Historian Paul Kengor Tells Incredible Story About Reagan, Pope John Paul II and the Secrets of Fátima

May 03, 2017

WRITER

What if the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981 was predicted in 1917? What if it was predicted on May 13 in 1917?

Historian and professor Paul Kengor, author of the new book A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century, joined Glenn on radio to describe the uncanny and chilling connection between Pope John Paul II and the Secrets of Fátima, a series of visions and prophecies given to three young Portuguese shepherds starting on May 13, 1917. Kengor also relayed why the name Fátima is so significant.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Hello, America. Welcome to the Glenn Beck Program. We're back with Dr. Paul Kengor, author of the new book A Pope and A President. John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and The Extraordinary Untold Story of the 21st Century. We started with Ronald Reagan said his best friend was Pope John Paul. They had this incredibly tight relationship. We found out -- and Paul's new book exposes the KGB -- or, I'm sorry, the Soviet plot to go into Poland the day that Ronald Reagan -- you want to talk about divine destiny. The day that Ronald Reagan was shot. And they didn't go in because they knew that the world or America might say, "My gosh, the Soviets shot Reagan, so they could go into Poland." And Al Hague steps up and says, "I'm in charge," and they freaked out about that. So all of these things that we thought were so bad may have actually saved the world from a nuclear winter.

Paul, you were saying there was an even more miraculous side to this?

PAUL: Well, those words divine destiny, Glenn. That's what nails it.

GLENN: Okay.

PAUL: And it's fascinating because Ronald Reagan always believed -- and his mother, his very devout mother had taught him this since he was a little boy, she said, "God has a plan for everything, Ronnie. All the bad things that are going to happen to you, God can bring good out of these bad things, especially if you're faithful."

So he always believed that bad things happened for a good purpose. And I could show you dozens of letters -- Reagan, as far back as the 1960s as governor, writing these nice, sweet letters to a widow who he read about in the newspaper, who lost her husband because he was a policeman and he was shot.

And Reagan would say things like, "I know this is really hard, but God can bring good out of this." It was almost like this divine planned theology that he had.

And so here of all things, could it be that his near-death experience averted the geopolitical catastrophe. And it's possible that it did. And what makes it even more intriguing, Glenn, is that Reagan never knew this. Because what I was told about this from the source in the book -- we call him Jack -- he told -- he shared this about ten years ago. We believe that Bill Casey went over and talked to him about it in Field Station, Berlin. But I don't know that Reagan ever knew that him taking that bullet might well have averted the Soviets from invading Poland.

GLENN: You know, it's interesting because the left likes to make Ronald Reagan into a zealot, when it's to their convenience. But they also will always throw up that he wasn't a religious man. He wasn't -- and he -- I don't -- he doesn't strike me as a religious man. But he strikes me as a very devout man. A big believer in God. And I think his optimism comes from that same belief that I have, that, you know, yes, it could get bad, but it will be great on the other side.

What strikes me as -- as odd, knowing Ronald Reagan, the way history has portrayed him as this irreligious guy, is his fascination with Our Lady of Fatima and Fatima's secrets. First, for anybody who doesn't know that, can you explain what the secrets are, and then Ronald Reagan's connection to them?

PAUL: Sure. One of the reasons I love your show is you're willing to talk about things like this. Most people aren't willing to go here.

But I couldn't ignore it in the book. Look, John Paul II was shot on May 13th, 1981, which every Catholic knows is the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima. And I say very carefully in the book, if you're not Catholic, you're probably going to find this very suspect. You might shrug it off. But you need to understand it because John Paul II was totally motivated by this and Reagan was fascinated by it. But it -- Catholics believe -- and this has been an officially approved miracle and series of apparitions in the Catholic Church. There have been thousands of these claimed over the centuries, and the church has only approved I think less than a dozen of them. But it is the belief that Mary, the blessed mother, appeared in this little Portugal village called Fatima between May 13th, 1981 -- or 1917 and October 13th, 1917.

