Talking with Michael Youssef on the Left-Islamist alliance

Egyptian-born Michael Youssef is possibly the Moore College graduate with the widest global reach. He heads Leading The Way, which has a focus on reaching Muslims in the Middle East for Christ. He is concerned about Islamist influence in the West.
Youseff is in Sydney for a short visit and spoke to The Other Cheek.

THE OTHER CHEEK I think we agree there is a longstanding link between post-Marxist lefties and many of the Islamists. To my mind, based upon their pursuit of the tactics of the FLN, who won in Algeria, but Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and now the Iranians don’t appear to be able to win the way the FLN did.

MICHAEL YOUSSEF: Well, FLN was really a national celebration movement. They wanted to be freed from colonial French colonialism. It wasn’t necessarily fought under the banner of Islam, more of a banner of Arabism and the wanting to be free from the French shackles.
But the current invasion of Western civilisation by Islam or Islamism or Islamists is really a whole different kettle of fish because it is really cooked and organised by a group of the Muslim Brotherhood in Qatar, led by a man called Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who’s dead now. But he was kicked out of Egypt from the Muslim Brotherhood organisation. And the third Jihad, I mean, has been for the last 30 years; they’ve been operating on a schedule. This is how we’re going to invade England. This is how we’re going to invade Australia. This is how we’re going to invade America. And they followed the procedure. They followed the plan that they released 30-plus years ago, which I’ve seen in meticulous detail.

And now Islamists represent what 20% or so of all Muslims, but as I said, often, that not all Muslims are Islamists, but all Islamists are Muslims. And I explained in my book, Unholy Alliance, the difference between Medina Muslims and Mecca Muslims. And therefore, it is very important to understand when you have people in the streets of Sydney and Melbourne talking about gas, the Jews, they’re not really … Well, Israel is always a canary in the coal mine, but in reality, that’s a stop on the way to taking over Western civilisation.

That is really the plan. This is the strategy. And if you remember in 2015, when they beheaded 21 Christian Egyptians on the Mediterranean Sea in Libya, and they said, “Let the blood flow into the Vatican because we are coming and taking over the Vatican.” That is really the heart and soul of the modern-day Islamist invasion. They call it Jihad, but in some stages, it’s not quite stealth. They openly speak about it. They’re running candidates for office, from mayor to city council, to school boards, to basically parliament, state, and federal, and in the US, running Congress members for office. And so all of that is basically the collusion between the Marxists and the Islamist, because they have one common aim, and that is the destruction of Western civilisation as we know it

We had, in the 1940s, a very powerful communist party in Australia; we had a referendum: should we ban the Communist Party in the late 40s. And the outcome from that referendum was that Australia decided not to ban the Communist Party and to use the normal means of democracy to not adopt a Marxist future for this country. And that worked. So my argument would be that possibly the same response to the people you’re talking about, Islamists, should be the same to use the normal virtues of democracy as we have in the past to defeat ideologies that would seek to dominate.

Right. That would be great. I think that will be wonderful if it works. The problem is that communism is an economic theory. As I told the Reagan administration, back in the 80s, I was there talking to the Reagan people in the early 80s. I said that as President Reagan wanted to defeat the evil empire. I couldn’t agree more. Absolutely, yes. But the problem that they did not understand then, and they’re beginning to understand now, I said that Islamisation is not like communism. Communism is an economic theory. When it fails, people are going to basically bury it, but the reward and the award for the Islamists is beyond this life in paradise with 70 virgins and all that stuff. And therefore, they have the inherent motivation of killing because that’s going to take them to paradise. And that is the distinction between them and the communists. And that is why whenever they get into collusion together, like they did in the 50s with Nasser and Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood, one has got to destroy the other.

Nasser was clever enough by 1954, he basically put them all in prison, killed the leaders, others escaped, and it just went along until Sadat came. He released them, and then the cycle continued. In Iran, it was the lefties who basically led the revolution, not Khomeini. Khomeini was in Paris.

And so you have the collusion between the leftists and the Islamic clergy, but Khomeini learned from Nasser’s lesson. So he’s the one, within 12 months, beheaded and killed all the lefties who were the prime minister and the foreign minister, all the articulate English-speaking guys on television night after night. He got rid of them, he destroyed the left and ruled Supreme for 49 years. And so that is something that unless we in the West wake up to, we could repeat that tragedy.

