Op-Ed: The Islamification of Texas
Islamification Process Of Daʿwa and Its Constitutional and Social Implications
By Wm Gawthrop, Ph.D.
Islam is a challenger civilization, dividing the world into the House of War and the House of Islam. A state of war, not peace, perpetually exists between Islam and unbelievers. The purpose of waging war is to secure the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam or collect jizya (protection money). Dawa and jihad become the tools for advancing the ideology toward its defined goals. Jihad can be violent. Dawa is seduction, Dawa will use jihad if the seduction is resisted.
Dawa is the conversion tool; a form of missionary work, and an Islamic strategy for reshaping the modern world.
Political daʿwa employs religious outreach reshaping society, law, and governance in pursuit of Islamic civilizational authority. The strategy is to get into the mainstream of local politics, education, media, create mentoring and outreach teams, convert individuals, and induce societal surrender through a gradual process.
Dawa transforms non-Islamic environments from within. It is primarily non-violent, patient, and incremental. Its long-term objective is the normalization, acceptance, and eventual dominance of Islamic norms, institutions, and governance principles in your neighborhood.
Stage 1: Individual Targeting and Identity Conversion
The initial stage of Islamification focuses on individuals. Political daʿwa uses personal mentorship—not mass preaching. It seeks the socially influential, emotionally unsettled, or the spiritually searching. These individuals are approached in private settings: homes, universities, community centers, social gatherings, and workplaces.
The process is deliberate. Trust is cultivated slowly. Friendship is used as leverage. Religious instruction begins with gentle moral themes and gradually expands to a complete worldview. Converts are guided to see Islam not only as a faith but as a comprehensive political-legal system that claims authority over every facet of life.
Converts are encouraged to shift their primary loyalty away from their culture of origin. They are urged to see themselves as members of a transnational community (the ummah) whose unity supersedes any national or civic identity. The ultimate goal is belief, obedience, group loyalty, and ideological discipline.
Stage 2: Building Parallel Communities
The next stage expands from personal identity to community formation. These emerging communities are intentionally structured to resist assimilation into the broader society. They promote an inward-facing culture, encourage separation from non-Islamic social life, and normalize patterns of dress, behavior, gender roles, and social expectations that mark a visible, permanent distinction from the host society.
To support this separation, parallel institutions begin to form:
- Islamic schools and after-school programs
- Religious arbitration bodies
- Halal businesses and financial services
- Charity systems independent of public welfare
- Community centers and youth organizations
- Informal neighborhood committees that function as moral police
Each institution appears benign in isolation. They reduce dependency on mainstream civic structures and build an autonomous social ecosystem whose norms differ from those of the surrounding non-Islamic community.
These systems create an information barrier. Messaging becomes internal. Critical voices from outside are dismissed as hostile. Reformist or dissenting Muslims are pressured or ostracized. The community becomes harder for outsiders to understand, influence, or integrate into.
The result is fragmentation—a society within a society.
Stage 3: Institutional Penetration and Influence
Political daʿwa influences public systems. Its actors pursue positions of trust and authority in order to shape governance from within. The targets include:
- School boards
- University departments
- Diversity and cultural-competency programs
- Law enforcement advisory roles
- Municipal community-engagement offices
- Interfaith councils
- Public libraries and cultural associations
- Political appointments and local commissions
Political daʿwa advocates pitch themselves as the authentic representatives of their community. They request accommodations, shape training curricula, advise public agencies, and pressure institutions to avoid content perceived as critical of Islam.
Muslims resisting political daʿwa are deliberately marginalized so that institutions engage only with those who advance the desired political narrative. Schools, police departments, hospitals, universities, and local governments unknowingly incorporate ideological assumptions aligned with daʿwa objectives into their policies and programs.
This stage is quiet, professional, and often welcomed by well-meaning administrators who mistake political manipulation for community partnership.
Stage 4: Normative Conditioning and Legal Soft-Power
Political daʿwa reshapes cultural norms by sustained advocacy, media pressure, litigation threats, and appeals to pluralism and tolerance.
The objectives include:
- discouraging criticism of Islamic doctrine through social intimidation,
- creating an expectation that institutions must avoid “offense,”
- normalizing informal blasphemy standards,
- expanding religious accommodations into areas of governance,
- embedding Islamic moral norms into diversity policies or school lessons,
- framing skeptical or opposing voices as bigoted or hateful.