And amid these appearances, the Lady of Fatima issued three predictions, and one of them was that World War I would end soon. But another war would start not that long after that. So World War II. The second was the rise of communism in Bolshevik, Russia. And keep in mind, that didn't break out until October of 1917, after all of her alleged appearances.

GLENN: Right. And so you also know, these kids were literally kids -- they were seven and eight years old in Portugal. They were not worldly kids. To come home --

PAUL: That's right.

GLENN: You know, a 7-year-old kid and go, oh, and the rise of Bolshevism and Russia is going to play a very big war, you know, geopolitically in the next 80 years. Bolsheviks -- I mean, the revolution hadn't happened yet.

PAUL: I know. Imagine that.

And, by the way, Pope Francis is going to canonize two of them in Portugal this coming May 13th.

GLENN: Wow.

PAUL: So two of the three kids are going to be made saints.

PAT: What's wrong with the third kid?

GLENN: It was -- he had a problem.

PAUL: That's a great question, Pat.

And the third one, her name was Lucia. She lived until 2005. She died just a couple months before John Paul II did. The two youngest children that are going to be canonized, they died within a couple years of these apparitions. And the lady had even said, two of you are going to be leaving here soon. But the other one, you will remain.

And it was Lucia who remained for the entire rest of the century and recorded all of this stuff. So the second secret was the rise of communism in Bolshevik, Russia, spreading errors and persecution against the faithful and the church around the world.

Now, the third secret of Fatima, this was the one that the people in the Catholic church that this predicted Armageddon. This would be the end of the world. You know, this was the apocalypse. Well, it turned out -- and this is really dramatic. But it's true --

GLENN: Hang on just a second. This one was not revealed. This one, I think, was given to the pope, and the pope kept it in the secret archives for a very long time, right?

PAUL: That's right. That's right. They kept it in the archives. And a couple of previous popes -- I think three of them had read it. Decided that the time was not right to release it yet. And then John Paul II when he was shot on May 13th, 1981, then he recovered, and he started thinking to himself, two 13ths of May. Two 13ths of May. And this was somebody who literally devoted his papacy to the intercession of Mary. His papal motto was totus tuis (phonetic), which means totally yours, Mary. Mary was his intercessor to -- to -- to -- for Jesus.

And so he requested to see the third secret. It was brought to him at Janelli (phonetic) Clinic, where he was recovering after the shooting on July 18th, 1981. And he opened it up, and the third secret talked about an attack on a bishop in white. The only bishop that wears white in the Catholic church is the pope.

GLENN: The pope.

PAUL: And in this attack, in this vision, the pope goes down and is apparently killed in this vision. They try to kill him. And with that, he connected the whole thing. He believed that the third secret of Fatima was about him. And thus, that confirmed for him long before it did for Ronald Reagan and Bill Casey, that the Russians were involved. All of this connected for him back to the Russians.

GLENN: Hmm.

PAUL: And -- and after pondering it for a while, he requested to see that third secret. He read it.

And then on the anniversary of Fatima, ten years later, he would actually take the bullet that had been in his body and put it in the crown of Our Lady of Fatima, at the original Fatima site in Portugal.

GLENN: Wow.

PAUL: Now, I know a lot of people, again, if you're not Catholic, you're probably going to think, "I don't know if I can believe that," or whatever. But Ronald Reagan was fascinated by it. And Reagan received the literal full briefing on Fatima from Frank Shakespeare, the second ambassador to the Vatican, before another one-on-one meeting that Reagan had with John Paul II at the Vatican in June 1987.

And Reagan actually went to Portugal -- and I can't believe that no one paid attention to this. But Reagan gave a speech to the Portugal assembly, Congress, May 9th, 1985, where he actually mentioned the children of Fatima, Mary, and John Paul II. It got no publicity. No one reported on it.

GLENN: I will tell you that what is fascinating to me -- and I keep saying this about the Middle East. It doesn't matter if you believe what these people believe.

PAUL: That's right.

GLENN: You need to understand that they believed it. I mean, it motivated Reagan. It motivated John Paul II. It doesn't matter if you believe it. It's the same with the people in Iran and the Middle East that believe in the caliphate and the return of the Twelfth Imam and everything. You could say all that's hogwash. It doesn't matter. It's what's motivating them.

