Multiculturalism Has Failed

Sunday

IN THE WEEK magazine, William Falk (the magazine's editor) had this to say about important events in last week's news:

It was once the great dream of Western liberal culture: a stewpot of different religions, races, and ethnicities, harmoniously blended. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pronounced the dream dead. Multiculturalism, she said, "has failed, utterly failed." Merkel is a respected world leader, not a nationalistic xenophobe, so her emphatic finality is all the more startling. But many Germans and many Europeans share her pessimism. The continent is recoiling from an influx of immigrants, especially those from Muslim lands: The French and the Belgians have banned burqas; the Swiss, the construction of minarets. Anti-Islamic movements are gaining momentum in Italy, Britain, the Netherlands, and even Sweden.

To dismiss these tensions as mere intolerance is, I think, naive. The boundaries between cultures are eroding, due to widespread immigration, economic interdependence, and the Internet, forcing modern societies into an uncomfortable paradox. We believe that every cultural group, religion, and nation has the right to self-determination. But we also hold as a bedrock principle that every human being is born with inalienable rights — including the 50 percent of us who are women. Is it our business to free Muslim women from their shrouds and subservience, to bring a halt to female genital mutilation in Africa and the Middle East? Do we have the right to object to China's insistence that democracy and human rights do not apply there? Genteel tolerance alone will not resolve these questions. The collision of values has begun. How that conflict plays out will determine the shape of the next half-century.

Read more: Multiculturalism and the Defense of Liberty.

Read more...

How to Think Outside the Persuasion Box

Saturday

For the most part, debating is frustrating. If your objective is to change your opponent's mind, debating is a largely useless and futile exercise. If you're debating in public, that's a different story, because you can change the audiences' minds if you debate well. But one-on-one, debate is an impotent weapon in the war of ideas.


You know people who believe Islam is a religion of peace and that you are an Islamophobic bigot for thinking otherwise, and you would like to change their minds. If you try to do it with debate, if you try to do it by answering arguments with arguments, no matter how good you are at arguing, no matter how many facts are in your favor, no matter how articulately you put your message across, the odds are a hundred to one against you succeeding.

I'm sure you've already discovered the painful and frustrating truth of this. Back and forth, right and wrong, will not work. You cannot penetrate.

To have any real impact, you need more powerful weapons at your command. What am I talking about? I am talking about a way of influencing that you can add to the process of debating, such as dealing with presuppositions (the assumptions your listener started with), or working on small, incremental changes over time, or using Cialdini's principles of influence, or using NLP rapport techniques, or becoming more charismatic.

What we need is transformational dialog. Not mere debate. We need influence, not mere argument. We need to effectively persuade, not just get peoples' hackles up and let them dig themselves deeper into their position.

The following is a list of ideas you can use — ideas you can add to your attempts to educate people about Islam. You already have "argument" in your arsenal. Below are additional weapons you can use. We'll be adding more articles to this list in the near future, but we can start with these:

10. Preemptive Ideological Strike

11. The Enemy of Us All

12. Training Course for Citizen Warriors

13. Get Motivated to Think Outside the Persuasion Box by Watching "Freedom Writers"

14. Criticizing Islam Successfully to People Who Don't Want to Hear It (by Talking About Scientology)

15. More on Using Scientology to Criticize Islam

16. Getting Through to People: How to Get Listening Leverage

17. Compare Islam to Bushido.

18. Become less self-righteous.

19. Respond to resistance by asking a simple question.

20. Still More on Talking About Islam by Talking About Scientology.

21. Getting the Information to Slip Right Past Their Defenses.

22. Talk About Sociopathy First.

Let's not get stuck answering argument for argument in one-on-one debates. Presenting a logical, factual argument to answer an argument is a relatively weak tool because the other side of the debate often uses it equally well. We have more effective tools at our disposal, and we should learn to use them to our advantage. Failure is not an option. We must open the minds of our fellow non-Muslims and we must do it quickly.

Read more...

Are Our Educational Efforts Self-Defeating?

Friday

A FRIEND OF MINE said it doesn't help us defeat Islamo-fascism (as he called it) to know more about Islam. He feels that animosity toward Muslims is fueling a division between Muslims and non-Muslims, and our best bet would be to side with those Muslims who are against jihad.

Basically, he is saying that our educational efforts to make non-Muslims aware of the teachings of Islam ultimately defeats our purposes by making "peaceful Muslims" side with orthodox Muslims (politically active Muslims) because animosity towards Muslims causes peaceful Muslims to take sides, and the side they will take is the Muslim side. To summarize his point of view:

Non-Muslims who express their dislike of the hateful teachings of Islam will cause peaceful Muslims, who also do not like those hateful teachings, to side with Muslims who like the hateful teachings.

So therefore, if we don't know the purposes and methods — if we don't know the ideology of the Islamo-fascists — we will be better at defeating them.

It sounds absurd, but he might be right. It is possible that animosity toward Muslims will cause peaceful Muslims or "Muslims in name only" to side with more politically-active, less peaceful, more orthodox Muslims. It's possible.

Does that mean we should stop educating our fellow non-Muslims about the doctrines of Islam? My friend says yes, we should stop. And what should we do instead? His suggestion is to strengthen and support the Muslims working toward peace. He thinks we should support Muslims who are actively working to reform Islam. There aren't a lot of them. Most Muslims who are not politically-active are not reformers; they are simply apathetic about Islam. They were born Muslims so they consider themselves Muslims, but they don't really care about following the teachings of Islam.

But there are a few Muslims who are working to reform Islam, to expunge it of the intolerant, supremacist teachings in the Islamic doctrine, and my friend's answer is to support those people.

There may be some validity to this point of view. But it is also true that many Muslims that we would call "peaceful" still have a supremacist Islamic political agenda, and they work to accomplish that agenda through more peaceful means (and sometimes stealthy means) and those who know nothing about Islamic doctrine can be easily taken in by this kind of "peaceful" Muslim.

This means that by following my friend's suggestion, the ultimate agenda of Islam's prime directive would be fulfilled — aided and abetted by non-Muslims working to stop Islam's prime directive from being fulfilled.

This is yet another example of why an ignorance of the basic doctrines of Islam is counterproductive to the ultimate goal of neutralizing the politically-aggressive orthodox Muslims.

One of the biggest problems with the whole idea of "supporting peaceful Muslims" is that apathetic Muslims are apathetic. They are not active. They are not politically assertive. They don't care about any of this. They just want to go on living their lives. And the Muslims actively seeking to reform Islam to expunge the hateful, politically-aggressive, violent, intolerant content of Islamic doctrine are a very small percentage and have almost no following in the Muslim world, regardless of how big their following is in the non-Muslim world.

So the most popular and by far the most active Muslims are the orthodox Muslims, the politically aggressive Muslims.