Daʿwa networks interpret concessions as evidence of leverage. What begins as voluntary accommodation soon becomes expected submission. What becomes “expected” eventually becomes “required”.
Islamification achieves soft authority: social control without formal power.
Stage 5: Informal Coercion and Community Enforcement
Political daʿwa uses informal coercion. This coercion is not always illegal, but it is effective. Pressure includes:
- mass complaints to employers or school boards
- online harassment campaigns
- coordinated protest groups
- public shaming
- reputational threats
- accusations of racism or Islamophobia
- intimidation of dissenting Muslims
- disruption of public events
Institutions capitulate out of fear of public backlash, legal battles, or damage to their reputations. Capitulation strengthens the perception that Islamic norms deserve special protection and that resistance is futile or socially dangerous.
This phenomenon creates anticipatory compliance: schools, universities, governments, and companies censor themselves to avoid conflict before it even arise achieving what no formal legal system could accomplish: the steady establishment of religious taboos in a secular public sphere.
Stage 6: De Facto Legal Influence
When political daʿwa reaches maturity, the cumulative impact becomes apparent. Even without changing written law, Islamic norms begin shaping the behavior of courts, schools, media, and government offices.
Several patterns emerge:
- Parallel legal expectations
Cultural pressure may cause law enforcement, judges, or administrators to overlook, reinterpret, or hesitate to enforce laws when cases involve sensitive religious issues. - Gender-discriminatory norms
Internal community enforcement may subject women and girls to unequal treatment, honor-related pressure, or community-based adjudication. - Restrictions on criticism
Individuals avoid speaking openly on topics involving Islam to avoid retaliation. - Claims of religious necessity
Institutions alter long-standing rules—even constitutional principles—to avoid accusations of insensitivity. - Transformation of civic identity
The central idea emerges that religious identity, not citizenship, is the primary source of fairness, belonging, and authority.
Though no official legal change has occurred, the practical effect is a shift in the balance of authority: from secular law to religious norms, from national cohesion to communal identity, from open debate to restricted speech.
Constitutional Vulnerabilities Exposed
This process exploits structural vulnerabilities in democratic societies:
- Broad religious-freedom protections
While essential for liberty, these protections can be manipulated when religious organizations pursue political goals under the cover of spiritual outreach.
- Deference to minority representation
Governments often choose the most organized or vocal group as a “representative,” unintentionally empowering ideological actors over moderate voices.
- Fear of accusations
Administrators fear being labeled discriminatory, creating a climate in which political demands are treated as protected religious expression.
- Lack of oversight for religious arbitration
Informal courts can function without transparency, enabling coercion and unequal treatment.
- Fragmented communities
Parallel societies reduce national cohesion and weaken neighborhood identity.
Without proactive, constitutional, policies, these vulnerabilities reshape civil society.
Summary
Political daʿwa is not violent in its early stages, and that is precisely why it is effective. It advances through persuasion, patience, and persistence using the strengths of open societies—their freedoms, fairness, and goodwill—to impose a worldview fundamentally opposed to pluralism, assimilation, and constitutional supremacy.
- William Gawthrop retired after 48 years of service in the United States Army as a counterintelligence officer and a GS-14 intelligence analyst for the United States Government. He is a Joint Military Intelligence College graduate with a Master’s of Science, Strategic Intelligence; the United States Army’s Command and General Staff College; United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College; and the United States Army War College Defense Strategy Course. He earned a PhD in Criminal Justice, addressing the civilizational clash between Islam and the U.S. Criminal Justice System. His analytic focus is the conflict between Islamic Law and U.S. Constitutional Law and the Criminal Justice responses to those conflicts. His latest book is The Criminal Investigator – Intelligence Analyst’s Handbook of Islam, 2nd Edition
Dr. William Gawthrop retired after 48 years in U.S. Army (Intelligence/Counterintelligence) and as a GS-14 government intelligence analyst. A Joint Military Intelligence College Master of Science, Strategic Intelligence, graduate, he also completed the two Army and Marine Corps Command and Staff Colleges and the Army War College Defense Strategy Course. He earned a PhD in Criminal Justice, focusing on the civilizational clash between Islam and the U.S.. His research centers on tensions between Islamic Law and U.S. Constitutional Law, and the U.S. Government response. He is author of The Criminal Investigator–Intelligence Analyst’s Handbook of Islam, second edition.