In that Enormous Silence, Tiny and Unafraid

The following was written by Henry Rochejaquelein, a community organizer based in the Vendée region of France. It is one of the best pieces of writing we've ever read at Citizen Warrior.

THE WORLD'S long wake for Norway has been hard for every friend of freedom. We should avoid self-pity by remembering those who suffer much more than we: the family members of those unarmed civilians murdered by a drug-addled, video-game obsessed plagiarist who still lived at home with his mother. There are a few sick souls out there who have expressed admiration for Anders Breivik; some racialists at the anti-Semitic site Occidental Dissent have taken to comparing Breivik to Batman — a self-made millionaire who bravely took action to save Gotham City. The fact that these people, like Breivik, take their inspiration from comic books speaks for itself. Like him, these cranks raise their sedentary pulses through boyish revenge and power fantasies. Like him, they should stick to dressing up like Jedi knights and dueling with plastic light sabers. They should leave questions of life and death, culture and the future, to those whose emotional age has at some point exceeded sixteen.

But once we have prayed for the dead, and grieved with the living, we have every reason to consider the implications of this slaughter — not so much for ourselves, since most of us are doing fine, but for the next generation of Europeans and Americans who will have to face a continuous escalation of Islamic self-assertion. The signs are clear: In just one day, the New York Times reported that (as columnists here had glumly predicted) politicized, intolerant Muslims now dominate the Egyptian revolution, and that the last batch of secular officers had resigned from the Turkish military, freeing its pro-Sharia president to remake that NATO member (and would-be EU member) as a militant Muslim state. Two countries which the U.S. had counted on bastions of moderation and allies in the “war against terror” are now being transformed in the image of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Syria, whose despotism for self-serving reasons has long protected some religious minorities, is sliding toward the brink of collapse, whose outcome will be a Sunni sharia state. Terror attacks continue to escalate throughout the world, from Nigeria to Pakistan, while radical clerics exploit Western liberties to remain at large.

Meanwhile, the peaceful efforts of patriotic citizens of Western countries to limit the assertiveness of orthodox Muslims who favor sharia have come under a terrible, blood-red cloud thanks to the actions of a single, vain pseudo-intellectual, who was willing to kill in order to draw attention to himself and happy to tarnish the reputations of dozens of non-violent writers and activists, whose ideas he shoplifted to provide himself with a manifesto. Just as Nat Turner's (much more justified) rebellion set back by decades the cause of anti-slavery activists in the South, so Breivik's murders have for the moment threatened to smear us all with his gore.

Robert Spencer has shown by example the right response: Express honest horror at the attacks, point out how they were in no way grounded in anything any reputable counter-jihad scholar or activist has ever written, and refuse to play the game of media hacks who are trying to silence us. Just as Martin Luther King did not fold up his non-violent movement when some black nationalists shot at cops, so we will not shelve our pens because some sociopath took up his gun.

Does the fact that some maniacs will murder for a cause spoil it? Think back to John Brown, who butchered pro-slavery activists in their beds; to the U.S. soldiers who as they crushed the army that raped Nanking collected human skulls as souvenirs; to the anti-Communist death squads funded by the CIA; to the city-busting thermonuclear missiles that targeted hundreds of millions of Russian civilians, preventing Soviet conquest and deterring World War III. Men have used dubious means to promote every cause in human history; was every cause thus unjust?

One of the things we so object to about Islam is that its own sacred scriptures endorse, even enjoin, the use of such evil means. To reject them for a Muslim is to make himself a heretic. That simple, ugly truth is so shocking to Western sensibilities that slothful citizens and cowardly politicians find it more convenient to pretend it isn't so — to claim that when freedom-fighters like Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or, and Geert Wilders simply report on acts of violence or their origins, they are inciting similar violence. Afraid of the mortal message, dhimmis would kill the messengers. In fact, they know perfectly well that real counter-jihadists aren't dangerous. (No editor lives under 24-hour guard for publishing a Robert Spencer cartoon.) We are, in cold fact, a religion of peace — and we won't kill you for saying otherwise.

I have seen some men on our side slide close to despair, or calculate that they must save their skins in the current purge by denouncing innocent allies. Some commenters on this site (Jihad Watch, where this article first appeared) have openly wondered if Islam might not be doomed in fact to win. So Whittaker Chambers feared of Communism during the Cold War. When our own society is fractured and unsure of itself, and its elites are dominated by those who seem sympathetic to the enemy, it is easy to conclude that the totalitarians will prevail. They are so much more disciplined and motivated. They are willing to die for their cause; on our side, men are frightened to write a letter.