Apathetic Muslims, or
Muslims-in-name-only, will never dominate no matter how much support and encouragement and money we give them. They're just not interested enough.

This means that aggressive Muslims — politically-active Muslims, orthodox Muslims — will only be stopped by non-Muslims educated in Islamic doctrine. This education is the one thing that needs to be done. My friend's political idea sounds good on paper, but it only sounds good to people who don't know anything about Islamic doctrine. And that's the point.

Read more...

Education Makes a Difference, Especially With the Large Proportion of "Undecideds"

Tuesday

The following was sent by ACT! for America to its subscribers. If you have not yet subscribed to their free email updates, I strongly recommend it. They will not overwhelm you with too much information, but they consistently send out good stuff. Anyway, here is the update (slightly edited):


Any critique or expose of Islam is usually met with name-calling (e.g., “Islamophobia”) from Islamists and their enablers, rather than rational or factual responses and rebuttals.

There are at least two reasons for this.

First, Sharia law does not provide for nor protect free speech. Criticism of Islam, Allah or Mohammad is a criminal offense. When Muslims attempt to suppress free speech critiques of Islam they are abiding by Sharia law, and insisting that we non-Muslims bow before Sharia law as well. They frequently get furious when we refuse to do so.

Second, as two examples below will attest, public discourse and debates about radical Islam reveal the truth that Islamists don’t want Americans to see. Hence, they rant, rave, and name call in the hopes of demonizing those who dare to expose the truth so as to keep the truth from the American people.

Two recent events reveal why Islamists and their enablers avoid genuine debate.

* A recent event held in Des Moines, Iowa, entitled “A Forum on Being An American Muslim,” produced a very illuminating exchange, where ACT! for America chapter leader Steve Kirby’s question about Sharia law and free speech was completely ignored by the Muslim moderator. The moderator went so far as to prevent Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a reformist Muslim, from answering the question by taking the microphone from him! To read Steve’s short summary of this incident, please click here. (You will need Adobe Acrobat to open the PDF).

* A recent debate was held in New York, debating the motion “Is Islam a religion of peace?” To view this fascinating debate, please click here. It's a long debate, but there's a link on that page that allows you to download the audio file for free. It's an MP3 file, which you can put on your iPod and listen to later.

Prior to the debate, the audience members were polled as to their position on the motion.

41% were for the motion
25% were against the motion
34% were undecided

After the debate, the audience was polled again. Check out these eye-popping results!

36% were for the motion (a decrease of 5 percentage points)
55% were against the motion (an increase of 30 percentage points)
9% were undecided

In other words, after seeing only one debate, most of the undecideds and some of those who initially agreed that “Islam is a religion of peace” changed their positions to opposing the motion.

Small wonder we see so few Muslims willing to step forward and defend Sharia law and the ideology of radical Islam! Truth and the facts are stacked so heavily against them they can only hope to “win” by suppressing speech that exposes the truth.

A similar result was obtained in another debate that used this as its proposition: Islam is Dominated by Radicals. Before the debate, the audience held these positions:

46% were for the motion
32% were against the motion
22% were undecided

After the debate, the audience was polled again. The results were:

73% were for the motion
23% were against the motion
4% were undecided

Again, a huge jump in people who grasped the real situation: Islam is dominated by radicals. Even if the majority of Muslims are peace-loving people, they are essentially irrelevant because they have so little impact on any of the realities non-Muslims must live with, they have no voice, they are politically inactive, and they are not stopping the devout Muslims pursuing Islam's prime directive.

Islam is, in fact, dominated by radicals. When people are given the chance to hear both sides, to really listen to a full explanation and not merely soundbites, innuendo, or ad hominem attacks, the reality of the situation shines through clearly.

Read more...

The Leading Edge of Freedom: How to Support Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

Sunday

GEERT WILDERS is well-known to most counterjihadists, but Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff’s case is very similar. Like Geert, she faces trial for reporting factual information about Islam. Her “crime” was to conduct public seminars in which she described Islamic doctrine, quoted from the Quran, and explained the dangers of Islamic encroachment.

Like Geert, Elisabeth has been charged with “hate speech” for her words (read an example of what she actually said). Unlike Geert, however, Elisabeth is a private citizen, a wife, and the mother of a small child. She lacks the major resources necessary to defend herself against the well-funded organs of the state which seek to persecute her.

Elisabeth will go on trial in Vienna on November 23rd, in what is clearly a political action intended to silence anyone who dissents against the prevailing multicultural orthodoxy.

Her European and North American supporters have created Elisabeth’s Voice to ensure she is not silenced. By appealing for financial aid, they intend to ensure that her defense is well-funded. By appealing for publicity, they intend to ensure that her case is well-known, not just in Austria and the rest of Europe, but across the entire Western world.

Americans may think Elisabeth’s plight is uniquely European, and has nothing to do with them. But make no mistake about it: the same repression is on its way to the United States of America. As the recent cases of Molly Norris, Juan Williams, and Derek Fenton demonstrate, free speech may already be taken away by non-juridical means. Dissent is even now being silenced in schools and on college campuses, and politically incorrect expression is cause for dismissal from both public and private employment.

The same types of “hate speech” laws that were used against Elisabeth in Austria are being prepared for the United States through the work of the United Nations. At the initiative of the Organization of the Islamic Conference — the largest voting block in the United Nations — the UN is on the verge of requiring all member states to pass laws criminalizing “the defamation of religions, including Islam.”

Barack Obama has indicated his support for the UN’s proposed resolution. Time is running out for all of us. If we don’t stand up now for people like Geert Wilders, Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn, and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, there will be no one to stand up for us later, when our turn comes.

How can you stand up for Elisabeth? Show your support. Contribute to Elisabeth’s defense fund (which is not under her control, and may only be used to pay her lawyers) visit the In Defense of Free Speech website. You can also get updates on her case at that website.

And we can each spend some time publicizing Elisabeth's case. Write a letter to your local paper. Make comments on blogs. Post something on Facebook about it. Let people know what's happening. Share the video below; share articles, talk about it to your friends and family. In both Elisabeth's and Geert's cases, this is the leading edge of freedom: Either the legal verdicts will be in favor of freedom of speech, or the verdicts will be in favor of limiting freedom of speech to accommodate Islamic sensitivities. Let freedom ring. Let's make freedom ring!

Watch an interview with Elisabeth
.

Read more about Elisabeth's case: Lawfare in Austria: Is Truth Illegal? Paul Revere Gets the Slammer.

Editorial note: The above article was heavily plagiarized
from
Elisabeth’s Voice. I didn't think they'd mind.

Read more...

What If You Get No Resistance?

Saturday

HERE'S SOMETHING NEW I've run across lately: People who don't really know anything about Islam, but when you tell them about it, they aren't surprised. And they agree with you that it certainly sounds bad. And yet they have no apparent motivation to do anything about it.

