Geert Wilders Publicly Supports Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

LAST WEEK, the Gates of Vienna reported that the judge in Elisabeth's trial added a new charge against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, prompting Elisabeth’s Voice to reactivate their fund-raising initiative to help Elisabeth meet her legal fees. The new charge is "denigrating religious symbols of a recognized religious group." The new charge is easier to prove, and it increases her chance of being convicted.

Now Geert Wilders has come out publicly and officially in support of Elisabeth. She received this email from Mr. Wilders:

The Austrian anti-jihad activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff is currently on trial in Vienna for speaking the truth about Islam. Her case is much like mine and that of all the other people in Europe who are being charged, tried, convicted, and silenced for daring to speak out against Islam.

Elisabeth is a courageous woman whose staunch defence of liberty, freedom of expression and the search for truth are an inspiration for us all. She is a beacon of light, not only for Austria but the entire West.

I fully support Elisabeth in her resistance to the oppression that has been forced upon her. And I especially support her in her defence against a charge brought by the Vienna court in an attempt to silence her.

It is important to defend those who are being prosecuted by the state for their convictions. We need to exercise our own right of speech on their behalf. If we do not speak out today for people like Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, we will all be silenced.

If you want to contribute to her defense, visit Elisabeth’s Voice and make a donation using PayPal. Or, if you prefer, you can send a bank transfer using the following information for international payments:

Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich
IBAN: AT513150042908021602
BIC: RZBAATWW

Made out to: Public Notary Mag. Martin Scheichenbauer, Hemmaweg 5, A-9342 Gurk

The defense fund is not under Elisabeth's control, and disbursements from it will be made solely to pay her legal fees.

If you are unable to contribute, please pass the word along to anyone who might be able to help. Post stories about Elisabeth on your Facebook page. Make comments on blogs. Email your friends. Talk about it to people you know. We all need to fight to keep Elisabeth and others like her from being silenced.

Here are more articles on Elisabeth:

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff Versus Sharia

The Latest on Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

An Interview with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

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

Elisabeth's Trial Has Begun

Read more...

Keeping Private Information Private at Spokeo

A NEW ONLINE USA phone book, Spokeo.com, has collected lots of personal information about you. They've got everything from photos you've posted on Facebook or the web, your credit score, photos of where you live, your income, your age, your home address.
But you can remove yourself by searching your name and then clicking on your name. A smaller window pops up. Go to the bottom of the smaller window and click on the Privacy link to remove yourself.
Once you put in your information and click, you will see a small sentence that tells you to check your email.
Go to your email and click on the "confirm" link. Within one day, you can check back and your information will be gone.

Read more...

More About "Whose Side Am I On?"

A COUPLE WEEKS ago, I wrote about a comment we got from a Muslim wondering if Citizen Warrior is just a very clever Muslim (Whose Side Am I On?). On Jihad Watch a few days ago, Robert Spencer wrote about the same phenomenon. Someone wrote to him and said:

"I can't understand whether you're a kafir trying to make people hate Islam with your commentaries or whether you're a Muslim trying to make people read the Quraan."

Using his inimitable sarcasm, Spencer's comment was, "This latest Hate Mailer, who writes in from Syria, is not as certain as the last one about my cleverly hidden secret identity."

I've been meaning to do a follow-up on my own article on the subject, because I've thought more about it. I think one of the reasons the article, Basic Principles of Islam, confused the Muslim commenter (about where my loyalties lie) is because the article is "value neutral." Most non-Muslims who write about Islam (and who know a lot about it) are very clearly against it. Their disdain for Islam comes through loud and clear in every sentence.

But I didn't do that in the article that got the comment. In fact, I specifically designed that whole website (Inquiry Into Islam) as a value-neutral educational site because the same things that raise the hackles of a Muslim would also raise the hackles of multiculturalists.

In other words, the article has no edge to it. It's just the facts. I personally feel that any non-Muslim who reads it needs no convincing from me. The straight information speaks for itself to those of us who share the values of freedom and equality. But what happens when a Muslim from Iran or Syria finds Inquiry Into Islam? What do they make of it? They can see that the information is being presented without any negative judgment. It might very well confuse them. Whose side am I on?

In Muslim countries you can speak openly about, say, the subjugation of women, and you can do it with no feeling of remorse or embarrassment, as I've seen on television programs created and shown in the Middle East, with experts arguing about just how much you can beat your wife, for example. There is no hint of shame about the topic, no embarrassment that their religious doctrines are misogynistic. Those of us who grew up believing in the principles of freedom and equality instinctively assume Muslims should be ashamed of these principles. How could they not be embarrassed about their own backward (to our way of thinking) beliefs? But they clearly are not.

To get outside this topic to see it plainly, let's look at Buddhism. You could speak about the teachings of Buddhism and just lay it out: "These are the teachings of Buddhism." And the person reading it might assume you are a Buddhist.

Or you could write about Buddhism with some disdain permeating your writing. In which case, a Buddhist might take exception to what you wrote, even if what you wrote was accurate. That may be what we are dealing with in educating non-Muslims about Islam.

When most of us write about Islam it's with ridicule or a clear tone of rejection. And a Muslim will take exception to what we write, even though we're saying things that are true. You see this all the time. Non-Muslims are speaking about Islam, but clearly not liking it, not agreeing with it — against it — and Muslims read it and object to what was said, even though it was true. They'll say, "You're taking it out of context" or "That's not the way we mean it."

A Buddhist might do exactly the same thing if you were saying some of the principles of Buddhism with an edge. One Buddhist teaching, for example, is to try to refrain from harming other living things. And if you said it like that, no Buddhists would have any objection. But if you said it in a way that added a negative value judgment to it, they might take exception to it, even if what you said was technically accurate.

For example, if you say they don't believe in good nutrition (and I think a case could be made that many vegetarians don't eat enough protein to be healthy), a Buddhist might say, "That's not what we believe" or "You took that precept out of context."

But the point is, a Buddhist or a Muslim will believe in the precepts of their own religion, and will try to defend them. And they won't feel those precepts are bad. And when people like us imply that they're bad, they take great offense to us and argue passionately. And if we present the facts without judgment, they think we are secret, very clever Muslims.

Let's look at it another way. Before the Allies began the invasion of Normandy, they gave the Germans the impression they were going to land somewhere else. The Germans knew a big invasion was coming, but they didn't know where. The Allies deliberately misled the Germans into thinking the invasion would take place further north. The Nazis moved some of their military resources to that place, which made Normandy a safer place to land.

Assuming you are from one of the Allied countries, let me ask you: Do you feel embarrassed that people on your side employed deception? Does it bother you? Probably not. If somebody criticized the deception, you might well defend the action. In war, deception is a legitimate tactic. Not many people think of it as "cheating."

In the same way, I think if Muslims know Islamic doctrine and believe in it they don't have any problem with it. More than that, they think it's the truth. They think it's right. They think it is ordained by the Almighty. So of course an expression of it — of the facts and principles of the truth as they see it — would not be anything to be embarrassed about. They wouldn't feel it is cheating or wrong or bad.

And if it was presented without any negative judgment, a Muslim might very well assume someone who is explaining their doctrine so clearly and unapologetically must be a Muslim.

The reason I think this topic is important is that many of the non-Muslims we talk to lower their voices in case any Muslims are nearby and might be angry about what you're saying. They don't understand that Muslims are quite proud of their teachings. To explain their teachings is not insulting. It is not an indictment. It is just the facts. And a nearby Muslim overhearing your conversation might think you are a Muslim trying to convert a Kafir!

And I think you can explain some of this and make it clear that their assumption (that you are being insulting to Muslims or indicting them) would itself be insulting to a Muslim! Their assumption is the insulting, un-multiculturalist faux pas. Get that across and you will have laid the groundwork for a new openness to the facts in their minds.

Read more...

If You Need Legal Recourse

A WOMAN named Christine sent me the following email, and I thought it might come in handy for some of our readers. Here's what she said:

Are you familiar with the ACLJ? (American Center for Law and Justice) They are fighting battles against Islam legally in our courts. I really wonder if our government sees Islam for the political threat that it is. Definitely common Americans need to be made aware so they can speak up to our politicians.

Did you hear about the college professor in Oregon who got fired because he wanted to teach an informative class about Islam? CAIR complained, (threatened) to the college administration so they fired him. Now the ACLJ is defending the professor in court.

If someone you know needs legal recourse, this is one organization to choose from.

This is how the ACLJ describe themselves: "Led by Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow, the ACLJ focuses on constitutional and human rights law worldwide. Based in Washington, D.C., with affiliated offices in Israel, Russia, Kenya, France, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe, the ACLJ is pro-life and dedicated to the ideal that religious freedom and freedom of speech are inalienable, God-given rights for all people. The ACLJ engages legal, legislative, and cultural issues by implementing an effective strategy of advocacy, education, and litigation that includes representing clients before the Supreme Court of the United States and international tribunals around the globe."
You can sign up here for their breaking news and action alerts for free. You can find them on Facebook and Twitter too.

Read more...

The Will to Believe Versus the Wish to Find Out

IN A LONG email conversation with an intelligent, educated, successful man, he went from being totally against my criticisms of Islam to deciding to read the Koran to find out for himself. He told me he ordered a Koran. That was a big victory. But I thought, "If he gets one of those standard Korans, it is going to be difficult to decipher." So I asked him, "Which version of the Koran did you order?" He said he signed up for a free Koran from a website, and he didn't know what version it was. I told him, "There are a lot of Korans available to read online, but one of the problems with the Koran is its message is somewhat scrambled." And I explained in detail what I said in the article, Why the Standard Versions of the Quran are so Difficult to Decipher. I made a classic mistake here: I gave too much information. I kept selling past the close. I wanted to prove to him I knew what I was talking about, but I went too far. He had already decided to read the Koran. I could simply have told him, "Well, this version is the easiest to read: A Simple Koran." But no. I said too much. This was his response:

Wow, thanks for the rundown. I can see that there are no answers on the behavior of the average Muslim in the Quran so I wouldn't gain much by wading through it. You know, what I take away from this is that whatever is happening it is not fueled by the Quran anymore than what happens with our various Christian sects has anything to do with the Bible. The books are just props for the Imams, priests, ministers and miscellaneous zealots trying to make people live and act the way they want them to. It always blows me away that every religious leader tells his flock what God thinks, what God intends, what God likes, what God doesn't like, and what God is going to do to you or me or the heretics or the unbelievers or whoever the opponent is. They never say "I think this may be his/her motivation" instead they use simple declarative statements indicating that they have it straight from the Big Guy. It's the religious leaders who control the people there for the most part just as in the religious communities here the people's thoughts and mores are pretty much set by the priests, preachers, ministers, politicians, Fox News comedians, etc. We're fortunate here that we have a smaller group of fundamentalist religious leaders and they have less political power than in most Muslim countries. Imagine if the government was really run by the religious right, say, with fundamentalist Baptist ministers or Catholic priests in control. Fortunately, our supply of zealots is a minority. We can hope that witch hunts, inquisitions, ideologically-motivated murders (abortion doctors), persecution of minorities (homosexuals, women, Mexicans, etc) is nominally against our secular law which is supposed to trump religious law. We seem to be moving in the right direction although we seem to be much more theocratic than many other countries — theocracy with a liberal dose of oligarchy to my way of thinking. It would be wonderful if we really had total separation of church and state like some other countries. But that's not our tradition. I was interested in seeing an article in the paper a couple of days ago citing a study that showed that on the average atheists had a better knowledge of the Bible and Christian dogma than Catholics, Jews, or the various Christian sects. That seems to indicate that people do just take what is fed them by the leaders and don't really study it for themselves. It also suggest that a lot of people who do study religion end up atheists. What do you think?

This is how I replied: I'm not a Christian, but Islam is significantly different than Christianity. Mohammad really did learn a thing or two from observing the Christians. The Quran, once it is unscrambled (and that really doesn't take that much trouble, once you know how it's laid out) is a much more straightforward document than the Bible, and it even gives instructions on how to deal with its own contradictions. I think it's worth wading through the Quran, but just get an unscrambled version. The reason I think it's worth doing is that you'll be able to get the feel of the religion. It's not like Christianity. Muslims often make it a point to say it is similar to Christianity, but it's very different, and you'll get that by reading it. You said what's happening is not fueled by the Quran, but that's completely mistaken. It is fueled by the Quran. You can predict what orthodox Muslims will do and how they do it by just reading the Quran. Osama bin Laden and the other Islamic terrorists of the world often quote the Quran, and they quote it accurately. The people who run the OIC — the largest voting block in the UN — quote it. They are running its "program." They use it for their guidebook (as it says they should). Islamic countries around the world either use it as their guidebook or they are constantly suppressing rebellious forces who are pressing to make them use it as a guidebook. There may be a higher percentage of "Muslims in name only" in America than other places, but America has a lower percentage of Muslims than almost any other country in the world. And in other countries, Muslims are much more openly and strictly Islamic. And we don't really know how Islamic they are here because they keep it to themselves if they are devout (as it says they should in the Quran). But we do know that in America, 75 percent of the mosques preach jihad. In Canada it is 80 percent. It's worth knowing what's in the Quran because there is a whole PR arm of the Muslim Brotherhood that is actively producing disinformation about Islam, and they are getting their message across through all major media sources; it is being bought hook, line, and sinker by everyone from George Bush to Diane Sawyer. If you've read the Quran, you'll know better about the "true nature" of Islam. He responded:

I do appreciate what you're saying and you have a very logical approach to learning about the religion. I can see that a thorough understanding of motivation and custom and tradition can help us in negotiating with people. It can help us decide how to modify our behaviour to affect our relationship with them and we certainly could use more understanding like that. I get the impression that a lot of people who go to so much trouble to produce statistical arguments that Islam is x% different, worse, or ?? than Christianity are trying to say that the people are evil or motivated by evil desires. Like the proposition that Imam Rush puts out that (paraphrase) "These people want to kill us because they hate our freedom" That's a preposterous proposition. Anyway, it seems like all this dissecting of the Qu'ran is a lot like looking at weather maps to see if it's raining instead of looking out the window. The best weather prediction in the world doesn't touch the accuracy of walking out of doors and observing. What is happening in the world is a function of myriad traditions, emotions like greed, hate, as well as ignorance, religious and political manipulation and other unsavory forces. There are no simple answers like "We're good and they're evil" or "We're generous and altruistic and they're greedy and flawed" or "We're moral and they're without mores". So I repeat — What is the point that you are making by all this analysis of Islam? It seems after a long explanation there should be a statement that sums up the speaker's point. For instance I see the following possibilities. - So therefore our best course of action is a pre-emptive strike to wipe out any Muslims that might threaten us. - So therefore we should get out of Afghanistan and let them work out their own destiny. - So therefore we ought to forbid the construction of mosques entirely and outlaw books that espouse jihad. - So therefore we should terminate our dependence on their resources (oil) and leave them alone. - So therefore the only sensible course of action is to learn to live with them and let them follow their own traditions as long as they don't break our laws. Well, you get the picture. What is your point in all this analysis? What are you trying to convince people of?

My response to him was the best thing I did in this whole exchange. I backed off. I pulled back. I said: That is a fair question. The short answer is, I want you to learn enough about Islam that you are no longer fooled by their PR machine because of where that will lead. But I just don't have the energy or time to explain that all to you. My experience in learning about this is that there are people who have an intuition about Islam, and are self-motivated to learn more. And what they learn shocks and amazes them and they want to share what they've discovered with others. But nobody wants to hear it. Most other people have an entirely different motivation: They want to find out some information or adopt a point of view that will allow them to just forget about it and go on about their lives. They are not motivated to learn more on their own. The topic is a big one, and there is a lot to learn. And maybe when you have seen enough, you will dig into it yourself. You gave me five options (the bullet points). I don't like any of them. I want you to know more about Islam so you are no longer fooled by the orthodox Muslims deliberately trying to fool you so they can accomplish their agenda. He wrote back to tell me that was a good answer and it made sense. This is something I see very clearly now: There are those who want to learn more about it and who have an open mind. And there are those who have already decided what they want to believe, and they are merely looking for a way to confirm what they already have already decided must be true. Bertrand Russell wrote, "What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite." It is very easy and enjoyable to share what you know with the first group. And it is difficult and frustrating to share what you know with the second group. However, I think it is possible to influence the second group by talking about these differences between the two groups. If you're talking about someone who just wants enough information to be able to dismiss his intuitive fears, just point out the difference between the two people and then back off. You don't have enough time to waste talking to people like that, anyway. Find someone who is curious, and talk to them. Focus on the undecided. Not only that, but backing off can help you change someone's mind. You have a greater ability to influence when you have "walk-away power," as it is known to salespeople and negotiators. Read more about that here.

Read more...