A Small Concession is No Big Deal

SOMEONE EMAILED the following message to us: "It is difficult to get the message over when a majority of people consider it as a taboo, as something that will hurt religious beliefs. Surprisingly many people around us do not really care if a piggy bank is no longer part of a bank and don't see a threat in this decline of our culture due to Islamic feelings. Do you have an idea, sources, etc., to help us get this point across?"

Our success in getting this point across is crucial. We must get our fellow non-Muslims to see each small concession in its larger context. We must get them to see the concessions as a gradual process of displacing our Western law with Sharia law. We must make them see each accomodation to Islam as an incremental insinuation of Sharia law into every aspect of life. Each concession is small — that's true. That's how and why they've gotten away with so much so far.

It's like a frog-in-the-soup-pot allegory: Put a frog in a pot of cold water and warm it up slowly, and the frog won't try to jump out (even though it easily could) until it's too late. By the time it notices how hot the water is and is motivated to escape, it is too cooked to jump.

Orthodox Muslims, committed to Islam's prime directive, are using the same slow-heating principle. They know if they go slowly enough — if they make small enough demands — they can heat up the water (take away our freedoms) until we are unable to mount a defense against further advances. They seek many different kinds of concessions, but they're most committed to removing free speech — they want desperately to take away our freedom to criticize Islam. That's the best way to prevent non-Muslims from organizing an effective defense.

How could they possibly remove freedom of speech in free countries? Orthodox Muslims are doing it very cleverly: By using our own cultural superiorities against us. One of the most magnificent values shared by the cultures of free nations is the toleration of differences, and our accute, aggressive, deeply-felt intolerance of the persecution or bullying of any minority group by a majority group. From an Islamic perspective, this wonderful feature of freedom-loving cultures is a weakness, and orthodox Muslims are exploiting it.

Orthodox Muslims portray Islam as a persecuted, bullied minority. This works well as a weapon against non-Muslims in free countries, but it also works well on the Muslims themselves. Muslims must feel persecuted. The feeling of persecution is a necessary precondition for advancing the primary goal of Islam in free countries. Why? Because, as it says in the Quran, a) Allah does not love aggressors, b) Muslims must defend Islam, and c) the only action a Muslim man can do to guarantee his passage to Paradise is to die while defending Islam.

Add those all together and the simple solution is being seen and seeing themselves as persecuted. It provides motivation to fight for Islam within its constituents, and it simultaneously disables the defenses of the non-Muslim population. Some Muslims have even been caught provoking persecution (faking hate crimes, for example) and making mountains out of molehills in order to continually portray themselves — not as conquerors and invaders — but has innocent, harrassed, tormented minorities.

Portraying themselves this way is extremely effective with non-Muslims who are filled with "white guilt" (as it is called in America) or "post-colonial guilt" (as it is called in Europe), making it fairly easy for orthodox Muslims to gain one small concession after another.

Most non-Muslims think, "What's the big deal? The poor Muslim minorities have had some tough breaks, let's cut them some slack and show them our support and they'll become our friends." The only way to sustain that kind of thinking is to be unaware of the ultimate goal or the ideology behind these efforts to gain concessions. Free people only go along with it because they mistakenly assume Islam is like any other religion. If you make that assumption, the demands for any particular concession seems acceptable.

So one way to get people to see these concessions as unacceptable is to teach them more about the basic elements of Islam. Then they will be able to see each of these concessions in a different way. They will stop seeing it as merely a way to demonstrate our tolerance, but as an incremental gain in establishing Sharia law in a free country. But they have to have enough knowledge about Islam to know that Sharia law is profoundly intolerant and thus our demonstrations of tolerance ultimately enables the establishment of intolerance.

Another approach is to help them grasp the great number and variety of concessions happening in many different arenas, and to help them see it as a deliberate strategy to move slowly and gradually enough to stay under the radar. Memorize lists like this one, so you can begin to easily recite them off the top of your head. Here is a huge collection of such concessions. Choose what you would consider the top ten clearest and most important concessions and memorize them. Each one by itself may not seem alarming, but when they are all said at once, the scope of the invasion becomes more recognizable, distinct, and impressive.

This directly counters the normal way of perceiving these concessions. In the normal course of events, if any of these events are covered in the news, each is portrayed as a separate issue, and "Islam" is usually not even mentioned. So each appears as an isolated incident that seems innocent enough. It is the very smallness and gradualness and incremental nature of these concessions that keeps anyone from resisting it or even understanding what's happening.

This is one of the techniques the Chinese used on American POWs during the Korean war. The communists in China had a sophisticated system of brainwashing, and one of its core principles was to get POWs to make a series of small, inconsequential concessions. They would ask the POWs to simply write down a few things that weren't perfect about the United States. Seems innocent enough. But psychologically, each POW who agreed to this small demand made a commitment, and the communists built on this, slowly widening the concessions to greater and more forceful public statements against America and ultimately in favor of the communists. When one of these servicemen came back to the United States speaking out against America and in favor of communism, it was a powerful public relations coup for China. It weakened America's ability to defend itself against further communist aggression (in Vietnam, for example).

This brainwashing technique took advantage of the principle of commitment and consistency. Experiments show that demonstrating a commitment to something — even by taking a very small, seemingly inconsequential action — a person is much more likely to make a bigger, more substantial commitment to the same thing later.

A girl wants to wear a veil. What's the big deal? A school wants to serve halal-only meat. A bank decides to stop giving away piggy banks because they don't want to offend Muslims. These concessions are small commitments. They seem innocent enough. But each is a small commitment to the principle that our way of life, our values, and our freedoms should yield to Islam. When we allow it, we are committing to the principle "when Sharia conflicts with our freedoms, it is our freedoms that must give way." And this commitment can then be built upon, and the concessions can be widened into greater demonstrations of that commitment over time.

When the Ultimate Fighting Championships first came out many years ago, I remember watching Hoyce Gracie as he held his opponent on the ground while Gracie worked his way almost imperceptibly closer and closer to the position he was aiming for. Every time his opponent moved or struggled to get out, Gracie closed in tighter, or moved into a better arm lock or whatever, until at last the opponent was held immobile and his air supply was choked off.

I have heard pythons do something similar. They grip their prey and wait until the prey breaths out. Then they squeeze a little tighter and hold it, so air is harder and harder to take in until the prey can no longer breathe.

This is what Islam is doing in the West. Get this message across. They are gaining one small concession at a time. Not many concessions are ever undone. Islam is a ratchet. It only goes one way.

But if enough non-Muslims become aware of the prime directive of Islam, these concessions will stop and many will be undone. We will be like Charles the Hammer. We will stand our ground, unified, and say to orthodox Muslims, "You shall go no further."