The first two times this happened, it took me by surprise and I didn't know where to go from there. I had never encountered this before. The three categories I've run into in the past are 1) people who know nothing about Islam but defend it, 2) people who know nothing about Islam but are surprised and awakened and motivated when they learn about it, and 3) people who already know about Islam and are already motivated and taking action.

But there's a fourth category: People who know nothing about Islam but do not disagree with you that Islam is a dangerous ideology, and yet lack motivation to do anything about it. What do you do when you come across someone like this?

I believe our best approach is to let them know that yes, it is certainly bad, but it could easily be stopped if more people knew about it. Use the Flight 93 analogy. With a little knowledge about the true motives of orthodox Muslims, they could be stopped. We greatly outnumber them. But they can easily defeat us if the majority of us believe Islam is a religion of peace and believe our best approach is to go out of our way to prove our tolerance and appease their demands.

Let them know what we need most is an educated population. Each of us needs to learn about Islam and educate people we know. And then recommend a book, or recommend they sign up for ACT for America updates, or recommend they subscribe to Citizen Warrior, but don't recommend all of these.

Give them some small act they could easily accomplish that will help them get more informed and that will motivate them to share the information with people they know. Don't load them down with too much at once. Just recommend one book or one email subscription or one DVD.

One small act of commitment can lead to larger acts of commitment in the future (read more about that here). But overwhelm someone, and they might give up on their commitment. The process of commitment is delicate at first, so tread carefully.

You will probably run into this new category of people more and more, so be prepared to deal with it. Think about it ahead of time. Think about which book or video or online resource you would recommend to a beginner if you could only choose one. Which would be the very best for a beginner? Something interesting. Something sharable. Let's be smart about this and turn them all into committed, motivated citizen warriors.

Learn more about influencing your friends:

How to approach a conversation about Islam

Answers to objections when you talk about Islam
How to think outside the persuasion box

Citizen Warrior is the author of the book, Getting Through: How to Talk to Non-Muslims About the Disturbing Nature of Islam and also writes for Inquiry Into Islam, History is Fascinating, and Foundation for Coexistence. Subscribe to Citizen Warrior updates here. You can send an email to CW here.

Read more...

Get Motivated to Think Outside the Persuasion Box by Watching "Freedom Writers"

Friday

I JUST WATCHED the movie, Freedom Writers for the second time. It's a good movie and a true story. But this time I realized the movie illustrates something I continually hammer on: If you can't reach somebody, one possibility is to blame them for the failure of your message to penetrate. Another possibility is to look at yourself, look at the way you communicate, and try to find another way. The first approach leaves you the victim of the mindset of other people. The second approach gives you power, gives you ability, and opens your mind to possibly finding or creating ways to get through. Your ability to think up or learn new ways to do something is greatly facilitated by an open mind. In order to relieve the cognitive dissonance regarding why people seem to stubbornly refuse to understand even the most basic things about Islam, many of us in the counterjihad movement write them off. We've all done it. We explain our setbacks by blaming our listeners, and while that's a perfectly understandable response, that kind of explanation leaves us less capable of overcoming our obstacles. You make it more possible to overcome the obstacles if you think differently about these setbacks. Think of it this way: You have obstacles to overcome and you need to find a way to become more creative. You need to find a way to get around the obstacles. And it's nobody's fault, there's no one to be angry with. This is just the way it is. All you need to focus on is finding a way to penetrate their ignorance. Find a way to get basic information about Islam into the minds of people who don't know yet. It helps your own attitude to think of yourself as being in training. Your own motivation and the obstacles you're running into are combining to teach you what you need to learn to reach people, to connect with people, and to help them understand and become motivated to learn more, just like the teacher in Freedom Writers. The teacher was fresh out of college, very idealistic, and her first job was at a school with forced integration. She was an English teacher and her ninth-grade students were basically the academic failures of the school, and mostly Hispanic, African-American, and Asian. They had been passed along in the school system for a long time, and they were almost entirely uneducated, mostly members of gangs who had been bussed in from another part of town, and they didn't care about education or graduating or anything else a teacher might need her students to care about (to motivate them to listen to her). She was frustrated that they didn't care what she had to teach. They were openly hostile towards her. Does this sound familiar? Have you felt the same way? Do you sometimes feel people don't care what you have to teach and they're openly hostile to you? The teacher went to get help from the administrators of the school, and they basically tell her, "don't beat your head against the wall, these kids are not going to learn, and the best you can do is to try to instill some kind of discipline." She talks to other teachers, and gets pretty much the same response. They explained their failure to reach the students, their failure to get through, by blaming the students or blaming the students' circumstances, or their culture, or whatever. All these explanations tend to close the mind to finding a way to get through. It's an attempt to explain failure rather than an attempt to solve the problem. Many of us are making the same mistake. We talk to our friends and family about Islam and meet resistance. Many of them react with anger and seem impervious to anything we have the say. They have preconceived notions about our message (or of the "kind of people" who communicate that sort of message). This is what the students did in the movie. They looked at this young white teacher, and they felt no connection whatsoever with her. They knew for a fact she didn't understand what they were dealing with every day — the violence, the fear, the uncertainty, the pressure to conform to the rules that have already been set up within the gangs and within their neighborhoods, the pressures from their peers. This young white teacher had no clue about how things worked. She didn't know the rules: If a student rejects their own racial group in their neighborhoods — if they are Hispanic but don't want to be involved in wars with the neighboring Koreans, for example — their own Hispanic neighbors and relatives will become hostile to them, and they'll have no way to protect themselves from the hostility they'll get from the Koreans either. Those students had difficult choices to make. They've been put in a difficult environment, and they looked at this teacher who was trying to teach them things they had no interest in, and they saw no relevance to their lives. She couldn't reach them. So instead of continuing to try reaching them using the same method and continually failing, or alternatively, giving up and blaming the students for her inability to reach them, she tried a third option: She tried a different way around the obstacles. When what you're doing isn't working, try something else. It's usually a good policy. So what does she do? She finds different ways of reaching them. For example, she tries to get some good books for them to read, but the school doesn't want to the academic failures of the school to use those books because the school administrators "know" the students will just destroy the books because they don't care about learning. The teacher wanted to get her students interested in learning, but she couldn't get any books they'd be interested in reading, so she got a second job in order to buy books she thought would interest her students. It's not right, she shouldn't have to do this, but she didn't limit herself to "the way things ought to be." She thought outside the box. She caught one of the students passing around a note in the classroom one day. But it wasn't really a note, it was a drawing of one of the students that exaggerated his racial features and made fun of him. The class had been passing it around and giggling. The teacher got angry. She said this is how the Holocaust started. She remembered seeing a similar drawing in a museum that exaggerated Jewish racial features. Then she found out most of them didn't know what the Holocaust was! And she realized this might be something that would interest them. She told them, "You think your gangs are tough? They don't even come close to what the Nazis did. That was a gang to reckon with!" She convinced the school superintendent to give her permission to take her students on a field trip to a Holocaust memorial (the school administrators rejected the idea, but the superintendent gave her the go-ahead, which really angered the school administrators). But the teacher was right: The students were fascinated. After the field trip, she set up a dinner with her students and invited three people who were actual Holocaust survivors. The students talked with these survivors and asked them questions. They were interested, they were connecting, they were learning. Then the teacher bought everybody in the class a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank. They became even more fascinated. Intrigued. Interested in learning. And interested in listening to this teacher and what she had to say. She thought creatively. She found a way to reach them. This is what we must do. When we can't reach people, our attitude, our response should be, "What can I do differently that will allow me to reach this person? What different approach could I use that would penetrate? What approach could I use that would get this person interested in learning about Islam?" After reading The Diary of Anne Frank, the students were in awe at the courage of the woman who risked her life to hide Anne Frank and her family for all that time. So the teacher suggested as one of their English assignments that everyone in the class write a letter to that woman. The students said, "We should send our letters to the woman, if she's still alive." The teacher was just doing it for writing assignment and hadn't thought of actually sending the letters. But the students said, "Why not? In fact, why not invite her here so we can meet her?" The teacher said, "I don't know how to reach her, I don't know if she can travel, she might be too old to travel," but the students were so excited by it, the teacher looked into it. And she was able to find the woman who harbored Anne Frank and her family, and this woman was moved by the letters the students wrote, so she came to the United States, to Long Beach where the students went to school, and talked with them. It changed their lives. If you are committed to doing the one thing that needs to be done — that is, awakening your fellow non-Muslims to basic information about Islam — I invite you to suspend your already-existing explanations for why you can't get through to some people, and open your mind. Decide that you will find a way. Decide you will learn about persuasion. Decide you will seek new ideas about influencing people. Decide that you will overcome the obstacles. Decide to try new things besides what you have tried already that didn't work. Sure, being more forceful is one option. Being more frustrated is another option. But neither of those work very well. What other ways can you try? How many different ways can you try? And when you find new ways I urge you, I plead with you, to share those ways with us. Go to Talk About Islam Among Non-Muslims and join the conversation. Give us your ideas. Give us your your new creative methods. Tell us what you tried and how it worked. Let's share our ideas and experiences with each other and let's all get better at this. Watch the movie Freedom Writers and get inspired to find new ways to reach people. Make the assumption that it can be done, and don't stop until you find a way.
Learn more about influencing your friends: How to approach a conversation about Islam
Answers to objections when you talk about Islam
How to think outside the persuasion box

