I am not Muslim, but I do spend a lot of time on Threads combating Islamophobia.

In reaction to this post on Threads, I tracked down and answered the questions that should have been asked:

• Who is the person pictured?
• What is the context?
• Who posted this and why?

I traced the photo using a Google search to Gad Saad on X.

When sharing a post by Dr. Maalouf (@realMaalouf), Gad Saad asked the question on X: Is he practicing Islam or Islamism?

Sending Mohammed was not only to establish justice in one small area of the globe, in Arabia. It was to make this system, Islam, prevail over the entire globe. So when Allah said (in the Quran): “He may make it prevail over all other religions”…To make it prevail over the whole religion, is to make it prevail over the entirety of man-made systems and ways of life, all put together, whether it is liberal democracy, whether it is Communism, whether is is socialism, whatever way of life was invented by Man. Allah’s way should prevail over that. Where is the glory of Islam? Where is the glory of the believers today? So we need to struggle to bring back the glory of Allah, the glory of Islam. Anything that contravenes the shari’a, we will not listen, we will not obey. Faith is an ideology. It manifests itself in Islam. Islam is a complete political, social, and economic system. They boast that their economic system is better than the Islamic economic system. They boast that their social structures are better than our social structure. No! We are way superior to them.

Who is the speaker?

The Michigan-based Imam Mustapha Elturk is the president of IONA (Islamic Organization of North America). He immigrated to the US in 1976. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Lawrence Institute of Technology and a Masters in Liberal Arts in Social Justice from Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan.

“Islam is far superior to man-made systems of government. I immigrated to the US because here, people can freely spread Islamic ideology. (12 October 2019)

The Evergreen Islamic Center is based in San Jose, California. The land was bought in 1989 and the construction started in 2010. The center is approximately 40,000 square feet and used as a place of worship. The space has a large community hall on a 2.2 acre parcel of land. The mosque is a non-profit run by its member congregation, and about 500 families use the facilities. It is the first mosque to be built ground up in the San Francisco South Bay Area.

Mustapha Elturk delivered a lecture and it was uploaded to YouTube on 12 October 2019. The Jihadwatch.org reported it noting “As such, his words here should be a matter of concern to law enforcement authorities. There are still laws against sedition and subversion. But to investigate Elturk for such things would be ‘Islamophobic.'”

JihadWatch and its director, Robert Spencer are considered anti-Muslim by the Southern Poverty Law Center.