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How Politicians, Profiteers, and Foreign Governments Are Playing You

 

You’re not wrong to be angry about Islam. You’re just angry at the wrong people.

I know that’s not what you expected to read. You clicked on this because the title confirmed something you already believed — that something about Islam isn’t right, that someone’s running a game, that you’re being played. You’re correct on all three counts. You’re just wrong about who’s doing the playing.

My name is James Coates. I’m a white American, born Catholic, raised in Illinois. I served as a Joint Drugs Enforcement Team operative for the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations and later an undercover counterterrorism operative for the FBI. In 2004, when I learned that members of an Islamic group I was embedded with were plotting to travel to Iraq and join Al-Qaida’s insurgency against American forces, I acted on it. I wore a wire to their weekly meetings. I ran firearms training at their jihad camp while federal agents watched from the treeline and snipers held positions in the surrounding woods. I did this for two years. When it was over, all four men were convicted. The media called them the “Houston Taliban.”

I am also a published author and expert on Islam who trained officers at the Houston Police Academy on Islamic extremism in America. I have spent decades studying its theology, its legal traditions, its internal fractures, and the way it is exploited by people on every side. I have written publicly about the tribalism in Muslim communities, the ethnic hierarchies, the organisational cowardice that refuses to confront radicalism when it surfaces in their own ranks. I have named these problems and paid for naming them. If you want someone who will tell you everything is fine, you’re reading the wrong article.

But I didn’t write this to tell you what’s wrong with Muslims. I wrote this because your anger — which is real, and in many cases justified — is being exploited by people you haven’t identified yet, for purposes that have nothing to do with your safety or your country. Someone is profiting, and they need you never to find out who.

Let me show you.

 

The Industry

There is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States whose product is your anger toward Muslims. It has an organisational structure, a revenue model, donor networks, legislative infrastructure, and a well-documented track record. It is not a conspiracy theory. It is conspiracy fact. The financial trail is public record for anyone who cares to look. Mainstream American charities have been caught unknowingly funneling millions of dollars to counter-Islam advocacy groups through a financial mechanism called donor-advised funds, which allow wealthy donors to give anonymously through reputable institutions. The money flows from names you’d recognise — household charitable foundations — into organisations you’ve never looked into, run by people who’ve made careers out of your concern. The only people who haven’t told you about it are the people cashing the cheques.

Between 2014 and 2016 alone, auditors identified 1,096 charitable organisations funneling money to 39 counter-Islam groups, with a combined revenue capacity of at least $1.5 billion. Since 2010, over 230 counter-Islam, Muslim ban and counter-sharia bills have been introduced or enacted in state legislatures across the country. This isn’t grassroots concern. This is an industry.

The ecosystem has clearly defined roles. ACT for America — the largest counter-Islam organisation in the country, with chapters in every state and a direct pipeline to legislators — provides the grassroots muscle. The Center for Security Policy serves as the think tank, churning out reports raising the spectre of Shariah law. The David Horowitz Freedom Center operates as the content factory, publishing FrontPage Magazine and funding Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch blog. Spencer has been barred from entering the United Kingdom for his views. In my decades of studying Islam, I can tell you that much of what he publishes wouldn’t survive five minutes of scrutiny from anyone who’s actually done the fieldwork. But accuracy was never the point. Outrage was.

The funding flows through channels designed for anonymity. Mainstream charitable foundations — commercial, community, and religious organisations — have been exploited as vehicles for funneling anonymous donations from wealthy donors into this network. A donor gives to a credible institution through a donor-advised fund, and that money quietly is siphoned away to organisations whose entire business model depends on keeping the outrage machine running.

And then there’s the political infrastructure. On December 18, 2025, Representatives Chip Roy and Keith Self launched the Sharia Free America Caucus. It now claims 47 members from 22 states, including the House Majority Whip. The caucus has introduced seven bills. The Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act would make advocacy for Shariah law grounds for deportation. Another bill would give Congress the power to designate organisations as terrorist groups through legislation — not through courts, not through evidence, but through a vote.

If that doesn’t concern you, it should. The Patriot Act was sold as a tool to fight Al-Qaida. It was used to surveil American citizens. The TSA was sold as airport security. It became a permanent bureaucracy that hasn’t caught a single terrorist. Every expansion of government power gets sold on the target you agree with and used on the target you didn’t see coming. That’s not a left-wing talking point. That’s American history. Politicians prey on our concerns, stoking fear. Organisations profit off of our concern. And we find that the freedoms we enjoy become less and less over time.

Here’s what none of these 47 members will tell you: every one of those seven bills is a fundraising engine. Every press release generates donor emails. Every media hit drives campaign contributions. They aren’t solving a problem. They’re fundraising off one. And the last thing any of them want is for the issue to actually get resolved — because the moment it does, the donations stop.

You may already be familiar with what the members of this caucus say when they think you’re on their side.

Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee — whose district includes over 40,000 Muslim Americans — posted on X: “Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie.” That post received 2.6 million views. The next day he wrote: “Paperwork doesn’t magically make you American. Muslims are unable to assimilate; they all have to go back.” When challenged, his response was: “My comments wouldn’t even be a news story if I had said this about Christians. Cry harder. Christ is King.”