Read more...

Let's Thwart Islam's Prime Directive With Speed and Efficiency

Monday

ALMOST EVERY TIME you send out an email about Islam or post something on your Facebook page, you will get back objections. They're almost always the standard responses: Christianity is just as bad, I have some Muslim neighbors and they're nice people, this is just a few extremists, blah blah blah. You've probably heard it all so many times you're bored with it. It is a lot of work to start from scratch with each of these objections and educate people all over again, especially if you've already done it again and again. It's tedious. And it's not necessary. Let's speed up our work and make it less boring. Let's all use the Answers to Objections as our central go-to page. Let's simply cut and paste from the answers. And if you get an objection that's not on the list, let us know and we'll add it to the list. Let's be efficient with our time and not waste our efforts reinventing the wheel. We have a lot of people to educate. If you have an answer to one of the objections — an answer not included in the article — post your answer in the comments of that article (or email it to me and I'll do it for you) so others can use it and so you, yourself can cut and paste from the article in the future. Use the article as a place to store your material. When you make a particularly good answer in an email or on Facebook, or if you read someone else's excellent response, cut and paste it into the comments on the appropriate article. Let's develop a useful encyclopedia of good responses. Citizen Warrior is not a temporary blog. We've been around since October 11th, 2001, and our domain name is paid up for the next five years. So please use this site as a permanent resource. Use the linked list of Answers to Objections to store your own best answers and the best answers you come across. Then you'll only need one link to go to all the answers to every objection. Let's waste as little time as possible awakening our fellow non-Muslims.
Learn more about influencing your friends: How to approach a conversation about Islam
Answers to objections when you talk about Islam
How to think outside the persuasion box

Read more...

A Small Concession is No Big Deal

Sunday

SOMEONE EMAILED the following message to us: "It is difficult to get the message over when a majority of people consider it as a taboo, as something that will hurt religious beliefs. Surprisingly many people around us do not really care if a piggy bank is no longer part of a bank and don't see a threat in this decline of our culture due to Islamic feelings. Do you have an idea, sources, etc., to help us get this point across?"

Our success in getting this point across is crucial. We must get our fellow non-Muslims to see each small concession in its larger context. We must get them to see the concessions as a gradual process of displacing our Western law with Sharia law. We must make them see each accomodation to Islam as an incremental insinuation of Sharia law into every aspect of life. Each concession is small — that's true. That's how and why they've gotten away with so much so far.

It's like a frog-in-the-soup-pot allegory: Put a frog in a pot of cold water and warm it up slowly, and the frog won't try to jump out (even though it easily could) until it's too late. By the time it notices how hot the water is and is motivated to escape, it is too cooked to jump.

Orthodox Muslims
, committed to Islam's prime directive, are using the same slow-heating principle. They know if they go slowly enough — if they make small enough demands — they can heat up the water (take away our freedoms) until we are unable to mount a defense against further advances. They seek many different kinds of concessions, but they're most committed to removing free speech — they want desperately to take away our freedom to criticize Islam. That's the best way to prevent non-Muslims from organizing an effective defense.

How could they possibly remove freedom of speech in free countries? Orthodox Muslims are doing it very cleverly: By using our own cultural superiorities against us. One of the most magnificent values shared by the cultures of free nations is the toleration of differences, and our accute, aggressive, deeply-felt intolerance of the persecution or bullying of any minority group by a majority group. From an Islamic perspective, this wonderful feature of freedom-loving cultures is a weakness, and orthodox Muslims are exploiting it.

Orthodox Muslims portray Islam as a persecuted, bullied minority. This works well as a weapon against non-Muslims in free countries, but it also works well on the Muslims themselves. Muslims must feel persecuted. The feeling of persecution is a necessary precondition for advancing the primary goal of Islam in free countries. Why? Because, as it says in the Quran, a) Allah does not love aggressors, b) Muslims must defend Islam, and c) the only action a Muslim man can do to guarantee his passage to Paradise is to die while defending Islam.

