Questions for Muslim Candidates

 

Questions for Muslim Candidates

No more softball

 

The essay, below, briefly discusses how the Judeo-Christian tradition affected American democracy. It summarizes how Protestant America reacted to Catholic candidates. It ends with questions that should be put to Muslim candidates.

 

Part One: A Brief Look at the Impact of America's Judeo-Christian Foundation.

 

The United States was originally a predominantly Protestant Christian nation. In the eighteenth century, over 98% of Americans were Protestant Christians. Scholar Donald S. Lutz demonstrated that "the Bible was the most frequently cited source in the political literature of 1760 – 1805 that influenced American political thought." "Deuteronomy was referenced nearly twice as often as John Locke's writings, and the apostle Paul was mentioned about as frequently as Montesquieu and Blackstone … the two most-cited secular theorists" (see here and here).

 

"All men are created equal" is a Judeo-Christian statement, rooted in Genesis. In the traditional Jewish and Christian interpretation of our shared literal or metaphorical descent from Adam and Eve, we are all equally created in the image and likeness of God. In Hebrew, this is B'tzelem Elohim; in Latin, imago Dei.

 

Historian Tom Holland insists that imago Dei is radical. It is also, he says, the bedrock of Western Civilization, and of subsequent Western concepts of human rights. "The biblical God creates human beings who share in his dignity. That's a very radical notion. It obviously endows the idea of humanity with an incredible dignity." Holland contrasts imago Dei with the Babylonian Enuma Elish in which gods create humans "as slaves" to do heavy manual labor, including the work of building and maintaining temples.

 

Other worldviews, including Hinduism, Islam, and Atheism do not share this belief. The Hindu Rig Veda establishes the caste system. Purusha, the primal man, is divided. His mouth becomes the highest caste, the priests and scholars, that is, the Brahmins. His arms become the ruler and warrior caste, his thighs become commoners, and his feet become laborers and servants. Untouchables were not created from Purusha's body; thus, their wretched status is inscribed in scripture. Reincarnation reinforces this. People commit bad actions in a previous life, and are reincarnated, as punishment, as Untouchables. Thus, compassion for Untouchables is irrational. The Rig Veda is estimated to be over three thousand years old. The caste system still controls Hindu life. Ninety-five percent of marriages in India occur between partners of the same caste. Seventy percent of Indians say that their social group consists of persons of the same caste as they. Most Indians believe that people should be "stopped" from marrying outside their caste.

 

Islam rejects the statement in Genesis that God made humanity in his image and likeness. Compare Genesis 1:26 and Koran 112:4. Think tank author Robert R. Reilly says, "The Judeo-Christian notion from Genesis of man possessing the imago Dei is a scandalous blasphemy in Islam." Islamic jurisprudence establishes very different statuses for men versus women and Muslims versus non-Muslims. These differing statuses are so rigid that if a Muslim kills another person, that person's sex, religion, and status as an enslaved person or a free person are factored into the diya or blood money that the Muslim killer might be required to pay. A female Muslim victim warrants half the blood money of a male Muslim victim. Non-Muslims who are not Christian or Jewish, that is Hindus, etc, are worth one sixteenth of the payment necessitated if the victim is Muslim. In the Koran, Allah exemplifies this casual attitude to human life. In verses 14:19-20, 35:15-16, and 4:133, Allah threatens to wipe out the entire human race and replace it with a superior model. Comparing these verses to John 3:16 clarifies how foundational documents mold worldviews and cultures.

 

In her 1988 Signs article "Women and the Advent of Islam," scholar Leila Ahmed compares life for women in the Arabian peninsula before and after Islam. Khadija, Mohammad's first wife, that is, a pre-Islamic woman, ran her own business, amassed her own wealth, hired her own employee – Mohammad – arranged her own marriage to him when she was forty and he was twenty-five, and lived with him monogamously until her death. After Islam dominated, Mohammad married his "favorite" wife, six-year-old Aisha, when he was in his fifties. Aisha was one of many wives and sex slaves, and she was required to endure veiling and seclusion, and at least one "painful shove" from Mohammad. Aisha is quoted as saying, "I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women. Look! Her skin is greener [that is, bruised] than her clothes!"

 

Perhaps the most vivid illustration of how belief systems mold human life is sex ratios. In Hindu India and Confucian China, as well as Muslim north Africa, the Middle East, and east Asia, there are more men than women. Sex selective abortion and infanticide suppress female lives during pregnancy and at birth. Throughout their lifetimes, daughters, especially the youngest, may be systematically denied adequate food and health care; those daughters so denied perish at higher rates than sons; see, for example, "Gender Bias in Child Care And Child Health."

