Just when you thought you’d talked enough about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s tattoos for one lifetime, this week Hegseth revealed a new one: a tattoo on his left bicep of the Arabic word “kafir,” which is usually translated as “infidel” or “unbeliever.”
Hegseth showcased his new ink in a March 25th tweet from a day of performative exercise with the Navy SEALs. Context is everything, of course, but given his neo-Crusader tattoos (the “Deus Vult,” the Jerusalem Cross, the sword for Matthew 10:34); his numerous writing, interviews, and drunken rants that valorize Christian violence against Muslims; and, most importantly, the blatantly illegal Signal chat the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally invited to? Pete Hegseth is simply daring us to ask about his, and the administration’s, blatant hatred of Muslims.
Hegseth was a problematic and deeply unqualified choice for a number of reasons—a history of financial mismanagement, intoxication, sexual assault, and a stint as a Fox News ‘journalist.’ This is to say nothing about the fact that he was banned from attending Joe Biden’s inauguration due to extremism concerns from his own National Guard unit. But he’s also an overt Christian nationalist; his church is both independently and organizationally a Christian nationalist mouthpiece, while he has served as a paid mouthpiece for Christian nationalist companies, and has a lengthy record of spewing overt anti-Muslim rhetoric. The allegation of a drunken rant in 2015 at an Ohio bar where he chanted “Kill All Muslims!” comes immediately to mind, but so do his 2018 comments, echoing France’s far-right parties and the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, that “they’ve got a slow-motion 9/11 happening there” and “demography matters.”
But it’s not just tattoos, drunken comments, and on-air statements that, one might argue, are off-the-cuff remarks. It’s everywhere in his writing, including his conviction that the Crusades are a model, not just for Christians dealing with secular America—his obsession with violence against “the Left” domestically—but as a model for Christian-Muslim relations as a whole. In American Crusade he frames the Crusades as a defensive war:
By the eleventh century, Christianity in the Mediterranean region, including the holy sites in Jerusalem, was so besieged by Islam that Christians had a stark choice: to wage defensive war or continue to allow Islam’s expansion and face existential war at home in Europe.
This comment has less to do with history than it does his beliefs about Muslims in the West today—beliefs one can find in every corner of the book. His comments on demographics above? Not idle, on-air missteps. Europe, according to Hegseth, is “demographically and culturally overrun” by Muslims—the fault of “quivering European beta-male politicians,” who in his view failed to deliver the authoritarian anti-immigration-crackdown Trump is promising. In his discussion of the Muslim population in Europe, he immediately pivots to America:
Could the same thing happen in America? Of course. With enough leftism and enough time, anything is possible for Islamists. As I have reported on extensively at FOX News, certain cities in my home state of Minnesota have started to look much different thanks to overwhelming and intentional Muslim immigration. What started with good intentions (see: Somali Omar in chapter 1) and peaceful refugees eventually evolved into insular communities, internationally funded mosques, welfare fraud, culture clashes, and radicalization. Then, as Muslims’ birth rates have grown—alongside their political influence—local “tolerant” populations have made concessions. Critics are called racists, crimes are hidden from the public, and the European cycle has begun. Similar trends are happening in other states, including Michigan and New York.
The leftist-Islamist link is no one off. In the very next paragraph he writes:
The unholy alliance between leftists and Islamists means that open borders, nonassimilation, the erosion of national allegiance, and toleration of the intolerable has left the door open for Islamists to establish a foothold in our country. In November 2019, twenty-six Muslim candidates won elected office in the United States. Muhammad is now a top ten boys’ name in America—what will it be in 2030?
So, again, The Great Replacement conspiracy theory—which has been linked to multiple mass shootings—is married to a fervent Islamophobia. Naturally his solution is violence:
Just like the Christian crusaders who pushed back the Muslim hordes in the twelfth century, American Crusaders will need to muster the same courage against Islamists today.
Hegseth’s solution for the precarious position the US is supposedly in: an all-out Christian Nationalist Holy War. And not just abroad, but within the US, against immigrants, “leftists,” and everyone who doesn’t share his views:
The hour is late for America. Beyond political success, her fate relies on exorcising the leftist specter dominating education, religion, and culture—a 360-degree holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom.
Why focus on this one book? Because Hegseth remains deeply, publicly, attached to these ideas. This isn’t about the past, it’s about the future. Hegseth talked about Trump as a “Crusader in Chief,” a meme that can now be purchased on everything from tote bags to laptop sleeves, but also one that ties together both of Hegseth’s chief enemies: “Surrounded by the Left, with the odds stacked against us, only a crusade will do.”