Add those all together and the simple solution is being seen and seeing themselves as persecuted. It provides motivation to fight for Islam within its constituents, and it simultaneously disables the defenses of the non-Muslim population. Some Muslims have even been caught provoking persecution (faking hate crimes, for example) and making mountains out of molehills in order to continually portray themselves — not as conquerors and invaders — but has innocent, harrassed, tormented minorities.

Portraying themselves this way is extremely effective with non-Muslims who are filled with "white guilt" (as it is called in America) or "post-colonial guilt" (as it is called in Europe), making it fairly easy for orthodox Muslims to gain one small concession after another.

Most non-Muslims think, "What's the big deal? The poor Muslim minorities have had some tough breaks, let's cut them some slack and show them our support and they'll become our friends." The only way to sustain that kind of thinking is to be unaware of the ultimate goal or the ideology behind these efforts to gain concessions. Free people only go along with it because they mistakenly assume Islam is like any other religion. If you make that assumption, the demands for any particular concession seems acceptable.

So one way to get people to see these concessions as unacceptable is to teach them more about the basic elements of Islam. Then they will be able to see each of these concessions in a different way. They will stop seeing it as merely a way to demonstrate our tolerance, but as an incremental gain in establishing Sharia law in a free country. But they have to have enough knowledge about Islam to know that Sharia law is profoundly intolerant and thus our demonstrations of tolerance ultimately enables the establishment of intolerance.

Another approach is to help them grasp the great number and variety of concessions happening in many different arenas, and to help them see it as a deliberate strategy to move slowly and gradually enough to stay under the radar. Memorize lists like this one, so you can begin to easily recite them off the top of your head. Here is a huge collection of such concessions. Choose what you would consider the top ten clearest and most important concessions and memorize them. Each one by itself may not seem alarming, but when they are all said at once, the scope of the invasion becomes more recognizable, distinct, and impressive.

This directly counters the normal way of perceiving these concessions. In the normal course of events, if any of these events are covered in the news, each is portrayed as a separate issue, and "Islam" is usually not even mentioned. So each appears as an isolated incident that seems innocent enough. It is the very smallness and gradualness and incremental nature of these concessions that keeps anyone from resisting it or even understanding what's happening.

This is one of the techniques the Chinese used on American POWs during the Korean war. The communists in China had a sophisticated system of brainwashing, and one of its core principles was to get POWs to make a series of small, inconsequential concessions. They would ask the POWs to simply write down a few things that weren't perfect about the United States. Seems innocent enough. But psychologically, each POW who agreed to this small demand made a commitment, and the communists built on this, slowly widening the concessions to greater and more forceful public statements against America and ultimately in favor of the communists. When one of these servicemen came back to the United States speaking out against America and in favor of communism, it was a powerful public relations coup for China. It weakened America's ability to defend itself against further communist aggression (in Vietnam, for example).

This brainwashing technique took advantage of the principle of commitment and consistency. Experiments show that demonstrating a commitment to something — even by taking a very small, seemingly inconsequential action — a person is much more likely to make a bigger, more substantial commitment to the same thing later.

A girl wants to wear a veil. What's the big deal? A school wants to serve halal-only meat. A bank decides to stop giving away piggy banks because they don't want to offend Muslims. These concessions are small commitments. They seem innocent enough. But each is a small commitment to the principle that our way of life, our values, and our freedoms should yield to Islam. When we allow it, we are committing to the principle "when Sharia conflicts with our freedoms, it is our freedoms that must give way." And this commitment can then be built upon, and the concessions can be widened into greater demonstrations of that commitment over time.

When the Ultimate Fighting Championships first came out many years ago, I remember watching Hoyce Gracie as he held his opponent on the ground while Gracie worked his way almost imperceptibly closer and closer to the position he was aiming for. Every time his opponent moved or struggled to get out, Gracie closed in tighter, or moved into a better arm lock or whatever, until at last the opponent was held immobile and his air supply was choked off.

I have heard pythons do something similar. They grip their prey and wait until the prey breaths out. Then they squeeze a little tighter and hold it, so air is harder and harder to take in until the prey can no longer breathe.

This is what Islam is doing in the West. Get this message across. They are gaining one small concession at a time. Not many concessions are ever undone. Islam is a ratchet. It only goes one way.

But if enough non-Muslims become aware of the prime directive of Islam, these concessions will stop and many will be undone. We will be like Charles the Hammer. We will stand our ground, unified, and say to orthodox Muslims, "You shall go no further."

Read more...

Why the Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant

Saturday

This is another in our series, Answers to Objections. It is an article written by Paul on Celestial Junk. The reason I'm reprinting this is because one of the most common responses we get when we mention anything negative about Islam is, "But the majority of Muslims are peace-loving people." This seems like such a final, decisive, irrefutable, self-evident conclusion, it makes all your ranting about Islam completely pointless. Or so it seems to the person who says it.

But from now on, when someone counters your educational efforts with "most Muslims are peace-loving," school them with Paul's response. Here it is:

Just as a "committed" Christian is one who truly follows the Bible, so a "committed" or "devoted" Muslim is one who truly follows the Quran. And just as a "devoted" Christian is one who truly follows Jesus, so a "devoted" Muslim is one who truly follows Muhammad.

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, he replied, "Very few people were true Nazis, but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories."

We are told again and again that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Even if this unqualified assertion is true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of zealous Muslims rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the committed, devoted, zealous followers of Muhammad...the "true Muslims"...rule Islam at this moment in history. Some call them "fanatics" or "extremists." It is these zealous followers of the Quran who march. It is the fanatical, committed, zealous, literal followers of Muhammad who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the committed Muslims who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatical followers of the Quran who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatical followers of Muhammad who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatical, committed Muslims who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatical Muslims, those who take the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad very seriously and literally, who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful Muslims, the "silent majority," (IF they are indeed in the majority), are cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were "peace loving?"

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:

Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.

Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like the aforementioned German aristocrat, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Brigitte Gabriel made this answer to a questioner, summarized emphatically. Watch it here on YouTube: Brigitte Gabriel's Epic and Brilliant Answer To "Most Muslims Are Peaceful..."

Citizen Warrior is the author of the book, Getting Through: How to Talk to Non-Muslims About the Disturbing Nature of Islam and also writes for Inquiry Into Islam, History is Fascinating, and Foundation for Coexistence. Subscribe to Citizen Warrior updates here. You can send an email to CW here.

Read more...

A Victory For Freedom: Update on the Geert Wilders Trial, Friday, October 15, 2010

Friday

ACCORDING TO Radio Netherlands, "The Geert Wilders trial is as good as over. The public prosecutor has called for the populist politician to be acquitted of all charges against him. The trial will continue, but everything is now an anti-climax.

"During two days of intricately constructed arguments, the prosecutors told the court they found no evidence that Geert Wilders had broken the law.

