I WAS WATCHING the FrontLine program, Target America, and it is impressive to see the skill with which the Jihadis successfully put the United States in a no-win double-bind, one after another. When Reagan began his presidency, for example, hostages had been held in Iran for more than eighteen months and Americans felt helpless to get them back.
The U.S. had initiated an arms embargo on Iran and we had urged the world not to sell them any weapons (they were at war with Iraq at the time).
And the U.S. had been urging every government leader to make no deals with terrorists. This was the ardent stand of the United States.
Then the U.S. made a deal with terrorists by selling weapons to Iran in exchange for freeing hostages!
Why? Basically out of intense frustration. At that point, they would have tried anything. Iran had successfully put the United States in a double-bind. If the U.S. did nothing, it looked weak and impotent, the U.S. government would be abandoning its own citizens, and the Jihadis would win.
But when the U.S. found a way to get the hostages back, the only viable option they thought up made the U.S. president look like a lying hypocrite, and America lost respect and credibility with our allies.
I was thinking of writing an article about the infuriating cleverness of Jihadis, and I was wondering what I could use to illustrate what they're doing. And then it came to me in a flash: The movie, What About Bob?
In the movie, Bill Murray plays a psychiatric patient who drives his psychiatrist crazy (Dr. Leo Marvin, played by Richard Dreyfus).
I just watched it again and the parallels are amazing. Bob uses the same techniques on Dr. Marvin that Jihadis use against the United States and Europe, and with similar results: Bob successfully fools everyone except Dr. Marvin, and Dr. Marvin becomes infuriated and helpless, but unable to stop it. Bob is able to cleverly insert himself into Dr. Marvin's life without his consent, and able to turn Dr. Marvin's friends and family against him.
As I watched, I kept stopping to write notes every time I saw a parallel. Here are my notes:
1. Bob's stand is: I am suffering. Islam's stand is: We are an oppressed people, we are under attack, we are the underdog, and we are suffering. Bob takes any and all normal events in life and he suffers from them. Jihadis take anything their enemies do and turns it into "oppression." And if their enemies do nothing offensive, Jihadis create opportunities to be affronted.
Read any mainstream Muslim publication, like the Muslim Public Affairs Committee newsletter, and you will see a strong theme running through almost every article: Muslims are oppressed and persecuted (and therefore must "defend" themselves).
I subscribe to several pro-Muslim e-mail newsletters, and this is such a strong theme. Every little "hate-crime" they can come up with proves that Muslims are an oppressed minority. I recently read this: In the year 2007, the number of hate-crimes in the U.S. committed against someone because of their religion was 1400. Here's how the hate-crimes break down by religion:
Anti-Jewish 969
Anti-Catholic 61
Anti-Protestant 57
Anti-Islamic 115
Anti-Other Religion 130
Anti-Multiple Religions, Group 62
Anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc. 6
(Source: FBI Hate-Crime Statistics)
Over the course of a year, and with 300 million people in this country, that's a pretty low incidence of hate-crimes against Muslims. But their perpetual position is that they are an oppressed minority.
2. Bob uses every technique he can find to keep pushing for what he wants. And he uses the one tool that gives him the most leverage with normal people: Pity. Evoke genuine pity, and you can pretty much gain any concession you want.
Stealth jihad uses this principle constantly. Jihadis try to portray themselves — just as their leader Mohammad did — as innocent victims of wrongdoing. Then, having aroused pity, they seek a concession of some kind.
They continue gaining concessions and giving none. Islam is a ratchet: It only goes one way.
3. Bob uses deceit masterfully. Bob hires a hooker to portray Dr. Marvin's sister to get through on the phone (when Dr. Marvin is on vacation and is not taking calls). Bob impersonates a detective and lies to the operator to get information about where Dr. Marvin is vacationing.
Islam has a principle called taqiyya, which means "religious deception." They can and do lie to non-Muslims and they have Allah's permission to do so as long as it serves the cause of Islam.