Representative Randy Fine of Florida posted: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” That post received 45.6 million views. Forty-five million. When asked about Ogles’s comments, House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to condemn them, saying there’s “a lot of popular sentiment that the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem” — validating the lie while pretending to distance himself from its language.

Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project and former Chief Counsel for Nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee — a man with 475,000 followers and direct access to power — posted a timeline of what he imagines a Muslim’s evening looks like: “6 pm: pray to their pedophile god. 7 pm: eat on the floor like dogs. 8 pm: like posts of Jewish women and their babies getting raped and slaughtered. 9 pm: build dirty bombs. 10 pm: pray to their pedophile god.”

Conservative commentator Benny Johnson, with over 2.5 million followers, posted: “A Muslim flag was raised at Newark City Hall as people chanted ‘Allahu Akbar.’ Mamdani sat on the floor and ate with his hands at New York City Hall. This isn’t assimilation. This is takeover.” That post received 215,000 views. Here’s what Johnson left out: the Newark flag raising was part of New Jersey’s official Muslim Heritage Month, enacted through bipartisan state law in 2022. The US flag flew alongside it, as required by state law. “Allahu Akbar” translates to “God is great.” Sitting on the floor to eat is a cultural tradition older than the United States. Johnson stripped the context, manufactured a threat, and a quarter of a million people absorbed it without checking a single fact. That’s not journalism. That’s a business model.

The popular account Libs of TikTok described a man performing the tawhid gesture — a raised index finger signifying monotheism, used in every daily prayer by every Muslim on earth — as “a Muslim doing the ISIS symbol.” That post received 426,000 views. Major international news outlets have had to issue formal corrections and apologies for making the same false claim. The gesture predates ISIS by fourteen centuries. But 426,000 people now associate a prayer gesture with terrorism, because an account with millions of followers told them to.

Political commentator Stacy Ruth declared: “Buddhism is a religion. Hinduism is a religion. Judaism is a religion. Christianity is a religion. Islam is a political ideology masquerading as a religion.” Representative Mary Miller said she was “proud to stand firmly against this radical ideology that seeks to uproot the constitutional principles and Christian values on which our nation was founded.”

These aren’t backbenchers. These are powerful voices with audiences in the tens of millions. But ask yourself — what has any of them actually done about the problem they keep telling you exists? Have any of those seven bills passed? Has a single one of those posts made your community safer? Or did they just make someone’s follower count bigger and someone’s campaign fund fatter? The question isn’t whether they believe what they’re saying. The question is who else benefits when they say it.

You thought you were forming your own opinion. You were consuming a product. And the product is our anger.

 

The Foreign Hand

Before I continue, I need to make a distinction that the people profiting from this deliberately blur, because keeping it blurred protects them from scrutiny.

Some of the most devout Jewish communities in the world — groups like Neturei Karta, the Satmar Hasidim, True Torah Jews — have opposed Zionism on religious grounds since the ideology was founded in the 1890s. They argue that it hijacked Jewish identity for a political project that had no basis in Jewish theology before the nineteenth century. For this, they are called self-hating Jews. They are told they are not real Jews. They are marginalised, smeared, and shut out — by the very apparatus that claims to speak for all Jews everywhere. Ask yourself why. These communities don’t raise money for Israel. They don’t lobby Congress. They don’t fit the model. And when the most religiously observant Jews on the planet tell you that the Israeli government doesn’t represent them or their faith, and get attacked for saying it, that should tell you everything about the operation I’m about to describe. What follows is about the Israeli government’s cash cow, its lobbying apparatus, and where our money is going.

The Israeli government spends enormous sums to shape how we think about Muslims. In 2025, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed a $6 million contract with the US-based firm Clock Tower X LLC to produce digital content and influence how artificial intelligence systems — including tools like ChatGPT — respond to topics involving Israel. The 2025 budget allocated an additional $150 million to the Foreign Ministry for influence operations — a twenty-fold increase over previous years. These funds target American college campuses, social media platforms, and international media.

Then there’s TikTok. In September 2025, Netanyahu sat down with a group of American influencers at Israel’s Consulate General in New York — and the meeting was recorded. His words were not ambiguous. He called social media “the most important weapon to secure our base in the US.” He identified the TikTok sale as “the most important purchase going on right now. Number one. Number one.” He then said of Elon Musk and X: “We have to talk to Elon. He’s not an enemy, he’s a friend. If we can get these two things, we will get a lot.”

Days later, the TikTok deal went through. The US operations were transferred to a consortium led by Oracle, whose co-founder Larry Ellison is a longtime Netanyahu ally and major donor to the Israeli military. Ellison has hosted Netanyahu on his private island. The consortium includes Rupert Murdoch and Michael Dell — Dell posted a photo with the Israeli president captioned “It’s an honor to stand with Israel” and is a major donor to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.

A foreign head of state went on camera, called our social media platforms weapons, celebrated their purchase by his allies, and told a room full of influencers that controlling these platforms would allow Israel to “get a lot.” Again, that’s not a conspiracy theory. That is a PsyOp by a foreign government on our minds.

The strategic logic is straightforward. Our concern about Islam serves Israeli foreign policy by reframing the conflict as civilisational — the West versus Islam — rather than what it actually is: a political conflict over occupation, dispossession, and the rights of the Palestinian Arabs. The more focused we are on Islam as a threat at home, worrying about what our neighbour is up to, the less likely we are to question what is being done with our tax money overseas.

