Over the course of a single day this month, a pattern repeated itself across the West. Two Muslims murdered at least 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. Five Muslims were arrested for plotting an attack on a Christmas market in Germany. French authorities canceled a concert in Paris due to credible threats of an Islamist terror attack. Two Iowa National Guardsmen in Syria were murdered by an Islamist while we play footsie with an illegitimate regime.

None of this represents an anomaly. It represents the accumulated failure of a strategy best summarized as “invade the Muslim world, invite the Muslim world.”

This conflict has never been about Jews alone. Jews are the first target, not the last. Islamist ideology ultimately targets all non-Muslims and any society that refuses submission.

That doctrine has produced neither peace abroad nor safety at home.

A contradiction the West refuses to resolve

Western governments spent the better part of a generation importing millions of migrants from unstable regions while simultaneously deploying their own soldiers to those same regions to manage sectarian civil wars.

The contradiction remains unresolved: We accept the risks of mass migration while risking our troops to contain the same ideologies overseas.

Islamist movements do not confine themselves to national borders. Whether Sunni or Shia, whether operating in Syria, Europe, or North America, the targets remain consistent: Jews, Christians, secular institutions, and Western civil society.

Yet our policy treats these threats as isolated incidents rather than the expression of a coherent ideology.

Strategic incoherence in Syria

Nowhere does this incoherence appear more starkly than in Syria.

On one hand, the Trump administration has moved toward normalizing relations with Syria’s new leadership. In June, President Trump signed an executive order terminating U.S. sanctions on Syria, including those on its central bank, in the name of reconstruction and investment. Last month, Syria’s new leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani — a former al-Qaeda figure rebranded as a statesman — visited the White House, where Trump publicly praised developments under the new regime and said he was “very satisfied” with Syria’s direction.

At the same time, Trump floated the idea of establishing a permanent U.S. military base in Damascus to solidify America’s indefensible presence and support the new government.

This would be extraordinary. The United States would be embedding troops deeper into one of the most volatile theaters on earth, effectively placing American soldiers at the mercy of a regime whose leadership and allies only recently emerged from jihadist networks — including factions accused of massacring Christians and Druze.

Simultaneously, the White House pressures Israel to limit its defensive operations in southern Syria, including its buffer-zone strategy along the Golan Heights, even as Israeli forces do a far more effective job degrading jihadist threats without sacrificing their own soldiers.

The result is perverse: America risks lives to stabilize an Islamist-adjacent regime while restraining the one ally actually capable of enforcing order.

Wars abroad, chaos at home

The contradiction deepens when immigration policy enters the picture.

Despite Syria remaining one of the world’s most unstable countries, with no reliable vetting infrastructure, the United States continues admitting Syrian migrants while maintaining roughly 800 troops inside Syria with no clear mission, no defined end, and no defensible supply lines.

Worse, U.S. forces increasingly find themselves aligned with terrorist factions tied to al-Jolani’s coalition to manage rival Islamist groups — placing American soldiers in the same position they occupied in Afghanistan, where “allies” repeatedly turned on them.

That dynamic produced deadly ambushes then. It is happening again.

Qatar’s fingerprints all over

The common thread running through Syria, Gaza, immigration policy, and Islamist indulgence is Qatar.

Qatar (along with our NATO “ally,” Turkey) invested heavily in Sunni Islamist factions during Syria’s civil war and backed networks tied to the Muslim Brotherhood for more than a decade. Qatar hosts Islamist leaders, bankrolls ideological infrastructure, and operates Al Jazeera, a media outlet that consistently amplifies anti-Western and anti-Israel narratives.

Yet Qatari preferences increasingly shape Western policy. We remain in Syria. We soften pressure on Islamist factions. We tolerate Muslim Brotherhood networks operating domestically. We allow Al Jazeera to function with broad access and influence inside the United States.

These choices do not occur in isolation. They align consistently with Qatari interests.

Unfettered immigration kills

Which brings us to the attack in Sydney that killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens more, when two Muslim terrorists opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration — using weapons supposedly banned in a country that prides itself on gun control, but not border control.