Hegseth, who seems to revel in what he sees as a righteous purge of religious violence, now leads the most powerful military in the world. The controversy over his tattoos is also over his writings and public statements and what that would mean for religious diversity in the armed forces. But it’s also about what it means to have a Secretary of Defense who sees the Commander in Chief as the “Crusader in Chief” and who’s obsessed with a narrative of righteous Christian violence against Muslims.
In November we wrote about what a Christian nationalist cabinet means for the US and for the world in practice. But Hegseth is enough of a concern all by himself. The exact timeline of when the Fox News host-turned-Secretary of Defense got his “Infidel” tattoo is unclear, since its position can be hard to make out in many photos. He seems to have already had it in a picture posted in July 2024, though only parts of it are visible. However, on Tuesday, Hegseth showed it off for all to see, when he posted photos of himself on “X.” It seems relevant that the Secretary of Defense was showing off his new tattoo after bombing Yemen, 99% of whose population is Muslim.
Mere weeks earlier, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had warned the global public of a “disturbing rise in anti-Muslim bigotry.” The use of the term “kafir” to mock Muslims has become popular on the anti-Muslim far-right. Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader sentenced to 17 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for his role on January 6th, has a similar tattoo on his arm. Biggs has since been pardoned by Trump, but nevertheless, quite the tattoo company the Secretary of Defense is keeping.
The off-the-books Signal chat transcript war plans among cabinet members (likely while in public, as the Atlantic reported) are littered with religious sentiments. JD Vance responds “I will say a prayer for victory” (with praying hand emoji responses, of course) right after Hegseth provides what appear to be classified operational details—with a “Godspeed to our Warriors.” This is followed by Michael Waltz’s text that they had successfully killed one of their targets (bringing down an apartment building full of civilians in the process), to rounds of congratulation and a “Really great. God bless,” from Susie Wiles and an emoji response from Steve Witkoff—two pairs of praying hands, a flexing bicep, and American flags.
Showing off his kafir tattoo in the immediate aftermath is an escalation and pure gloating. Hegseth doesn’t care about the violation of secrecy or record keeping—he’s just excited to remind you of his hatred of Muslims.
Given that the chat also explicitly suggests doing this before either Israel bombs Yemen or breaks the ceasefire in Gaza—which it has done, in addition to bombing Beirut—we have to ask ourselves, in the midst of such unabashed Crusader imagery, what’s next? It will certainly figure into his rhetoric and decision-making on Gaza and Palestinians. Not merely in regard to pro-Palestinian protests, letters, and op-eds, though the kidnapping and deportation of international students across the Northeast is part of it. Hegseth’s obsession with the Crusades and religious violence has real implications for US foreign policy. At an Arutz Sheva/Israel National News conference in 2018, Hegseth said that after seeing the “miracle” of the Western Wall:
It got me thinking about another miracle I hope all of you don’t see as too far away. 1917 was a miracle, 1948 was a miracle, 1967 was a miracle, 2017, the declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a miracle, and there’s no reason why the miracle of the reestablishment of the Temple on the Temple Mount is not possible. I don’t know how it would happen, you don’t know how it would happen, but I know that it could happen, that’s all I know.
The Third Temple Movement has deep Christian apocalyptic roots alongside extremist Israeli ones. It would, of course, also require the destruction of the Haram al-Sharif, the “Noble Sanctuary” that includes the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque, and is the third holiest site in Islam. It could very well lead to an ever broadening war, with cataclysmic consequences; given Hegseth’s infatuation with crusades, it remains worrisome.
It’s just a tattoo. A single word in Arabic. “Infidel.” But it’s also never just a tattoo. It has a context—and with Pete Hegseth, in the midst of a furor over the multiple illegalities of the way bombing campaigns in Yemen were organized, the tattoo is a call for religious violence from a man with a history of championing religious violence—who sees it as the only thing that will save the US.
And although Hegseth uses the classic defense of bigots in American Crusade—“I have many dear friends who are Muslim”—his past utterances, both written and verbal, leave no doubt about how this man views the world, and Muslims specifically. And now, the Secretary of Defense has carved even more proof of this into his body.
One can only imagine an “Infidel” tattoo, right below “Deus Vult,” might go over the next time Hegseth has to meet with Muslim officials as part of his job. But what should be incontrovertible proof that Hegseth should be nowhere near his new job, is actually proof of his qualification for MAGA, a movement that adores performative cruelty and trolling that has real-world consequences.
In a way, this tattoo is the perfect encapsulation of Trumpish foreign policy: offensive, brutish, and flaunting its disregard for anyone who isn’t a White, conservative Christian aligned with the administration’s draconian policy positions. It is—just like Hegseth’s nomination itself—both a threat and a promise to those it considers not fully human.