And it is our money. The United States has provided Israel with over $317 billion in US taxpayer funded aid since 1951, adjusted for inflation, making it the largest cumulative recipient of American foreign aid since World War II. In the two years since October 2023 alone, the US has spent $21.7 billion in direct military aid to Israel, with an additional $9 to $12 billion on related military operations in the region. The Israeli Defense Ministry confirmed that since October 2023, the United States delivered ninety thousand tons of arms and equipment on eight hundred transport planes and one hundred and forty ships.

Israel receives its annual aid in the first thirty days of the fiscal year — no other country gets this treatment. Unlike any other recipient, Israel is not required to account for how it spends US aid, including on settlements that violate stated US policy. Meanwhile, Israel maintains free universal healthcare and free education for its citizens. We are subsidising another country’s social safety net while our own crumbles, and the people telling us to be angry about Muslims are making sure we never connect those dots.

Ask yourself why the conversation is always steered toward Islam and never toward the cheque our government writes every year. Someone doesn’t want us connecting those dots.

The same infrastructure extends into technology — and this is where it comes home. The tech companies taking billions in defence contracts with Israel, paid for by our tax dollars, are the same ones building the surveillance systems being deployed on American soil. Google’s $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract provides cloud and AI services to the Israeli military. Microsoft’s Azure powers Israeli government operations. Amazon Web Services enables intelligence gathering overseas. These are the same companies providing facial recognition to American police departments, predictive policing algorithms to American cities, and cloud infrastructure to American intelligence agencies. The technology gets tested on someone else’s population, AI designed for warfare, and then deployed on ours. If you think the AI tools being built for foreign military operations won’t eventually be pointed at American citizens, you haven’t been paying attention to how this works. It’s already coming home while we are distracted by the political sleight of hand of our politicians.

Our tax dollars fund the bombs. Our anger provides the political cover. And the people telling us to be angry about Muslims are the same people making sure we never ask why. The road to truth always lies at the end of a money trail.

 

The Intel

Now let’s look at some of the claims we’ve all heard repeated. Some of them don’t hold up when you check the source.

Shariah is one of the most misunderstood words in this debate. There is no single book of Shariah — you cannot walk into a bookshop and buy one, the way you can buy a Bible or a Qur’an. There are books about Shariah, and there are law books in Muslim-majority countries that reflect local cultural norms — sometimes with an Islamic flavour. But that’s no different from Western nations whose laws carry a Christian influence without being based on the Bible, or Israel, where Jewish identity shapes the state but not every law of the Torah is practised. Shariah is not a legal code waiting to be imposed. It’s a tradition of thinking that different countries apply differently — or not at all. Shariah is a science of interpretation practised across five major schools of thought, each reaching different conclusions on issues ranging from prayer posture to commercial law. Over ninety percent of Shariah has nothing to do with criminal law. It covers prayer, fasting, charity, personal hygiene, inheritance, and business ethics. When politicians ban Shariah, they won’t be banning a book — they will be banning a way of thinking. And once the government can ban one way of thinking, yours is next.

Shariah courts in Western countries — including the United States and United Kingdom — operate identically to Jewish Halakha courts, known as Beth Din. Both handle civil matters on an opt-in basis: divorce, inheritance, contract disputes. Neither imposes religious law on non-adherents. Neither has jurisdiction over criminal matters. The Beth Din system has operated in America for decades without a single “Ban the Beth Din” bill. The forty-seven members of the Sharia Free America Caucus could not define what they are trying to ban — and have never proposed banning its Jewish equivalent. The inconsistency tells you everything about who’s running the game.

In fact, Israel itself — the country our tax dollars subsidise to the tune of $317 billion to expand, operate influence campaigns against us — operates Shariah courts for its Muslim citizens, handling matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The politicians who vote to send that money to a country with Shariah courts are the same ones telling you that Shariah in America is an existential threat. Let that sink in.

The claim that Muhammad was a pedophile is a commonly debunked claim Mike Davis recently shared with 475,000 followers. It is built on a single hadith — a recorded oral tradition written down two to three centuries after the events it describes. What no one sharing this claim tells you is that the hadith literature contains multiple contradictory accounts, and the weight of the evidence — drawn from independent chronological records, biographical sources, and battlefield participation logs that prohibited anyone under fifteen from military expeditions — places Aisha in her late teens to early twenties at the time of marriage. The single account claiming she was nine requires ignoring all of it. No contemporary of the Prophet — not even his bitterest enemies, who accused him of everything from insanity to sorcery — ever accused him of marrying a girl too young. Meanwhile, US state laws as recently as today permit marriages as young as twelve with parental consent. Before condemning seventh-century Arabia, examine your own legal codes. The person who told you this was counting on you never looking it up.

Halal slaughter requires that an animal be humanely raised throughout its life, removed from the sight of other animals before slaughter, and killed with a single clean cut to the jugular using a razor-sharp knife, with a short prayer said beforehand. This is virtually identical in principle to Jewish kosher slaughter, known as shechita. Both traditions mandate humane treatment and the rapid draining of blood. The “ban halal” crowd has never proposed banning kosher. Ask yourself why. When politicians target one practice and protect an identical one, they’re not legislating food safety or concern for animal cruelty. They’re picking a target and hoping you don’t notice the double standard. Remember the political sleight of hand and who benefits from the outrage.