PAUL: Right. That's key. That's what's key for people to understand.

And also, Glenn, here's another entire fascinating component about this: Fatima was the only city in all of Portugal named for the daughter of Muhammad. Muhammad's favorite daughter was Fatima.

GLENN: Wow.

PAUL: And she is the second most revered person in Islam -- or second most revered female in Islam behind only the Virgin Mary. Mary is mentioned in the Koran more times than Jesus is mentioned in the Koran. And so of all things, there is this -- and Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot the pope, was Muslim. A Muslim Turk. And when John Paul II went to meet with Agca to forgive him privately in the jail cell, he said, you know, the thing that Agca was really freaked out about was what Agca kept referring to as this Goddess of Fatima. He was calling her this Goddess of Fatima. And he was afraid that she was going to wreak vengeance on him. You know, strike him with, I don't know, a lightning bolt out of the sky or something.

GLENN: Wow. Wow.

PAUL: Yeah. Yeah. So the Muslim world -- what I'm telling you about Fatima and Mary wouldn't surprise people in the Muslim world. I've got friends who are Coptic Christians in the Middle East. They're not surprised by any of this at all.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

PAUL: This isn't strange for any of them.

PAT: Paul, wasn't there supposed to be some sort of unraveled portion of the third secret of Fatima?

GLENN: Yeah, I thought there was too.

PAT: Wasn't there like a big -- at least a rumor or a belief in the church that there was more to it? And, in fact, didn't -- it seems like Pope Benedict said something like that, that there is no more. Right?

PAUL: That's absolutely right, Pat.

The church spent a lot of time on that. They fully released it here again, May 13th. May 13th, 2000. And the person who at that point who was running the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, which kept all of this stuff locked up for decades, was a cardinal by the name of Joseph Ratzinger, who wrote the whole secret, let it all loose, and later became Pope Benedict the 16th who replaced John Paul II.

GLENN: Amazing.

PAT: And what was it that they thought was there? Do you know? Do you know what it was supposed to be?

PAUL: Well, there was so much -- this sounds odd, but people who wanted the third secret to really be something more, like Armageddon, end times.

PAT: I don't want it to be that.

GLENN: I don't either. But I remember -- I grew up in a Catholic school, and this was before the third secret. And that's what we always believed in.

PAUL: Yeah.

GLENN: In fact, I think it was my belief that they were saying that the pope was going to be killed. Russia was going to have a new rise after the century. And that --

PAUL: Conversion.

GLENN: And the Lord would have to return.

PAUL: Right. Right.

Which some people believe all of that could still be possible, as like a further fulfillment.

GLENN: Sure.

PAUL: But what the third secret says is it predicted this attack on a bishop in white. And so it kind of ends there. And one of the reasons why some Catholics believe that Lucia lived as long as she did is that throughout this process, '80s, '90s, 2000s, all the way up until the release of the third secret, they were in regular communication with her, saying, "Okay. Is this it? Has it been fully revealed?" And she kept saying, "Yes, this is it. It's been fully revealed. This is the end of it."

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: Unbelievable.

The name of the book is called A Pope and A President by Paul Kengor. Make sure you pick it up. Fascinating stuff. And, Paul, it's always great to have you on. You're one of my favorites in history. Thank you so much.

PAUL: Well, thank you so much, guys. Always great to come on.

GLENN: You bet. Paul Kengor. A Pope and A President. I went into the secret archives at the Vatican and I didn't find out how rare that was until I was standing next to the guy who ran the Catholic University and was the head of the university committee that would go and brief the copy. He would have two advisers, one who was the head of the theological university, and the other was the head of the archives. And when I was in the archives for like the first ten minutes, I said, "This is unbelievable." I said, "What is the meaning of this?" And I turned to the guy at the theological school. And he said, "I don't know. I've never been allowed here. I've never been allowed past the first door." Three hours later, we were still going through. It's phenomenal. But it's that kind of thing that makes you -- makes people say, "Well, they got tons of secrets they're hiding. They got all kinds of stuff."