"We request acquittal on fact 2...we request acquittal on fact 3." Statement after statement, and charge after charge, prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman, who took turns reading the arguments, said Wilders had not broken the law.

"The prosecutors consistently came to the same conclusion. What Wilders said may be 'hurtful to Muslims, and may be met with emotional responses', but he did not break the law.

"The prosecutors analysed each of Wilders' statements for each of the five charges against him. The charges included group defamation, inciting hatred of Muslims and non-western ethnic minorities, and inciting discrimination of Muslims and non-western ethnic minorities."

The conclusion was confirmed by
Dutch News, which wrote: "The public prosecution department on Friday afternoon (October 15th, 2010) stated that Geert Wilders is not guilty of discriminating against Muslims. Earlier on Friday it announced he should also be found not guilty of inciting hatred.

"Prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman reached their conclusions after a careful reading of interviews with and articles by the anti-Islam politician and a viewing of his anti-Koran film Fitna."

Geert Wilders and the forces of freedom have won this battle.

Let the trumpets sound, and let's all raise a glass to this victory. Join with people all over the world today and drink a toast to this triumph of freedom over the forces of tyranny. Free speech laws defeated hate speech laws. This is a moment worth commemorating.

And if you were one of those who helped alert others to Wilders' case, who made comments on other web sites or shared a post about it on Facebook, or if you participated in the SITA actions and wrote letters to the judge and prosecutors, please take a bow and give yourself a pat on the back. You deserve it.

Read more...

Are All Fundamentalists Dangerous?

Wednesday

A Zen master is a Buddhist fundamentalist. Zen masters, such as the late Shunryu Suzuki, shown in the picture here, try to practice Buddhism in its pure form. They try to do things the way Buddha did them, and they try to follow Buddha's teachings. They live austere lives devoted to meditation and teaching, just like Buddha did. They try to focus more on direct experience than in learning doctrines (something Buddha repeatedly stressed in his teachings). They try not to conceptualize too much. They get their students to learn about their own minds from long periods of meditation.

A Buddhist fundamentalist cultivates a state of calmness and kindness, and cultivates the ability to keep her or his attention in in the present moment and not in the past, the future, or lost in thought.

These are Buddhist fundamentalists.

If Zen devotees work hard, most of them will achieve a state of abiding inner peace and a profound and lasting feeling of kindness toward others.

Islamic fundamentalists try to practice Islam in its pure form. They try to do things the way Mohammad did them, and they try to follow Mohammad's teachings. They live austere lives devoted to jihad. They don't sit around contemplating their navels. They prove their devotion with action. They try to make the law of Allah the supreme law of the world. They devote their lives to fulfilling the political goal of Islam, just as Mohammad dedicated his life to it, and just as Mohammad taught his followers to do.

An Islamic fundamentalist cultivates hatred toward non-Muslims and works toward the day when all non-Muslims are either subjugated as dhimmis, converted to Islam, or dead.

These are Islamic fundamentalists.

If Islamic devotees work hard, most of them will find themselves in some form of warfare with non-Muslims and ideally will be killed fighting in the way of Allah.

Are all fundamentalists dangerous? Are all ideologies the same? Would it matter to you what kind of fundamentalist you had as your neighbor? Would it matter to you what kind of fundamentalist your children chose as close friends or heroes? Would it matter to you what kind of fundamentalist your country allowed to immigrate to your country?

Read more...

Why You Should Read the Quran and Discover the Disturbing Truth For Yourself

Monday

ONCE YOU'VE read the Quran, your knowledge of the core Islamic teachings will affect the way you perceive the world, allowing you to understand things which would otherwise be perplexing.

Islam is becoming a more prominent part of society in every country of the world, and this will only increase as time goes on. More Muslims are moving to Western democracies, Muslims are having far more babies than any other group in the world, and they're using underhanded tactics like love jihad to persuade non-Muslim women to marry Muslim men to increase their numbers.

Not only are innocent people dying in jihad-inspired terrorist attacks around the world, but Muslim action "for the sake of Allah" has a significant influence on world events, like what OPEC does to world oil prices, what the Saudis do with their oil billions, what Iran may do with nuclear weapons, and what mainstream Muslim organizations do to change laws within free nations.

What people do in the name of Islam is not a peripheral or minuscule issue any more. It is impacting world events in a major way, and more so all the time. All the Muslims working toward their political goals are following the commands, so they say, from the Quran. What does it say in that book? Can it be interpreted some other way? Are they taking it all out of context? Or should we take what they're saying at face value?

How will you know the answers to these questions? By listening to others? You never know what agenda someone is following, or why they say what they say. You don't need any more opinions about Islam. You don't need someone's biased opinion about the Quran. You don't need anyone scaring you or trying to comfort you or trying to deceive you. You need to know what it actually says. You need to know the content of what 1.5 billion people on the planet consider to be their primary holy book.

People have political agendas. They have personal agendas. They have reasons to bias or misrepresent their information about the Quran and about Islam. Some even go out of their way to give the impression they don't have an agenda when they really do.

The only people you can honestly trust and believe are people you personally know and trust. Do you know anyone that you trust who has read the Quran? If not, you can read it yourself. You can go to the source and find out what's really true and who is distorting the facts about Islam.

And after you've read the Quran, when you talk about Islam, you will be able to speak with some authority. You're no longer going on second-hand knowledge. You've gotten your information directly from the Quran.

You can then help educate your friends and family, who are in the same boat — they don't have anyone they can trust to tell them what's really true about Islam. Once you've read the Quran, they'll have you.

Reading the Quran is a harmless, peaceful, and yet productive way to do something about what's going on in the world. You can become a source of solid information in a sea of rumor and opinion. It is doing something positive about something negative.

When you decide to take this step and read the Quran, please see our recommendations for which Quran to read. You can save yourself a lot of time and frustration to read a version written in modern English, put in chronological order, and with the missing historical details filled in. Read more about that here.

Reading the Quran is an act of heroism. It is not pleasant or easy. But it will make a difference. Please consider it carefully, and if you are ready, take the pledge to read the Quran.

Read more...

