President Trump’s executive order on immigration has caused enormous furor, yet its impetus seems largely to have gone unnoticed: Chaos in the Near East.

Much of the Islamic world in Saharan Africa and the Middle East has gone beyond turmoil into a nether world of political oppression, military violence, and social disarray. The “Arab spring” of 2011 has turned into a region where, to paraphrase a metaphor from C.S. Lewis, there is always searing heat but never an oasis.

Searing Heat

In Libya, since dictator Moammar Ghaddafi was excised from political power in 2011 (and brutally murdered), ISIS has gained a stronghold and the nation itself is currently torn between three competing ruling factions. Fraught with tribal and thus regional tension, Libya’s oil production has dropped from about 1.56 million barrels daily to about 400,000 today. And hundreds of thousands of people are internally displaced.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood-backed presidency of Mohammed Morsi was ended after Islamist political repression and violence wracked the country. Former military chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has restored a measure of stability, but violent Islamists now have control of part of the Sinai Peninsula.

As to Syria, where to begin? Russian planes bombing civilian targets. American-hating Iran fighting American-hating ISIS. An estimated 13.5 million people needing humanitarian aid, 6.3 million people internally displaced, minimally 4.7 million Syrian refugees, and roughly 400,000 killed and hundreds of thousands more injured.

Then there are Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Yemen, and Turkey. In these countries, there is repression if not outright oppression and Islamic terrorism and/or Islamism in governance. These stifle religious and political liberty and create anxiety in populations already cast down by centuries of tribal hostilities, Muslim sectarianism, misogynistic culture, and political severity.

It is from this cauldron of pain and suffering that the new President’s policy toward seven overwhelmingly Muslim countries has emerged.

Islamic Domination was the Aim of Muhammed

The details of Mr. Trump’s immigration plan are worth debating, but what should be inarguable is that the North African-Middle Eastern Islamic world is fragmenting under the weight of its own self-destructive politics and social structures.

Let us grant, for the sake of argument, that the post-World War I political reapportionments of the greater region were a colossal mistake. Let us also stipulate that the West has made grave errors in everything from supporting Saddam Hussein to the way we deposed him. The list of externally-inflicted problems is a long one.

Throughout the Arab world, tribal and sectarian loyalties have transcended national allegiances. Force (ala Saddam Hussein, Ghaddafi, the Assads, et al.) has been the glue holding together disparate groups within countries whose contours, whether ethnic, geographic, or sectarian, are grounded in neither history or logic.

But the one thing that experts, commentators, diplomats, and on-the-ground analysts hate to discuss is the nature of Islam itself.

To be clear: Only a minority of Muslims want violence-based adherence to Sharia law to dominate their own countries, let alone the world. Yet a responsible reading of the Quran implies that Islamic domination — attained at the tip of a sword — was the aim of Muhammed from his religion’s beginning.

This is why the radical Islamic government of Iran cannot be dismissed as a aberration from the true Muslim faith. It is why fanatical followers of that faith have caused insidious political disruption throughout their vast region, culminating in strong-man rule (some of it more enlightened than others) by Sadat to al-Sisi and Sharia-based governments from Saudi Arabia to Iraq.

Then there are the terrorists themselves.

A Long War With ISIS

“The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic,” wrote Graeme Wood in a landmark Atlantic article in 2015. “Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.”

This declaration created tremendous push-back against Wood from a host of quarters. However, seeing ISIS’s continuing durability, it is difficult to disagree with Wood’s essential conclusion:

Ideological tools may convince some potential converts that the group’s message is false, and military tools can limit its horrors. But for an organization as impervious to persuasion as the Islamic State, few measures short of these will matter, and the war may be a long one.

In addition, we have to ask: Where in the Quran are the principles of the equality of all people, representative self-governance, religious liberty, and other First Amendment-type rights ever articulated, let alone implied? I am hard-pressed to find these ideas anywhere in Islam’s essential text or in its leading theologians’ commentaries thereof.

A Revolution of the Islamic Faith?

Over the past two years, Egyptian President al-Sisi has called for a “revolution” within Islam, decrying the notion of the Islamists that the entire global population must convert to Islam, submit to it, or be killed. He draws a distinction between the teachings of his faith and the political ideology the extremists draw from it, and argues that the latter must be expunged.

Whether this is possible is the subject of another essay. As former Muslim Dr. Nabeel Qureshi wrote last year in USA Today, “The Quran itself reveals a trajectory of jihad reflected in the almost 23 years of Muhammad’s prophetic career.” He goes on to note that ISIS

may lure youth through a variety of methods, it radicalizes them primarily by urging them to follow the literal teachings of the Quran and the hadith, interpreted consistently and in light of the violent trajectory of early Islam. As long as the Islamic world focuses on its foundational texts, we will continue to see violent jihadi movements.

How can any religion retain its identity if it rejects its “foundational texts?” And if it does so, what is left to it? This is the question the Islamic world must answer if it is to deal honestly and wisely with its own house. It is the question that Christians, and the west, ignore at our own peril. (For more from the author of “Hysterical Responses to Executive Order Main Issue: The Nature of Islam” please click HERE)

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