In the movie, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, there are several good examples, captured on film, of a Muslim leader speaking to Western media, saying one thing, and then speaking to their fellow Muslims saying just the opposite. You see them speaking peace and tolerance to Westerners and two days later vigorously preaching jihad against the West to their fellow Muslims. This is taqiyya.
Probably the single most important reason Jihadis have gotten away with so much is because they use deceit masterfully.
4. Bob pushes for concessions because he is special, unique, weird. And Bob captures everyone's attention and doesn't let them go about their normal lives.
Muslims do the same thing. In Norway, for example, Muslims are agitating for a law that would make it illegal to serve alcohol in discos on certain nights (because they are uncomfortable around alcohol). Hege Storhaug, the co-founder of Human Rights Service, rejects such a proposal. "All the time they have special rules," says Storhaug, "and we reject special requirements. We get a split-up society and Islam gets more presence in the public sphere. People force religious opinions on others. In the most extreme consequence it leads to the Islamization of society...All the time it's Muslims who come with special requirements. We never hear a peep from Catholics, Jews, Hindus etc."
One way to try to gain a concession is to simply ask. Another way, and far more effective is to ask and give a good reason why an exception should be made for you that would not be made for others. Bob had "special needs" because he was agoraphobic or afraid of sailing or deathly afraid of germs, and people went out of their way to accommodate him, conceding things to him they would never concede to a normal person.
Islam does the same thing. And they often succeed (read more about what kinds of concessions they have gained). They press for concessions because they are oppressed or because they are unique (they have particular needs because of their unique religion), or because they've been wronged or persecuted or whatever.
5. Bob seems really nice to everyone but his enemy. People usually recognize Bob is unusual, but they think he is innocent. But Dr. Marvin sees what he's doing and how deliberately and insidiously he's doing it.
By the skillful use of taqiyya, Muslims — even Muslims we know to be bloodthirsty killers — are considered "really nice people" by those who don't know better. (Read a good example of that here.)
Islamic countries are often very friendly to Western countries while at the same time whipping up national hatred against those same Western countries on Islamic television stations, and funding global jihad against those same countries.
6. Bob uses public embarrassment to force concessions. When he arrives in the small town where the well-respected Dr. Marvin spends his summer vacation, Bob starts yelling at the top of his lungs in the middle of the street, "Dr. Marvin! Doctor Leo Marvin!" He keeps yelling until he has everyone's attention and Dr. Marvin can't simply ignore him and get away, which is what he was planning on doing.
Jihadis try to embarrass organizations into doing what they want. They will go to court even though they know will lose, they will get the press involved. They'll do whatever it takes to embarrass people or companies or governments into conceding. Radio stations have fired good people because the station didn't want to deal with the public embarrassment of a lawsuit. Politicians restrain themselves and go out of their way not to say anything honest that might be offensive to the super-sensitive Muslim-advocacy organizations, because those organizations will do what they can to embarrass the politicians.
Jihadis have wormed their way into training programs for police and intelligence agencies and intimidated them into not saying anything that might lead to public embarrassment, demonstrating again and again that the Muslim organizations will use public embarrassment to silence critics of Islam.
7. Bob uses Dr. Marvin's enemies against him. There is a husband and wife in town who are angry because the rich city doctor came and bought their dream home out from under them. Bob gets these people to help him, and they do it to help ruin Dr. Marvin's life.
Islam is actively converting and recruiting disgruntled convicts in prison — people who are already enemies of the society. Iran sends soldiers into Iraq in order to kill U.S. soldiers, but Iran also supplies Russia and China with oil, so if the U.S. wants to do something about Iran, we will have our two biggest enemies to contend with. In essence, Iran uses our enemies against us.
Closer to home, those of us who are in the process of alerting our fellow citizens to the danger of Islamic supremacism have enemies among our own fellow non-Muslim citizens. The blind multiculturalists in the media actively fight against us, trying to discredit anyone who criticizes Islam, and the Jihadis use those enemies against us.
I get a newsletter from CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) that brags in almost every issue about how they are bringing this suit against this person or sending press releases out about this or that grievance, and you can see from their wording that they are hitting every hot-button they can think of to gain sympathy from our "enemies."
