Trump Pentagon pick Pete Hegseth’s books foreground anti-Muslim rhetoric

Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth, who has the crusader motto “deus vult” tattooed on his arm, has put bigoted anti-Muslim rhetoric at the center of several of his published books, according to a Guardian review of the materials.

Hegseth, especially in 2020’s American Crusade, depicts Islam as a natural, historic enemy of the west; presents distorted versions of Muslim doctrine in “great replacement”-style racist conspiracy theories; treats leftists and Muslims as bound together in their efforts to subvert the US; and idolises medieval crusaders.

Experts say that Hegseth’s view of Islam is riven with falsehoods, misconceptions and far-right conspiracy theories. Yet Hegseth, if his nomination is successful, will head the world’s largest military force at a time of conflict and instability in the Middle East.

The Guardian emailed Hegseth and the Trump transition team for comment and received no response.

The Guardian has previously reported that in his 2020 book Hegseth calls for an “American Crusade”, targeting both “internal” or “domestic enemies” and the enemies of Israel. Hegseth also connected the two, writing: “We have domestic enemies, and we have international allies … it’s time to reach out to people who value the same principles, relearn lessons from them, and form stronger bonds.”

‘False, totally wrong’

In American Crusade, Hegseth presents the medieval crusades as a model for Christian-Muslim relations, but one historian of the period says his presentation of the history of that period is “just totally wrong”.

In a chapter entitled Make the Crusade Great Again, Hegseth writes: “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,” adding: “The leftists of today would have argued for ‘diplomacy’ … We know how that would have turned out.”

Hegseth continues: “The pope, the Catholic Church, and European Christians chose to fight – and the crusades were born,” and “Pope Urban II urged the faithful to fight the Muslims with his famous battle cry on their lips: ‘Deus vult!,’ or ‘God wills it!’”

Hegseth has a tattoo of the same crusader slogan, which is also associated with Christian nationalism, white supremacist and other far-right tendencies.

For Hegseth, the crusaders’ short-lived victories in the Holy Land means they can be credited with safeguarding modern values. “Enjoy Western civilization? Freedom? Equal justice under the law? Thank a crusader,” having written the same thing again earlier in the chapter.

Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, and the author, with David Perry, of Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe.

In a telephone conversation, he said that Hegseth’s picture of Muslim encroachment in the 11th century was misplaced.

“There were absolutely no incursions into mainland Europe,” he said, adding “If anything, Islam was kind of on the retreat in Iberia and other places as well. So there was no large geopolitical shift or any kind of immediate threat of Islam taking over Europe.”

On Hegseth’s presentation of the crusades as a victory for the west against Islam, Gabriele said: “The Crusaders lost. They lost everything.

“The idea that they kind of like emerged victorious is absolutely false.

“This narrative of the crusades as a defensive war, where if the Christians didn’t launch this offensive towards Jerusalem that Europe would be overrun has been a bog-standard narrative on the right: it’s something that was espoused by Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, in 2011 and by the Christchurch shooter a few years ago.”

On Hegseth drawing a direct line between the crusaders and the modern west, Gabriele said: “It’s the worst kind of simplistic thinking,” adding: “Anybody who tells you these simple stories is selling something.”

“The British were invaded, and they didn’t even know it”

Elsewhere in American Crusade, Hegseth repeatedly characterizes Muslim immigration to Europe as an “invasion” in a way that mimics racist “great replacement”-style conspiracy theories about immigrants displacing white populations.

At one point he tries to connect – an expert says falsely – an aspect of Islamic history with the purported “capture” of Europe.

Hegseth writes: “In Islamist circles, there’s a principle known as hegira,” and then claims: “This term refers to the nonviolent capture of a non-Muslim country.”

Hegseth writes: “Hegira is a cultural, physical, psychological, political, and eventually religious takeover. History is replete with examples of this; and because history is not over, it’s happening in the most inconceivable places right now.”

Hegseth posits the US as an example where, he claims: “Radical mosques and schools are allowed to operate. Religious police control certain sections of many towns. Sharia councils dot the underground landscape. Pervasive political correctness prevents dissent against disastrous policies such as open borders and nonassimilation.”

