David Vance SubstackRead More
This is an important guest post by my friend Nasir who was born in Afghanistan.
“I grew up in a place where fear wasn’t something you noticed — it was simply there, all the time. It settled into daily life. Streets that should have felt ordinary felt dangerous. People disappeared quietly. Houses were left behind, one after another, until no one needed explanations anymore. Everyone understood: violence wasn’t random. It had a pattern. It had a purpose. It was the language of Islamists and jihadists. In that kind of world, survival meant learning how to read faces, pauses, and the weight of silence.
Years later, I recognized that same way of thinking when I saw it appear in Western countries. Islamists and jihadists didn’t arrive with curiosity or a desire to belong. They did not come to adapt or to meet society halfway. Outsiders were never equals. Women and children were not individuals. They were categories — obstacles, tools, sometimes targets. Your laws carried no meaning because they were not divine. Your freedoms were dismissed as corruption. What you had built over generations became, to them, something to be used. And they did so calmly, confidently, without shame or hesitation.
They are not interested in your culture. Your art, your books, your music — these things do not move them. What matters is what can be taken: education, opportunity, and room to push their ideology forward. Their children sit in European classrooms, learning math and science at public expense, while parents back in Afghanistan pay clerics to teach them Sharia online. Western knowledge is useful. Western values are disposable.
When you see them praying in public spaces, it is a mistake to see it only as private devotion. It is also a signal. A quiet assertion that your rules do not fully apply here. This is not accidental, and it is not unfamiliar.
Under Islamic Sharia, even friendship with Jews or Christians is forbidden, and those who form such relationships are warned of hell. So it is worth asking, honestly and without illusion: when Islamists and jihadists settle in your cities, where does their loyalty lie? With the society that gives them shelter — or with an ideology that demands loyalty above all else?
Silence is their greatest ally. Every moment of hesitation, every excuse, every decision to look away gives them space. Standing firm is not about anger or revenge. It is about survival. It means protecting your community, speaking plainly, and setting clear boundaries. Doing nothing is not neutrality. It is permission.
Islamists and jihadists did not come to build alongside you. They came to dominate. They move into schools, streets, and neighborhoods to take what they can. They exploit your freedoms, undermine your laws, and reject your values. Pretending this is not happening solves nothing. You have to see them clearly, question them openly, and defend the society you live in.
History will remember who stood their ground — and who chose comfort over clarity. Every pause, every justification, every silence makes them stronger. You do not need to answer hatred with hatred, but you cannot pretend it does not exist. Silence sustains them. Courage — quiet, steady, and honest — is what stops them. See clearly. Speak clearly. Act clearly. That is the difference between letting this ideology grow and refusing to let it take root.
