Essay: If Pete Hegseth Was a Muslim

On his chest, Hegseth has a tattoo of the Jerusalem Cross. “That cross has a long history in Christianity but has lately been co-opted by some far-right groups as a symbol of the fight for Western civilization,” says Reuters. Photo:Instagram/Peter Hegseth

First published on January 29, 2025

This is the latest in a series. Read also:

If Amy Coney Barrett Was a Muslim

If Marjorie Taylor Greene Was a Muslim

If Harrison Butker Was a Muslim

If Pete Hegseth was a Muslim, the U.S. would’ve invaded his country to save the “free world” from the Hegseth jihad. Instead, this white supremacist extremist crusader, rapist, drunkard, and abusive husband will be second in command running the most powerful and lethal military in history.

What will he do with it?

Hegseth, who has called for an “American Crusade” against the “internal” and “domestic enemies” of the U.S. and Israel, was nominated to his position by a President and Commander-in-Chief who is publicly itching to deploy that military throughout the United States. Who will save the people of the U.S. from an internal crusade of a military that already has an extremism problem?

Hegseth is a Christian zealot who believes that Islam is a natural, historic enemy to the West and has lamented growing numbers of American Muslims.

With white supremacist, sexual predator Donald Trump – a conduit for Christian zealots in the U.S. –in command of that military, who will save the world from the United States’ external fascist crusade?

The West lost the Crusades, by the way.

But you wouldn’t know it from the way Hegseth and other white Christian supremacists fetishise those atrocity-filled missions launched by Western Europe to take control of Jerusalem and other areas that Muslims ruled.

Those same white supremacists who love to call Islam and Muslims violent, whitewash the bloodthirsty history of their own religion. And more often than not, their anti-Muslim and Islamophobic diatribes are barely disguised envy at what they accuse Muslims of doing and being that they wish they could do and be.

In a review of his books by The Guardian, the newspaper says that 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,” and “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.”

“‘Deus Vult’ is a Latin phrase meaning "God Wills It," a rallying cry for Christian crusaders in the Middle Ages,” says Reuters. Photo: Instagram/Peter Hegseth

The New Yorker has reported that a complaint filed during his time leading he veterans group Concerned Veterans for America says that during the CVA’s Defend Freedom Tour, Hegseth and someone traveling with the group were in a bar when they started chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!” in what the complaint described as “a drunk and a violent manner.”

Far right white Christian zealots like Hegseth hate Muslims and want to be as zealous as they imagine Muslims to be. As per the popular proverb: every accusation is a confession.

“At times he seems to admire what he imagines to be the thoroughgoing religious zealotry of Muslims compared with an increasingly secular west,” says The Guardian.

The newspaper highlights this quote from Hegseth’s American Crusade: “Almost every single Muslim child grows up listening to, and learning to read from, the Quran…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.”

Whether Hegseth and his white Christian Crusaders or ISIS and other jihadis, the control of women is another thing they can see reflected in each other.

It gets worse. See this from Jasper Craven’s profile for Politico, headlined Pete Hegseth’s Crusade to Turn the Military into a Christian Weapon.

“In his 2016 memoir, In the Arena, Hegseth says he relates to an online image of a triumphant ISIS fighter — a Quran in one hand, an AK-47 in the other: ‘With God on his side and the wind at his back, he is a conquering warrior,’ Hegseth writes. ‘He is fighting for something greater than himself. He is fighting for his God.’”

Craven continues.

“In this photo, Hegseth sees a warped version of himself. ‘I recognize that fighter, even though I’ve never met him. I am drawn to him because I relate to him,’ he writes. ‘I deplore what he stands for, what he does and how he does it. He is a soldier of hate, subjugation and sheer evil. But I understand his passions.’”

I can assure you that most people who’ve been subjected to the brute force of the U.S. military’s forever wars and invasions, believe that Hegseth and others who’ve fought and killed for that military are “soldier(s) of hate, subjugation and sheer evil.”

White people in the U.S. are able to see zealotry and its dangers only when it doesn’t look like them. Hegseth has one upped that. He sees the dangers of an ISIS fighter’s zealotry and says “Kudos! But he’s a savage and I’m God’s warrior.”

And whether Hegseth and his white Christian Crusaders or ISIS and other jihadis, the control of women is another thing they can see reflected in each other. With a dangerous twist.

Far right white supremacists, including Hegseth, are obsessed with the racist and sexist conspiracy “replacement theory” that “is predicated on the notion that white women are not having enough children and that falling birthrates will lead to white people around the world being replaced by nonwhite people.”

“In their minds, in this clash of civilization, white men are in a weaker position because their women are not doing the work of reproducing,” Arun Kundnani, a professor at New York University, told the New York Times.

“They are saying, ‘Look, Muslims have got their women where they need to be, and we’re not doing a good job at that,’” Kundnani, author of “The Muslims Are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism and the Domestic War on Terror,” said.

Someone call Vice President “I want more babies in the U.S.” Vance.

In the U.S. the majority of white voters–men and women–voted for Trump and the white christian crusader fascism he is unleashing.