When 'Abolish America' stops being symbolic

Al Drago / Stringer | Getty Images

Prosecutors stopped a New Year’s Eve bombing plot rooted in ideology that treats the US as an enemy to be destroyed.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles announced that four members of an anti-capitalist extremist group were arrested on Friday for plotting coordinated bombings in California on New Year’s Eve.

According to the Department of Justice, the suspects planned to detonate explosives concealed in backpacks at various businesses while also targeting ICE agents and vehicles. The attacks were supposed to coincide with midnight celebrations.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed.

The plot was disrupted before any lives were lost. The group behind the plot calls itself the Turtle Island Liberation Front. That name matters more than you might think.

When ideology turns operational

For years, the media has told us that radical, violent rhetoric on the left is mostly symbolic. They explained away the angry slogans, destructive language, and calls for “liberation” as performance or hyperbole.

Bombs are not metaphors, however.

Once explosives enter the picture, framing the issue as harmless expression becomes much more difficult. What makes this case different is the ideological ecosystem behind it.

The Turtle Island Liberation Front was not a single-issue group. It was anti-American, anti-capitalist, and explicitly revolutionary. Its members viewed the United States as an illegitimate occupying force rather than a sovereign nation. America, in their view, is not a nation, not a country; it is a structure that must be dismantled at any cost.

What ‘Turtle Island’ really means

“Turtle Island” is not an innocent cultural reference. In modern activist usage, it is shorthand for the claim that the United States has no moral or legal right to exist. It reframes the country as stolen land, permanently occupied by an illegitimate society.

Once people accept that premise, the use of violence against their perceived enemies becomes not only permissible, but virtuous. That framing is not unique to one movement. It appears again and again across radical networks that otherwise disagree on nearly everything.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements do not share the same vision for the future. They do not even trust one another. But they share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed. The alignment of radical, hostile ideologies is anything but a coincidence.

The red-green alliance

For decades, analysts have warned about what is often called the red-green alliance: the convergence of far-left revolutionary politics with Islamist movements. The alliance is not based on shared values, but on shared enemies. Capitalism, national sovereignty, Western culture, and constitutional government all fall into that category.

History has shown us how this process works. Revolutionary coalitions form to tear down an existing order, promising liberation and justice. Once power is seized, the alliance fractures, and the most ruthless faction takes control.

Iran’s 1979 revolution followed this exact pattern. Leftist revolutionaries helped topple the shah. Within a few years, tens of thousands of them were imprisoned, executed, or “disappeared” by the Islamist regime they helped install. Those who do not understand history, the saying goes, are doomed to repeat it.

ALEX WROBLEWSKI / Contributor | Getty Images

This moment is different

What happened in California was not a foreign conflict bleeding into the United States or a solitary extremist acting on impulse. It was an organized domestic group, steeped in ideological narratives long validated by universities, activist networks, and the media.

The language that once circulated on campuses and social media is now appearing in criminal indictments. “Liberation” has become a justification for explosives. “Resistance” has become a plan with a date and a time. When groups openly call for the destruction of the United States and then prepare bombs to make it happen, the country has entered a new phase. Pretending things have not gotten worse, that we have not crossed a line as a country, is reckless denial.

Every movement like this depends on confusion. Its supporters insist that calls for America’s destruction are symbolic, even as they stockpile weapons. They denounce violence while preparing for it. They cloak criminal intent in the language of justice and morality. That ambiguity is not accidental. It is deliberate.

The California plot should end the debate over whether these red-green alliances exist. They do. The only question left is whether the country will recognize the pattern before more plots advance farther — and succeed.

This is not about one group, one ideology, or one arrest. It is about a growing coalition that has moved past rhetoric and into action. History leaves no doubt where that path leads. The only uncertainty is whether Americans will step in and stop it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

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The administrative state has long operated as an unelected super-government. Trump v. Slaughter may be the moment voters reclaim authority over their own institutions.

Washington is watching and worrying about a U.S. Supreme Court case that could very well define the future of American self-government. And I don’t say that lightly. At the center of Trump v. Slaughter is a deceptively simple question: Can the president — the one official chosen by the entire nation — remove the administrators and “experts” who wield enormous, unaccountable power inside the executive branch?

