Muslims are buying and transforming American churches into mosques — and Americans are angry about it!
But is their anger being directed at the right source?
Recently, a year-old video clip of a Muslim cleric went viral on X. In it, Muhammad Musri, president of American Islam and chairman of the board of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, delivers a sermon saying that, due to its “unimpressive dogma” of “someone” being crucified for them, Christianity is dying out in America, preparing the way for Islam:
A lot of Christians are leaving their faith, especially the young generation. The churches are emptying out. The Pew Research Center has shown that in the last 10 years, 28% of people have left the church and became atheists or agnostics. They are not impressed anymore by the dogma that someone 2,000 years ago was crucified for their sins. They are searching for something that is more meaningful, that is consistent with science and consistent with the principles that we know today. Islam is the answer for them, and we are jumping on the opportunities.
As such, Muslims are busy buying up and transforming churches into mosques as part of their Islamization of America program, continued Sheikh Muhammad:
As these churches empty out … we are buying these churches. We bought three churches so far and converted them into mosques, and now we have one we are buying with a school… The [American] people who are part of that community one day will be Muslims. So we will make it into a mosque and an Islamic school for our children and their children, inshallah [Allah willing]…. I ask Allah to give Islam victory in this country…
Online Outrage
There is nothing new or shocking about such words and goals. Indeed, around the same time that Sheikh Muhammad was boasting about purchasing churches in Florida, Muslims purchased another large, especially important and historic Catholic church in New York: “St. Anne’s Church, Buffalo, NY. Permanently closed,” Fr. Ronald Vierling wrote in a post on August 11, 2024: “Sold to the Islamic community for $250,000 who are converting the historic church into a mosque.”
In both cases (that of the Florida churches, and that of the historic NY church) social media users expressed outrage. Thus, to quote from the most popular comment (by Mag 1775) concerning Sheikh Muhammad’s supplication to Allah to transform even more churches into mosques:
That’s not a prayer, that’s a threat. Converting churches, claiming territory, preaching takeover? Sounds less like faith, more like infiltration. This is America, not a caliphate. We don’t kneel to Sharia, and Florida damn sure won’t fall without a fight. We stand for Christ, Constitution, and country. No retreat. No surrender.
Similar outrage was voiced regarding the NY church, to the point that Fr. Vierling had to issue a follow-up statement:
No anger should be directed against the Islamic community. The parish complex was made available for sale by the diocese. No doubt the changing demographics of the area and the inability to financially support the complex made the continuance of St. Ann as a viable parish possible. This scenario is being played out in once large, urban dioceses across the country.
What to make of all this?
Not Business as Usual
For starters, let no one be deceived: For Muslims, these purchases are not mere business transactions; a point is being made.
From its very origins, Islam always sought to convert the temples of other religions into mosques — victory mosques, to be precise. Past and present, one of the very first signs of Muslim consolidation was/is the erection of a mosque atop the sacred sites of the vanquished: the pagan Ka’ba temple in Arabia was converted into Islam’s holiest site, the mosque of Mecca; the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, was built atop Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem; the Umayyad mosque was built atop the Church of St. John the Baptist; and the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque upon the conquest of Constantinople (and again, recently).
For Muslims, the transformation of non-Muslim places of worship into mosques is the physical manifestation and validation of Islam’s ancient battle cry: Allahu akbar, which simply means “my god is greater than your god,” as seen by Allah’s taking up residence in the temple of his vanquished counterparts.
The transformation of Christian churches into mosques is especially emblematic of this phenomenon. Because most of the land Islam conquered (or stole) from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east was for centuries Christian, most of the religious houses that were turned into victory mosques were churches.
As such, the transformation of American churches into mosques is, for Muslims, another example of Islam’s triumph over its Christian nemesis. “Allahu akbar” will be chanted as the Muslim deity makes his residence in this vacated church.
Look to Yourself
Even so, Fr. Ronald Vierling saying, “No anger should be directed against the Islamic community” is also true. Muslims are, after all, only doing what is good for them and their religion. Who can blame them? They are not directly conquering anyone or annexing any building; every American church they transform into a mosque was sold to them for a few silver pieces. All fair and legal.
This is the point that so many Western folk, who are otherwise wise to Islam and its wiles, do not seem to understand: Muslims cannot be faulted for flooding Western Europe or for having so many children (so that the number one name for newborn baby boys in several Western capitals is Muhammad), or for advocating for laws and behavior that conform to sharia. In doing all of these things, they are merely engaging in self-preserving and self-promoting activities, which is how all normal people behave.
So how can they be blamed for buying and turning churches into mosques?
Alarmed Christians or Westerners in general will get nowhere until they learn to point their fingers in the right direction — at themselves, or at least, at their “elected” leaders who allow Muslims to promote themselves over the native peoples of the West.
And then doing something about it.
An example of how American leaders help empower Islam in America just occurred on May 2: New York City Mayor Eric Adams decreed that mosques no longer need to apply for permits to blast their “call to prayers” on loudspeakers.
Do you think American leaders would ever allow American churches to blast “Christian calls to prayers” — annoying surrounding non-Christians the way non-Muslims are now going to be annoyed in New York?
In short, yes, Christians should be angered that their churches are being pawned off to Muslims, who turn them into mosques. But Christian anger — if it is to be of any value — should be less directed against Muslims, whose actions are normal and representative of a people seeking to preserve and promote itself, and more toward themselves and their leaders, whose actions are suicidal and precisely what has led to Muslim empowerment in the West.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.