It is an unchallengeable dogma of our post-9/11 civic faith that every Muslim in the United States, from the leaders of national Muslim organizations to the rank-and-file believers in the serried ranks of worshipers at mosques around the country, is a “moderate.” Everyone assumes that Muslims in the U.S. all reject terrorism and violence as a twisting and hijacking of their peaceful faith, and that only racist, bigoted “Islamophobes” would dare suggest that the gentle soul in the next cubicle at work or who runs the store down the street could possibly harbor anything but love for his non-Muslim neighbors.
And so what, then, does the imam Ragab Abdelmoneim, who recently called for Muslims in the United States to be willing to sacrifice their blood for the sake of Allah, have in mind?
An imam in Alabama, Ragab Abdelmoneim of the Islamic Academy of Huntsville, openly told his audience that Muslims must be ready to sacrifice their lives through jihad in order to establish “the religion of Allah” in the United States.
— Yossi BenYakar (@YossiBenYakar) June 25, 2026
He claimed that victory over America is… pic.twitter.com/Jtb5NcaKBl
Ragab Abdelmoneim is not some wild-eyed fanatic screaming obscenities on a streetcorner. On the contrary, he is a prominent, respected member of the Muslim community in the U.S. today. Alabama’s 1819 News reported recently that he is “now the Imam and ‘Resident Scholar’ at the Islamic Center of Maryland.” An Alabama publication is reporting on him because before he moved to Maryland, he served as an imam at the Islamic Academy in Huntsville, Ala., and was also a “part-time lecturer at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).”
In Huntsville, Abdelmoneim was the Islamic Academy’s “first full-time imam,” and he was an excellent choice for this distinction, as he has an impeccable educational background. He “began his religious career as a cleric at the Liverpool Islamic Academy in 2009. In 2013, after teaching and graduating from Al Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, Abdelmoneim relocated to the academy in Huntsville.”
To graduate from Al-Azhar is like graduating from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. It is the most respected institution in Sunni Islam. And yet Ragab Abdelmoneim does not seem to be interested in presenting a moderate face to non-Muslims in America. “In a now widely circulated video on social media,” according to 1819 News, “Abdelmoneim called for Muslims to expand Sharia law by any means necessary, including through bloodshed.”
Abdelmoneim said: “We need to… have some people to love their religion and to sacrifice for their religion, sacrifice their money and their blood and their wealth for the sake of Allah.”
It’s easy to understand what Abdelmoneim meant when he said that Muslims should be willing to sacrifice their money and wealth for the sake of Allah. Every religion takes up collections, and the Qur’an exhorts Muslims to “spend your wealth for the sake of Allah” (2:195).
But what does Abdelmoneim mean when he calls upon Muslims to sacrifice their blood? Is he envisioning some nightmare scenario in which “Islamophobes” are murdering Muslims wholesale? That’s fanciful to the point of being completely unbelievable.
Also, Abdelmoneim most certainly knows that the Qur’an calls upon Muslims to “kill them wherever you find them” (2:191, 4:89, 4:91, cf. 9:5), and makes it clear that Allah favors those who fight unbelievers over those who do not do so: “Those of the believers who sit still, other than those who have an injury, are not equal with those who wage jihad in the way of Allah with their wealth and lives. Allah has conferred on those who wage jihad with their wealth and lives a rank above the sedentary. Allah has promised good to each, but he has bestowed on those who wage jihad a great reward above that of the sedentary, degrees of rank from him, and forgiveness and mercy. Allah is always forgiving, merciful.” (Qur’an 4:95-6)
Related: Mamdani Gives 250th Anniversary Speech, and Boy, Does This Guy Hate America
Whatever he means, Abdelmoneim is worried about “Islamophobes” supposedly spreading falsehoods about Islam: “Corrupt and wicked politicians, leaders, and officials,” he claimed, “they propagate and perpetuate this kind of hatred in their discourse, in their rhetoric, in their communication in the media, just to demonize and to put people down and to stigmatize Muslims and minorities.”
As a result of the spreading of this hatred, he said, many Americans were suspicious of Islam: “The [American people] developed a lot of attitudes, including hatred, animosity, against the Muslim Ummah, against the community, and against Islam itself…You can see what happened to our brothers and sisters in Dallas. They have a project, and they have a lot of challenges, legal challenges, because it will be the Sharia area.”
And so he exhorted Muslims to fight back: “Allah told us about how to protect yourselves from their thinking, how to expose their plans and their plotting, how to be against them and stand against those people.” All right. If Abdelmoneim really wants to expose the alleged “plotting” of these “corrupt and wicked politicians, leaders, and officials,” he could start by apologizing, clarifying what he meant about Muslims sacrificing their blood, and calling upon Muslims in this country to renounce — sincerely — terrorism and any effort, violent or stealthy, to bring Sharia to this land. But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
Editor's Note: It’s America’s 250th birthday! Help PJ Media celebrate the greatest nation in history by honoring its past, defending its present, and preserving its future with reporting you can trust.
Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code AMERICA250 to receive 74% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member