Talking to People You Love About Islam

When you try to tell people what you've learned about Islam and they argue with you or it seems like they just won't understand what you're saying, your first impulse might be to forget it, at least with that person. But that's the wrong response.

One great thing about these conversations is that they are upsetting. That may sound strange, but those kinds of discussions keep you awake at night thinking about them, which means you will get better. Next time you'll have better answers to those objections because you thought about it (maybe even obsessed about it). You gave it so much thought because it was upsetting. So don't fight it. Your feelings of upset are not pleasant, but they aren't a bad thing.

Several things will help you live with this kind of upset:

1. Take breaks in between. Don't have so many upsetting conversations that you aren't getting any sleep.

2. Take your time with the discussion. You don't need to respond immediately. You can take all the time you want, and then come back and say, "I've been thinking about our conversation and..." And you don't need to "win." You don't need to convince someone you are right. Just plant some solid facts, and let it go. They'll sink in and the person will have to alter the way they look at the world, even a little bit, to accommodate the new information. They might even look it up to see if you are correct, and when someone discovers the truth on their own, it is even more powerful.

3. Never overstate your case. Understatement is far more persuasive in the long run than overstatement. Try to be as accurate as possible, but if you're going to err, err toward understatement.

4. Don't spoil family gatherings with upsetting arguments. It's not worth it. And group settings are usually not the best venues for changing someone's mind anyway. If you have Islam on your mind at a family gathering and want to do something, build rapport. It'll help future conversations.

5. Think about the upsetting feelings differently. Rather than being a bad sign, think of them as a good sign that you're fighting for a cause that's important enough to get upset about.

6. Use your upset as fuel and focusing power, motivating you to look up facts and craft your arguments carefully. Use our Answers to Objections list to help you. Use the non-Muslim forum to request possible answers to an objection that has stumped you. As you obsess, take notes. It will help you remember the points you want to make.

7. Always try to give some fundamental information. Primary information can help change someone's world view in the long run. Muhammad killed people and took slaves. The Koran says 91 times that a Muslim should follow Muhammad's example. Simple facts like these are something solid that can help someone think differently about the problem of Islam.

These conversations are happening more frequently these days and with less resistance. But there are still plenty of holdouts who don't want it to be true and will fight you tooth and nail before they will admit (even to themselves) that the facts have overwhelmed their denial. This is a bitter pill to swallow, and some people will go through all five stages of resistance to the truth about Islam. Help them get through it and never give up.

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.

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Available as a Kindle Now: A Handbook For The Counterjihad

Our handbook for citizen warriors entitled, Getting Through: How to Talk to Non-Muslims About the Disturbing Nature of Islam has been released in a Kindle version.

The book has a section on different ways to approach conversations about Islam, and another section on how to educate people in other ways besides arguing. The book includes Answers to Objections and The Terrifying Brilliance of Islam in their entirety.

Our mission is to make it universally understood that Islam is not a religion of peace, and that Islamic doctrine outlines a clear political goal: The global application of Sharia law.

This mission is much harder than many of us expected. Our new manual should make our task easier and more enjoyable for everyone. Click here to get the book on Amazon.

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Militant Scientologists Gun Down 15 People in Shooting Spree

Last week, at a private event in New Jersey where ex-Scientologists gathered to air their grievances about the Church of Scientology, three masked gunmen burst into the room and opened fire, killing everyone present. Most newspapers have criticized the ex-Scientologists for holding the meeting. They should have kept their grievances to themselves, said MSNBC. CNN and the NY Times said the ex-Scientologists knew how offensive any kind of criticism is to the Church, so they were asking for trouble.

The headline and the above paragraph are fiction. This was a way to illustrate how ridiculous it is for any non-Muslim to criticize anyone for holding a Muhammad cartoon contest.

In Islam, it is not okay to draw Muhammad or satirize Islam. Fine. Muslims shouldn't do it. But should that rule be applied to everyone, whether they are Muslim or not?

In the same way, if it is a sin for a Scientologist to criticize Scientology (and it is) a non-Scientologist can do it if they want to. We all know this. A person who is not a member of the religion can criticize it all they want. None of us are bound by the rules of a religion of which we're not a member. Obviously. Right? It should be obvious.

It used to be a Catholic rule that Catholics were not supposed to eat meat on Friday. In some places in the world, this rule is still in effect. Fine. Non-Catholics don't care, and don't worry about whether they eat meat or not on Fridays. But what if Catholics became offended when anyone ate meat on Fridays? What if they started killing non-Catholics who were found eating meat on Fridays? Would the pundits say the meat-eaters had it coming? Would they say that by having a hamburger barbeque in their backyard, they were obviously provoking the Catholics and got what they deserved? That would be ridiculous. Right?

