Using Ambiguity to Reduce Ignorance

Have you seen the MEMRI video, posted by Honor Diaries, of a Saudi sheik talking about the virgins of paradise? I posted it on my personal Facebook page with the comment, "Don't you enjoy learning about other cultures?"

I have used ambiguous statements like this before and found them very effective. Some of my friends and family don't quite know how I mean it when I say things like that. Several of my Facebook friends have told me they sometimes can't figure out what side of an issue I'm on. But with people who are very resistant to basic information about Islam, this kind of ambiguity is very effective.

Lots of my Facebook friends watched the video because they were curious. Even my mom watched it. I mix in all kinds of stuff in my Facebook posts. And then I throw something Islam-related in there once in awhile, and even people who might normally avoid looking at that sort of thing read it or watch it because I am not in their face, self-righteously shoving this horrible reality down their throats. They don't see me as an alien, out-of-touch crazy man spouting hate speech.

Several of the people I work with are friends of mine on Facebook, and today at work, I said to one of them, "Did you see that post on my Facebook page today? The sheik talking about paradise?"

"Yeah, I did," he said, shaking his head.

"Crazy, right?" I said this to join him in his world. In the past he's been reluctant to consider the possibility that basic, mainstream Islamic teachings are violent and intolerant. But he has slowly come around to a better understanding of the painful and disturbing facts about Islamic doctrine. Then I said, "I recognized some of what he said from the Koran, but the rest of it must be in the Hadith, which I haven't read." He already knew I've read the Koran. I said this because I wanted to make sure he understood that these were not merely the mad ravings of a sheik, but the tenets of basic Islamic doctrine, faithfully expressed.

Then I said, "It's amazing that this stuff is televised." He nodded. "That was a video by MEMRI," I said. "which stands for 'Middle East Media Research Institute.' That's all they do: They take programs that air on TV in the Muslim world and translate them into English. You see the most amazing stuff on there."

Another guy had walked in on this conversation, and he asked, "Like what other kind of stuff?"

I said, "Like a video I saw today showing a Palestinian cleric giving a Friday 'sermon' while waving a knife around, and telling the listeners in the mosque (and on TV!) how to stab Israelis."

I talk about many things at work, but every once in a while, when a good opportunity presents itself, I try to inject a little solid information about Islam. I want people to understand that there is a well-established written doctrine, and it is aggressive, intolerant, and violent, and when they see Muslims acting this way, they are not seeing insane "extremists," taking Islam's peaceful teachings out of context; they are seeing faithful believers following the true teachings of Islam.

But to get this message across with any degree of success, I have learned from bitter experience that it has to be done with some ingenuity and flexibility. And one of the methods that really helps is to use ambiguity. The question I added to the MEMRI video on my Facebook page is a good example: "Don't you enjoy learning about other cultures?"

That can be taken at least two ways: I might mean it as sarcasm. Or I might mean it sincerely. It is certainly interesting to learn about other cultures.

As we've written before, one good reason (among many) to learn more about Islam — a reason that a multiculturalist would surely subscribe to — is that it is enlightening to learn about other cultures and to avoid being ill-educated, unworldly, or one-sided about your own culture. So my comment especially motivated those kinds of people, and those are the very people who are not being reached with this information, and who are most in need of a new understanding of Islam.

Using ambiguity this way is a no-lose situation. Those who are already acquainted with Islam will not change their minds, and if it makes the rest of them curious enough to watch the video, they will be closer to waking up to the problem of Islam.

In this way, ambiguity can help you get past peoples' defenses.

In the conversation above, after I said I had read some of that stuff in the Koran, I said, "The Koran seemed so blatant in its lavish descriptions of Paradise and its scary descriptions of hell. It was so obviously self-serving, I'm surprised anyone bought it. L. Ron Hubbard had a better shtick!"

Let me explain why I added that last comment. First of all, L. Ron Hubbard is the creator of Scientology, and I have already talked to my workmate several times about Scientology, and he and I are in agreement that Scientology is a religion with dangerous policies and bizarre beliefs. But as we've advocated here many times, you can use Scientology to make it clear that criticizing religions is a perfectly fine thing to do. Whenever you criticize Scientology, you will never get any flak, unless the person you're talking to is a Scientologist. Nobody ever argues with you or tries to defend Scientology. So by adding this comment, I changed the feel of our conversation from an Islam-bashing session to a civilized discussion of the merits of different religious creeds.

Hopefully we're all getting better at having these conversations about Islam. I encourage you to share what works here: Talk About Islam Among Non-Muslims. Let's help each other improve our success rate.

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.

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Improve Your Persuasion Powers By Speaking Their Language

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to pay attention today to the words people use to describe their experience. Find out what "representational system" they use the most. Once you learn how to do this, you can start talking to people in a way that will reach them, because you'll be using the representational system they favor. But for now, your mission is to simply identify the primary representational system of everyone you talk to today.

