Hegseth’s anti-Islam rhetoric raises questions about fitness for military post
Book review: ‘American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free’ by Pete Hegseth, ★☆☆☆☆
If Pete Hegseth’s nomination as President Trump’s secretary of Defense falters, it most likely will be because of concerns over his alcohol use and/or findings related to a 2017 rape allegation. But Hegseth’s socio-religious views, which might best described as an aggressive form of Christian nationalism, should be just as troubling.
At least as he outlined in his 2020 book, American Crusade: Our Right to Stay Free, Hegseth sees the United States as potentially the key defender of Christianity in a war against what he calls Islamism. While he says he isn’t advocating for a violent advance against Islamism, he seems to accept the possibility, if not the desirability, of than nothing less than a repeat of the medieval Crusades, and thus the title of the book.
While Hegseth doesn’t defend the excesses of the Crusades, he frequently praises what the Crusaders accomplished:
By the eleventh century, Christianity in the Mediterranean region, including the holy sites in Jerusalem, was so besieged by Islam that Christians had a stark choice: to wage defensive war or continue to allow Islam’s expansion and face existential war at home in Europe. The leftists of today would have argued for “diplomacy,” sending Sir John Kerry to Jerusalem to broker peace by playing guitar with James Taylor. We know how that would have turned out.1 The pope, the Catholic Church, and European Christians chose to fight — and the crusades were born. Pope Urban II urged the faithful to fight the Muslims with his famous battle cry on their lips: “Deus vult!,”2 or “God wills it!” The moment required followers of Christ to take up the sword in defense of their faith, their families, and their freedom. After centuries of fighting, the tide turned. Christianity in Europe was saved, Jerusalem was liberated, and Christians did not seek further war with Muslims.
At times, Hegseth seems to be itching for a fight:
Next to the communist Chinese and their global ambitions, Islamism is the most dangerous threat to freedom in the world. It cannot be negotiated with, coexisted with, or understood; it must be exposed, marginalized, and crushed. Just like the Christian crusaders who pushed back the Muslim hordes in the twelfth century, American Crusaders will need to muster the same courage against Islamists today.
The problem, as Hegseth sees it, is that the founder of Islam, Muhammed, “was the polar opposite of Jesus.” He calls Muhammed “a warrior through and through”; as a result, “Islam never needed an army, because Islam is an army.”
Hegseth strains at times to note that there are peaceful Muslims, and that many of them lead exemplary lives. But they do that, he cautions, only by “disregarding intolerant quranic passages.”3 As as result, he warns, there is reason to be concerned about the growth of Muslim communities in the United States:
In November 2019, twenty-six Muslim candidates won elected office in the United States. Muhammad is now a top ten boys’ name in America — what will it be in 2030?
Although Hegseth says little about Islam until the final chapters of the book, he structures the book in such a way that it forms the book’s climax. The book is mostly a repetitive diatribe against leftists, and they’re the ones who are reinforcing the threat of Islamism.
Hegseth attacks “isms” that have become targets of the religious right: using his words, they are leftism, globalism, genderism, socialism, secularism, environmentalism, elitism and multiculturalism. And what the people who hold these beliefs have in common is that they are “zero percent Americans” — and, often, they support the Islamist agenda either openly or unwittingly.
If you’re looking for something new in religious-right propaganda other than Hegseth’s views on Islam, you won’t find them here. Following the doctrines of Christian nationalism, he grossly exaggerates the role that Christianity played in the founding of the United States. And his attacks on Democrats are frequently of the straw man variety: He looks for the most extreme statements he can find from the left and claims that they are typical of Democrats and liberal influencers. If there’s any good that the left has to offer, Hegseth doesn’t see it at all: “Only the categorical defeat of the left will secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity.”
And he’s not shy about proclaiming himself the expert in much the same way that his mentor Trump does: “I’m no theologian,” he admits, “but I’d argue that I know more about the Bible than your average Ivy League religious studies professor.”
A reading of this book raises at least two immediate questions about what kind of secretary of Defense Hegseth would be:
Is he so blinded by his animus toward Islam that he would encourage an unnecessary war?
Is his level of hate toward those who disagree with him so overwhelming that he wouldn’t flinch at a presidential command to use the armed forces domestically against “zero percent Americans”?
This book was written to support the 2020 candidacy of Donald Trump as president. It also could be used to wage a fight against Pete Hegseth’s 2024-25 campaign to become the next Defense secretary.
Cheap personal attacks like these are scattered throughout the book.
Hegseth has a prominent tattoo on his right arm featuring this Latin phrase. They are also the final two words in this book, signaling the admiration he holds for the Crusades.
Hegseth acknowledges the use of divinely ordained violence in the Christian Old Testament but dismisses it because of the teachings of the New Testament.