Karl Popper pointed out in the book The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) a fundamental problem with tolerance: Unlimited tolerance leads to the disappearance of tolerance. If tolerance is to survive, it must be conditional.

– If a society is infinitely tolerant towards the intolerant, the intolerant will destroy the tolerant society.

Popper uses Nazism as an example: A democracy that allows Nazis to organise freely and use democratic means to dismantle democracy will lose democracy.

Democracy, a means, not an end

Communist regimes have established one-party states after seizing power. Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks regarded the political system as a means to establish a new social order.
The Nazis exploited an existing parliamentary system, elections, propaganda and political mobilisation to gradually conquer the state from within. They were the first to exploit the fundamental weakness of liberal democracy, tolerance, in order to abolish democracy. They built power through electoral participation, freedom of speech and parliamentary institutions. Once they achieved power they abolished the system. This was not a hidden game, it was an open strategy.
Almost a century later we see the same tactic being used systematically – and it is not the old fascist movements that have re-emerged; German socialists are doing their best to limit political competition while they hold power, but even more threatening is that political Islam is eating its way into the institutions of democracy.
The expression “one man, one vote, one time” sums up the fear: Islamic movements participate in elections, win, and then ensure that there will never again be any elections. This is no academic abstraction; it is open practice:

• Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood won the 2012 presidential election in Egypt. They quickly tried to consolidate power, change the constitution in a politically Islamic direction, suppress opposition and push in sharia. A year later they were thankfully overthrown by the military following massive popular protests.
• Hamas won democratic elections in Gaza in 2006. Since then they have ruled as an authoritarian terrorist organisation without new elections.
• Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his AKP initially appeared as an apparently moderate conservative Turkish party. Through several elections they have gradually eroded secular institutions, taken control of the judiciary, the media and the opposition, and moved Turkey in an increasingly authoritarian, Islamic direction.
• In Tunisia, An-Nahḍah (Ennahda), which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, showed more pragmatism, but they too tried to lead the country in the direction of sharia.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology underlies most of these movements. They see democracy as a means, not an end. The goal is an Islamic state where sovereignty ultimately lies with Allah and power is enforced through sharia.
Muslims make use of Western values in the struggle to defeat the West. They demand freedom of speech in order to spread the message that freedom of speech is blasphemy. They demand freedom of religion while waiting for power to suppress other religions. They participate in elections, but their holy texts tell them that democracy is “taghut” – Satan, tyranny that exceeds God’s limits – and that legislation belongs to Allah alone.

Once a Muslim prays in the church it is considered conquered territory for Islam and Muslim for all time.

— Socialists&Leftists4Israel (@Lefties4Israel) June 24, 2026

Liberal democracies are built on mutual tolerance and compromise. For Muslims, compromise is betrayal of Islam. They play by democratic rules as long as they are in the minority – and change the rules when they are in the majority.

The discomfort of reality

Of course “not all Muslims are like that”; many adapt to democracies perfectly well, but we do not know where their loyalty lies when it comes to the crunch, we do not know where the generations after them will place their loyalty. The problem lies in Islam as a political ideology, what many refer to as Islamism – an ideology which, once it gains power, has proved resistant to liberalisation.
Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance is as relevant today as it would have been on 30 January 1933 when Hitler was appointed German Reich Chancellor. A society that is tolerant without setting limits will be taken over by the intolerant.

“When Muslims become the majority in the next 40 years, non-Muslims will have to convert to Islam, pay the Jizya or be killed because then Sharia will rule."

Sheik Assim Al Hakeem is currently visiting Nigeria to spread Muslim Brotherhood/style Islamism pic.twitter.com/8QH6IaDPMC

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 16, 2025

This video should be broadcast 24/7. The Muslim Brotherhood leader explains in his own words that, after 700 years of failed attempts to conquer Europe by force, they are now conquering it peacefully with the help of naive Western governments. The EU's weak and corrupt… pic.twitter.com/jH7JvZYwj7

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) May 3, 2026