 

Wealth is not the only factor. Peer-reviewed studies indicate that immigrants from these countries living in the wealthy West also practice sex-selective abortion, aborting girl fetuses at a higher rate than male; see for example here and here. Scholar Rodney Stark argued that Christianity's insistence on the equal value of women, from the womb to the tomb, contributed greatly to Christianity's spread in the Pagan Mediterranean.

 

It was devout Christians, especially Quakers, who led the Abolition movement. Abolitionist Angelina Grimke wrote that a human being "who was created in the image of his Maker, never can properly be termed a thing." Grimke cites extensively from the Old and New Testaments. Frederick Douglass, Maria M. Stewart, and William Lloyd Garrison all cited imago Dei as support for their abolitionist work. Justice John McLean cited imago Dei in his dissent from the Dred Scott decision. "A slave … bears the impress of his Maker … he is destined to an endless existence." In contrast, it took pressure from the British Empire to suppress the slave trade in the Muslim world. Muslim Mauritania did not ban slavery till 2007, and slavery still exists there.

 

Atheists, of course, reject the concept of imago Dei, in that they do not believe in God. Superstar Atheist ethicist Peter Singer's views provide a glimpse into one inspiration for some Atheist decision-makers. "People with profound mental retardation pose a problem … We should drop the belief in the equal value of human life, replacing it with a graduated view that applies to animals as well as to humans," he wrote in 2009. "Killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person … The life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee … Rats are indisputably more aware of their surroundings, and more able to respond in purposeful and complex ways to things they like or dislike" than a human fetus at eight months, he wrote in 1979.

 

Obviously, if any of these non-Judeo-Christian worldviews were applied to the country's founding or to our lives today, America would be a very different place. The point is that what people believe to be true affects how people live. If America continues to be less of a Judeo-Christian country, America will inevitably change, and many public intellectuals are tackling how this change will change society; see for example Douglas Murray, Richard Dawkins, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tom Holland, Chantal Delsol, and Paul Kingsnorth.

 

Part Two: American Catholics Run For High Office.

 

Protestant Americans have long held deep concerns about the presence of Catholics. In Colonial Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, and New York, the following were illegal: for Catholic priests to reside, Catholics openly to practice their faith, Catholics to vote, or to act as a court witness, Catholic parents to raise their own children, or Catholic schools or churches to operate. In some cases, those who violated these laws faced the death penalty.

 

Protestants feared that Catholics in power would pose a threat to cherished American values. "Papists," it was feared, would follow papal dictates and destroy the freedom that Americans were working, fighting, and dying for. Over one hundred years of religious war followed the Reformation sparked by Martin Luther. American Protestants didn't want those wars in the New World. In subsequent decades, wealthier Protestants feared that poorer Catholics – think the Irish, Poles, and Italians – would bring and spread "Catholic" poverty to prosperous, Protestant America.

 

In 1928, New York state Governor Al Smith became the first Catholic nominated by a major party to run for the US presidency. To this day he remains the only Italian American so nominated, and also the only such candidate never to have attended any college.

 

Robert A. Slayton's biography of Smith records that the Ku Klux Klan sent mailings reading, "We now face the darkest hour in American history. In a convention ruled by political Romanism, Antichrist has won." The Klan burned crosses on the route of Smith's train. Rumors spread that "If a Catholic was elected, all Protestant marriages would be annulled," and children of such marriages would be rendered illegitimate. The Lincoln Tunnel was said to be "a secret passageway to bring the pope from Rome to Washington.''

 

Ellery Sedgwick, editor at The Atlantic, wanted to quell hysteria. He requested from lawyer Charles C. Marshall a document outlining Protestant objections to a Catholic candidate. Sedgwick hoped to elevate resistance to Smith's candidacy from irrational prejudice to rational debate.