The idea that Islam is incompatible with democracy or trying to take over isn’t new — and it didn’t convince the founding fathers of our great nation. Thomas Jefferson hosted the first White House iftar dinner in 1805, rearranging the time of a state dinner to accommodate the Ramadan fast of the Tunisian ambassador, Sidi Soliman Mellimelli. Jefferson owned a copy of the Qur’an. And the author of this article served as a counterterrorism operative protecting American democracy — and helped bring to justice people who were plotting against it.

In a nation of many religions — and we often forget that different denominations of Christianity were once treated as separate and rival faiths — this is where we should be most concerned. Article VI of the United States Constitution states: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law regardless of religion. Every bill introduced by the Sharia Free America Caucus — from making Shariah advocacy grounds for deportation to designating organisations as terrorists by legislative vote — violates the foundational principles of the country these legislators claim to defend.

And here’s where it gets personal. What happens when Evangelicals set religious tests for Catholics? Or Protestants for Mormons? Setting the precedent by banning Islam — a religion that believes Jesus is the Christ, that he ascended to Heaven, and that he will return in his second coming — brings it home on just how easy it would be to ban any denomination the group in power deems undesirable or a threat to what they believe is the real religion of the nation. The person who told you Islam is incompatible with America was counting on you never reading your own Constitution. Or just not caring. Benjamin Franklin warned us: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” He wasn’t talking about Islam. He was talking about us.

 

The Exit

The people profiting from our anger don’t live in our neighbourhoods. They’ve never set foot in the communities they talk about. They have constructed, for profit and for political power, an image of 1.8 billion people based on the worst acts of a fraction of a fraction — and they’ve made a very comfortable living doing it.

And it isn’t just domestic profiteers. AIPAC and the Israeli government benefit directly from every ounce of our outrage. It is the political cover for a foreign policy that costs thousands of American lives and American treasure — $317 billion and counting — while the recipients enjoy the social programmes we can’t afford. The outrage machine keeps our eyes on Islam so we never look at the line item in the federal budget.

We were never stupid. We were targeted. The same psychological machinery that radicalises a young Muslim man watching jihadi recruitment videos in his bedroom is the same machinery being used on us: curated content selected for maximum emotional impact, an in-group that rewards escalation, an algorithm that serves us more of what makes us angry, and an industry that profits from our inability to see past the noise. The mechanism is identical. Only the content differs.

I know this because I’ve watched radicalisation from every angle a person can watch it from. I was radicalised myself, as a teenager, in a Christian cult that beat me with oak table legs and broomstick handles in the name of God’s authority — I know what it feels like to have a worldview constructed for you by people who profit from keeping you captive. I watched people I was close to get radicalised by online propaganda until they were ready to fly to Iraq and kill American soldiers. I trained them at a jihad camp while wearing a wire, and I helped put them away. And now I watch ordinary, decent Americans get radicalised by a billion-dollar industry that needs our outrage more than it needs the truth.

The machinery is the same every time. A curated feed. An authority figure who profits from our outrage. A community that polices doubt — where questioning the narrative gets you branded a traitor or a sympathiser. And a set of claims that fall apart the moment you verify them independently. The men I helped convict had their Anwar al-Awlaki recordings and their Baghdad Sniper videos. We have our Benny Johnson posts and our Libs of TikTok screenshots. The emotional architecture is identical: select the most inflammatory content, strip it of context, serve it to people who are already angry, and watch the radicalisation compound.

The real-world consequences are already here. In 2024, monitors recorded 8,658 complaints about incidents targeting Muslims across the United States — the highest number ever documented. That’s not a sign of a country getting safer. That’s a sign of a population being manipulated into attacking their own neighbours while the people running the operation cash cheques and win elections. Every incident is a data point in someone’s fundraising deck. Every headline is a donation driver. The outrage isn’t a side effect of the industry. It is the industry.

The exit starts with checking what we’ve been told — and not by asking the people who told us, because they have a financial interest in keeping us in the dark. Not by retreating into our own curated content to reinforce what we already believe. Step out. Challenge the beliefs we’ve been carrying. Beliefs aren’t permanent — they change as we grow, and changing them is a sign of strength, not weakness. Look up the donor-advised fund filings. Read the actual text of the bills being proposed in our name. Search the names I’ve given you and follow the money. See who’s getting paid, and ask yourself whether the people getting rich off our anger have ever done a single thing to make our lives better.

I told you about my work for the USAF Office of Special Investigations and my counterterrorism work for the Federal Bureau of Investigations, I told you about being raised Catholic, my time in a Christian cult and after becoming an Evangelical Christian, but there’s one more thing you should know about the man who wrote this article.

I’ve been Muslim nearly thirty years. But I didn’t abandon Christianity — I grew into Islam through it. I spent years studying the Bible, the Jewish scriptures, and eventually the Qur’an. What I found was that Islam didn’t ask me to reject Jesus — it asked me to revere him, as the Christ, born of a virgin, who ascended to Heaven and will return. My faith deepened. It didn’t break. The men I helped convict didn’t just betray their country — they betrayed a faith that teaches the same reverence for Jesus that your church taught you.

