The Temporary Friends of Islam

The first half-century of Islam’s history is soaked in blood. Not the blood of outsiders, but the blood of Muslims killed by other Muslims. Caliphs were assassinated. Cities were besieged. Sacred spaces were violated. Entire armies, all praying the same prayers and reciting the same scripture, slaughtered one another in conflicts that erupted almost immediately after Islam’s founding figure died.

When Muhammad died in 632, there was no agreed-upon mechanism for succession. No council had been established. No institutional separation existed between spiritual authority and political command. Whoever led the community would control the army, the treasury, the law, and the right to speak in God’s name, all at once.

Several Arab tribes responded to Muhammad’s death by withholding allegiance from Medina. Importantly, some of them did not even reject Islam as belief. They continued to pray. They continued to identify as Muslims. What they rejected was subordination to a new central authority. They no longer recognized Medina’s right to command them or extract loyalty and tribute.

Abu Bakr, the first Caliph, declared these tribes apostates and launched what became known as the Ridda Wars. Tens of thousands were killed. The issue was not disbelief, but it was allegiance. The crime was not holding the wrong ideas about God; it was refusing to obey the center after the founder’s death.

The second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, presided over a rapidly expanding empire. Under his rule, Islamic armies conquered vast territories, absorbing populations, resources, and power at a pace unmatched in the region’s history. When Umar was assassinated in 644 by a Muslim, it was not over theology. It was the consequence of tensions created by rapid expansion, centralized authority, and the distribution of power and wealth.

His successor, Uthman ibn Affan, inherited an empire already straining under its own success. Accusations of nepotism, corruption, and favoritism circulated. Opposition grew not around doctrine, but around governance, who controlled appointments, who benefited from conquest, who commanded loyalty. In 656, Uthman was besieged in his own home by Muslim rebels and murdered.

The murder of Uthman detonated the first full-scale Islamic civil war. Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, became the fourth caliph. Almost immediately, his authority was challenged. Aisha, Muhammad’s widow, led forces against him in what became known as the Battle of the Camel. Muhammad’s own wife fighting Muhammad’s own cousin, each commanding Muslim armies, each invoking legitimacy.

Ali’s conflict with Mu‘awiya, the governor of Syria, escalated further. Tens of thousands died. Ali’s legitimacy was weakened. A radical faction known as the Kharijites emerged, insisting that any ruler who compromised was illegitimate. They were not theological innovators; they were absolutists of authority. One of them assassinated Ali in 661.

Within a single generation, Islam’s first four leaders were either killed by Muslims or died amid violence caused by Muslims. Hundreds of thousands had already been killed. The community was fractured, traumatized, and bloodied.

The breaking point came at Karbala in 680. Hussien, Muhammad’s grandson, challenged the legitimacy of the Umayyad ruler Yazid. His force was small, symbolic. He was intercepted, surrounded, and massacred along with his family. The killing of the Prophet’s grandson shocked the Muslim world and permanently divided it.

From this event emerged the Sunni–Shia split, not as a theological debate about God, but as a moralized memory of power. Shia identity crystallized around dispossession and martyrdom. Sunni identity crystallized around order, continuity, and obedience to whoever held authority.

Only now, after decades of bloodshed, did theology harden into distinct traditions. Belief followed history. Doctrine followed power. At no point did Muslims fight over the nature of God, the structure of revelation, or the mechanics of salvation. They fought over who ruled, who obeyed, and who commanded in God’s name.

Where Division Begins Matters

Christianity’s earliest and most consequential splits emerged from sustained theological disagreement. Long before Christianity had armies, states, or emperors enforcing doctrine, Christians were already arguing intensely about belief. What exactly was Jesus? Fully divine? Fully human? Both? How could one God exist as Father, Son, and Spirit? These questions went to the heart of what Christians thought salvation even meant.

The disputes were slow, grinding, and public. Bishops wrote letters. Schools formed around interpretations. Councils were convened to argue, not to conquer. The Council of Nicaea in 325 did not respond to a civil war over who would rule Christianity. It responded to a doctrinal crisis over the nature of Christ. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 did not settle a power struggle between rival kings. It attempted to resolve a theological contradiction that Christians could not reconcile on their own.

When Christianity eventually fractured institutionally, it did so because theological disagreement had become irreconcilable. The Great Schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism in 1054 followed centuries of debate over doctrine, authority, and church structure. The break formalized disagreements that had already matured intellectually. Violence did not create the division; it followed it.

