Over two decades ago I was driving through the Carolinas listening to a radio interview with a Fundamentalist Chrisitan Minister and the interviewer asked him if he felt that he was violating the separation of church and state because he was known to tell his congregation, from the pulpit, who to vote for in elections. He responded that it was not inappropriate, because he decided that Secular Humanism was a religion, and that it had already taken over his government. I remember thinking that night that if his way of thinking were to catch-on and spread from clergy to clergy, that it would be a threat to our country.
This was an early example of what has been called the age of narcissism – where individuals, through modern media, have opportunity to reach larger audiences than ever before; and if the individual is confident, eloquent, and charismatic enough, they convince their followers that their individual philosophy is rooted in fact, or rooted in scripture, rather than rooted in prejudice, fear and hate.
What I witnessed Saturday morning at Morning Star Fellowship in Quakertown under the banner of “Truth in Love Conference, ISLAM, CHRISTIANITY, AND AMERICA” was yet another example of the age of narcissism.
The guest speaker on Saturday morning was Shahram Hadian, born in Iran to a Muslim family, who immigrated to America, converted to Christianity, and became a pastor. He was delivering a well-thought-out, though intellectually dishonest, personal philosophy, which combines Koranic and Biblical scripture, cherry-picked history, and personal prejudice, into a message skillfully choreographed to fit modern American right-wing politics.
Shahram Hadian is articulate, charismatic, and passionate. He has a message that he delivers as a warning about the imagined destruction of American culture; and the message is that Islam is about world domination – the establishment of a world-wide-Caliphate.
He blends his personal story of exile from the Islamic Republic, with the modern history of Islamic terrorism starting with 9/11. He introduces his personal manifesto, what he calls the “Red/Green Axis.” This, in his conspiratorial mind, is the alliance of the RED (Marxism, Socialism, Communism) and the GREEN (Islam), in order to infiltrate a society and conquer it. He says the Islamists embraced the communists in Iran until they took power; and he says the same is happening in America with politicians like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In the end, he predicts, they only want Sharia law (not true), and that Islam can accept no other religion.
His message matches many MAGA talking points, disinformation and bigotry.
He takes the idea of the white supremacist great replacement theory (the conspiracy that minorities are deliberately being used to outnumber whites in the United State and other Western nations) and re-tools it to focus on birthrates of American Muslims averaging five children, and the rest of America averaging 1.7 children. He emphasized that abortion and the LGBTQ community hurt the birth-rate statistics nationally. He depends on the ignorance of his audience in equating the Nazi Party of Germany, which he called Democratic Socialist, with the Democratic Party in America, which he claims has a socialist agenda. (Something you might hear 100 times a day on Fox News.)
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But the most disturbing thing about his presentation was the ultra-religiosity (and ultra-irony) of condemning Islamic jihad and Sharia law while presenting the Christian equivalent – an obligation to spread the message of Christ everywhere, to hold-the-fort until Jesus comes back; then “all these demonic spirits will be defeated and Christ will win over all.” He criticized interfaith dialogue, suggesting there is “no negotiating with Islam.” He said that the “Christian Church is asleep to the Anti-Christ – Islam.” His audience was more than receptive to his message. This is disturbing on so many levels, exactly how hate, even under a banner of love, has led to so much human suffering.
Needless to say, the loving and peaceful Muslims, amongst the world’s 2.4 billion, were not mentioned, nor were the hate-filled Christians; and the hundreds of years of culture and tolerance in the Islamic Caliphate of Cordoba, and the reign of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, also known for religious tolerance, was not part of his presentation. Also missing was the bloody history of Christianity on the indigenous populations of the Americas and Africa, and the Christian Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews.
For the first time in my life I felt as if I had attended a cult gathering – religion turned to spectacle, entertainment, and political messaging, complete with side-tables offering miniature American flags, copies of the Constitution compliments of Hillsdale College, and representatives from Turning Point USA, available to answer any questions. And for the first time in my life, I fear its ability to metastasize, because Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, two heart beats away from the presidency, and Secretary of Defense/War, Pete Hegseth, are actively pushing a Christian Nationalist agenda onto our military and civilian population, and openly embrace un-constitutional messaging they are sworn to oppose.
This “truth in love” gathering was only missing two ingredients: truth and love. But it was certainly an echo of the man who wants to send the people of the Islamic Republic “back to the stone age, where they belong.”