Now that I've given you the mission, I'm going to explain it. A "representational system" is one of three things: Visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. When you think or remember, you are representing reality in your mind. For example, you can remember what happened yesterday by seeing mental pictures. That would be using your visual representational system. Or you could remember by recalling what someone told you yesterday or the sounds you heard yesterday. That would be using your auditory representational system. Or you could remember how you felt yesterday. That's using your kinesthetic representational system.

This all sounds terribly complicated, but it's not. We have three primary ways to store and recall reality: Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Many of our memories or imaginings include all three representational systems, of course. In other words, you remember what you saw, what you heard, and what you felt.

But all of us tend to "favor" one representational system over the others, in the same way that you are right-handed or left-handed. You tend to use one representational system more than others. You tend to store your most important information in that representational system. You tend to respect and respond to information presented in that representational system more than you would if it was presented using a different representational system.

In other words, if you are a visually-oriented person, and I speak to you using visual terms, what I say will have more impact, will be more persuasive, will be more memorable to you than if I spoke to you using auditory terms.

Speaking in visual terms would be saying things like, "When you read the Quran, you will see things in a whole new light. You'll get the big picture." Speaking in auditory terms would be saying things like, "When you read the Quran, you are hearing the words of Mohammad the way Muslims around the world hear them. It may sound like what I'm saying does not make sense, but once you read the Quran, it will click for you." Speaking in kinesthetic terms would be saying things like, "When you read the Quran you'll grasp the overall negative, hostile feeling of Mohammad and Allah toward non-Muslims." Click here to find more examples of the kinds of words that indicate the three different representational systems.

But before attempting to speak someone's language, you must first know what it is. How can you know? By listening to the way people describe things when they talk. That's your assignment today. And ideally, you would keep it up every day until you can easily know what representational system people favor. Once you can do that, speaking someone's language is easy.

This exercise will increase your observational powers. And it will increase your ability to connect to people and influence them.

You can practice all day long. Anytime you are speaking with someone, pay attention to which words they use. Which sensory system are they talking about?

This is not as hard as you would think. If I told you to determine whether someone was right or left handed, you would be able to tell just by watching, don't you think? If you observed the person's behavior for awhile, you'd easily identify which hand they favor. You may have known the person for awhile and didn't know if they were right or left handed, but once you pay attention, once you're looking for it, you can find out just by paying attention.

You can do the same to discover the representational system they favor. It is only a matter of paying attention.

We need to reach people. We need to help them understand what we understand about the third jihad. We need to get past their barriers to listening. So we need to get really good at gaining rapport with people. One excellent way to improve our rapport and help people to listen to (and respect) what we say is to speak their language — to use the representational system they favor most when we speak.

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.

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When You Meet Resistance

Milton Erickson was an accomplished and well-respected psychiatrist who created innovative therapeutic techniques and was able to cure or significantly help many seriously mentally ill patients whose cases had stumped every other psychiatrist who had tried to help them before Erickson.

I once read something Erickson wrote that struck me as profound and important at the time, but it wasn't until many years later when I began trying to share what I was learning about Islam that what he wrote became personally relevant. He said in psychiatric literature, they talk a lot about "resistant patients." This is a common phenomenon in psychiatry: Patients often put up psychological barriers to change. Frequently, the mental illness causes intense suffering for the patient, yet patients will often resist change. From the point of view of the psychiatric literature, the resistance originates in the patient.

Erickson's point of view was entirely different. And I believe his different point of view led to his many innovations in the field and allowed him to successfully treat patients who were unreachable by other competent psychiatrists:

Erickson considered a resistant patient to be an indication of his own lack of skill. 

In other words, if he was skilled enough at dealing with a particular human psyche, there would be no resistance. If his rapport with the patient was strong enough, there would be no resistance. If he had the right approach, there would be no resistance. And in fact, many times Erickson was able to help "resistant" subjects nobody else could help because he would use their resistance. He would say things like, "I don't want you to change too quickly" and they would resist him by changing immediately.

I often think about this when I run into someone who "just won't listen." My first instinctive response is, "This person is too self-righteous and stubborn to listen." But then I remember Erickson's perspective, and I think maybe I'm just not skilled enough yet. And I wonder, "What might get through to this person?"

We've got a real problem here. If national policies are going to change, a significant percentage of non-Muslims will need to be acquainted with the basic gist of Islamic doctrine. And for this to happen, it is up to us. The media will not do it for us. Politicians won't do it. School teachers aren't going to do it. If it's going to happen, it will be we few who do it — those of us who are now acquainted with Islamic doctrine.

And of course, you've already discovered that a significant proportion of the general population resists learning about Islam. One way to interpret this is, "They are idiots. They won't listen to the facts." Another way to interpret it is, "I must not be skilled enough yet. I wonder what kind of approach might get through to this person? I wonder what new skill I could learn that would make it possible?"