The alleged attackers, Sajid Akram and Naveed Akram, were a father-and-son pair of Pakistani origin. Sajid Akram entered Australia from Pakistan in 1998 on a student visa, converted it to a partner visa in 2001, and later received permanent residency through resident return visas.

In other words, this was not a transient or marginal figure. Akram was educated, had lived in Australia for more than 25 years, raised an Australian-born son, and still became radicalized enough to murder Jews in his adopted country.

Pakistan is one of the countries the Trump administration continues to treat as an ally, allowing large numbers of its nationals into the United States. Over the past decade, roughly 140,000 Pakistanis have received green cards, with tens of thousands more entering on student and work visas.

RELATED: Political Islam is playing the long game — America isn’t even playing

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

The same pattern appears elsewhere. In Germany, five terrorists arrested for plotting an attack on a Christmas market came from Morocco, Syria, and Egypt. In the U.S., we have issued green cards to approximately 38,000 Moroccans, more than 100,000 Egyptians, and over 28,000 Syrians.

This problem is not confined to ISIS or a handful of extremists in distant war zones. It is systemic. It explains why thousands took to the streets celebrating the Sydney massacre and why Islamist mobs now routinely surround synagogues in American cities, blocking worshippers and daring authorities to intervene.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter which Islamic country they hail from, how friendly that government may be to the West, or the tribal dynamics on the ground there. All of them, when they cluster in large numbers and form independent communities run by the Musim Brotherhood organizations, are incompatible with the West.

The problem is with Islam itself and the mass migration and Western subversion promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood through Qatari and Turkish gaslighting.

A choice we keep postponing

This conflict has never been about Jews alone. Jews are the first target, not the last. Islamist ideology ultimately targets all non-Muslims and any society that refuses submission.

The West must decide whether it intends to defend its civilization or continue subsidizing its erosion — through mass migration without assimilation, foreign entanglements without strategy, and alliances that demand silence in exchange for access.

Rather than building up Syria, risking the lives of our troops, and continuing to appease our enemies in Qatar, why not pull out, let Israel serve as the regional security force, while we focus on closing our border to the religion of pieces?

Protecting the country requires clarity. That means ending immigration from jihadist incubators, dismantling Islamist networks operating domestically, withdrawing troops from unwinnable sectarian conflicts, and empowering allies who actually fight our enemies.

Anything less is not “compassion” or sound foreign policy. It is criminal negligence.

​Opinion & analysis, Immigration, Islam, Terrorism, Syria, Qatar, Turkey, Western civilization, The west, Submission, Sajid akram, Naveed akram, Australia, Hanukkah, Massacre, Jews, Anti-semitism, Germany, France, Mass deportations, Invasion, Al jazeera, Propaganda, Europe, Abu mohammed al-jolani, Doha forum, Muslim ban 

The world is vast and varied — different foods, cars, buildings, beliefs, and political systems wherever you go.

Yet somehow, laundromats are always exactly the same.

In an era of technologically dehumanizing isolation, I find myself seeing beauty in the most mundane moments of human connection or human commonality.

Universal, they stretch from the northern Atlantic to the southern Pacific. Where there are people and where there is civilization, there is laundry and there are laundromats.

Watching the washers

I remember waiting in a laundromat in northern France. It was right across the street from the Super-U. It was long and thin with tall windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. It was late November, the low sun was warm on the seats next to the windows, our clothes turning back and forth behind the tightly sealed window facing us. The silence of the warm carpet, our winter coats unbuttoned though still on, as we waited for our clothes to finish before walking back to the apartment.

In Chicago, my laundromat had long rows of metal machines. They loaded from the top and took six quarters per cycle. You slipped the quarters in the little slots and only once all six were filled could you push the metal slider forward. A few seconds later, the machine would start.

There were boxes of overpriced dry laundry soap next to the front door and a few benches next to the bathrooms that were always occupied by people staring down at their phones. I would wait in the corner, leaning against a rumbling dryer, looking up from my phone only when someone got up to move their wet clothes from washer to dryer. I would see wrinkly shirts, knotted sweaters, socks, pants, and skirts as they shuffled their clothes to another metal machine.