This isn’t a technical fight. It’s not a paperwork dispute. It’s a turning point. Because if the answer is no, then the American people no longer control their own government. Elections become ceremonial. The bureaucracy becomes permanent. And the Constitution becomes a suggestion rather than the law of the land.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

That simply cannot be. Justice Neil Gorsuch summed it up perfectly during oral arguments on Monday: “There is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government that’s quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.”

Yet for more than a century, the administrative state has grown like kudzu — quietly, relentlessly, and always in one direction. Today we have a fourth branch of government: unelected, unaccountable, insulated from consequence. Congress hands off lawmaking to agencies. Presidents arrive with agendas, but the bureaucrats remain, and they decide what actually gets done.

If the Supreme Court decides that presidents cannot fire the very people who execute federal power, they are not just rearranging an org chart. The justices are rewriting the structure of the republic. They are confirming what we’ve long feared: Here, the experts rule, not the voters.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

The founders warned us

The men who wrote the Constitution saw this temptation coming. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers hammered home the same principle again and again: Power must remain traceable to the people. They understood human nature far too well. They knew that once administrators are protected from accountability, they will accumulate power endlessly. It is what humans do.

That’s why the Constitution vests the executive power in a single president — someone the entire nation elects and can unelect. They did not want a managerial council. They did not want a permanent priesthood of experts. They wanted responsibility and authority to live in one place so the people could reward or replace it.

So this case will answer a simple question: Do the people still govern this country, or does a protected class of bureaucrats now run the show?

Not-so-expert advice

Look around. The experts insisted they could manage the economy — and produced historic debt and inflation.

The experts insisted they could run public health — and left millions of Americans sick, injured, and dead while avoiding accountability.

The experts insisted they could steer foreign policy — and delivered endless conflict with no measurable benefit to our citizens.

And through it all, they stayed. Untouched, unelected, and utterly unapologetic.

If a president cannot fire these people, then you — the voter — have no ability to change the direction of your own government. You can vote for reform, but you will get the same insiders making the same decisions in the same agencies.

That is not self-government. That is inertia disguised as expertise.

A republic no more?

A monarchy can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A dictatorship can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A constitutional republic cannot. Not for long anyway.

We are supposed to live in a system where the people set the course, Congress writes the laws, and the president carries them out. When agencies write their own rules, judges shield them from oversight, and presidents are forbidden from removing them, we no longer live in that system. We live in something else — something the founders warned us about.

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

Restoring the separation of powers does not mean rejecting expertise. It means returning expertise to its proper role: advisory, not sovereign.

No expert should hold power that voters cannot revoke. No agency should drift beyond the reach of the executive. No bureaucracy should be allowed to grow branches the Constitution never gave it.

The Supreme Court now faces a choice that will shape American life for a generation. It can reinforce the Constitution, or it can allow the administrative state to wander even farther from democratic control.

This case isn’t about President Trump. It isn’t about Rebecca Slaughter, the former Federal Trade Commission official suing to get her job back. It’s about whether elections still mean anything — whether the American people still hold the reins of their own government.

That is what is at stake: not procedure, not technicalities, but the survival of a system built on the revolutionary idea that the citizens — not the experts — are the ones who rule.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn's Show Prep

Historian Paul Kengor Tells Incredible Story About Reagan, Pope John Paul II and the Secrets of Fátima

When 'Abolish America' stops being symbolic

Prosecutors stopped a New Year’s Eve bombing plot rooted in ideology that treats the US as an enemy to be destroyed.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed.

When ideology turns operational

What ‘Turtle Island’ really means

The red-green alliance

This moment is different

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

The administrative state has long operated as an unelected super-government. Trump v. Slaughter may be the moment voters reclaim authority over their own institutions.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

The founders warned us

Not-so-expert advice

A republic no more?

The path forward

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

Choosing death over care

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

The logical end of a broken system

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

How Sharia arrives

The warning from those who have lived under it

America is vulnerable

Wake up before it is too late