islamists “started trying to convert me.” It dawned on Considine that the MB network’s interfaith facade “was a sly, political, strategic maneuver.”
“One of the switches that went off in my head” was when Islamists “started trying to convert me.”
In 2018, Considine traveled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) “as part of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies under Shaykh Bin Bayyah.” The normalization process between the UAE and Israel had a “massive, massive impact” when he “really listened for the first time” to Jewish and Muslim elders committed to “a vision of the Middle East that was about peace.” A fierce backlash from the MB affiliates and their allies followed his involvement in the UAE and the Abraham Accords, exposing the “deeper anti-Israel, antisemitic ideology” within the movement.
Considine’s 2020 book, The Humanity of Muhammad: A Christian View, garnered much attention in political spheres. Islamists “didn’t like the fact that I was bridging the gap between Islam and the West” and turned on him. In 2021, his social media was hacked, which he attributed to his work with the Hizmet and Gülen movements. The latter is “the arch nemesis of Erdoğan and Turkey,” MB promoters. Despite his disillusionment with the MB organizations that had previously supported him, Considine continued with the Hizmet and Gülen groups because he believed “their values aligned with my values as a Christian, but also my values as an American,” or so he thought.
Considine was not surprised when he received pushback from Jamaat-e-Islami, a Pakistani group that is part of the MB network. However, he had a rude awakening after October 7. The Ahmadiyya Muslim community, with whom Considine had engaged in interfaith advocacy since 2015, reacted by adopting the Islamist position. “It literally shocked me and I was hurt, and the connection with them was dropped off.” The Hizmet and Gülen groups “haven’t been saying much of anything, which is de facto nothing.”
These Muslim groups had claimed to “stand by these similar principles,” i.e., advocating interfaith relations and supporting American values of “freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, the right to own property, the right to vote, [and] the right to assembly.” October 7 revealed that “it’s bigger than the Islamists and the Brotherhood, too.” Considine believes that “there are so many organizations and sections of the wider Muslim American community that are buying into the ideology and they don’t even know it.”
The Islamists and the MB have gained an even greater foothold in U.S. academia that is “so deeply embedded in far-left ideology, especially Marxism, which is obviously, I think if anyone knows, what the Islamist agenda and the Brotherhood is all about.” He was “transformed” after seeing how Islamists exploit Marxists and their sympathizers’ ideology of “oppressor versus the oppressed” to advance their Islamist agenda.
“I’m calling out a movement and an ideology that anyone with a sane mind would understand is not good for this country. It’s not good for this country because it’s fundamentally opposing basic values that were entrenched in the eighteenth century.” Considine finds that challenging left-wing talking points inevitably elicits accusations of being a racist.
“Anti-American sentiment” is being taught by “experts teaching the youth to hate their country. That’s suicidal. That’s like civilizational suicide, that’s national suicide.” Post-October 7 investigations into the billions of foreign money that pours into U.S. universities from countries such as China and Qatar play a large role in fomenting this anti-American sentiment, but “it’s more of a structural, fundamental, deeply ingrained issue within Western academia that we’ve gone too far left.”
“I’m calling out a movement and an ideology that anyone with a sane mind would understand is not good for this country.”
“I think that it starts with the upper echelons of these institutions getting proper leadership, and making sure that hiring practices don’t contribute to echo chambers in safe spaces. We need to get back to getting critical thinking into the classrooms and into academia.”
Islamists are prominent in the U.S. because the MB has successfully “politicized everything” by spreading its propaganda through mosques, Islamic centers, and such organizations as CAIR, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and other MB affiliates. The left-wing rhetoric pushed by these organizations is replete with such buzz phrases as “decolonization, critical race theory, social justice” that resonates with a lot of the country’s youth.
“A lot of it does start with education, but a lot of it starts with our political leaders.” Politically, the MB “is deeply ingrained into the Democratic Party.” Republicans are unambiguous in pronouncing that the Islamist movement is not good for America, but the “political inroads that the MB has made with the Democratic Party [are] massive, absolutely massive. And it’s happening at the very, very top.”
Internationally, the MB is influential in Qatar, where support for MB entities in the U.S. and its Al Jazeera broadcast network is “controlling the narrative.” MB influence is also seen in Bangladesh, Turkey, and Hamas.
Considine emphasizes individualism, encouraging his students to think critically as a way to counter the indoctrination in academia, “which is really the antithesis of what the American … experiment is really all about.” He advises his students to “make sure to read across the aisle. Read everything, not just Fox and CNN. Read both and do your homework, and then you can make a sound decision.” He is concerned because “a lot of this identity politics stuff is forcing young people and everyone really into tribes, into communitarianism.”
Considine’s advice for the public at large is to “be skeptical. Understand that groups, entities have political objectives [and] to think about the potential political implications of their allyship … their social justice efforts. It was mentioned in the description of this event … all is not what it seems, and that is true.”
