Scholars launch ‘Infidel Awareness Month,’ to run annually from September 11 to October 7

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A coalition of historians, former Muslims, scholars, and public intellectuals has launched the inaugural “Infidel Awareness Month,” running annually from September 11 through October 7.

Founded by historian Richard Landes alongside a network of researchers, philosophers, and filmmakers, the initiative was designed to highlight and name the political and ideological dimensions of jihadist movements.

Scheduled specifically to bridge the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the campaign centers on confronting what organizers term “supremacist Islam.”

According to the project’s foundational materials, the campaign aims to educate the public on terminology and geopolitical threats that proponents argue have been obscured by institutional euphemisms, political correctness, and self-censorship.

The core program features a structured initiative known as the “27 Days of Truth,” broken down into three primary pillars: a record remembering the victims of global jihad, a reckoning examining how Western institutions address radical ideologies, and a warning that extremist threats persist beyond the fall of territorial caliphates.

Campaign distinguishes between radical Islamism and peaceful Muslims

Organizers stress that the campaign distinguishes between radical Islamist ideology and individual Muslims who coexist peacefully as neighbors. However, the project’s explicit use of the term “infidel,” historically an Arabic designation for non-believers used within specific theological and militant contexts, is intended as a direct counter-narrative, urging Western societies to acknowledge the ideological divisions outlined by extremist groups.

At the center of the project is a daily educational curriculum designed to give participants concrete insights into the operational and ideological mechanisms of global jihad. Through this daily programming, the initiative first maintains a record that documents and honors individual victims of global jihad by sharing personal histories and testimonies to preserve the human cost of extremist violence.

Running concurrently, the project’s reckoning focus challenges Western institutions, universities, and media bodies for adopting self-censorship and euphemisms that organizers argue obscure the ideological drivers of radicalism.

The campaign issued a sustained warning emphasizing that jihadist ideology did not conclude with the collapse of territorial caliphates or the deaths of high-profile leaders, maintaining that underground networks and ideological recruitment continue to threaten free societies. 

By reclaiming and analyzing terms like “infidel” (kafir), the daily releases aim to dismantle the public’s blind spots regarding how extremist groups categorize non-Muslim populations, providing audiences with the historical and linguistic context necessary to recognize modern Islamist supremacy.

Among the scholars supporting and participating in the initiative is Professor Andrew Pessin, philosopher and founder of the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism. Launched earlier this year, the Institute is a scholarly enterprise dedicated to critically examining anti-zionism. The Institute features a roster of roughly 300 scholars, over 5,300 Substack followers, and has rolled out initial programming including a webinar series, an academic journal, a foundational sourcebook, and a textbook introducing the new field of study. 

Pessin told The Jerusalem Post, “As Islamist anti-zionism is one of the many subfields of this nascent field of study, I’m happy to participate in Infidel Awareness Month.” 

Also serving as a co-organizer of the initiative is Danny Burmawi, a former Muslim born in Jordan who now heads the Ideological Defense Institute as CEO, analyzing the theological and political dimensions of Middle Eastern affairs. 

‘Islam divides the world into Muslims and infidels… sanctions subjugation’

In a statement provided to the Post, Burmawi said, “Just as communism divides the world into oppressors and oppressed and then uses that division to justify violence by the oppressed, Islam divides the world into Muslims and infidels and gives religious sanction to the conquest and subjugation of those outside the faith,” Burmawi stated.

“As former Muslims coming together to organize Infidels Awareness Month, we want to remember the people who, across fourteen centuries of Islamic history, were persecuted, conquered, silenced, enslaved, or killed because they stood outside Islam or refused to submit to it.”

Burmawi further stated, “We remember the Jews of Banu Qurayza and the Jews murdered on October 7. We remember the Christians driven from the Arabian Peninsula and the Christians murdered on September 11. We remember dissenters such as Asma bint Marwan in the seventh century, and the dissidents stabbed on the streets of Europe today.”

Burmawi concluded, “All of them were targeted simply because they are infidels. Infidels Awareness Month exists to honor those who fell under the sword of Islam, and to warn the modern West that the freedoms of a free society should never be exploited to recreate the very system from which so many of us escaped.”

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