Everything I told you about the profiteers, the foreign influence operations, the manufactured outrage, the claims that fall apart when you check them — I told you as a man who knows Islam from the inside, who has lived it, bled for it, and been exiled for defending it honestly.

Christ himself told us: “You cannot serve God and money.” Every politician, every lobbying group, every influencer, every organisation I have named in this article — ask yourself which one they are serving. The answer has been staring us in the face the entire time.

You just read an entire article by a Muslim and didn’t throw it in the bin. You evaluated the evidence on its merits. You followed the facts where they led. That is the version of you that the hate industry cannot afford to exist — because a person who evaluates evidence is a person who can’t be hustled.

The most radical thing you can do right now is verify.

 

James S. Coates writes about AI ethics, consciousness, and the intersection of faith and technology. His books include A Signal Through Time, The Threshold, The Road to Khurasan, the memoir God and Country (published under pen name Will Prentiss) and his forthcoming Neither Gods Nor Monsters. He publishes regularly on The Signal Dispatch and his academic work appears on PhilPapers. 

© 2026 James S. Coates

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In 2004 I was attending a seminar at the Department of Justice with a friend who worked there. He was interested in my diversity training programme on Islam and Muslim communities for government agencies. At the time I was heavily involved with a national Islamic organisation that supported my activist work — anti-war and pro-Palestine protests, defending the Muslim community in the media, running seminars.

I sat down next to a man I did not know. He introduced himself. He told me he was an FBI agent. I perked up in intrigue. Then he told me he was a Muslim. My heart sank as if I were sitting next to Satan himself.

It was time for prayer. I made Thuhr Salat beside him, reluctantly. Afterwards we talked. He explained that his motivation for becoming an agent was to help the Muslim community fight against extremism — and that most of his Muslim friends, and even some of his family, had disowned him when he told them. I walked away with dismay, intrigue, confusion, and a question that took years to answer: how could a Muslim do this?

The answer was already in front of me. I just was not ready to see it yet.

“O you who have believed, when you go forth in the cause of Allah, investigate; and do not say to one who gives you a greeting of peace, ‘You are not a believer,’ aspiring for the goods of worldly life. For with Allah are many acquisitions. You yourselves were like that before; then Allah conferred His favour upon you, so investigate. Indeed Allah is ever, with what you do, Acquainted.” — Qur’an 4:94

Islam does not teach us to make takfir on another Muslim. It took me years to deprogramme from the community narrative that the intentions of government and their investigations are out to round us up. The Muslim agent at the DOJ had the right intention: to investigate and find out who is a threat to the Muslim community and to society at large. The narrative I had been carrying around was not Islamic. It was cultural, and it was wrong.

This article is about why.

Understanding Informants

Confidential informants have been used in domestic law enforcement for a long time, in many Muslim countries and in the West. They are considered an invaluable tool by every law enforcement agency operating against extremism — by Muslims or by non-Muslim groups — as well as against organised crime, drug trafficking, and other crimes. They are not without controversy. The social stigma of “informing” on family or friends has produced a great deal of confusion and misinformation about how informants actually function.

“Not many people know very much about informants, and to many people it’s a queasy area. People are not comfortable with informants… The informant is THE — with a capital T — the most effective tool in law enforcement today, state, local or federal.” — William Webster

The motivations of informants vary widely. Some are upstanding citizens who happen to come across criminal activity. They are not always random members of the public — sometimes they are the leaders of our organisations: presidents, imams, sheikhs. Others are people who have been involved in a group that turned to criminal activity, who themselves became implicated, and who turned on an individual or a group to reduce their own exposure or sentence.

Some informants are paid; many are not. They are not used legally by law enforcement in the United States to subvert religious groups, to act as agents provocateurs, or to manufacture cases against people who have done nothing wrong. They are used in intelligence-led investigations of criminal activity.

“Informants are not official employees of the FBI, but many receive compensation for their services. They are screened for suitability before they enter into relationships with the FBI and are screened periodically thereafter.” — PBS

There are three basic classifications:

  • Confidential Informant (CI) — provides additional information in an investigation.
  • Cooperating Witness (CW) — testifies in court and operates under a formal agreement regarding obligations and expectations.
  • Source of Information (SOI) — does not collect information actively, but provides routine access to information through legitimate professional position.

The use of informants has been standard FBI procedure in the fight against organised crime since 1961. In 1978 a formal programme was established to support active investigations. Informants have been used most notably against the mafia and other organised crime networks, in drug enforcement, against right-wing radical groups, and in domestic and international terrorism cases — with a high degree of success.

The ability to use informants has historically provided an invaluable tool for bringing to light secretive crimes that would otherwise never present themselves for investigation.

Prudence

The use of confidential informants in terrorism-related cases is highly controversial among Muslims in the West, particularly in the United States. The tendency among many Muslims is to view their use as government invasion of privacy, entrapment, and the unjust targeting of Muslims as a group.

As in any area of law enforcement, some people do get caught up in investigations because of abuse by individual officers or handlers. This is the rare exception, not the rule. Government agencies understand that ethical conduct in the use of informants is essential. It is important for our communities to ensure proper oversight of agencies that use informants, and even more important that those agencies maintain factual cases, integrity, and professionalism throughout.

