Last week, Sadiq Khan, London’s new Muslim mayor, made his first dent as an internationally recognized political figure. Instead of tackling key issues on his homefront, he chose to antagonize half of the American people in an already contentious presidential election.

Stateside, Trump campaign is fumbling with an on-again, off-again blanket immigration ban on Muslims. Exploiting the GOP nominee’s under-developed platform for his own exposure, Khan fired at Trump’s “ignorant” view of Islam. Khan crafted an opportunity to slam Trump by stating that he’d planned to visit the U.S. ahead of the November election should Trump win the presidency. Khan’s calculated statement provoked journalists to scramble to clarify the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s already opaque immigration policy.

For his part, though, Trump had said he was “happy to see” Khan win the election, adding that he hoped “he does a good job.” But for those who have already questioned Khan’s association with extremists and his choice to defend the rights of radicals who have condemned the West and secular values, it is a grim sign of things to come. Within two weeks of becoming the first Muslim mayor of one of the world’s most coveted cities, Khan has already incited division through race and religion.

During Khan’s campaign, Prime Minister David Cameron was verbally assaulted as a racist for trying to raise a conversation about the then-candidate’s alarming sympathy for and interaction with Islamists and radicals. Rather than quell the issue by taking the opportunity to shed the myth that attacks are race-based, Khan allowed them to continue. He was in a position to address the issue of race and disqualify valid concerns as racist, while still being able to dismiss the inquiries into his past as perhaps unreasonable – but he chose not to.

On the issue of religion, Khan fanned the flames of religious intolerance, reaffirming reservations about his ability to separate his faith from his responsibility to represent all Londoners. Instead of taking on the great task at hand of managing London, Khan engages in verbal warfare with a U.S. presidential nominee, escalating what has been a necessary policy discussion into an accusation of an assault on Islam – with a global audience.

The arrogant tone that supposes Trump is “ignorant” on Islam is accompanied by the stain of superiority common among Islamists world-wide. The assumption among both many Muslims and Islamists is that the Islamic faith is simply above question and speculation, and that any (even necessary) interrogation is somehow either ignorant or Islamophobic. That tactic is an attempt to silence critics of Islam and suspend any deeper conversation on a faith that has plagued the 21^st century. In this case, that critic is Trump.

For as clumsy as Trump is with outlining policy and organizing a campaign infrastructure that can address these issues, he’s dead right about his gut instincts that there’s “something going on” in Islam that warrants a closer look at immigration and travel with greater scrutiny than has been afforded under the Obama administration.

Although Trump’s immigration policy originated from a valid position of concern in a conversation about Syrian refugees it is, at present, murky at best. In maximizing his voice and visibility by targeting a likely future President, Khan shows a sort of arrogant audacity that is already the bane of the British public in dealing with unassimilated Pakistani Muslims.

One thing is for certain: this won’t be the last time we see Khan rise up against American leadership, particularly if he’s on track to be Prime Minister, as anticipated by many. For Muslims and Islamists around the world, Khan’s pivot against Trump will be seen as an audacious and inspiring challenge against Western authority. That is a confounding fact considering that as Mayor of London, Khan represents Western authority as well. And that’s precisely where it’s key for us to be able to fully understand the mindset of non-secular and Islamist Muslims: They will not recognize integration. They will only recognize domination.

Khan’s shift in turning his attention to American politics as quite possibly an underhanded way to set the conversation on Islam is a major win for Islamists, even if it’s coming from a secular Muslim of a major Western city. The message Khan got across very clearly is that Islam is a no-go zone for outsiders. In that sense, what Khan does intentionally or unintentionally is not that different from the other extreme, ISIS: Both force their audience to submit, whether by the sword or by shame.