 

In his powerful Atlantic piece, Marshall pulls no punches. He states the anti-Catholic case clearly. He quotes canonical material. Voters fear, Marshall writes, that Smith's status as "a loyal and conscientious Roman Catholic" is "irreconcilable with that Constitution which as President you must support and defend, and with the principles of civil and religious liberty on which American institutions are based." In spite of the gravity of the moment, Americans were afraid of discussing Smith's religion. Anyone who broaches the topic faces

 

"the unjust and withering attribution of bigotry or prejudice … Undoubtedly a large part of the public would gladly avoid a subject the discussion of which is so unhappily associated with rancor and malevolence, and yet to avoid the subject is to neglect the profoundest interests in our national welfare … Is not the time ripe … for a declaration, if it can be made, that shall clear away all doubt as to the reconcilability of [the Catholic Church's] status and her claims with American constitutional principles? … [Catholicism] is hopelessly committed to that intolerance that has disfigured so much of her history."

 

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Marshall says, insists that "dogmatic intolerance" is a "sacred duty." This Catholic intolerance makes it impossible for Catholics to be true to their Church and their nation as well. Marshall fears that Catholic officeholders may "annihilate the rights of all who are not Roman Catholics."

 

Marshall quotes Pope Leo XIII's Encyclical Immortale Dei.

 

"The origin of public power is to be sought for in God Himself. and not in the multitude … it is repugnant to reason to allow free scope for sedition … it is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual, either to disregard all religious duties or to hold in equal favor different kinds of religion … the unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one's thoughts is not inherent in the rights of citizens."

 

Marshall directly contrasts Pope Leo XIII's words with those of the Constitution's. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

 

In response to Marshall's powerful critique, Governor Smith does not label Marshall a lowly "Catholic-phobe" and "bigot." Smith does not change the subject so he won't have to address points head-on. Smith does not launch into a rambling reply to confuse or mesmerize his audience. Smith does not lead his audience down a long dark alley of historical abominations; he does not say, "Oh yeah? Well what about when English Protestants hanged, drew, and quartered hundreds of Catholics!"

 

Rather, Smith is true to a Biblical teaching and to the best of American tradition. The New Testament book of 1 Peter, verse 3:15, requires that Christians be ready to explain, with "gentleness and respect," their faith. Smith responds as American gentlemen did back in the day when rational debate reigned. Smith expresses gratitude to Marshall "for defining this issue in the open and for your courteous expression of the satisfaction it will bring to my fellow citizens for me" to make clear that he does not hold the positions Marshall imputes to all Catholics. "Without mental reservation," Smith says, "I can and do make that disclaimer."

 

Smith, a politician, not a priest, grew up poor and never went to high school. Smith, therefore, defers to eminent Catholic theologians to do the heavy lifting around doctrine. Smith cites Father Francis P. Duffy, and Smith makes sure to mention that Duffy is the recipient of the "Distinguished Service Cross of our country, its Distinguished Service Medal, the Ribbon of the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre with Palm of the French Republic. He was the Catholic Chaplain of the almost wholly Catholic 165th Regiment in the World War." Smith, thus, reminds the reader that Catholics have already served America.

 

Smith says, "I have taken an oath of office in this State nineteen times. Each time I swore to defend and maintain the Constitution of the United States … I have never known any conflict between my official duties and my religious belief." Smith details his significant accomplishments as a public servant. "The essence of my faith is built upon the Commandments of God. The law of the land is built upon the Commandments of God. There can be no conflict between them." Smith points out that Catholics served in the World War in numbers proportionate to their share of the population. Smith mentions the successful tenures of two Catholic Supreme Court chief justices.

 

Smith moves on to address Marshall's points more specifically. Smith alleges – accurately – that Marshall quotes Pope Leo and also the Catholic Encyclopedia divorced from historical and textual context, thus distorting meaning. Smith reports that the quoted documents authored by Pope Leo XIII have "no dogmatic force;" that is Catholics are not required to obey them. Marshall, Smith says, cannot "quote from the canons of our faith a syllable that would make us less good citizens than non-Catholics." Smith reminds Marshall that Catholics and Protestants alike pray not to "my father" but to "our father."

 

Smith offers interpretations by Catholic educators of the quoted papal material. These interpretations leave a very different impression than do Marshall's selected quotes. Smith quotes theologian Father Joseph Pohle. "If religious freedom has been accepted and sworn to as a fundamental law in a constitution, the obligation to show this tolerance is binding in conscience." Smith quotes many other Catholic theologians defending the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of religion. Archbishop John Ireland offered this patriotic and poetic metaphor. "Violate religious freedom against Catholics, our swords are at once unsheathed. Violate it in favor of Catholics, against non-Catholics, no less readily do they leap from the scabbard."