When I lived in Jerusalem, I washed my clothes at a laundromat close to Kikar Tzion. It was usually quiet, though never entirely empty. There was always someone else there talking quietly on the phone, listening more than speaking. Sometimes in Hebrew, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in French. The walls were covered with posters and printouts with little tags with phone numbers that could be torn off and slipped into your pocket if you were interested in whatever they were selling.

Metal machine music

Last week, our washer broke. On Saturday night, I took three loads plus two kids out in a snowstorm to the laundromat to get the laundry done.

It was empty, with the exception of the guy at the front desk who greeted us kindly as we stumbled in knocking the snow off our boots on the long black carpet. There was a TV in the corner, a couple tables with chairs, long lines of big, silver machines, and a few teal seats that looked like they were made in 1982. The kids and I loaded up the machines, poured in the detergent we had brought from home, and began listening to the low hum as the clothes began to spin.

The sound is always the same in every laundromat. There’s never loud music on a stereo; if there’s a TV, it’s always muted or very quiet. Even the people waiting for their socks and underwear behave as if they’re in a library, talking in low voices by the rumbling machines and spinning heat.

RELATED: The A&W Drive-In in Cortland, New York, isn’t just a lunch spot — it’s a time machine

Jim Steinfeldt/Getty Images

On the scent

The smell too; it’s always the same. All laundry soap all over the world has that same detergent-y scent. Soft, flowery, and lightly chemical. Detergent in Italy and detergent in Israel may have different names from detergent in America or detergent in Iceland, but they all are basically the same. The world is big and there are so many people, but all their clothes smell the same.

At the laundromat, people wash their most intimate garments in public, together. They carry their laundry baskets in and wash the things they only show their significant others right next to the things that someone else only shows theirs.

We never acknowledge any of this, and this is why we all hurry to put our clothes in, or change our clothes over, when we are at the laundromat. We all have a secret to protect, and we are all stuck together, in public, with the spinning machines, the low hum of the heat, and the smell of chemical flowers.

Together alone

This is part of why we are all fairly quiet as well. It’s like we don’t actually want to acknowledge that anyone else is really there washing their clothes right alongside ours. We may make small talk, but we don’t say much.

Laundromats are almost something like holdovers from a more necessarily communal time. Waiting and watching the people sitting and their clothes spinning, I have thought about how all the women must have washed clothes down by the river, or wherever it was they did laundry, in the ancient days.

In an era of technologically dehumanizing isolation, I find myself seeing beauty in the most mundane moments of human connection or human commonality. The things we share even if we don’t dwell on them. The things we do together even if we are alone. The spinning machines, the private garments we want to keep to ourselves, the smell of the detergent, the quiet as we wait.

​Laundromat, Men’s style, Fatherhood, Lifestyle, The root of the matter 

Western nations are collapsing under the weight of mass migration, failed assimilation, demographic upheaval, and the growing alliance between Marxist and Islamist ideologies — a threat Charlie Kirk warned about with clarity long before his death.

“We don’t talk enough about Islam. … We don’t talk nearly enough about the hundreds of thousands of Muslims that we have voluntarily imported into our country that build mosques, implement Sharia law,” Kirk once said.

“You go to Minneapolis, you even go to Dallas, you go to New York, and it will metastasize. It will spread. You know why? Because the women of the West, they get cats. The women of Muslims, they have eight kids. Eventually, it doesn’t work very well,” he continued.

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey couldn’t agree with Kirk more.

“I thought he was going to go in the direction of toxic empathy, because it’s toxic empathy that has made us say, ‘No, Christians are the bad ones. Muslims are the great ones. And we just need to accept, unfettered, anyone into our country,’” she tells her father and BlazeTV contributor Ron Simmons on “Relatable.”

And Simmons has noticed it in his own neighborhood.

“Even in the neighborhood that I live in, I walk a lot. … I will pass people that I know have immigrated here, you know, meet them, and they won’t even make eye contact. It’s just really strange,” Simmons tells his daughter.

“That’s not the America that I grew up in or believe in,” he adds.