Adducing proof, Hegseth bizarrely writes: “Take the British cities of London, Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield, Oxford, Luton, Oldham, and Rochdale. What do they all have in common? They have all had Muslim mayors.”

For Hegseth, this shows: “The British were invaded, and they didn’t even know it. In one generation – absent radical policy change – the United Kingdom will be neither united nor a Western kingdom. The United Kingdom is done for.”

He adds: “The same can be said across Europe, especially following the disastrous open-borders, pro-migrant policies of the past few decades. Countries such as Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands threw open their doors to Muslim ‘refugees’ and will never be the same because of it.”

According to Hegseth, countries that do not restrict Muslim immigration ignore that “Islam itself is not compatible with Western forms of government. On the other hand, countries that want to stay free … are fighting like hell to block Islam’s spread.”

Jasmin Zine is professor of Sociology and Muslim Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, and the author of a book-length report, The Canadian Islamophobia Industry: Mapping Islamophobia’s Ecosystem in the Great White North.

Zine said Hegseth’s narrative appeared to be an “Islamophobic conspiracy theory distorting the practice of ‘hijra’ or the migration of the Prophet Muhammad and early Muslims from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD looking for safety from persecution”, which “is now being used to promote the xenophobic idea of a Muslim ‘takeover’ of the west”.

Zine added: “These ideas are also linked to white nationalist demographic replacement conspiracies about Muslim birth rates in the west (AKA ‘demographic jihad’) and scare stories about ‘creeping shariah’, which have spawned retaliatory ‘crusader’ narratives in far-right subcultures.”

‘Hard-core leftism provides the best gateway for Islamism’

At other points in American Crusade, Hegseth appears to try to scapegoat Muslims for familiar conservative grievances, in narratives that suggest Muslims and leftists are colluding to undermine the US.

In case of a Biden victory in 2020, Hegseth predicted that an “anti-Israel and pro-Islamist foreign policy” would be introduced along with “speech codes instead of free speech, bye-bye Second Amendment” and “naked socialism, government-run everything, Common Core education for everyone, a tiny military, and abortion on demand – even postbirth”.

Hegseth also tries to connect his narrative with gripes about supposed censorship on social media platforms. “Who are the first people being banned on social media?” he asks, answering: “Not intolerant jihadists or filthy leftists but outspoken conservatives.”

At times he seems to admire what he imagines to be the thoroughgoing religious zealotry of Muslims compared with an increasingly secular west.

“Almost every single Muslim child grows up listening to, and learning to read from, the Quran,” Hegseth writes. “Contrast this with our secular American schools – in which the Bible is nowhere to be found – and you’ll understand why Muslims’ worldview is more coherent than ours.”

At another point in the book he engages in a lengthy diatribe about the Council for American Islamic Relations (Cair), which has been a bugbear for US conservatives since the “war on terror”, and claims Democrats are helping the organization cement a radical “Islamist” agenda.

“Groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and [Cair] have advanced the radical mission of Islamism for decades,” Hegseth claims, adding: “In the past two years alone, more than one hundred members of Congress – including Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff, Rashida Tlaib, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar – have signed letters endorsing CAIR.”

Hegseth then singles out “Socialist Bernie Sanders”, who he claims is “a favorite among Muslim Americans due to his support for Palestinian causes and distaste for Israel”.

Sanders has repeatedly publicly supported Israel’s right to defend itself, even after the commencement of the current war in Gaza, while also saying: “Innocent Palestinians also have a right to life and security,” and calling for humanitarian pauses and ceasefires, and last week leading efforts to restrict the sale of offensive weapons to Israel on the grounds that it was in violation of the international laws of war.

Some of Sanders’s positions since 7 October 2023 have drawn criticism from the left, who have seen them as insufficiently critical of Israel and insufficiently supportive of Palestine.

Hegseth meanwhile, as previously reported in the Guardian, is unconditionally supportive of Israel, and has appeared to argue that the US military should ignore the Geneva conventions in favor of “winning our wars according to our own rules”.

According to Hegseth in American Crusade, though: “Leaders of CAIR speak very highly of Bernie because his hard-core leftism provides the best gateway for their Islamism.”