Possessing Freedom is Not Enough — We Must Exercise Our Freedom to Preserve It

Saturday

The following is a transcript of a speech columnist Diana West gave at a free speech conference of the International Free Press Society held in Denmark's parliament in Copenhagen: AMERICANS ARE proud, and rightly so, of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which, among other things, protects speech from government control. The Amendment says in part: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Increasingly, however, Americans seem content to regard the First Amendment not as the fundamental working tool of democracy, but as a national heirloom, a kind of antique to admire rather than put to use. I don’t think many of my countrymen perceive how profoundly their attitude toward free speech has changed. But there is a difference between having freedom of speech and exercising freedom of speech, one that has become glaringly and distressingly obvious to me since September 11, 2001. So, while it is true that the US government is not Constitutionally empowered to make laws that censor Americans, it is also true, I believe, that Americans have come to censor themselves. But why? I speak today in regard to the effect of Islam on speech in America — Islam as it has entered our national discussion and debate — and, I must add, lack of national discussion and debate — since the heinous Islamic attacks on the US in 2001. You may recall that just days after the attacks, then-President Bush said — and I quote — “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” At that same moment, the Pentagon, just across the river from the White House, was a colossal ruin, there was still carnage and mangled steel in the Pennsylvania woods, and an acrid fire of souls burned at the bottom of Manhattan. But once President Bush uttered that word “crusade” a new fear seemed to grip Washington and the wider world: namely, the fear that the President would “alienate” Muslims, even so-called “moderate Muslims.” I believe such a fear may be unique in the annals of peoples under assault and bears further consideration. The English word “crusade,” of course, harkens back to the medieval wars between Islam and Christendom, which Islam ultimately won, as we know. In the more than nine centures since, the word has become a familiar metaphor for any moral fight for right: Long ago in America, Thomas Jefferson spoke of a “crusade” against ignorance; the feminist Susan B. Anthony called for a women’s temperance “crusade”; more recently Colin Powell referred to the “equal rights” crusade. And when Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote his memoir of World War II, he called it “Crusade in Europe.” But after 9/11 it became instantly clear that there wasn’t going to be a 21st-century-“crusade” against newly expansionist Islam — not even against the most violent manifestations of jihad as exemplified by these bloody attacks on civilians and cities in the United States. Why? Muslims didn’t approve. Non-al Qaeda Muslims, presumably, didn’t approve of a “crusade” against al-Qaeda, and the leader of the Free World deferred. A White House spokesman quickly expressed the president’s “regret” that anyone might have been “upset” by the word “crusade.” After that, the word was effectively struck from the English language. This may seem like a small thing, no more than a diplomatic nicety, but the significance of excising this rousing and storied word from the vocabulary of Americans at the onset of war can hardly be overstated, and must be understood as an early and decisive psychological victory for Islam over the West. In this early semantic retreat we can see the beginnings of the official American lexicon that now strives to avoid associating Islam and jihad altogether, that no doubt gives mighty encouragement to the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s continuing efforts to outlaw all criticism of Islam. Let me explain. In acceding to the Islamic interpretation of the word “crusade” as something wrong and indefensible — and, worse, something taboo and also verboten — the president traded away a piece of our history and our language — and our understanding of our history through our language — for the sole sake of appeasing Islam. And truly, this was just the beginning. Soon, the president was giving up other words, other pieces of our culture. Operation Infinite Justice, the Pentagon name for the assault on the Taliban, for example, was changed after Muslims complained that they believed only Allah dispenses infinite justice. The new name was Operation Enduring Freedom. Presumably, Muslims do not believe Allah dispenses freedom, enudring or otherwise (which is interesting), so that was all right. But in making the change, the US was again deferring to Islamic demands, Islamic understandings. In other words, as a military intelligence officer-friend of mine likes to put it, we were “outsourcing” our judgment to Islam. Indeed, the name “war on terror” itself was a generic sop to Islamic sensibilities, omitting any reference to the Islamic dimension of the struggle, namely the jihad that was and is underway. In those early days after 9/11, President Bush also made it part of his job to serve as the nation’s head cheerleader for Islam as “the religion of peace.” Confusingly, this immediately put “jihad” in a box as something superfluous to Islam. This is now the conventional wisdom in America, from Left to Right: jihad has nothing to do with Islam. Or: “Jihadism is not Islam,” former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney obediently declared. People think Barack Hussein Obama is the first American president to promote Islam. The fact is, President Bush’s incessant declarations that Islam is a peaceable creed that terrorist-traitors had “hijacked” or “twisted” drove Abu Qatada, the notorious imam in Britain linked to Al Qaeda to comment — and I quote: “I am astonished by President Bush when he claims there is nothing in the Koran that justifies jihad or violence in the name of Islam. Is he some kind of Islamic scholar? Has he ever actually read the Koran?” It’s fair to say that the answer to both questions is no. It’s also disturbing to realize that in the mainstream conversation, the only questions balking at the president’s depiction of Islam as a hearts-and-flowers ideology came from an Islamic terror-imam — never from our own media or politicians. George W. Bush’s Department of Homeland Security made it difficult for government officials to talk about anything but “hearts and flowers” Islam by issuing a long memorandum “suggesting” that government officials stop using all such words as “jihad,” “jihadist,” “Islamic terrorist,” “Islamist” “Islamofascist” and the like when discussing, well, Islamic terrorism. “Using the word “Islamic” will sometimes be necessary,” the memorandum said, adding that the department’s Muslim experts were concerned that in such a case — quote — “we should not concede the terrorists’ claim that they are legitmate adherents of Islam.” It’s not hard to imagine Abu Qatada cackling over this propaganda, but I regret to say there was scant media coverage of even this outrageous Islamic apologetic via government directive. This shouldn’t be surprising since the media in the US, as elsewhere in the West, is overwhelmingly predisposed to ignore or deny, as a key point of cultural relativism, all specifically Islamic roots of jihad violence and conquest. This is the philosophical basis of what I call Islam-free analysis. Add to that the fear factor of Islamic violence — as we saw in the Danish cartoon crisis — or fear of Islamic protests or harassment, and the United States of America is happy to comply with a universal gag order on Islam, First Amendment or no First Amendment. And so, from the so-called war on terror — which is now, even more opaquely known by the Obama administration as an “overseas contigency operation” — to newsrooms across America, Islam as what sociologists call “an underlying cause” is increasingly treated as a forbidden topic. Another example: As a journalist, I attend expert lectures in Washington, DC, on, What happened in Iraq? or, The future of Afghanistan. I can attest that at all the ones I have attended, Islam — its culture, its history, beliefs, supremacism, sharia, jihad, anything — is never even mentioned. In this same mold, when Gen. Stanley McChrystal gave one his first interviews as the newly confirmed commander in Afghanistan about the challenges facing coalition forces in Afghanistan. Such challenges, apparently, have nothing to do with Islam, Islamic law (sharia), or jihad — none of which he even mentioned. This same see-no-Islam mindset, to focus on the media for a moment, drives stories such as