“And that’s one thing, you know, we heard so much, especially the past few years: ‘Diversity is our strength. Diversity is our strength.’ Well, statistically, that’s not true,” Stuckey agrees.

“It can bring different perspectives and things like that, but at the end of the day, you have to say, ‘Okay, but this is what we have in common.’ But if you don’t have that, then diversity is a weakness,” she says.

“We are trying to force multiculturalism upon people without any shared underneath values,” she continues. “And that has worked zero places throughout history.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Video phone, Video, Upload, Camera phone, Sharing, Free, Youtube.com, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Charlie kirk, Islam, Islam and the west, Islam destroying the west, The islamification of america, Ron simmons, Toxic empathy 

On December 11, 18 child online safety bills took a significant step toward becoming law. The package — each bill addressing, in some way, the harms children face online — passed out of a House subcommittee on a mostly party-line vote. The legislative bundle is, overall, a somewhat milquetoast mix of meaningful wins and frustrating defeats for child safety advocates. Still, it represents real progress. For those who have long pushed for action, the ball has finally moved down the field.

The bills vary dramatically in scope. Some, like the Assessing Safety Tools for Parents and Minors Act, would simply mandate an analytical report on the efforts technology companies are making to protect children. Others, such as the App Store Accountability Act — which would require app stores to determine whether a user is a minor and, if so, prohibit downloads without parental consent — are far more consequential, fundamentally changing how app stores operate.

Advancing 18 bills signals that one of the longest-standing objections to action — whether social media actually harms children — has effectively collapsed.

There are also bittersweet elements. The most well-known and controversial bill, the Kids Online Safety Act, is included in the package — but in a significantly watered-down form. The original version, introduced by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), passed the Senate with more than 90 votes. But House GOP leadership raised constitutional concerns, arguing that the bill placed undue pressure on social media companies to regulate speech.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), one of the bill’s most prominent opponents, warned that it would “empower dangerous people.” Other critics likened KOSA to the British Online Safety Act — a far more draconian law than its American counterpart. (The most recent Senate version of KOSA focuses on disabling addictive features and restricting minors’ access to dangerous content.)

These concerns forced substantial revisions. Most notably, the bill now includes a sweeping pre-emption clause barring states from regulating anything that “relates” to KOSA — effectively nullifying existing and future state-level efforts to protect children online.

Equally disappointing is what failed to make the cut.

Some excluded proposals were undeniably radical, such as the RESET Act, which would have barred minors from creating or maintaining social media accounts altogether. But another bill left behind — the App Store Freedom Act — was critical to restoring competition and accountability in the app ecosystem.

That legislation would have challenged the Apple-Google duopoly, which controls more than 90% of app store purchases in the United States. As long as those two companies dominate the marketplace, meaningful reform will remain elusive. Unsurprisingly, both firms opposed the bill, arguing that it would “endanger” children by allowing downloads from unvetted third-party stores.

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), the bill’s sponsor, blasted that claim, noting that Apple has long permitted minors to download TikTok — a platform run by a Chinese company with well-documented national security concerns.

RELATED: Schools made boys the villain. The internet gave them a hero.

Image by Alexandr Muşuc via iStock / Getty Images

Despite its importance, the App Store Freedom Act was removed from the package. Even so, the remaining legislation still marks a major victory for those focused on protecting children online.

Here’s why.

First, advancing 18 bills signals that one of the longest-standing objections to action — whether social media actually harms children — has effectively collapsed.

For years, lawmakers debated whether digital platforms were the problem or whether other factors deserved the blame. A steady stream of studies, headlines, and internal leaks showing that social media companies knew their products damaged adolescent mental health helped put that question to rest.

Second, the breadth of the package ensures that something will happen. Even the weakest provisions — those requiring studies or reports — will energize advocates and help bring order to what remains a digital Wild West for children and families.

The legislative fight is far from over. The bills must still clear committee, pass the House, and survive the Senate. But momentum is clearly shifting toward reform.

It’s time to finish the fight.

​Congress, Online safety, Apple, Google, App store, App store accountability act, Opinion & analysis, Kids online safety act, Marsha blackburn