New Jersey Muslim Leader Boasts of Using Carlson, Owens, Bannon to Divide MAGA Movement

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A video began circulating Thursday of a guest speaker at the Islamic Center of Passaic County in Paterson, New Jersey (ICPC-Paterson), Osama Abu Irshaid of American Muslims for Palestine, that every American, including President Donald Trump, should watch, watch again, and study. Its implications for the American political scene are massive, but few, if any, will take heed of them.

The video comes from a Jan. 16, 2026 event at ICPC-Paterson, “The Night Journey & Cultivating Hope,” a commemoration of the Islamic legend of Muhammad being carried to Jerusalem on a winged white horse with a human head, which constitutes the entirety of the Islamic claim to Jerusalem as a holy city of Islam. Abu Irshaid is in a happy mood, and regales his audience with the story of recent successes in the United States. He warns, however, against complacency, saying that Muslims need to wage jihad in order to build upon these successes. As Abu Irshaid speaks, ICPC-Paterson’s senior imam, Mohammad Qatanani, nods along approvingly.

Abu Irshaid states:

Now within the Democratic and the Republican Party, we see the split, we see the fractures, within what? The MAGA movement. You see the likes of Tucker Carson, you see the likes of Candace Owens you see the lies of Megyn Kelly, you see the likes of Steve Bannon! He’s the one who coined MAGA. Do you know what MAGA means? Do you know what MAGA? Do you know what MAGA? MAGA, Make America Great Again, right? MIGA, Make Israel Great Again. So he said, “Either your MAGA or MIGA. Choose.”

At this, the crowd titters approvingly, clearly amused over the MAGA/MIGA wordplay. They had much more to celebrate in Abu Irshaid’s declaration of victory at the hands of the new antisemites among patriots, namely, Carlson, Owens, Kelly and Bannon. Abu Irshaid continues:

So he accuses people like Ben Shapiro and who? Mark Levin, who he calls Mark Tel Aviv Levin, that’s what he calls him. These cracks are happening, so now for those who continue to question, is our work paying off? I’m telling you, it is.

There is the clearest declaration we have yet of the fact that the fashionable new antisemitism is serving the cause of Islam in the United States. Abu Irshaid cautions, however, that the Muslims must not rest on their laurels:

Is it where we want it to be? No, it’s not. Is it where it should be? No, it’s not. Are we able to get there? Yes, we are. Because Allah is providing evidence to us that your struggle is paying off, that your voices is making a difference. But it comes with what? It comes with sacrifices. It comes with hardships. It’s the same as Surah Al-Isra. You want the victory in the first and second round? It has to come with a sacrifice. It has to come with struggle. Today we’re afforded another opportunity. America now is being divided.

“America is being divided.” This is what these Muslim groups wanted all along, and now Carlson, Owens, Kelly and Bannon have accomplished it for them.

Spoke about the promise of Allah, the promise of victory. But you know, if you go through the ayahs again, you will find that victory comes through struggle. Comes through struggle. There are ups and downs. It depends on the situation of the ummah, of the believers. When we are awarded struggle or we are defeated. It depends on us. Yes, the victory of Allah is given. The promise of Allah is given. But what is not given, it is the people who are going to achieve this victory. Iman [faith] necessitates action. I am going to struggle until I die.

Note that Abu Irshaid speaks repeatedly about the necessity of “struggle,” which in Arabic is jihad. A Muslim Brotherhood document dating from May 1991, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America,” states that the Brotherhood in the U.S. is in “the process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions” (p. 7).

The idea that the Westerners would destroy their own civilization “by their hands” comes from the Qur’an:

“It is he who has caused those among the people of the book who disbelieved to go forth from their homes to the first exile. You did not think that they would go forth, while they thought that their strongholds would protect them from Allah. But Allah reached them from a place they did not expect, and cast terror in their hearts so that they ruined their houses with their own hands and the hands of the believers. So learn a lesson, O you who have eyes” (Qur’an 59:2).

And now, here are Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly and Steve Bannon ruining our house with their own hands. Allah’s promise appears to be being fulfilled before our very eyes, courtesy of some attention-seeking has-beens wanting to increase their visibility.

When the Explanatory Memorandum first began to be publicized, it became a new basis for wholesale defamation of foes of jihad violence and Sharia oppression in the U.S. The Huffington Post sneered in 2018 that “the anti-Muslim chorus,” including me, “have written that ‘the Brotherhood lays out a plan [in the document] to do nothing less than conquer and Islamize the United States.’” Inconceivable! The Southern Poverty Law Center charged that those who called attention to this endeavor were “gripped by paranoid fantasies of foreign entities such as the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating and supplanting the U.S. from within.” The ADL dismissed warnings about the Muslim Brotherhood document as “anti-Muslim conspiracy theories.”

Yet here now is a Muslim leader cheerfully avowing that dividing America was the plan all along.

Will the HuffPo and the SPLC and the ADL retract and apologize? Don’t hold your breath.