By Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, Esq.

Here’s the full and final column, top to bottom:

Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Muslim

By Abdul-Hakim Shabazz

So I found out last week that I’m in a “demonic death cult.” News to me. And frankly, a little insulting, because if I’m in a demonic death cult, it is the worst-run demonic death cult in the history of demonic death cults. No robes. No orientation packet. Nobody so much as handed me a can of pea soup on the way in. And not once, in all my years, has anybody invited me to join the band — which stings a little, because I’ve actually got a song-and-dance background. You’d think a “demonic death cult” would at least have a horn section. I spent my weekend the way I spend most of them — scotch, a cigar, a stack of comic books, and a fight with my wife about whether Blazing Saddles is Mel Brooks’ best work. (It is. Fight me on that. Not on religion.) I will be the first to admit I am not a very good Muslim. But that’s between me and God, and last I checked, the Lieutenant Governor of Indiana was not cc’d on that thread.

Ah yes. The Lieutenant Governor.

Because the man who knows the actual state of my soul better than I do is Micah Beckwith, who shared this revelation on a Christian talk show called Flashpoint — presumably because Stormfront was already taken. There, on camera, our state’s second-in-command told Hoosiers it was time “to hate again,” and then, reaching deep into the bag for an example of something worth hating, he pulled out… me.

“I am going to call on others to hate it, because I hate Islam,” he said. “It is a death cult.”

And then, without so much as a breath, he found the love:

“Now I love Muslims, because they make great Christians when Jesus gets a hold of them.”

Sit with that. Really let it marinate, because it is a small masterpiece of bigotry-with-a-smile. It reminds me of the old joke — “I love Black people, I think everybody should own one.” That’s the exact genre Micah is working in. And before you tell me I’m being unfair, remember this is the same Micah Beckwith who went on video last year and called the Three-Fifths Compromise “a great move” — a generous little gift to Black folks, the way he tells it, rather than the deal that counted my ancestors as a fraction of a human being to fatten the slave states’ representation. His own boss wouldn’t touch that one; Governor Braun said he “definitely wouldn’t have used that characterization.” Actual historians used the word “laughable.” So forgive me if I don’t take Micah’s theory of what’s good for me, my people, or my soul entirely at face value. Affection as acquisition. Love with an asterisk the size of a cathedral. Because Micah doesn’t hate Muslims. He loves us — the way an HGTV flipper loves a teardown. Good bones. Solid foundation. Tremendous potential, once somebody guts the kitchen. I’m not a person to this man. I’m a renovation project with a permit pending. An old house with good bones, just sitting here waiting on a little religious gentrification.

And then — because Micah has a flair for timing that I almost have to respect — he waited until the close of Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest days on the Muslim calendar, to log onto his official, taxpayer-adjacent Twitter account and post this: “On the close of Eid… I would like take this opportunity to wish all Muslims in Indiana the best. And by best I mean I hope you all become Christian.”

After, and I quote, “much prayer and consideration.” So he workshopped it. There’s a draft somewhere that was worse. Sit with that.

And here’s my favorite part. Micah’s “convert or else” tour has to stop somewhere, and you’d think the floor would at least be Christian. Except he’s also spent time pushing material plenty of Hoosiers found nakedly anti-Catholic — which is awkward, because the man he answers to, Governor Mike Braun, is a devout Catholic who took his oath of office on two Bibles. So either the boss gets a hall pass and the rest of us are negotiable, or nobody is quite pure enough for Micah’s Indiana and we’re all just standing in line waiting our turn. I’d ask him to clarify, but I don’t think he’s thought it through that far. Thinking it through has never really been the point.

Now, I have been doing this a long time, and I know a religious-bigotry rollout when one rolls past me, because they all come with the same cleanup crew driving the same little truck. Sure enough: by the time FOX59 got the office on the phone, “I hate Islam, it is a death cult” had been gently dry-cleaned into a statement about “Sharia Law” and people who refuse to “assimilate to our culture.” That’s the two-step, folks. Step one: hate the whole faith out loud on the livestream, where the base is watching and the donations clear. Step two: lawyer it down to “lawful immigration and assimilation” by the time grown-ups with press credentials start dialing. I could set my watch to it. I practically do.

Here’s what actually gets me, though. If Micah wanted a reason to hate me, he was spoiled for choice. He could’ve hated me for the journalism — and Lord knows we’ve handed his office a buffet. We covered the closed-door Life Church meeting where he reportedly worked the room to go after Assemblies of God leadership. We covered the senior adviser shown the door, the article he shared that a lot of folks read as straight-up anti-Catholic, and the town halls that got chippy enough to make news entirely on their own merits. And we covered the part that ought to make a self-anointed anti-“groomer” crusader sweat clean through his shirt: the way that crusade kept tripping over the Peternel matter — a former close adviser accused of pressuring a teen, and a separate child-exploitation case tied to his orbit — real names, real allegations, sitting a whole lot closer to home than anything you’ll find in my mosque. And since I’m a lawyer and constitutionally incapable of leaving this alone: under Indiana law, everyone is a mandatory reporter. Everyone. There is no carve-out for Lieutenant Governors, no exemption for pastors, no special pass for self-appointed defenders of the children. Just a little something to keep in the back of your mind, for a guy who built an entire brand protecting kids from threats he had to imagine.

