If there was an X award for intellectual dishonesty, I think you would easily take it home, every time. Your argument is centered around the assumption that 2 billion people who don’t agree on the most basic tenets of their faith are a monolith that’s secretly planning a ‘transnational state of Islam’. If these people were half as intelligent or organized as you claim them to be, they would’ve at least moved on from their tribal disputes long ago and actually united to achieve any collective goals. Instead, the majority of Islamist violence is targeted at Muslims, most Muslim-majority states have experienced civil sectarian violence among Muslims and the political leadership of most of these countries is entirely focused on inter-Islamic disputes. Stop trying to gaslight these people, Dan. Radical Islam needs to be stopped and it won’t be stopped by exaggerated fear mongering but by addressing the actual facts. Presenting easily disprovable arguments with such confidence weakens the overall effort to get this done because it gives them substance that’s very easy to attack.

The reason my analysis calls for a ban on Muslims in official positions in the West is not bigotry against a specific identity. It is because I know it is nearly impossible for a Muslim to be professional, to separate his Islamic beliefs from his profession, whatever it is. A few years ago I needed to see a therapist because of anxiety episodes I was going through. My wife, who happens to be a psychologist, recommended her own professor, who was at the time probably the most important therapist in the Arab world, a Sorbonne trained and a board member of one of the most prestigious psychology foundations on earth. The man was a Muslim. And even though I knew, as a former Muslim, that it is, as I said, impossible for a Muslim to be professional, I decided to go anyway. Long story short: within two sessions the man was reading from the Quran, trying to convince me that I had left Islam because I was running away from my mother. People in the West can't understand how Muslims think. They project their own understanding of the world onto Muslims. But let me tell you this: being a Muslim is a unique thing. It is not only a religion; it is not only a political identity; it is a state of mind in which you are enslaved to a worldview that blinds you from seeing anything in a neutral way. Muslims in public office in the West will always prioritize Islam and Islamic causes. They will always work against the interests of the country they claim to belong to, because their loyalty, first and foremost, is to the transnational state of Islam.