 

Smith quotes Marshall's own beliefs back to him. "The Articles of Religion of your Protestant Episcopal Church … declare: 'The power of the civil magistrate extendeth to all men … in all things temporal; but hath no authority in things purely spiritual.'" Smith then reminds Marshall that they both worship a savior who instituted the then novel concept of the separation of church and state. "Your Church, just as mine, is voicing the injunction of our common Saviour to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

 

Smith has never, he says, performed any public act that could be interpreted as favoring Catholics or disfavoring non-Catholics. His cabinet "was composed, under my appointment, of two Catholics, thirteen Protestants and one Jew."  

 

The Marshall – Smith exchange is a stirring and inspirational example of America at her best. Atlantic editor Sedgwick recognized that America's freedom of thought and rational and civil exchange of ideas might defuse KKK-style extremism. Marshall's first strike is impressive. He did his research and he quoted pertinent material. Smith's response was even better. Smith won the exchange with Marshall, but he ultimately lost in a landslide to Herbert Hoover, who served only one term, and came to be associated with the Great Depression.

 

In May, 1960, as John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, ran for president, "Thirteen thousand Southern Baptists unanimously adopted a resolution … expressing strong fears about electing … any … Roman Catholic." During the primaries, Kennedy's opponent, Democrat Hubert Humphrey, a Protestant, implied that Kennedy would lose the general election because of his Catholicism.

 

Kennedy did not lash out, he did not play victim, and he did not label anyone a "Catholic-phobe." With his signature aplomb, Kennedy exercised his brilliant eloquence to emphasize his patriotism. He bought TV time to assure West Virginians that he was a safe bet. In September, Kennedy spoke to a Texas audience of Southern Baptist preachers. Kennedy said, "I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president." Kennedy did win, but "It was one of the closest elections in American history, and some people still doubt its outcome." Historians report that Kennedy's efforts had minimal impact among Protestants. Christianity Today opined that 90% of Protestant pastors voted for Kennedy's opponent, Richard Nixon. Gallup says that 62% of Protestants voted for Nixon.

 

In 2017, California Senator Dianne Feinstein said to judicial nominee Amy Coney Barrett, "The dogma lives loudly within you." Feinstein's 2017 argument is similar to that of Marshall's from 1927 and Baptists' from 1960. Barrett was a threat because she would be true to Catholic dogma rather than American law. Barrett's Catholicism was again an issue in 2020 when she was nominated for the Supreme Court. CBS journalist Norah O'Donnell reminded Barrett that she is a graduate of Notre Dame, a Catholic school, and asked Barrett if her faith would prevent her from being true to her oath to the Constitution. In all instances, with calm and dignity, Barrett informed her interlocutor that her faith was no impediment to her adherence to the Constitution. At no point did Barrett play victim, call her questioner a "Catholic-phobe," or attempt to duck questions through verbal legerdemain.

 

Politicians in high-stakes, public debates are not alone. Average Catholics are used to being interrogated and insulted for their faith. Anti-Catholic prejudice is epidemic on social media, in mainstream media, and in hiring. It appears on numerous Protestant websites and in Atheist media, for example on the Bill Maher HBO show. Catholics respond in a civilized manner, that is, through speech defending their faith.

 

The above account of Catholics defending their place in American public life could be rewritten about Jews, Atheists, and Evangelicals. The 1964 Republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, was raised Episcopalian, but his paternal ancestry was Jewish, and he faced antisemitism. Goldwater responded with tact and with humor. When he allegedly attempted to play golf at a private club that didn't allow Jews, Goldwater, son of an Episcopalian mother, calmly responded, "Why, that's all right. I only wanted to play nine holes."

 

American Jews today are pressured to renounce Israel. Campus protests threaten Jews. "Globalize the intifada" terrorists have attacked and murdered Jews, for example in Boulder, Colorado and Washington DC, both in 2025. In spite of this, American Jews follow Biblical and Talmudic precepts that emphasize rational speech, as opposed to sectarian violence. See Proverbs 15:1, Proverbs 15:28, Proverbs 16:23, Proverbs 25:15, and, from the Mishnah, Pirkei Avot 2:14.

 

Polls show that a significant minority of American voters would not vote for an Atheist for president. Congressman Pete Stark became the first congressman to identify publicly as an Atheist. He was beset with questions. He responded with many jokes.

 

Protestants are no longer a majority, but they remain a plurality in America. Even so, recent years have seen an intense barrage of criticism of Protestants' place in American political life. Ironically, much of that criticism comes from fellow Protestants, for example David French, Russell Moore, and Peter Wehner. Anyone who consumes mainstream media, social media, and American pop culture is exposed to harsh criticism of Evangelicals on a daily basis. Evangelicals, for the most part, respond with charitable words.

