Why Have Western Leaders Abandoned the Monopoly on Force?
by Dexter Van Zile (November 2025)
During a trip to England in early December 2024, I barged into the Kilburn Islamic Center in London without having removed my shoes at the entrance. As I walked into the foyer, an elderly man of about my height with a beard and traditional Islamic garb told me in broken English to take off my shoes and put my backpack over in the corner.
I immediately regretted my hurried and impulsive entrance for two reasons. First, I wanted to be a good guest and make a good impression on the leadership of the mosque. I had dropped off my business card at the center a few days before and had hoped to conduct an interview with mosque leaders about what it was like to be a Muslim in England in the months after the October 7 massacre, a subject I have written about previously. The last thing I wanted to do was to show any disrespect to the mosque and its rules.
The second and more immediate reason for regretting my impulsive entrance was that I was vaguely fearful about my safety. The man who confronted me looked like he was quite willing to close the distance between us and make a manly effort to knock me down should I proceed to walk any further into the center without removing my shoes. The other folks in the mosque—all men by the way—who watched the interaction (and who had dutifully removed their shoes) looked at me with expressions that made it perfectly clear to me that they would back him up should there be a physical confrontation between the two of us.
I immediately apologized for barging in so inconsiderately, went to the corner, took off my shoes and backpack, put them on the floor and made a second attempt to get into the center of the foyer. I approached a young man I had spoken to a day or two before. He told me that he had given my business card to the mosque’s leaders and that they would get back to me if they wanted to answer my questions. I nodded, thanked him, walked back to my shoes and backpack, put them both back on and left the building.
During the entire interaction, there was no doubt about who controlled the premises of the Kilburn Islamic Center. The man who confronted me over my shod feet made it perfectly clear that he exercised what Max Weber called the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in the building.[1] It was their space; they called the shots and if I wanted to stay in the building, I had to follow their rules.
As I walked out of the mosque toward my hotel in Cricklewood, a neighborhood of London, I lamented internally that Western leaders have failed to do what the man in Kilburn Islamic Center had done—enforce the long-standing rules of behavior that governed the territory they control. European and American leaders had failed to guard the borders of the countries they governed from an influx of immigrants and having let them in, failed to require of the newcomers that they respect the rights of their neighbors. As a result, the safety of women, gays, and Jews, and journalists had declined substantially in recent years and anyone who complained about this turn of events was vilified as an “Islamophobe.”
The problem was particularly pronounced in England where thousands of young women were subjected to terrible abuse at the hands of rape gangs comprised of Muslim men from rural Pakistan who encouraged to view women who did not wear traditional Islamic garb as “easy meat.” Police throughout the United Kingdom knew that men from this community were raping white girls on a massive scale for decades but did nothing for fear of being called racist.
Similar fears prompted a security officer to deny his instincts about a young Muslim man at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in 2017 and as a result, Salman Abedi, Muslim terrorist was able to detonate a bomb that killed 22 concert goers. By way of comparison, citizens in the U.K. have been thrown in jail for posting mean things on the internet. U.K. elites have deployed the monopoly on force to deny citizens the right to speak about longstanding and obvious threats to their safety and welfare. Instead of insisting that newcomers assimilate to the ways of Merry Olde England, the original inhabitants are forced to tolerate the destruction of the traditions that have governed the country for centuries.
The problem is not limited to England, nor is it restricted to issues of national security and law enforcement issues. A similar failure is evident on the part of people and institutions charged with enforcing longstanding rules of civil society in Western democracies. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who documented the decline in the safety of women in areas with large Muslim populations in Europe in a recent book, has been vilified for years as an “Islamophobe”—oftentimes by women who describe themselves as feminists.
The failure to exercise and maintain the monopoly on force was particularly evident during the George Floyd protests when police departments in cities across the country stopped policing Black neighborhoods allow for a drastic increase in crime in these neighborhoods.
A similar retreat from the rule of law was evident when the Biden administration failed to maintain American borders, allowing millions of illegal immigrants to enter the country causing downward pressure on wages for working class people in cities throughout the country. And when the Trump administration reversed the policy and started removing illegal aliens, the American left called him a fascist and a dictator. At a recent “No Kings” protest in Boston I saw a young woman carrying a sign declaring “I preferred ICE crushed,” a clear call for the destruction of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Another protester, a young Asian woman, carried a sign that vilified the DHS.[2]
The message at this rally in Boston was that anyone who wants American borders protected is a very bad person and that Trump officials who actually protect the borders and enforce the law are evil fascists.
On a related matter, officials in Washington, D.C. have failed to maintain another monopoly closely related to the monopoly on force that modern democratic states need to maintain to survive—that of taxation. Sam Westrop, director of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch, has written numerous articles about how federal tax dollars have been given to Islamist organizations that promote terror overseas and foment ideological strife in the United States. Moreover, he has documented how tax-deductible donations have been directed to these same groups. In sum, government officials have allowed taxpayer funds to be spent on projects inimical to the interests of the American people and their republic. Predictably, groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations have complained bitterly about the Trump administration’s efforts to fix the problem.
The upshot is that people who defend Western democracies against physical and ideological threats are vilified, while the actual source of those threats are given a pass—coddled even—by Western leaders charged with exercising the monopoly on force accorded to them by the people they are charged with governing and protecting. The people with the knives at their throats are restrained while the knife-wielders are portrayed as victims. Many Western elites simply have no loyalty to the people they are called to lead and protect.[3] And all too many Western intellectuals will call those who complain about this lack of loyalty “fascists.”
Denying the citizens of Western democracies of the tools they need to protect their families and communities from external threats does not prevent fascism.
It paves the way for its entrance.
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[1] In the years since, sociologists have replaced Weber’s bothersome—but accurate—phrase “monopoly on the legitimate use of violence” with the less troublesome phrase, “monopoly on force.”
[2] Interestingly enough, she wore a Star of David Around her neck and covered her face completely with a keffiyeh, obscuring her Asian background, before leaving the subway station to protest.
[3] If this sounds over the top, ask yourself this question: When did anyone from U.K.’s royal family advocate for the victims of rape gangs in the Midlands? To her credit, Lady Diana traipsed around the world advocating for the victims of landmines. Did anyone from the royal family spend a dime on providing treatment for the victims of rape-gangs in the U.K.? If they did, why wasn’t it publicized?
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Dexter Van Zile is the Managing Editor of Focus on Western Islamism, a project of the Middle East Forum.