the Buffalo, New York “businessman” who beheaded his wife this spring after she filed for divorce. Did I mention he was a Muslim? That he had founded a television station to combat negative Islamic stereotyping? Most US media didn’t. Initial reports, such as they were, cited “money woes,” or general “domestic violence” as the trigger, never noting the sacralization of misogyny within Islam, let alone the unfortunate Koranically inspired propensity toward beheading people. To take another typical story, last month authorities uncovered a terror plot in New York City targeting synagogues and military aircraft. I listened to a 2 minute and 29 second radio report of the story and didn’t get the information that the suspects were jailhouse converts to Islam until the final eight seconds. And that was typical. Another non-story for the Islam-blind: When Harvard University’s Muslim chaplain recently declared support for the traditional Islamic penalty of death for apostasy, there were exactly two newspaper stories: one in Harvard’s student newspaper, and one that I wrote. Some of the most egregious examples of Islam-free reporting came out of the jihadist attacks on Mumbai. Early this year, for example, the Indian government released intercepts of conversations of the jihadists who murdered 163 people last November. The conversations frequently invoked Allah, Islam and the need to spare Muslims in the bloody rampages but world media including the New York Times and the Asscoiated Press, for example, omitted all or very nearly all references to Allah, Islam, and the need to spare Muslims in the bloody rampages. As a conservative, I would like to say that such silence on all things Islam is a phenomenon of the mainstream media, or the Left in general. But this same silence is also a phenomenon of the Right, the side of the politial spectrum where one expects to find some fight. But American conservatives, too, protect Islam by not talking about it — our most famous conservative talk show hosts, for example, barely ever mention it — or by obscuring the subject with the nonsense words that hide the mainstream Islamic roots of terror and supremacism. Soon after 9/11, I tried some of these same terms out myself — Islam”ist,” Islamo-fascist, radical fundamentalist, Wahhabist, and the like — but came to find them confusing, and maybe purposefully so. In their amorphous imprecision, they allow us to give a wide berth to a great problem: the gross incompatibility of Islamic ideology with Western liberty. Worse than imprecision, however, is the evident childishness that inspires the lexicon, as though padding “Islam” with extraneous syllables such as “ism” or “ist” is a shield against politically correct censure; or that exempting plain “Islam” by criticizing imaginary “Islamofascism” spares us Muslim rage — which, as per the Danish experience, we know explodes at any critique. Such mongrel terms, however, not only confuse the disucssion, but keep our understanding of Islam at bay. Here is how it works on the Right. In writing about Cartoon Rage 2006, Charles Krauhammer, probably the leading conservative columnist in America, clearly identified why the Western press failed to republish the Danish Mohammed cartoons. He wrote: “What is at issue is fear. The unspoken reason many newspapers do not want to republish is not sensitivity but simple fear.” Unquote. This was clear as a bell: but then he wrote: “They know what happened to Theo van Gogh, who made a film about the Islamic treatment of women and got a knife through the chest with an Islamist manifesto attached.” To repeat, the columnist wrote that Theo van Gogh made a film about the “Islamic treatment of women” and was killed by a knife “with an Islamist manifesto” attached. Given that both Theo’s film and murder-manifesto were explicitly inspired by the verses of the Koran, what’s Islamic about the treatment of women that’s not also Islamic about the manifesto? The “ist” is a dodge, a semantic wedge between the religion of Islam and the ritual murder of van Gogh. It saves face. But why, why, is it up to an infidel American columnist to save face … when the face is Mohammed’s? I think the answer is connected to what may have been the real war President Bush began to lead the day he gave up the “crusade.” I’m afraid this effort isn’t against “jihad,” and it isn’t against Islamization. On the contrary, it’s a very strange war for the West: it’s our war against alienating Islam; our war against blaming Islamic ideology for violence and repression in the cause of Islamic conquest. In this Western struggle to protect Islam, denouncing an Islam”ist” manifesto, for example, leaves Islam itself ideologically blameless. And this constitutes a win in this very weird war. But the war against alienating Islam is not a war I want to fight — and no adherent of Western liberty could believe it’s the war we want to win. Indeed, this war effort turns out to be the same thing as fighting for Islam. It calls us to self-censorship, self-abnegation, self-extinguishment. It depends on and encourages our submission. This is the behavior of the dhimmi and the culture of dhimmitude as catalogued by the great historian Bat Ye’or. Honestly, I don’t think Americans realize they’re engaged in such a suicidal effort, which has even intensified under President Obama. Nor do I believe most Americans would rally to such a cause — if, that is, they became educated enough to understand it. But the knowledge gap is as wide as the communications gap. Deep down we may not have lost our will; however, at this terrible point, we have lost our language to mobilize that will. And very few Americans seem to realize it. A final point: I’ve had the opportunity to observe Geert Wilders speak in the United States this past year, and, as you know, he speaks in robust terms to explain forthrightly the perils of Islamzation in the West. His heroic manner and clarity electrify many of the Americans who hear him — which suggests there is a healthy flicker of life out there. But there is often someone in the crowd who will tell Mr. Wilders that while he agrees with the message, Mr. Wilders should soften his words so as not to offend anyone — meaning, of course, Muslims. “Don’t say Juedo-Christian culture is better,” I heard one man say to Mr. Wilders. “Say: 'we believe in women’s rights.’” I know I don’t have to worry about Mr. Wilders “moderating” his message, but I worry greatly about all the Americans who ask him to. On hearing about the Dutch court’s sharia-compliant prosecution of his freedom of speech, an American journalist reacted with genuine horror that such a state of repression could exist in a Western country. At the same time, I could sense his quiet pride in knowing, at the back his mind, that he, as an American, was fully protected by the First Amendment. But I wondered to myself, Did he use it? Did his colleagues use it? If the state of American journalism is any marker, the answer is no. Geert Wilders speaks out as if he is protected by the First Amendment, but US journalists and politicians speak so as not to “give offense,” so as not to raise alarm, so as not to criticize Islam. Islam, of course, is not our only block on speech. For decades, Americans have been schooling themselve to speak with political correctness. As the country has lurched Left under President Bush and now even further under President Obama, we are now seeing ominous legislation making its way through Congress — so-called “hate crimes” legislation — that bodes ill for free speech and also for equality before the law. We are seeing alarming efforts on the Left to “regulate” — in fact, to censor — radio talk shows, for example, and also the Internet. I wish I could end on a hopeful note, but my sense is that it will have to get worse in America before it gets better. And how will we know when things are beginning to improve? When Americans, as a people, learn, or re-learn something: that it’s not enough to possess freedoms. We must learn that it’s vital to exercise our freedoms if we want to have any hope of preserving them.

Read more...

Article Spotlight

One of the most unusual articles on CitizenWarrior.com is Pleasantville and Islamic Supremacism.

It illustrates the Islamic Supremacist vision by showing the similarity between what happened in the movie, Pleasantville, and what devout fundamentalist Muslims are trying to create in Islamic states like Syria, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia (and ultimately everywhere in the world).

Click here to read the article.


Copyright

All writing on CitizenWarrior.com is copyright © CitizenWarrior.com 2001-2099, all rights reserved.

  © Free Blogger Templates Columnus by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP