Entryism Comes to America

France has completed the investigation America has yet to undertake. In May 2025, the French Interior Ministry published “The Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islam in France,” the product of a mission assigned to senior officials a year earlier. The inquiry examined political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in spreading it, and the movement’s connections with affiliated European networks. French authorities concluded that the danger extended beyond jihadist violence. They described an assiduous campaign to acquire influence within the ordinary institutions of French life.

The actor France has identified is the Muslim Brotherhood and the political-Islamist ecosystem surrounding it. The method is entryism: the gradual penetration of schools, associations, religious institutions, charities, municipalities, political parties, and administrative structures. The objective described by French officials is the cultivation of communities in which Islamist norms gain authority while republican principles progressively retreat.

France has treated that finding as a threat to national cohesion. On May 5, 2026, the French Senate adopted legislation directed against Islamist entryism by a vote of 208-124. The measure seeks stronger powers to prevent, detect, and punish concerted institutional activity aimed at undermining the principles of the republic.

France nevertheless crossed an intellectual threshold that most Western governments have avoided. It distinguished private religious observance from a political movement that may employ democratic freedoms tactically while pursuing a comprehensive vision of law, society, education, and government. That distinction carries enormous consequences.

“Washington often emphasized that religious liberty was not just a blessing, but a right.25 He wrote to the United Baptist Churches of Virginia in May of 1789,

” ...no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution—For you, doubtless, remember that I have often expressed my sentiment, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.”

George Washington, Mount Vernon Archives

“Quoting John Locke (1632-1704), Thomas Jefferson asserted that “Neither Pagan nor Muslim nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.” His ally, Richard Henry Lee [Father of Robert E. Lee], even passed a motion in Congress on June 7, 1776, in which he asserted that “True freedom embraces the Muslim and the Hindu as well as the Christian religion.”

The University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, includes a visual tribute to his commitment to religious pluralism. It features the statue of an angel carrying a tablet inscribed with the words “Religious Freedom, 1786” and which includes the names God, Allah, Jehovah, and Brahma.

Although some Americans believe that Islam has always been fundamentally at war with the West, the fact of the matter is that the Ottoman Empire, the most powerful Muslim political entity of the period, concluded a treaty with the United States that was inspired by the Covenant of the Prophet. The Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Ottoman Empire, signed by President John Adams in 1797, proves this to be true. It reads:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the Laws, religion, or tranquility, of Muslims; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Muslim nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. (Spellberg 207)

As Denise A. Spellberg summarizes, “The treaty… unequivocally asserted that America’s government was neither officially Christian nor inherently anti-Islamic”. The Treaty of Tripoli, signed by Thomas Jefferson in 1806, also retains and reaffirms America’s official stance toward Muslim beliefs: “The Government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, and tranquility of Muslims”.

I expect you to put up false information:

From my query with AI:

No, Richard Henry Lee did not include language about Muslims and Hindus in his June 7, 1776 motion.

The motion Lee introduced on that date was the Lee Resolution, a formal declaration calling for the colonies’ independence from Great Britain. Its text focused strictly on political separation, foreign alliances, and confederation, stating: “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States...” It contained no references to religion or religious freedom.

Origin of the Quote The statement “True freedom embraces the Mahomitan [Muslim] and the Gentoo [Hindu] as well as the Christian religion” is historically attributed to Lee, but it was made in a different context. According to historians like James Hutson and the Library of Congress, Lee made this assertion while campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia alongside Thomas Jefferson, likely during the debates over the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (passed in 1786) or related state-level religious liberty issues in the early 1780s. The quote is often conflated with his famous 1776 resolution due to his simultaneous role as a leading advocate for both independence and religious tolerance.

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