The Protestant Reformation follows the same pattern. Martin Luther did not raise an army. He wrote theses. He argued against indulgences, against the authority of tradition over scripture, against the theology of salvation promoted by Rome. His challenge spread through sermons, pamphlets, and debate. Only later did princes and states turn these theological fractures into political conflicts. Once again, belief came first. Power followed.

Judaism provides an even sharper contrast. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Judaism lost political sovereignty altogether. There was no king, no army, no state to fight over. What followed was not civil war, but reinterpretation. Rabbinic Judaism emerged as a system built around argument, law, and commentary. Disagreement was not eliminated; it was preserved. Minority opinions were recorded alongside majority rulings. Authority became textual and communal rather than coercive.

Judaism survived precisely because belief did not depend on unified political control. No single ruler could enforce orthodoxy by force. Theology remained primary. Power was peripheral.

These examples establish a baseline. When religion fractures because theology matters most, disagreement looks a certain way. It is slow. It is argumentative. It produces texts, councils, schools, and traditions. Violence may intrude, but it is not the engine.

Islam’s history does not follow this pattern.

Returning to Islam’s early decades, the contrast is immediate. Disagreement escalates into violence almost instantly. There is little patience for prolonged debate. Authority crises are treated as emergencies, not conversations. Once violence resolves the contest, theology hardens around the outcome.

This is why apostasy occupies such a central place in Islamic law and imagination. Apostasy in Islam is not primarily understood as holding the wrong ideas about God. It is understood as abandoning allegiance. The apostate is dangerous not because he thinks differently, but because he refuses to submit.

In a system where belief and authority are fused, withdrawal of loyalty threatens the entire order. If obedience becomes optional, the system collapses. Apostasy must therefore be criminalized as treason. Disbelief is less threatening than disobedience.

This logic explains why Islamic law treats political rebellion, heresy, and apostasy as overlapping categories. The concern is not internal conviction. The concern is public defection. A person may privately doubt, but public withdrawal of allegiance cannot be tolerated.

Once this logic is understood, the early civil wars take on a different meaning. The Ridda Wars were not about defending theological purity. They were about reasserting centralized control after the founder’s death. The murder of Uthman was not the result of doctrinal innovation. It was a revolt against perceived illegitimate rule. Ali’s conflicts were not theological schisms. They were battles over authority.

The Sunni–Shia divide, often portrayed as a theological split, is better understood as a dispute over legitimacy. Shiʿa held that leadership should remain within the lineage of Muhammad, while Sunnis came to accept rule by those who successfully seized and maintained power.

This pattern does not end in the seventh century. It repeats throughout Islamic history. Dynasties rise claiming legitimacy. They consolidate power. Rivals are crushed. Scholars align with authority or are sidelined. Theology stabilizes the new order. When legitimacy erodes, violence returns, and the cycle repeats.

The Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Ottomans, and Safavids all follow variations of this script. Civil war precedes doctrinal clarification. Power determines orthodoxy. Theology rationalizes outcomes.

What is missing, consistently, is the kind of internal theological revolution that redefines belief independently of power. Islam does not experience a Reformation because its structure does not allow belief to float free from authority. To challenge authority is to challenge the system itself.

Political ideologies demand loyalty. They moralize obedience. They treat dissent as betrayal. They rewrite history to sanctify victory and demonize defeat. Belief serves unity. Unity serves power. In such systems, ideology does not emerge from debate. It emerges from consolidation. Once power is secured, doctrine is fixed. Once doctrine is fixed, dissent becomes illegitimate. Islam’s internal history fits this model.

Religion is not the engine of the Islamic system. It is the surface language through which power is organized, enforced, and justified.

Temporary Friends

In Christianity, non-negotiable claims are theological: who God is, what salvation means, how grace works. Authority exists to serve those claims, and when authority collapses, belief continues, often fragmenting, arguing, reforming, but persisting independently. Christianity can survive institutional failure because belief is not structurally dependent on centralized coercion.

In Judaism, the non-negotiable element is covenantal law interpreted through argument. Authority is distributed, not concentrated. Disagreement is not a threat to survival; it is a condition of continuity. Judaism endured exile precisely because it did not require political sovereignty to function.

