The Tucker Carlson
Network (TCN) prompted intense theological debate the other week for an X post
claiming Muslims love and revere Jesus Christ, which came a day before Carlson
said President Donald Trump is acting like the Antichrist.
“The people in charge don’t want you to know this, but Muslims love Jesus,” read the TCN post, which drew more than 11.3 million impressions shortly thereafter. “Islam reveres Him [Jesus] as a major prophet and messenger of the Lord, believes He performed miracles, and states that He will return to Earth to defeat the Antichrist.”
The post suggested the Islamic reverence for Jesus is what prompted Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to condemn Trump’s Truth Social post from Easter Sunday, which depicted him as a Christ-like figure with light emanating from his hands. Trump deleted the meme following outrage, claiming he believed the AI-generated image was him as “a doctor.”
TCN’s post was met with pushback from many X users, including some figures who have generally been supportive of Carlson.
Calvin Robinson, a cleric in the English Catholic Church in North America who was a recurring guest on Carlson’s Fox News program, suggested his characterization of Islam failed to take into account that Christians are severely persecuted in many parts of the Muslim world. “I have a lot of time for Tucker. But Islam is his blind spot,” Robinson wrote in an X post. “ ‘Moslems love Jesus’ may or may not be true. But they most certainly do not love Christians. Christians are the most persecuted people around the world. Especially in Moslem-majority countries. Islam is oppressive.”
Others echoed Robinson by pointing out the large number of Christians who are martyred for their faith by radical Muslims each year, as well as the theological gulf that separates Christians and Muslims regarding the divinity of Christ.
“Muslims reject the divinity of Jesus, reject Jesus as the Son of God, reject Jesus as the second person of the Trinity. In 2025, 4,849 Christians were murdered for their faith. 93% were murdered by Islamists in Africa. But tell us more how Muslims love Jesus and His followers,” said conservative podcaster Liz Wheeler.
“Muslims don’t love Jesus: they love a bastardized version of Him that neither scriptures nor history recognizes. They don’t believe He’s God, or that He died and rose again. Rather, they believe when He returns, He will ‘break the cross, kill the pigs, and abolish the Jizya tax,’ ” said Protestia, a popular Christian X account.
Dan Burmawi, an author and former devout Muslim from Jordan who converted to Christianity, posted a lengthy response to TCN’s post, claiming that the Quran’s apparent respect for Jesus and Mary is deceptive and merely serves “to affirm Islam’s false narrative.”
“Muslims love to parade the Quran’s mentions of Jesus and Mary as if it’s some grand gesture of respect,” said Burmawi, who is also the founder and CEO of the Ideological Defense Institute, a nonprofit research and educational organization that provides information and analysis about the Middle East. Burmawi went on to cite verses from the Quran that confuse biblical figures, which he said proves its author “was historically and theologically illiterate.” The Quran also dishonors Jesus by denying His key claims, portraying His apparent crucifixion as a divine deception and lying about the Gospel in an attempt to redefine Him as lower than Muhammad, Burmawi said. “The Quran strips Jesus of everything that makes Him the cornerstone of Christianity. It denies His divinity (Quran 5:116), denies His Sonship (Quran 19:35), and denies His redemptive death on the cross (Quran 4:157). Instead of being the Messiah who sacrificed Himself out of love, the Quran portrays Him as a weakling who needed Allah to deceive people in His place,” Burmawi said.
Burmawi's line of reasoning was echoed by Salam Almasri, a research fellow at the Ideological Defense Institute, who wrote an op-ed arguing that interfaith assertions of Islam being fundamentally peaceful or respectful toward Jesus are “a profound act of intellectual dishonesty” intended to “annex” Christ and redefine Him on Islamic terms.
Christian author and broadcaster Eric Metaxas described TCN’s post as “anti-Christ propaganda” and pushed back against Carlson’s comments during a later episode of his podcast. Citing remarks he made earlier this week at the final White House Religious Liberty Commission hearing in Washington, D.C., where he warned that “some faiths hate liberty and some faiths love liberty,” Metaxas said Carlson’s characterization of Islam was wrong to neglect that Muslims ultimately dismiss Jesus as a mere prophet eclipsed by Muhammad. “So imagine that they have this plausible deniability, where they say — and Tucker is now spouting these Islam talking points — that ‘we revere Mary and we revere Jesus.’ It’s complete nonsense. They don’t say He is the Messiah. They don’t say we worship Him as Lord. None of that stuff. So, it’s completely meaningless, but the headline is that Tucker is pushing this,” he said. “It is very difficult to fathom how he could be pushing these lies, why he would be pushing these lies. It’s bizarre,” added Metaxas, who has increasingly become an outspoken Carlson critic in recent months.
The Wednesday edition of TCN’s morning newsletter acknowledged the “firestorm” set off by the previous day’s edition, but suggested Americans are generally ill-informed about Islam and the Muslim world, which he maintained was “no accident.”
“The forces supporting the Iran War do not want the public to realize that the Quran heralds the Christian savior as a prophet and messenger of the Lord. This does not mean Christianity and Islam are aligned. They definitely are not,” the newsletter said in part. The newsletter went on to argue that anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S., fueled by neoconservatives, wrongly portrays Islam itself as the root cause of Middle Eastern terrorism, and that Islamic terrorists commit violence not because they are Muslim, but because they are evil criminals who use religion as a justification. It likened such behavior to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “[invoking] Amalek to excuse his mass killing of innocents” or Nathuram Godse assassinating Mahatma Gandhi “in the purported name of Hinduism.”
The uproar is the latest in the contentious debate that has erupted within Trump’s political base over the war in Iran, which has raised concerns regarding the role that religion and eschatological beliefs are playing in it.
During his weekly monologue on Wednesday evening, Carlson condemned Trump for what he described as an increasingly sacrilegious attitude toward Christianity, citing his ongoing public feud with Pope Leo XIV and multiple social media posts since Easter that Carlson said were “a mockery of God.”
Observing Trump has never shown similar disrespect toward Judaism, Carlson alleged that forwarding the foreign policy interests of the Israeli government — or “Israelism” — has become the dominant civic religion of the U.S. government, even when it “abets the murder of Christians” or inflames conflicts that spill their refugees into historically Christian nations.
Reading from the description of “the man of lawlessness” in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12 and the prophecy of a boastful king in Daniel 11:36, Carlson suggested the president is exhibiting characteristics typically associated with the Antichrist, though he said it remains “unclear” if Trump is that figure.
Much of Daniel 11 has historically been considered to be a prophecy regarding Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a Seleucid king who reigned from 175 to 164 B.C. and whose desecration of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem prompted the Maccabean Revolt.
Christians have disagreed over whether Daniel 11:36 and the later parts of the chapter are a further reference to Antiochus IV, or if it refers to a future figure referenced in 2 Thessalonians, who will exhibit the same blasphemous spirit. The church has also long debated the identity of the man of lawlessness, with various interpretations including Roman emperors such as Nero, the papacy or a man yet to be revealed.
Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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