In light of world affairs, it is especially prudent for the Muslim community to prevent acts of terrorism or radicalism before they happen rather than react after the fact. Muslim informants from within the community are better suited to act as a guide for law enforcement than an outside investigator reacting after the event. They are better positioned than someone who does not know how to navigate the community, interpret the language, or identify what someone has expressed an intention to do. Muslim informants are the most likely people to ensure that the government does not build an unjust case based on misunderstandings and prejudice.

Plots are not hatched in the open. They cannot be discovered by ordinary means. If there is a possibility of a threat from radicalism in our communities, then these types of investigations are necessary because of the very nature of the secrecy surrounding plots of this kind.

The Double Standard

In a time when the Islamic community has serious problems with people travelling to Iraq and Syria to join groups like ISIS or al-Qaida, it matters that we deal straight with the government rather than acquiescing to radicalism and then turning on law enforcement when a plot is uncovered.

The double standard is glaring. On the one hand, we claim to condemn extremism and terrorism. On the other hand, we do not want the government to investigate us, and we do not want our people to work with them to root out radical plots from within our ranks. The Muslims who do become informants or FBI agents are often ostracised, and dedicated webpages and social media campaigns spring up to rail against them, sometimes with implicit or explicit threats of violence. In many of these cases the informants and agents cannot publicly rebut the abuse because of ongoing prosecutions that may last for years — making it easy for the family and friends of those accused to mislead public opinion and manufacture a conspiracy. The job of law enforcement, and of those who support them, is not to engage in a social media battle. It is to deal with investigations and the courts.

Islamic organisations publicly tell members to work with law enforcement if they come across information about extremism and terrorism. But within the community, our default is to attack government investigative methods and defend perpetrators rather than weigh the evidence — or support the person who tried to prevent the crime by approaching authorities. It is a catch-22 in logic, and it is a catch-22 the community does not seem to recognise about itself.

In a US court, the defendant is presumed innocent and cannot be convicted if there is reasonable doubt. It is the defence lawyer’s job to create that reasonable doubt — even when the defendant is, in fact, guilty. That is why, given the overwhelming evidence in most extremism cases, the defence almost always claims entrapment. As a community we cannot take defence arguments as scripture and launch campaigns against the government and its informants on behalf of people who are claiming to be falsely accused. We have to weigh the facts ourselves, listen to the court evidence, and understand the legal definition of the very thing we are claiming.

“When they disregarded the warnings that had been given them, We rescued those who forbade Evil; but We visited the wrong-doers with a grievous punishment because they were given to transgression.” — Qur’an 7:165

Focusing on the Wrong People

In any country, in any jurisdiction in the United States, there may be bad agents, bad informants, bad investigations. That is the reason to ensure proper oversight. It is not the reason to be reflexively suspicious of the entire system put in place to protect us from radical violence. It is not the reason to jump on the entrapment bandwagon every time someone in our community is charged. There are far more good agents, good informants, and good investigations than bad ones — and they are there to protect not just the general public, but the Muslim community itself.

Investigations involving informants can run into the millions of dollars. There is no institutional motivation to waste that kind of money making false cases against people who have done nothing wrong, just to “get a Muslim.” Intentionally targeting the wrong people would be counterproductive, and it would let the real threats fall through the cracks.

Conversely, in many Muslim countries — countries from which a great number of Muslims in the United States originate — the system does have a motivation to suppress its own people. Many Muslim organisations operating in those societies are viewed as a direct threat to the ruling party, the dictatorship, or the military power structure. The Arab Uprising made this visible to the world.

“Government critics say Malaysia’s sedition laws have been increasingly used to silence dissent.” — BBC

That is not to justify the actions of those governments. It is to say that Muslims who come to the West and occupy our masajid carry the same cultural attitudes towards the US government that they carried towards their home governments. Those attitudes get taught to converts as if they are Islamic. They are not. They are imported. We hear them parroted from the activist platform, from the minbar at Jumuah, in special talks, conferences, and programmes. They have nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with the political experiences of countries that are not the United States.

The Entrapment Bandwagon

Just because a case involves a paid or unpaid informant does not mean the government set out to entrap the would-be perpetrator. It does not reflect on the quality of the information the informant provided.

There is an enormous amount of confusion about what entrapment actually means. In most of the extremism cases where it has been claimed, the people making the claim have no idea what they are talking about. The legal threshold is straightforward: an investigation using an informant requires only that the idea or engagement of the criminal act originate with the would-be criminal. Anything the agency provides after that is for the purpose of discovering the extent of the plot, identifying those involved, and collecting the evidence required to demonstrate intent in court.

“The key to entrapment is whether the idea for the commission or encouragement of the criminal act originated with the police or government agents instead of with the ‘criminal.'” — Online Legal Dictionary

Consider the contrast. When it was first reported that the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building might be the work of Muslims, the assumption ran wild before any investigation had concluded. When Timothy McVeigh was identified — a white Christian boy raised in Lockport, New York — the Christian community did not rally to his defence. They did not declare he had been framed. They did not manufacture conspiracy theories about federal entrapment. They jeered at him as he was led away.

When a Muslim is charged, our community’s first instinct is the opposite. The default is to declare the accused innocent, to claim entrapment before a single piece of evidence is presented, and to treat defence counsel’s argument in court as established truth. Christians did not do this for one of their own. They let the evidence speak. They let the trial run. They let the verdict land.

We could learn from that.