But consider how hopeless the following good men's causes seemed at various low points:

• William Wilberforce, as he fought entrenched financial interests, attempting to end the British slave trade, only to be slapped down again and again in parliament and find himself vilified as the enemy of his country's prosperity.
• Ludwig von Mises, who had demolished socialism intellectually in the 1920s — as he watched the Soviet Union expand, and new forms of collectivism rise to power all across Europe, while “planned economics” became the new orthodoxy in the democracies.
• Charles de Gaulle when France surrendered, and Britain sank its fleet in 1940.
• Cardinal Mindzenty, after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution, who sat for decades watching Communist tanks from the windows of the U.S. Embassy.
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, as he wrote little scraps of The Gulag Archipelago in a Soviet labor camp.
• Lech Walesa, when the Polish army cracked down on Solidarity.
• Ronald Reagan, who began fighting Communism among the Hollywood labor unions in the late 1940s—and was ridiculed, blackballed, and shunned for his efforts without ceasing, right up through the second term of his presidency. (Remember how “mainstream” analysts denounced his “Evil Empire” speech as a piece of warmongering madness?)

The strength of totalitarians is always much more brittle than it seems. Also, and this is central to remember: Our goal is not to persecute Muslims or drive them out of their faith. If demolishing a 1.5 billion man world religion were our goal, we might indeed be right to throw down our arms. By contrast with Islam, Communist ideology was always a fragile fantasy. Marx's messianic dream was incompatible with our species. In its promises to blow up the cornerstones of human society—private property, religion, the family, the nation and the state — it wrote its own epitaph. Islam is a profoundly corrupt theological compromise with the vices of Wrath, Vanity, Greed, and Lust — all of which it “baptizes” and directs against unbelievers, promising jihadists rewards for conquest, subjugation, looting, and the taking of sex slaves. In this sense, it is far less delusional than Communism, and more resembles the Nazi ideology — which promised its adherents not an earthly utopia but piles of loot and peasants to plunder. The Communist ideal demanded that man (at the point of a bayonet) remake himself as an angel. Islam reaches down to groom and congratulate the thuggish primate inside each one of us. It will likely prove as stubborn as slavery.

But our success does not depend on reforming Islam from the outside, or winning Muslims for Christ or Richard Dawkins. We simply seek to contain it, in the hope that its adherents in the West will somehow make their peace with pluralism and learn how to live in our midst as non-aggressors.

What we fight is something much more bizarre, unnatural and fragile than Islam: We are fighting Western dhimmitude, and the multiculturalism that enables it. It is not in fact natural for men of one race and religion to surrender their country to another. It is profoundly uncharacteristic of Frenchmen, Germans, Englishmen, Dutchmen, etc., to pervert their legal systems to suit the crude mores of alien colonists. It is not typical of Christians to water down their creed to the point where they imagine real common ground with intolerant, apostate-murdering Muslims. It does not come naturally to feminists to cooperate with wife-beating, honor-killing polygamists, nor for Jews to apologize for defending themselves from mobs intent on pogroms. The psychological games such people are playing on themselves are surely exhausting — as wearisome, finally, as denying Stalin's terror famines and defending his purge trials proved to Western Communists. As pessimistic as Orwell's 1984 was, doublethink is not sustainable for the masses over the long haul. It cannot even endure forever among elites. Just as so many liberals “mugged by reality” turned into neo (or even real) conservatives, and so many Communists hit the breaking point and “flipped,” so we will keep on reaping a steady stream of educated defectors to freedom's cause. Meanwhile, the voters in one Western country after another will get their fill of national masochism, and rally for faith and fatherland.

We must soldier on, keeping our hands clean and our hearts pure. We must preserve and pass along a sane and humane movement of Western self-defense that can channel popular feeling in peaceful directions that honor the rule of law. When madmen (or simply bad men) arise and do evil acts, allegedly in our name, we must simply denounce them and keep marching forward. We should treat the smears as what they are: psychological warfare. The sheer baroque complexity of the lies required to believe the dhimmi viewpoint metastasizes with every jihad attack, every “hijacking” of a “democratic revolution” by sharia. In the long run, it will prove as impossible for honest men to accept as the fabrications of Holocaust deniers, or the economics of Karl Marx. And as each such man wakes up, we will be waiting, to welcome him home.

This article has also been posted on Inquiry Into Islam for your sharing pleasure: In That Enormous Silence, Tiny and Unafraid.

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Jack Rainbow's Leaflets

A citizen warrior using the name Jack Rainbow wrote today to say, "My leaflets are illustrated and use advertising techniques to hold readers' attention. Please put them up on your site for all to use."

Some are PDF documents, some are Jpegs, and some are Word documents. Check them out:

http://4freedoms.ning.com/group/leafleting

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Why Are There Peaceful Muslims?

A READER asked this question: "If the Koran was arranged out of chronological order and Mohammed started out a nice guy and then turned into a "Psycho-Killer," why don't some of his earlier, more peaceful teachings contradict his later, more violent teachings and consequently prevail?"

