It's Not Good Enough To Be Upset

I just read a comment on a counterjihad blog that said, "I don't understand our (America's) seeming blindness to this threat to our very way of life!" I've read statements like this many times. It is passive and helpless. It is exasperated and frustrated.

I want to ask, "Who do you think will end this blindness? There is nobody here but us."

Another comment said, "I hope the masses rouse from their stupor before it's too late." Hope? Masses? This is far too weak and idealistic. What about rousing your neighbor from his stupor today? Edmund Burke wrote, "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." What about lending your Obsession DVD to your sister tomorrow?

Another comment railed about how "Americans are ignorant to the Islamic threat." And, he said, "until something very bad happens (like another 9/11) and it has to happen in some person's backyard...only then will those people start to open their eyes."

I say bull. If you can't reach people, change your approach.

I do not mean to come from "on high." I have those same frustrations. I sometimes feel demoralized and upset. But each of us needs to think in terms of "what I can do." It's too tempting to waste our time wanting the government to do something or the media to do something, or for some kind of state-sponsored counter-propaganda campaign to begin enlightening people about the goals and methods of orthodox Islam.

It's not going to happen. At least not until a lot more of us understand the goals and methods of orthodox Islam.

It's up to us. If people are hard to reach, we will just have to find a way. Each of us can find things that work, and we can share them with each other, and we can continue to get better at it. We had better get better at it and quit waiting for someone to save us.

In the movie, Live Free or Die Hard, the following conversation took place (I've edited it a little):

The younger guy — the computer hacker — is talking to the cop (Bruce Willis) after they have just barely escaped with their lives. They are on their way to do something else dangerous. They need to stop a terrorist who is disabling the electronic infrastructure of the United States, causing mass panic, confusion, car accidents, etc.

Willis is driving the car. He looks over at the hacker and says, "What's wrong?"

The hacker kid says, "I can't do this. I'm not like you."

"Like what?" asks Willis.

"Like heroic and brave and everything."

Willis is dented up from the last encounter. His head is bleeding. He looks exhausted. He says, "I'm nobody's hero, kid."

He thinks about it for a second and says, "You know what you get for being a hero? You get shot at, you get a pat on the back, blah blah blah."

He pauses for a few seconds and then says in a bitter and depressed tone, "You get divorced. Your kids don't talk to you. Trust me, kid, you don't want to be that guy."

The hacker looks totally confused. "Then why are you doing this?!"

Willis's answer is our answer too. He says, "Because there's nobody else to do it right now, that's why. Believe me, if there was somebody else to do it, I'd let them do it, but there's not. So we're doing it."

With admiration in his voice and understanding in his eyes, the hacker says, "That's what makes you that guy."

Let's stop waiting and hoping for someone to save us. It's up to us. What needs to happen first is for the people around each of us to learn more about Islam. We should — we MUST — improve our ability to educate the people in our lives. We need to think about it like this: There's nobody else to do it, so we're doing it.