I propose to you that we will accomplish our goal much faster with the second interpretation than we will with the first. And on this topic, speed is important. To see a good example of this approach in action, watch Freedom Writers, get inspired, and then get to work improving your abilities and coming up with new ways to approach the task. And as you discover ways that work, share them with us here: Talk About Islam Among Non-Muslims.

P.S. For efficiency's sake, it is important to focus first on the undecided.

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.

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Why Aren't All Muslims Violent?

If it's true that devout believers in Islamic doctrine would kill all non-believers, why aren't there more deaths? Someone asked us this question, and the answer is very interesting.

First of all, many Muslims are really not practicing or devout Muslims, just like in any other religion. They don't even know the doctrine of their own religion. They were simply born a Muslim and so that's what they call themselves.

There are also those who know what the doctrine says but they don't want to do some of it, so they ignore certain teachings even though it says in the doctrine you must not ignore any of its directives.

But for the true believers, the orthodox Muslims (and according to Islamic doctrine) the goal is not indiscriminate murder. Killing is one tool allowed to be used to accomplish the goal, which is to establish the law of Allah everywhere on earth. The goal is not even to make everyone Muslim, but to make sure everyone is under the rule of Islamic law. It can be done in many ways, and it is being done in many ways all over the world.

In the U.S., for example, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is, by the way, the largest international Islamic organization in the world, has created many organizations that work to establish Islamic law incrementally. They've got their members into high places in the government, they have teams of lawyers who sue people or put pressure on companies when one of their employees is critical of Islam (one of the laws of Islam is that nobody can criticize Islam), they have organizations that influence what is printed in our public school systems about Islam, they've got organizations that pressure Hollywood to depict Muslims in a positive light, and on and on.

They don't advocate violence, but not for moral reasons. They advocate these nonviolent methods for strategic reasons. They feel that violence doesn't help the cause yet. But they take full advantage of violent episodes by other Muslims, having press conferences about fears of "backlash" and blaming free speech for the atrocities. 

The Muslim Brotherhood plan was first uncovered in an FBI raid. They have created what is called the “Civilization-Jihadist Process” – a term taken from a key 1991 Brotherhood document, "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America," submitted as evidence by the Justice Department in the landmark 2008 U.S. versus Holy Land Foundation, a HAMAS terror funding trial. Here's what the document says:

“The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers, so that is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

By its nature, the object of such a stealthy form of jihad is to ensure that the target community remains unaware of the extent of the threat until it is too late.

Another group working nonviolently toward Islam's prime directive is the OIC (the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — the “collective voice of the Muslim world” and second largest intergovernmental organization in the world after the United Nations, and the largest voting block in the UN). Their goal is to establish a limit on free speech worldwide. It is one small step in the direction of Islamic law.

OIC General Secretary Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu admitted in a speech in June of 2008 that the OIC is working to criminalize speech that offends Muslims, noting their success is causing the West to deter "freedom of expression." Ihsanoglu said, "In confronting the Danish cartoons and the Dutch film Fitna, we sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed."

For strategic long-game reasons, then, not even all orthodox Muslims are violent.

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.

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Does it Really Matter What the Doctrine Says?

Did you know it is a Mormon practice to fast once a month for 24 hours? Not all Mormons practice it, but the practice is recommended in the Mormon doctrine.

Did you know it is a Muslim practice for husbands to hit their wives if they disobey? Not all Muslims practice it, but the practice is recommended in Islamic doctrine.

What is different about those two statements? The first and most obvious difference is that the content of the doctrine is different. The actual teaching is different.

To many people, the statement about the Muslim practice seems like a criticism. But in the Muslim world, hitting a disobedient wife is not considered a bad thing to do. It is recommended in the Koran, so a devout Muslim may not want non-Muslims to know about the practice, but among themselves, if they truly believe the doctrine, it is not negative at all. In the Middle East, they have talk shows discussing the ins and outs of this practice. Where on her body should you hit your wife? Under what circumstances is it permitted?

So in mixed company (Muslims and non-Muslims in the same room talking to each other), it may be an insulting thing for a non-Muslim to say, but to a Muslim in his own mind, it is not insulting any more than the statements about the Mormon practice is to a Mormon.

Some people may disagree with the Mormon practice of fasting. Maybe they think it's unhealthy or too difficult. But it is just fine to say this is part of their religion, whether you like the practice or not. The same is true for wife beating in Islam or the obligation of jihad. This is part of their religion. When you get resistance from people, make this point. This will not only clarify that it is okay to talk about religious beliefs, no matter which religion it is, you will simultaneously make a second very important point: Different religions have different beliefs and practices. Not all religions are the same. And those different practices have real consequences in the world. The rules don't only apply to spiritual, non-physical practices.

Use this example in your conversations. These discussions need to be happening with our friends and family — as gently and kindly as possible, but also as effectively as possible.

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.

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