 

In short, the questions, below, for Muslim candidates, should be unexceptional. Muslims could respond as have Catholics, Jews, Atheists, and Protestants – with carefully worded and forthright position papers, not with false claims of "Islamophobia" or with violence and threats.  

 

Part Three: Questions for Muslim Political Candidates.

 

Using the Marshall – Smith exchange as a model, we can outline questions that should be put to Muslim candidates for office in the US.

 

1) Freedom of Speech.

 

For us merely to have this conversation, both of us must be committed to the Western ideal of freedom of speech. A hadith states, "Whoever insults a prophet, kill him." Some Muslims say that even saying that the Koran was created, and is not an eternal thing, is also a capital crime; see here: "Whoever claims that the Saying of Allah … is created, is a Kafir and must be sentenced to capital punishment."

 

Recent years have seen many deaths resulting from these beliefs. Muslims killed Christians, including an elderly nun performing aid work in Somalia, and a priest in Iraq, in protest against an erudite and otherwise obscure lecture by Pope Benedict XVI in Regensburg, Germany, in 2006. There were multiple deadly attacks in Paris in 2015 in protest against the French humor publication, Charlie Hebdo. Scholar of Arabic and Persian literature Hitoshi Igarashi was stabbed to death after translating The Satanic Verses and author Salman Rushdie lost an eye to a Muslim attack in New York state in 2022. Rushdie was stabbed at the Chautauqua Institution, which is dedicated to free speech. Molly Norris was a Seattle cartoonist who drew a cartoon that Muslims deemed disrespectful. Norris disappeared never to be seen again.

 

In June, 2024, in Pakistan, a tourist named Mohammad Ismail was, according to police, "tortured to death" by a mob. His body was burned. He was accused of disrespecting the Koran. On July 4, 2012, a mob beat to death and then burned the body of a mentally ill homeless man. He was accused of disrespecting the Koran. Rifta Masih, an 11-year-old Christian Pakistani, had to go into hiding, as did other Christians, because Rifta was accused of disrespecting the Koran. In 2015, Farkhunda Malikzada, a devout Afghan Muslim woman, was beaten to death, on video, for allegedly disrespecting the Koran. In 2005, Newsweek spread unverified rumors that American service personnel disrespected the Koran. At least seventeen people died in subsequent violent protests. In 2010 and again in 2011, an obscure Florida pastor announced that he would burn a Koran. "Dozens" died in subsequent protests.

 

Do you renounce Islamic suppression of free speech, and do you support the First Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing free speech?

 

2) Jihad.

 

Back in 2013, Muslims attempted to prettify the word "jihad" through an advertising campaign that insisted that "jihad" could mean working out or "building friendships." The campaign was not successful. Scholar Bernard Lewis reminds readers that "jihad" is used in a "military sense," that is, violence exercised to spread Islam. The Answering Islam website lists 164 jihad verses. Answering Islam also argues for a progression in these verses and hadith, from co-existence exercised when Muslims are weak, to violence exercised when Muslims are strong.

 

Do you renounce jihad?

 

3) Gender Apartheid.

 

Honor killing is a feature of Muslim majority countries and among Muslim immigrant communities. In Koran 18:60-82, Khidr, a righteous servant of Allah, kills an apparently innocent boy, because that boy might someday discomfit his Muslim parents. Muslims online debate whether or not this passage can be used to justify honor killings (see here). Robert Spencer quotes Reliance of the Traveler, a manual of Islamic law. "Not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother … for killing their offspring."

 

Texas-born Amina and Sarah Said were shot to death in an honor killing carried out by their Egyptian-born father in 2008. Their killer was protected by his family members and he managed to evade justice for twelve years.

 

Mohammad, in a hadith, sanctions FGM – female genital mutilation. In April, 2017, Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, a Detroit physician, was charged with performing FGM on seven-year-old girls in the United States. A July, 2024 United Nations study, "Cross-Border and Transnational Female Genital Mutilation," reports that some American Muslim families send their young daughters overseas for the procedure. This is called "vacation cutting."

 

The Koran, in 33:59, mandates hijab, and suggests that wearing hijab will fend off sexual assault; thus non-Muslim women, without hijab, are subject to harassment. In fact hijab does not protect women from harassment. See the Frontline documentary "Saudi Arabia Uncovered." Saudi women recorded video of fully covered women being harassed in public. See also the #MosqueMeToo movement. Women recorded incidences of being groped in Mecca during the Haj pilgrimage.

 

Hira Anwar was a fourteen-year-old Yonkers eighth-grade student. According to the New York Times, after Hira's father dropped her off at school, Hira removed her hijab. The school principle feared that Hira was a victim of Islamophobic harassment. "Hira said it was the opposite … She finally felt free to express herself. That freedom did not last long." In 2025, Hira's father and her uncle conspired to have Hira shot to death. "Mr. Rajpoot told investigators he ordered Hira's execution because her behavior was an embarrassment … 'Hira's clothing choices, lifestyle and social relationships' had brought her family shame."

 

Forced, arranged marriages of underage girls are a feature of Muslim life. Mohammad's marriage to his favorite wife, Aisha, when she was six years old, is cited as support for early marriage.

 

Thousands of underage American Muslim girls have been forced into arranged marriages. Twelve-year-old Jada was from New Jersey. Her father attempted to sell her in Saudia Arabia. 

 

New York girl Naila Amin was forced to marry when she was 13. The man violently beat her, kicked her, and dragged her back and forth by her hair. Afterward, he raped her. He forced her to lie naked on cement. He would say, "It’s your body but you have no control over it. I rule you."

 

"It was unbearable," Naila said. "I cooked for my enemy, cleaned for my enemy, slept next to my enemy."

 

Lina, an American girl, attempted to resist a forced marriage in Yemen. She overheard her family discussing the cheap cost of a bullet. If she refused marriage, they would just shoot her.

 

In October, 2024, parents Ihsan Ali and Zahraa Ali assaulted their 17-year-old daughter outside Timberline High School in Washington state. Their daughter was "guilty" of refusing an arranged marriage. Multiple bystanders attempted to stop Ali from choking his daughter. "You disgusting monster … you tried to kill me," the daughter alleged, at her parents' trial.

 

Koran 4:34 tells husbands to beat their wives. In 2009, a Moroccan man stood trial for beating, sexually assaulting, and torturing his arranged Moroccan bride. Both lived in Bayonne, New Jersey. The wife requested a restraining order, and Family Court Judge Joseph Charles denied the request, arguing that the husband was simply following Islamic religious custom.

 

Gender apartheid is not a remote concept practiced only in far-off Afghanistan. Gender apartheid is in the US, now, and has been for years. Women and girls are assaulted, choked, shot to death, all thanks to gender apartheid.

 

Do you support gender apartheid, or do you support the American assertion that "all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights"?

 

4) Dhimmitude.  

 

Devout Muslims, as part of their daily prayers, repeat, seventeen times daily, that Jews anger God and that Christians go astray. The Koran, hadith, and commentary repeatedly state that Muslims must not become friends with Christians and Jews; see here. The Koran also states that Christians and Jews are to be fought, humiliated, and economically fleeced; see Koran 9:29. The Koran denigrates Jews, claiming, for example, that Allah turned Jews into monkeys and pigs. See Koran 2:65, 5:60, 7:166. A hadith states,

 

"The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews."

 

In another hadith, "Isa" – that is a counterfeit appropriation of Jesus – will return to earth and break all the crosses, that is, abolish Christianity, and fight for Islam. In just one of the details of this Isa's manufactured bio, Isa did not die when crucified. The crucifixion of Jesus is an historical fact, according to canonical historians.

 

Please explain your attitude towards these hostile teachings regarding your fellow American citizens who are Christians and Jews.

 

5) Israel.

 

Israel is America's valuable strategic partner. There are roughly fifty Muslim-majority countries, depending on how one counts. Most do not recognize Israel. Some call for the destruction of Israel. Do you believe that Israel, the Jewish state, within defensible borders, has a right to exist or not? If you deny Israel's right to exist, what fate do you recommend for the more than seven million Jews who live there?

 

When Al Smith was presented with well-researched questions asking how his Catholic faith might impact his ability to honor his oath to the US Constitution, Smith thanked his interlocutor for the opportunity respectfully to present his point of view. When, in August, 2026, US Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed won a primary by a very small margin, El Sayed's ally, extremist podcaster Hasan Piker, labeled anyone who didn't vote for El Sayed an "Islamophobic piece of s---." Thuggish and threatening accusations of Islamophobia are the coward's way out. It's time for Muslim candidates to respond to questions that require answers.

 

Danusha V. Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery