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“Is America ready for a Muslim president?” Kristen Welker asked Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on Meet the Press yesterday. As a Muslim with a long history of fighting against Islamist's anti-Western politics and thought, I find the framing of this question deeply concerning. Here is why: 🇺🇸 The question should never be whether America is ready for a Muslim president. The question should be whether a political candidate is ready to put the American Constitution above religious doctrine and political ideology. Constitutional loyalty is what matters... always. 👉 The United States represents one of humanity's greatest achievements in constitutional democracy, individual liberty, and religious freedom. In all honesty, sadly, Islam (until reformed, maybe) is not compatible with these values. I am speaking from experience here, as a Muslim and as someone who experienced the Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt firsthand. 🔆🇺🇸 There is a fundamental difference between being a Muslim who participates in a secular democracy and embracing political Islam, which seeks to subordinate political institutions to religious authority. Having spent much of my life confronting the latter in Egypt and in the United States, I know how consequential that distinction is. ⁉️ Finally, it is interesting how El-Sayed responded to the question by saying he had no intention of running for president. It just reminded me of something I heard repeatedly from Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt before the Arab Spring. They also insisted they had no presidential ambitions. They claimed they wanted only parliamentary representation to serve the Egyptian people. Then, when the political opportunity emerged in 2012, they used their parliamentary base and stepped up to the presidency. ✋ And I hate to say it, but I did not flee for my life from an Islamized Egypt, leaving everything behind, only to come to the United States (the land of the free) and find myself hearing the same conversations about religion and political power in the American media! Please! It is pretty traumatic.