What If You Get No Resistance?

HERE'S SOMETHING NEW I've run across lately: People who don't really know anything about Islam, but when you tell them about it, they aren't surprised. And they agree with you that it certainly sounds bad. And yet they have no apparent motivation to do anything about it.

The first two times this happened, it took me by surprise and I didn't know where to go from there. I had never encountered this before. The three categories I've run into in the past are 1) people who know nothing about Islam but defend it, 2) people who know nothing about Islam but are surprised and awakened and motivated when they learn about it, and 3) people who already know about Islam and are already motivated and taking action.

But there's a fourth category: People who know nothing about Islam but do not disagree with you that Islam is a dangerous ideology, and yet lack motivation to do anything about it. What do you do when you come across someone like this?

I believe our best approach is to let them know that yes, it is certainly bad, but it could easily be stopped if more people knew about it. Use the Flight 93 analogy. With a little knowledge about the true motives of orthodox Muslims, they could be stopped. We greatly outnumber them. But they can easily defeat us if the majority of us believe Islam is a religion of peace and believe our best approach is to go out of our way to prove our tolerance and appease their demands.

Let them know what we need most is an educated population. Each of us needs to learn about Islam and educate people we know. And then recommend a book, or recommend they sign up for ACT for America updates, or recommend they subscribe to Citizen Warrior, but don't recommend all of these.

Give them some small act they could easily accomplish that will help them get more informed and that will motivate them to share the information with people they know. Don't load them down with too much at once. Just recommend one book or one email subscription or one DVD.

One small act of commitment can lead to larger acts of commitment in the future (read more about that here). But overwhelm someone, and they might give up on their commitment. The process of commitment is delicate at first, so tread carefully.

You will probably run into this new category of people more and more, so be prepared to deal with it. Think about it ahead of time. Think about which book or video or online resource you would recommend to a beginner if you could only choose one. Which would be the very best for a beginner? Something interesting. Something sharable. Let's be smart about this and turn them all into committed, motivated citizen warriors.

Learn more about influencing your friends:

How to approach a conversation about Islam
Answers to objections when you talk about Islam
How to think outside the persuasion box

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.