I’ve written often about why white people in the U.S. are able to see zealotry and its dangers only when it doesn’t look like them. Hegseth has one upped that. He sees the dangers of an ISIS fighter’s zealotry and says “Kudos! But he’s a savage and I’m God’s warrior.”

Hegseth and his fellow crusaders are the recruitment material of the very jihadis that they themselves use to recruit for their own fascist hate groups, with this major difference: No Muslim voted for Osama Bin Laden or his al-Qaeda jihadis, no Muslim voted for the Taliban, no Muslim voted for ISIS.

But here in the U.S. the majority of white voters–men and women–voted for Trump and the white christian crusader fascism he is unleashing–not creating, because he is the fruition, not an aberration or a sudden appearance. The majority of white voters chose Trump knowing exactly what he was and would bring.

Just as Donald Trump is not an aberration, but rather a fruition of decades of white supremacist, misogynist, bigoted rot, so too is Hegseth a product of those hatreds and tacit approval that white, Christian zealots get in this country. You might think his pass was revoked when he was reported as an “insider threat” for his Crusades and Jerusalem Cross tattoos and withdrawn from Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, but Trump, and Congress in confirming him, rewarded his hate and zealotry.

The ISIS warrior that Hegseth admires and hates at the same time, targeted more Muslims than western targets. And you would be foolish to think Hegseth–who “has written in a book that he could imagine a scenario in which the US armed forces would be used violently in American domestic politics”–is any different.

And for those white people who didn’t vote for Trump–they know a Hegseth, or a Vance, in a father, brother, husband, uncle, or name the relative they tolerate, barely; they know the daily patriarchy of those fathers, uncles, brothers, boyfriends, and husbands. But they have not confronted them.

Those white people who didn’t vote for Trump should understand that those Hegseths in their lives are more than willing to confront those white Americans who do not take their threat seriously. What was January 6, after all?

And for more context, that even Crusader Peter would understand: the ISIS warrior that he admires and hates at the same time, targeted more Muslims than western targets. And you would be foolish to think Hegseth–who “has written in a book that he could imagine a scenario in which the US armed forces would be used violently in American domestic politics”–is any different.

“Throughout his work, and especially in 2020’s American Crusade, Hegseth paints an apocalyptic picture of American politics, and encourages his fellow rightwingers to see their opponents as an existential threat,” says The Guardian.

In American Crusade, Hegseth “describes leftists, progressives and Democrats as ‘enemies’ of freedom, the US constitution and America, and counts Israel among the ‘international allies’ who can help defeat such ‘domestic enemies,’” The Guardian continues.

White conservative men just want to control their women the way they think Muslim men do. White liberal men think they’re better than that, but scratch the surface, and find a subterranean sexist.

When you only see the dangers of zealotry of those who don’t look like you, the danger right here right now of the zealots who look like you–the ones who will storm your capital, try to overturn an election, and in the case of Pete Hegseth, redraw an ahistorical version and mashup of the Crusades and the U.S. Civil War to justify their violence against enemies over there and here–will go unnoticed and unchallenged for so long because that danger looks like you, your father, brother, husband and son.

White conservative men just want to control their women the way they think Muslim men do. White liberal men think they’re better than that, but scratch the surface, and find a subterranean sexist, and white liberal men are rarely in anyone’s crosshairs.

And now Crusader Pete’s American Crusade is coming for you too. Not just Muslims but anyone not a fascist zealot like him.

I used to say that unless the United States develops the stomach for a long-overdue reckoning with the white supremacist Christian theocracy that has been unabashed in its destruction of Roe v Wade, abortion rights will not be the only rights it destroyed. And now, it is too late.

The U.S. is a deeply conservative country that is in denial over the power and influence that Christianity exerts. And that power and influence, along with racism and misogyny are at the core of the ascendancy of Trump et al.

The same arrogance and naiveté that made so many white Americans think Trump would never become president the first time around let alone again is that same arrogance and naiveté that made so many think "it would never happen here" about abortion bans, is the same arrogance and naiveté that made so many of you point to your uncles in Georgia, or grandparents in Florida to blame, the same arrogance and naiveté that convinced you fascism would never come for you too.

And now Crusader Pete’s American Crusade is coming for you too. Not just Muslims but anyone not a fascist zealot like him.

So successful has white supremacist patriarchy been at convincing white women especially that they’re lucky to live in the U.S. and not Saudi Arabia or Iran, that so many white women did not pay enough attention to the theocracy that white supremacy was building right here at home.

It was being built by white men who look like their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, not the scary brown Muslim men with beards, right? It was being built by mediocre white men who look like Pete Hegseth, whose zealotry is a smug shield against accountability.

Because after all, he’s a religious, godly man - how dangerous could he be? they think.

And now a man who is a rapist and a drunk will run a military that already suffers a sexual assault epidemic. Women in the U.S. armed forces comprise only 16.5 percent and yet nearly one in four U.S. servicewomen reports being sexually assaulted, and more than half report experiencing harassment.

Every white person in the U.S. knows a version of Crusader Pete in their family or workplace. He is the fascist that looks like them and the zealot who is right here. And he will turn the military on you unless you develop that stomach and spine needed to fight him, to see the fascist who looks like you for the danger that they are.

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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her latest book is an anthology on menopause she edited called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.

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