That’s the stuff a public official gets to be sore at a reporter about. I report it, he hates it, the Republic stands. That’s the deal. We both signed it.

But he didn’t come for the journalism. He came for my God. And that one choice tells you everything about which fight Micah thinks he can actually win.

And look — glass houses, so let me be honest. From one media whore to another, Micah: I get it. I get it. I’ve been in this racket long enough to know exactly what an outrage cycle clears, how fast a hot quote travels, how lovingly the algorithm rewards the one guy in the room willing to say the genuinely ugly thing into a live mic. There’s a phrase for this. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. You found the slot machine that pays out in earned media and small-dollar donations, you keep yanking the lever, and this week the lever was a Muslim. Professionally? Respect. Truly. You played that hand.

The difference — and it is the whole difference, the only one that matters — is this. I make a living putting out the things people in the public sphere would rather keep quiet. The records, the deals, the conduct they hoped nobody would look at too closely. You make a living manufacturing a threat that wasn’t there until you walked up to a microphone and invented it. I report what powerful people actually did. You report what frightened people can be talked into believing. One of those jobs has a referee, a record, and a right of reply. The other one ends with somebody’s mosque calling around for extra security on a Friday afternoon. You know which is which. You did the math anyway and decided the jackpot was worth it.

Anyway.

Here’s the thing, Micah. I genuinely appreciate the concern for my eternal soul. I do. But I need you to understand the caliber of competition you’re stepping into, because it is well above your weight class.

I have a wife. She is — and I say this with all the cold objectivity of a man who knows precisely what’s good for him — extremely hot. She is also devoutly, fluently, can-quote-you-chapter-and-verse-on-a-Tuesday Baptist. That woman has had a clean shot at converting me for years. Daily access. Home-field advantage. A plate of fried chicken and mac and cheese that could turn a lesser man. Motivation, frankly, that you cannot dream of matching.

And here I sit. Still Muslim.

So I’ll be straight with you, brother: if she couldn’t close it, your odds are not what you’d call good. You are not bringing one single thing to this negotiation that she hasn’t already tried, and she’s better-looking than you and a far better cook. So — good luck, Micah. Sincerely. You are going to need a great deal more than a Flashpoint hit and a hashtag.

But let’s say you’re right. Let’s say you’ve got the eternal real-estate map, the keys are in your pocket, and I am in fact booked into the warm part of town. Fine. If you’re going to threaten me with eternal damnation, I have exactly one request.

Save me the seat next to you.

No — make it the one right in between. You know how when two fellas go to the movies together, there’s an unspoken rule about leaving an empty seat between them? The buffer zone? That’s the one I want. Park me right there next to you, a respectful seat apart. Bring your Flashpoint notes. We’ll have time.

Because here’s the part Micah keeps speed-walking past while he hates on a schedule: the Council on American-Islamic Relations did not fire back with hate. They invited him to a mosque. To sit down. To break bread with the actual flesh-and-blood Muslim Hoosiers he was elected — by oath, on a Bible — to serve. The Indiana Muslim Advocacy Network, run by people who could have matched his tone syllable for syllable and chose not to, called the rhetoric dangerous and then committed the radical act of reminding everyone that religious freedom means respecting people of all faiths.

That’s the grown-up move. Show up. Sit down. Eat. It’s a standing invitation, and we both know he’ll never take it, because a quiet Tuesday dinner with people who turn out to be — surprise — people doesn’t fundraise, and hate does.

So I’ll leave the porch light on, Micah. The death cult brews a shockingly good pot of coffee, the conversation’s better than anything on Flashpoint, and not one soul here is going to lift a finger to threaten yours.

Let me actually send you off with a little scripture, since we are both, in our way, people of the Book.

The Quran — yes, that book — has a line I have always loved: “There shall be no compulsion in religion.” That’s chapter two, verse 256. Sit with that one. The “demonic death cult” you’ve spent a week hating wrote down, centuries ago, that you cannot force a soul to convert. It beat you to your own punchline.

…oops. Right. Quoting the Quran at the man who called it demonic is like reading the Cheat Sheet to somebody who doesn’t subscribe. My mistake. Let me try a translation you’ll accept.

From a gentleman you claim to work for — and I don’t mean Braun, I mean the other One: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Mark, chapter twelve, verse thirty-one. Red letters. He meant it.

He didn’t say love thy neighbor once he converts. He didn’t carve out the Muslims, didn’t attach a permit, didn’t tell anybody to wait around until Jesus “gets a hold of them.” He just said love them. Full stop. Called it the second-greatest commandment there is — and it’s sitting right there in the book you actually claim as your own.

You told Hoosiers it was time to hate again, Micah.

He’d have told you to knock it off.

Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is the editor and publisher of IndyPolitics.org and a licensed attorney in Indiana and Illinois. He has been a Muslim and an American citizen since birth.