8. Bob exploits all of Dr. Marvin's weaknesses — his egotism, his desire to win his family's love and approval, his failures and embarrassments, his family's kindness and innocence, his family's resentment against Dr. Marvin's pomposity — Bob exploits it all to get what he wants.
Jihadis exploit Westerners' weaknesses, too. One of our "weaknesses" is our reverence for life. Jihadis will hide behind civilians during a battle, knowing Western soldiers will not open fire.
Here's another example of this principle, from DhimmiWatch:
"Palestinian jihad fighters have even used Christian sites and people as shields against the Israelis. In Spring 2002 they appropriated Bethlehem’s Manger Square as a base of operations, knowing that Israeli forces would not attack them there and would face international opprobrium if they did. This activity precipitated the siege of the Church of the Nativity in April and May of that year. After launching attacks against the Israelis from Manger Square, a group of jihadists fled into the church, where they remained for 39 days — secure in the knowledge that Israel would not attack a Christian holy site. Meanwhile, they desecrated the church."
Jihadis are masters of exploiting their enemy's weaknesses. They immigrate into free countries and then use the democratic process and rights of free speech to agitate against those freedoms and seek to subvert the democracy, as illustrated in the ironic picture at left.
They also exploit the multicultural beliefs of the resident population in order to wage jihad by gaining concessions.
9. Bob is absolutely relentless. He doesn't let up. Neither do the Jihadis. Jihadis keep infiltrating, they keep immigrating, they keep agitating, they keep killing, they keep intimidating, and they will never stop on their own. They've been doing it for 1400 years, and they are determined to keep it up until the whole world acknowledges there is no god but Allah and Mohammad is His Messenger.
10. Bob makes sure every response Dr. Marvin makes will backfire. He ensures that no matter what Dr. Marvin does to return to his normal life or solve his problem, it will not work. This brings me back to Target America. Each successive president through the seventies, eighties, and nineties tried many different ways of dealing with the Jihadis, and every attempt backfired.
The Jihadis made sure they set up a situation where no matter what the U.S. did, it would go badly.
The same infuriating frustration Dr. Marvin feels is what I saw on the faces of all the presidents in Target America as they tried and failed to deal successfully with hijackings and captured hostages and bombings.
11. No matter what he does, Bob makes Dr. Marvin look like the mean one and Bob look like the innocent, underdog victim of Dr. Marvin's apparently bad-tempered selfishness. Osama bin Laden's plan was to run planes into the Twin Towers in the hopes that the U.S. would overreact, counting on the fact that the violent overreaction would cause Muslims around the world to unite against the West.
Many people think that's exactly what happened. Muslims flew planes into the Twin Towers, killing thousands of office workers, and in the end, the U.S. looks like the mean one to a lot of people, and Muslims look like the underdog victims who only need potable water and a little compassion from big, bad America.
12. Bob causes Dr. Marvin's wife and kids to sympathize with Bob against Dr. Marvin. They all try to look out for poor Bob. They push for Bob to get what he wants. This is analogous to Jihadis causing multiculturalist Westerners to sympathize with Muslims and turn against their fellow countrymen who are trying to protect us all from further harm.
So we have one group of people in the U.S. who want to make sure we're no longer vulnerable to attack by Jihadis. And then we have another segment of the U.S. who wants "no more war," wants to "give peace a chance," and wants to stop "racial profiling."
In other words, Jihadis have successfully turned some of our own people against each other. They have manipulated the situation so some non-Muslims are pushing for the Jihadis to get what they want.
This is not just happening in America, it is happening in free countries all over the world.
13. Bob keeps provoking a hostile overreaction from Dr. Marvin and then appears to be the innocent victim of Dr. Marvin's cruel insensitivity, and then he leverages that to gain concessions. If Dr. Marvin doesn't respond, Bob escalates or persists in his provocation until Dr. Marvin can't take it any more and bursts out in anger.
One memorable example from the movie is the dinner scene. Bob moaned with pleasure while he was eating. He kept moaning and saying, "This is so delicious!" And he kept it up until Dr. Marvin suddenly yells at him to shut up. All of Dr. Marvin's family looks at him with anger and embarrassment. Bob looks like the innocent victim of Dr. Marvin's irrational rage.