If we want to stay out of the criminal justice system, we stay far away from anything to do with extremism. When I was a young Catholic boy long before I converted to Islam, my grandmother had a rule for us. Don’t say “I’ll kill you” to your brothers and sisters. Someone might believe you.

That rule scales. Don’t talk about wanting to do violent things. Don’t broach the topic if someone else mentions it first. If a conversation turns that direction, walk away from it. If those people are being investigated, they may drag you in with them on the strength of something you said that can be interpreted as intent. If you are not involved, you have nothing to fear. And if you become aware that someone else is involved, you have an obligation to act. We will come to that.

The fact is that the majority of cases involving Muslim informants and Muslim defendants in extremism plots are solid cases built on documented evidence. They are not entrapment.

Rage Against the Informant

Posting names, photographs, and angry videos of informants on the internet is a futile exercise. It accomplishes nothing for the person charged. It does not free them, it does not strengthen their defence, it does not change the evidence. What it does is signal to the wider public that the Muslim community is unwilling to be trusted to help protect society from extremist plots. It subverts the public statements our own leaders give against extremism. It hands every hostile commentator a fresh example of what they have been claiming about us all along.

It does more harm to the peaceful existence of the Muslim community in the West than it does good. And it does nothing — not one thing — to help the person whose name is on the indictment.

We have to get away from the culture of revenge that we imported. Revenge is personal vigilantism. It is misguided more often than not, and it is the cultural inheritance of societies where the rule of law has either failed or never existed. It is not Islam. From the earliest days of the Ummah in Madinah, the rule of law has been central to social justice in Islam. If we believe in the innocence of someone, or in an injustice done to them, then it is our duty to ensure that the truth comes out — through lawful means. Not through revenge.

“Twice will they be given their reward, for that they have persevered, that they avert Evil with Good, and that they spend (in charity) out of what We have given them.” — Qur’an 28:54

“The Messenger of Allah replied: An angel came down from Heaven and he was rejecting what he had said to you. When you took revenge, a devil came down. I was not going to sit when the devil came down.” — Abu Dawud, General Behaviour, Book 41, Number 4878

It may also be that the informant against whom revenge is being plotted is the person in the entire equation who has done nothing wrong. Our duty as Muslims is to stand for justice — even if that justice runs against our families, our tribes, our nations, or our co-religionists.

“O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives. Whether one is rich or poor, Allah is more worthy of both. So follow not personal inclination, lest you not be just. And if you distort your testimony or refuse to give it, then indeed Allah is ever, with what you do, Acquainted.” — Qur’an 4:135

Many criminals are otherwise upstanding citizens. They give to charity. They serve their communities. Drug bosses and mafia leaders have done this for generations. The fact that we know someone as a good neighbour or a generous donor does not mean they are not also engaged in something hidden — something that can only be uncovered through covert investigation. That is the nature of secret crime. It hides itself behind the visible.

Sense and Sensibility

Today, every Muslim country in the world maintains domestic intelligence services designed to root out extremism, drug trafficking, and organised crime. Despite this, an enormous taboo persists among Muslims in the United States about the use of informants in American investigations.

In the United Arab Emirates, plain-clothes police officers operate undercover on the streets and make arrests. The Criminal Investigation Department goes undercover. Who does the average Muslim think the Inter-Services Intelligence agency is in Pakistan? Or the General Intelligence Presidency in Saudi Arabia? Do these agencies announce their investigations to the targets? How does anyone imagine they gather intelligence on plots? They use human intelligence — informants. The same tool, in the same manner, for the same purposes.

“O ye who believe! Avoid suspicion as much as possible: for suspicion in some cases is a sin. And spy not on each other behind their backs. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Nay, ye would abhor it… But fear Allah: For Allah is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful.” — Qur’an 49:12

The Qur’an forbids spying for personal reasons — backbiting, gossip, settling scores. It is clear from the Seerah, the Qur’an, and the consensus of scholars in Muslim countries that informing the authorities about criminal activity that could harm Muslims or society at large is permitted. One would be hard-pressed to find a serious scholar who says otherwise.

The fact is that in the United States and most Western countries, a person stands a far better chance of being accused objectively, having a fair trial, and exercising rights of appeal than they would in many of the Muslim countries those same critics hold up as more legitimate.

Our Islamic Duty

Once a Muslim becomes aware that another Muslim intends to break the law, there is an obligation to bring it to the attention of the authorities and to cooperate as required to protect everyone involved — including the would-be perpetrator from himself.

“And cooperate in righteousness and piety, but do not cooperate in sin and aggression. And fear Allah; indeed, Allah is severe in penalty.” — Qur’an 5:2

“O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives…” — Qur’an 4:135

The Fiqh Council of North America has issued a clear ruling on the matter:

  • All acts of terrorism targeting civilians are haram in Islam.
  • It is haram for a Muslim to cooperate with any individual or group involved in any act of terrorism or violence.
  • It is the civic and religious duty of Muslims to cooperate with law enforcement authorities to protect the lives of all civilians.

Don’t let radicalised Muslims act in your name — in the name of the religion you hold dear. If you have information, the responsibility to stop it falls on you.