The other thing is that always, check me on this, historically, whether from the rise of Islam and invading of Christian North Africa or the Ottoman Empire going all the way to Vienna, always when the church is weak, Islam rises and they always rise and grow and become strong on the rebels of the failure of Christian church to stand up and be strong, preach the gospel, proclaim the truth, and be unafraid.

It’s always the case.

Let me enthusiastically agree with you that the church being strong is the key to strong, free societies. I certainly believe that very strongly. Let me circle back to your comment about Australia, and you mentioned the “Gas the Jews” demonstration, which was on October 9th, 2023, outside the Sydney Opera House. What people often fail to realise is the reason that about a thousand, it was a small demonstration, about a thousand people gathered there in protest at what? The Opera House was lit in blue and white in support of Israel, which had just suffered the October seven massacre. So that’s the context for a small group of Islamists.

Sure. I’m aware of that.

You’re very well read.

Israel had not invaded Gaza yet. [Hamas] did murder babies and women and rape women of 1,200 in Kibbiutzim. And here’s the funny part. These were the liberal Jews who supported the Palestinians.

One of the great ironies of war, I take that. The difficulty, I think, for the pro-Israel side in this country is that Australians support the underdog. And for the beginning of that war, Israel was the underdog. They had suffered a huge massacre, but as the number of Gazans dying in that war rose, and let’s take the IDF figures, the IDF has now agreed that about 70,000 Gazans died in that war, and the ratio of civilians to Hermas fighters is disputed, but it’s either one to one or maybe one to one and a half. That’s a lot of Gazan children, for example, who died. And I think that’s one of the problems for the pro-Israel side.

John, you’re missing something very important here. It was the Hamas people and the leaders in Gaza who put bombs and guns in the tunnels under schools, under mosques and under hospitals deliberately. So leaders who have betrayed them, not Israel. Israel had to get to those weapons, had to get to those bombs, had to get to those tunnels, and therefore … And I’m not an apologist for Israel, trust me, I just want to stand for the truth. And the truth is, the [Israelis] never initiated a war. 48 was initiated, and the Israelis never initiated the war. In 48, it was the Arabs who initiated a war. And in 67, I lived that … I was there. It was Nasser who started the war. In 73, Sadat went to surprise the war. So every war in the Middle East was started by an attack from the Arabs.

Certainly. And you can read the Hamas attack on October 7th as one of the most foolish attacks ever. It’s led to their defeat, the defeat of Hezbollah, and now look at what’s happening to their supporters in Iran. But the point I’m making is that for Australians, we do love the underdog. So we support the Iranian women’s football team and many people, 200,000 people marched across the harbour bridge protesting the amount of death in Gaza. That is a difficulty for rallying people against the Islamists because people see problems with the Israeli side, too.

Well, I’m sure Israel is not perfect … I mean, I’ve never really blindly defended Israel, but I’m just saying we’ll always focus on the truth. And the truth is that they did not initiate this. They did in self-defence, but the Islamic ideologies funded by the Qataris and many other Arab countries and the Iranians, they’re the ones who are basically saying, “We’re going to kill the Jews. We’re going to kill the Americans. We’re going to dominate the world and renew Jihad.” The third Jihad, they failed twice in the 600s and in the 1400s. Now they said it’s our chance, but we’re going to do that by birth rate and petrodollar investment. And they’ve taken over England, literally. I mean, they own Harrods, they own Barclays Bank, so many institutions, and therefore the Labour government in England was basically almost forced to side strictly with the Muslim side and defend the Muslims.

How can you defend terrorism? But anyway, this is the illogical part that has taken place in Western leftist governments, whether it be in Canada, Australia, or England.

[Youssef had to rush to his new appointment.]

Will, it’s so good to talk to you, John.

Yeah. Yeah. Good to talk to you. Are you in Australia for very long?

No, two more days.

I’ll be doing a sky interview on Sunday, and I’m with John Anderson tomorrow, and then I’m heading out.

Okay. Well, I’m so glad you’ve been able to come home to Sydney.

Thank you, brother. Yeah. Oh yeah, we love this place. Yeah. We’ll always be coming back.

Image: Michael Youssef. Image Credit: Michael Youssef Facebook.

An Unholy Alliance: How Progressivism Brought about an Islamist Invasion

Michael Youssef

Published March 24

Available for pre-order on Amazon