I quote from William Bennett's Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism:
"From the beginning, the Palestinian strategy was, and still is, to provoke outrages to which Israel has had no choice but to respond with stringent countermeasures, thereby supplying endless footage of Palestinian casualties and eliciting fresh pressure by the West to accommodate ever-escalating Palestinian demands. Israel's commitment to peace stimulated in the Palestinians not a spirit of reciprocal amicableness but an appetite for more..."
14. Bob knows full well what he's doing, but successfully appears innocent to everyone but Dr. Marvin, who sees right through him but can't get anyone else to see it. Those of us who have been trying to alert our fellow Westerners to Islam's relentless encroachment are having a very difficult time.
Islam appears innocent to many people, and to them, we are suspect. We must be racists or bigots or Islamophobes. This assessment effectively shuts their ears to accurate information about something real enough to cause over twelve thousand deadly attacks since 9/11.
15. Dr. Marvin clearly expects the problem (Bob) to go away, but he will never go. He keeps insinuating himself more and more thoroughly into Dr. Marvin's life. Almost every non-Muslim I talk to about Islam's relentless encroachment or Islamic terrorism expects someone to take care of it and expects the problem to go away. But it isn't going away. It's getting worse. Islamic supremacists are insinuating themselves more and more thoroughly into Western societies.
16. Bob is skillful, but conceals it. Dr. Marvin comes up with a brilliant scheme to admit Bob into a mental institution, but the institution can only legally hold Bob for 24 hours before they let him go. They can keep him there only if the staff agrees Bob needs to be institutionalized. Dr. Marvin is sure everyone will see Bob is crazy, but they don't. Within a few hours, they release Bob. Bob completely charmed the staff, telling jokes and cracking everyone up.
Like Bob, Islam is skillful, but conceals it. The more I learn about the clever infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into mainstream American life, the more impressed I am at the long-range planning and the skillful, sophisticated understanding of the American mind. (Read more about that here.)
One branch of the Muslim Brotherhood is CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. They have successfully fooled most people in America that they represent moderate, peace-loving Muslim Americans. Read about what they are really up to.
17. Bob is in it for the long haul. Eventually, Dr. Marvin loses his mind, goes off the deep end, and he becomes violent and irrational, mainly because nobody else sees what Bob is really doing except Dr. Marvin.
Jihadis find every crack in the wall they can find and work their way in, and they twist every event and utterance to their purpose. They will not stop, they will not tire, and they have nothing else to live for. This is it. This is the meaning of their existence: Islam must win. Islam must dominate all other cultures, all other religions, all other governments. Allah wills it.
They have infiltrated our schools by giving donations to colleges and then using their seat on the board to exert influence (creating a campus culture of Islam-loving, America-hating students). Jihadis are offering the British government and banks on Wall Street money to help them through the present financial crisis, but with strings attached — the money is "Shari'a compliant" which means, among other things, that there is a built-in written agreement that a certain portion of the money goes to particular charities — charities that support jihad against the West. Jihadis have created "legitimate," mainstream organizations that lobby Washington and "represent the Muslim community" to governments and to the media, and yet have a secret agenda, revealed at the recent Holy Land Foundation Trial, of conquering America from within.
The list goes on and on. They are in it for the long haul, and they absolutely will not stop, ever. They won't grow tired or give up. If they are going to be stopped, we must stop them. And we had better do it with more success than Dr. Marvin had with Bob.
To get rid of Bob, out of mad frustration, Dr. Marvin tries to blow him up, but Bob ends up "accidentally" blowing Dr. Marvin's vacation home to smithereens, and then marries Dr. Marvin's sister!
Bob won. Dr. Marvin lost. We've got to do better.
Would you like to entertain yourself while watching a demonstration of Jihadi techniques? Watch What About Bob?
And while you're watching, see if you can come up with ideas we can use. What would you do if you were Dr. Marvin?
Come back here and leave your ideas in the comments. This is serious business and we need all the smart ideas we can get.
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