If you know someone who has decided that they are going to make hijra to a Muslim land to fight a jihad to establish “justice in the land” and bring back the Caliphate, think ahead about what they are about to do. Think about what it means for the Muslims and the organisations in your country when their plans land on a front page. Think about whose name and whose religion is going to be dragged through the public square afterwards. Think about the families — the parents and siblings of the young men they will recruit on the way.

And then think about this:

The Caliphate cannot be established through violence and injustice.

Article by brjimc © 2015, 2018, revised 2026

by on

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ir-Raheem (In the Name of Allah the Most Merciful the Most Benificent)

Common misunderstandings exist of what Islam prohibits concerning espionage and spying among Muslims which lends us to turning a blind eye to acts being planned or carried out by radical extremists within our communities. Such acts are those that have two destructive effects on the Muslim community at large. First, it causes Islam and Muslims in a non-Muslim land to come under suspicion. Second, it brings acute oppression against Muslims living in a non-Muslim land and even oftentimes in their own Muslim countries.

In Islam it is commonly thought of that spying is forbidden. However, most of the scholarly works and rulings strictly forbid only two main kinds of ‘spying’. One kind of spying strictly prohibited in Islam is that which is used for personal gain and commonly associated with gossip and backbiting. Qur’an 49:12, “O you who believe! avoid most of suspicion, for surely suspicion in some cases is a sin, and do not spy nor let some of you backbite others.“ According to the Prophet (pbuh) to expose the secrets of others in order to defame them is a sin considered even worse than adultery and the one who remains quiet saves himself (from hellfire).

This sort of ‘spying’ is not done by authority figures (or their sources) to enforce laws, such as in drug enforcement, gangs or terrorism. Nor is it the sort of ‘spying’ that is done between nation states, i.e. espionage.

Another sort of ‘spying’ or espionage that is forbidden is done by a Muslim (or non-Muslim living in the Islamic State) do destroy or work against the Islamic State.

Spying to destroy the Islamic State or Muslims by denying or abandoning faith and defaming them is strictly forbidden and punishable under Shariah in this life and by Allah in the Hereafter. However, if Muslims are plotting to break the law of the land (in a Muslim or non-Muslim land) or about to commit an act that is forbidden in Islam (that is also forbidden by law) then other Muslims around him or her have the duty, as Muslims, to inform the appropriate police authorities whether or not the authorities are Muslim and whether or not the perpetrators are Muslims. The Qur’an says, “”Collaborate in virtue and righteousness and do not collaborate in sin and transgression” (Qur’an 5:2) Islam strictly forbids vigilante justice and turning a blind eye to law breaking and wickedness and allows for Muslims to seek out justice through appropriate channels. Furthermore, Islam forbids us from breaking the laws of the land in non-Muslim countries provided they allow for our freedom to practice our religion and worship Allah.

Qur’an 4:135, “O ye who believe! stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. Follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest ye swerve, and if ye distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do.”

Islam Online Fatwah by Muzammil Siddiqi (The Fiqh Council of North America) confirms my assertions, “We Muslims should play an important role in bringing justice to the world. We have to live by the guidance of Allah, establish justice and fairness among ourselves and be a good example to others. We should not only work for ourselves but for the whole world. We must remember that injustice cannot be removed by another injustice. We must love for others what we love for ourselves. We need to work and cooperate with others.”

Islam Online Fatwah

Dr. Siddiqi also states in another Fatwah, “It is haram (forbidden) to support any person or group that is involved in acts of terrorism.”

Islam Online Fatwah

If one is living in an Islamic State then Muslims must work with the authorities of the Islamic State. If one lives in a non-Muslim state then one must work with the non-Muslim authorities since there is no Islamic authority to enforce law or justice. Spying is one of the many investigative tools used by law enforcement in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries to provide peace and security (to prevent harm) to the population and its interests by enforcing the laws and is permissible in Islam whether carried out on Muslims or not.

The President of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston as interviewed by the Houston Chronicle on November 30, 2006. The article stated, “Rodwan Saleh, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, said … he would urge Muslims to report any suspicious activity they come across, but also said they should not deny their faith.”

Houston Chronicle article reported by anita.hassan@chron.com and cynthia.george@chron.com.

Espionage has always been a valued tool of the Islamic State ever since it was founded by the Prophet (pbuh). From the earliest battles it was a vital method of gaining access to information on enemy positions, plans and the vulnerabilities of their cities. A good example of this is in the conquest of Constantinople. In order for the Islamic Sate and its leadership to rally the vast resources needed to assault and conquer the city Muslims had to rely on past experiences and most recent information from sources.

Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi confirms the permissibility of this and has this to say about espionage, “Tackling this seemingly difficult question, the prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, issues the following Fatwa:

“Muslim jurists, who are committed to their religion, cannot give blessing to the illicit acts, such as drinking wine, Zina (adultery or fornication) committed by a Muslim who acts as a spy in favor of his country.

On the other hand, the spy who is true to his cause may be allowed to look as if he is drinking wine but not drinking it. He may also be permitted to perform the prayers beyond their appointed times, but he is not allowed to leave the prayer at all under the pretext that his job dictates doing so.”

Islam Online Fatwah

Another type of espionage that is forbidden that I have not seen many scholarly works on is that of Corporate Espionage. However, there is plenty of Shariah Laws on the methods of commerce in Islam and to be carried out by Muslims to justify the forbidding of Corporate espionage.

-Article by BrJimC © 2007