Hello Reader,
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This week: the New York Times uses two words to shut down one of the most important conversations in America — and we reopen it. A hammer-and-sickle notebook in a Shanghai office, and the "No Kings" movement gets complicated. Thirty-six nations sign a statement — and do nothing. And the quote from Donald Trump that made Vladimir Putin's week.

Dispatches from the Rebellion: Counterstrikes Edition

1. Two Words. Debate Closed.
2. No Kings. Just Commissars?
3. The Land of Strongly Worded Condemnations
4. Trump's Threat, Putin's Dream

Essay: Two Words. Debate Closed.

On New Year's Day 2025, Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a truck into Bourbon Street, killing 14 — ISIS flag on his windshield. That attack was the beginning of what can now be called a spate of ISIS-inspired attacks on American soil. A former Michigan National Guard soldier flew a drone over a US Army base in reconnaissance for a planned ISIS massacre. An 18-year-old in North Carolina recorded an ISIS loyalty oath before planning a New Year's Eve knife attack on a grocery store.
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Then on March 7, two American teenagers hurled TATP-packed bombs into a crowd of anti-Islam protesters outside Gracie Mansion, pledging allegiance to ISIS.
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Meanwhile, Iran's Islamic Republic — a government built explicitly on divine law — massacred over 30,000 of its own citizens in two days. An al-Qaeda-linked militant group has strangled Mali's capital, Bamako, for months. ISIS is quickly expanding and overwhelming governments across West Africa.
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Last week, we showed how the New York Times has determined there is no cause for concern. A subordinate clause in a story about Nigerian massacres described a man who had "falsely argued that violence is a fundamental part of Islam."
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No evidence cited. The conclusion: predetermined.
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On March 19, the Times’ editorial board went further, declaring that "irrational fear of Shariah" was driving anti-Muslim policy.
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“Falsely.” “Irrational.” Two words. Debate closed.
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As mentioned last week, these pages have vigorously advocated for Muslim minority communities worldwide — China’s Uyghurs, Pakistan’s Baloch, Myanmar’s Rohingya, Palestinians, India's Muslim minority. None of that is changing. But I'm asking two questions the Times will not:
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Is there a pattern of violence worth examining? And is it “Islamophobia,” or is the fear rational?
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CAIR — the largest Muslim civil rights organization in America — emphasizes that Sharia, for most American Muslims, is a personal religious framework: prayer, fasting, charity, family ethics. Muslim-American politicians have taken oaths to the Constitution and generally championed pluralism. That is the lived reality of Muslim civic life in America, and it matters.
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But the question isn't just about American Muslims. It's about a legal tradition 1,400 years in the making, codified unanimously by every major school of Islamic law, and being enforced at gunpoint on three continents today.
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Here's what the NYT has decided you can't be trusted to consider for yourself:
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