Islam’s non-negotiable element is different. It is not a specific theological proposition that cannot be questioned. It is submission, obedience, allegiance, alignment with authority that claims to rule in God’s name. Belief matters, but belief alone is insufficient. What matters most is whether one submits.

This explains why Islam is uniquely capable of coexisting, tactically and temporarily, with doctrines that openly contradict its own moral and theological claims, so long as allegiance is not threatened.

Islam does not require its allies to believe in its theology. It requires that they do not challenge its authority, legitimacy, or expansion. This is a feature of a system in which submission, not belief, is the non-negotiable core.

Historically, Islamic rule has shown a remarkable ability to tolerate internal contradiction when it serves power. Non-Muslim populations were permitted to retain their religions, customs, and even internal legal systems under Islamic empires, not because Islam embraced pluralism, but because submission had already been secured. As long as the hierarchy was acknowledged and authority remained unchallenged, belief could be managed. Theology was secondary to order.

The same logic operates in Islam’s relationship with the contemporary Western left.

The modern left advances doctrines, sexual liberation, gender fluidity, secular morality, rejection of divine law, that are fundamentally incompatible with Islamic theology. Yet this incompatibility does not disrupt the alliance, because Islam does not evaluate allies primarily by belief. It evaluates them by alignment. As long as the left directs its energy against Western sovereignty, national identity, liberal institutions, and civilizational confidence, Islam has no incentive to confront its doctrinal deviations.

From Islam’s perspective, these deviations are temporary, contingent, and ultimately irrelevant. What matters is whether power structures are weakened, whether resistance is neutralized, and whether opposition is delegitimized. Belief can be corrected later. Authority must be secured first.

This mirrors Islam’s historical treatment of internal dissent. A ruler who governs effectively and enforces order may be tolerated despite personal impiety. A believer who challenges authority, even while professing correct doctrine, is treated as a threat. The priority is stability and control, not moral coherence.

This is why Islamic actors rarely expend energy condemning the left’s beliefs with the same urgency they reserve for critics of Islam. Criticism represents defiance. Defiance threatens authority. Doctrinal error among allies does not.

The left, for its part, often misunderstands this dynamic. It interprets Islam’s silence as tolerance or convergence. In reality, it is conditional acceptance. As long as the left functions as a shield, deflecting scrutiny, suppressing criticism, delegitimizing opposition, it is useful. Once it ceases to do so, the contradiction will no longer be ignored.

This logic also explains why figures on the right, or leaning toward the right such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, Dan Bilzerian, and others are being celebrated today by Muslims across social media for standing with Islam against Israel. Of course, these figures are using Islam as a weapon against Israel, but Islam is using them too.

They are valuable to Islam because they attack Israel and weaken Western moral confidence. Carlson’s and Owens’s massive platforms are a gift to Islamic propaganda. Fuentes is useful because he reframes hostility toward Jews in civilizational terms rather than explicitly religious ones. Bilzerian, whose lifestyle violates virtually every Islamic moral code, is useful because he publicly aligns himself against Israel and amplifies Islamic narratives to millions of followers.

From a religious standpoint, this should be scandalous. From a theological standpoint, it should be disqualifying. From the standpoint of a system organized around allegiance and utility, it is entirely coherent.

What matters is not personal virtue, doctrinal consistency, or moral discipline. What matters is whether a figure advances the cause of Islam. A man who drinks, gambles, and lives in open defiance of Islamic law can still be embraced if he directs hostility outward, toward the correct targets.

In systems where belief is primary, alliances are built around shared truth claims. In systems where power is primary, alliances are built around shared enemies. Islam’s history shows that it belongs to the latter category.

Islam’s temporary friends are playing with fire, they treat it as harmless. A tool. A convenient weapon in a cultural war against Jews, Israel, or the liberal West. They assume they are in control, that they can instrumentalize Islam without consequence, deploy it rhetorically, and then walk away. What they do not understand is that they are not using Islam; they are being used by it. Useful idiots, on both the left and the right, temporarily shielded by their usefulness, blind to the nature of what they are empowering.

A system built around power rather than belief does not distinguish between friends and enemies in the moral sense. It distinguishes only between assets and obstacles.

This is why the danger is existential. Empowering a system whose core logic is domination rather than truth, allegiance rather than belief, is not a game that can be played selectively. The same force used against one enemy will eventually turn on all others. Those who help weaken the West in the name of a temporary alignment should not assume they will be spared by what comes next.

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