What if they weren't just innocently and quite-by-accident having a hamburger barbeque, but knew Catholics didn't like it, and to prove they had the right to eat what they want, they went ahead and ate the burgers anyway? And then Catholics killed them for it? Now did they get what they deserved? Should they be criticized for provoking the Catholics? No. The Catholics are the ones to be criticized, and the rule that non-Catholics should follow Catholic rules — that is what should be criticized. Obviously.

What ought to be criticized is the Islamic rule that non-Muslims must follow Islamic rules.

This commentary is also posted on Inquiry Into Islam here for your sharing convenience.

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.

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Oops! Not on Sale Yet

Yesterday we posted the great news that the Kindle version of Getting Through is available and on sale. Several people wrote to us saying the links didn't work, and the Kindle version is not on sale. 

Turns out, Amazon rescheduled the sale to November 24th! It's apparently against the rules to put it on sale until 30 days after the original release of a Kindle book. 

We're sorry to tease you like that! We will post something about it when it is ACTUALLY on sale. 

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No One Would Listen

If you haven't read the powerful book, Night, by Elie Wiesel, you really should. It is his account of what happened to him during WWII. He was a young teen living in a small village in Hungary when, in 1942, the Hungarian police arrived to announce that all foreign Jews had to leave. The police loaded them all into trains and took them away.

The people in the town were disturbed, of course. It was a sad day. But after a few months, the memory began to fade, and life eventually returned to normal. They felt they were far enough removed from the war that it would end before it ever came to their remote village.

Then one day, one of those foreign Jews found his way back to the village. His name was Moishe. He was an old man, but the young Elie Wiesel had known him fairly well. Moishe had an extraordinary story to tell. He said when the trainload of Jews crossed the border into Polish territory, the Gestapo loaded them into trucks and took all the Jews into a forest where they were forced to dig huge trenches, and then they were all shot! Moishe himself was shot in the leg and left for dead. But he escaped and had been struggling to get back to the little village so he could warn people of what happened. He was urging everyone to flee; to get away before the Germans came.

He went "from one Jewish house to the next," wrote Elie Wiesel, "telling his story..." And he repeatedly and urgently told his story at the synagogue.

But nobody believed him.

They thought he must have lost his mind. Why would the Germans just kill Jews like that? Germany was a modern, industrialized, enlightened country. They wouldn't simply murder people so heartlessly and for no reason. Moishe must have lost his mind.

Moishe was insistent. He begged people to listen to him. He cried. He pleaded. But not one person believed him. They didn't want to believe him, and that's a formidable barrier to communication.

Our message — that what is written in Islamic texts is dangerous to non-Muslims — is also something many people do not want to believe. The implications are too heavy. The people of Elie's village didn't want to contemplate what it would mean if Moishe's story was true. It would mean tragedy and heartache and a loss of faith in humanity. It would mean a drastically different future for everyone. If they believed Moishe, the wise course of action would be to immediately pack up or sell everything they own and move somewhere they'd never been before. They'd have to start over. The journey would be fraught with uncertainty and danger. Most of them had lived their whole lives in that little village.

But they had another option, didn't they? They could explain away Moishe's terrifying story. They could decide there must be some other explanation.

That's what we run into also, isn't it? People are desperately trying to explain it away. If it's true that the doctrines of Islam are dangerous to non-Muslims, we should all drop what we're doing and address it. What's the point of going on about our lives, as they did in Elie's village, if it will all go terribly wrong in a few years? No, there would be no return to normal. If someone truly and fully grasps the real situation, they're in a whole new world, and the "important goals" they were busy trying to accomplish up until now would be abruptly abandoned in order to handle this new (and far more pressing) reality.

But they have another option, don't they? They can decide there must be some other explanation. You must not understand it correctly. You must be taking the Koranic passages out of context. Muslims who believe in Islamic doctrines must be a very small minority. There must be some other explanation.

I invite you to read Night and think about this: What would you have done if you were in Moishe's situation? Do you think you could have gotten someone to believe you? How would you get through to people? Or would you have given up, as Moishe did, and leave them all to their fate?

In 1944, the German Army arrived at Elie's village and immediately initiated new policies to limit freedoms for Jews. The noose closed in tighter and tighter, one policy at a time, until one day all the Jews of the village were imprisoned in a ghetto and ordered to board the transport trains. People were terrified. What did this mean? They were busy in Elie's house frantically packing up food for the trip when Moishe came up to the front door and shouted, "I warned you!" Then he turned and left without waiting for anyone to respond.

It was too late to do anything about it. They were transported to Auschwitz, and all of them suffered terrible, unbelievable physical and psychological torment. Most of them ended up dead.

If Moishe had been able to make people believe him, everyone in the village would have had plenty of time to flee.

Let's not repeat the same mistake. Let's get through. Not with force. Not with crying or pleading or intensity. Let's find out what allows our message to penetrate, and let's use it with ever-growing skill. If you need help, it is available here: Tools.

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.

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