It's a good question. As you probably know, Mohammad's chapters (called "Suras") are not in chronological order in most versions of the Koran. It is traditional to have them arranged in the order of the Suras' length. But when two passages conflict, the mullahs decide which passage overwrites which by looking back to the chronological order rather than the traditional order.

They know with certainty what order the chapters were written in. But the chapters are arranged from the longest to the shortest chapter (except for the first chapter), and that has become the traditional way to arrange them.

Unfortunately, the most intolerant, violent passages in the Koran are chronologically later. So they abrogate (supersede or overwrite) the earlier, more tolerant passages.

So then the question is, "Then why are there any peaceful Muslims?"

Peaceful Muslims come about for three reasons:

1. Muslims are, of course, human beings and most people do not want to be violent. Mohammad anticipated this and told Muslims they had to be intolerant and even violent whether they liked it or not (and as a test of their faith), but people do their best to ignore these very direct Islamic teachings. And they tend to ignore the teachings rather than speak out against them because it can be dangerous to contradict or criticize the Koran. More devout believers can become quite violent and intolerant when a fellow Muslim criticizes any Islamic teaching.

2. If the Muslim is living in a non-Muslim majority country and violence (or even intolerance) would impede the ultimate victory of Islam, then peaceful behavior is called for, at least for the moment. Mohammad anticipated this too (the possibility of a Muslim living in a Muslim-minority country) and provided ideas for many other ways to work toward eventually gaining control of the laws of the country (Islam's prime directive) — by having lots of children, trying to convert others, giving money to Muslim organizations, etc. I'm sure many Muslims are quite happy to avoid living a life of political agitation, and this way they get to satisfy their Islamic obligations while enjoying a peaceful life in a free country.

3. And of course, a Muslim can always pretend to be peaceful while actively working toward violent goals. Apparently nice people have occasionally been known to be intolerant and even violent.

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Condescending Arrogance Combined With Ignorance

IN AN ARTICLE in the Huffington Post, Nancy Graham Holm wrote one of the most idiotic articles I've seen in awhile, and she did it with an appalling degree of arrogance. The article is entitled, Three Questions to Ask Geert Wilders About Anti-Islam Hate Speech. Her point is that when Geert Wilders talks about Islam, he only causes problems and doesn't help anything.

Holm takes it for granted that limiting (or God forbid, STOPPING) Muslim immigration to a Western nation is such a ridiculous notion it is not even worth arguing about. Wilders has suggested in many times, and with good reason, but she dismisses it as an idea unworthy of consideration.

She first says that some Muslims out there are so "short-fused" that they "would rather kill and be killed than tolerate Wilders' brutal humiliation." When I read that, it startled me. I am in the middle of reading Unbroken right now, the true story of an American captured by the Japanese in World War II. He was deliberately starved for years, tortured, brutally beaten almost every day, and intentionally humiliated. THAT was brutal humiliation. A politician talking about the hate-filled passages of Islamic texts may be insulting, but "brutal humiliation" goes way overboard. That was in her first paragraph.

It gets worse.

Her grasp of Islamic doctrine is basically non-existent, and yet she writes about the issue with a condescending arrogance that defies comprehension. She mentions an opinion piece Wilders wrote wherein he suggests outlawing the Koran in the Netherlands. "Mein Kampf" is outlawed, says Wilders, because of its Jew hatred. If the Dutch are to be consistent, then, the Koran should be outlawed.

Nancy Graham Holm, of course, thinks this is "provocative" and clearly believes the allegations are preposterous. Of course, she doesn't have a clue about the work of Bill Warner, who simply counted up how many incidents of Jew hatred are in Islamic texts and Mein Kampf. What did he find? There is far MORE Jew hatred in Islamic texts than Mein Kampf, so Wilders has a point and Holm should be embarrassed. Check out the proportions:


Another provocative thing Wilders said was that Muhammad was a "barbarian, a mass murderer and a pedophile." According to Islamic history, and using our modern definitions of barbarism, mass murder, and pedophilia, Wilders is simply stating a fact. She is assuming it can't possibly be true (or that facts that some would consider provocative should not be spoken in public, in which case Holm should be silent because she is definitely provoking me).

I agree with her about one thing, though. It would be a terrible thing to say if it weren't true. However, she could easily discover for herself that Wilders is speaking accurately. The information is available in every bookstore. The information is not difficult to find at all. It is not a secret. And it can be found in Islamic texts themselves, not mean non-Muslims writing about Islam in order to denigrate it.

It sometimes feels as if I'm in a crazy world where someone can write an article ABOUT Islam without knowing the first thing about Islam, all the while criticizing someone who knows a lot about Islam, and criticizing what he says about Islam! And all this published in a well-known, well-respected, mainstream magazine, who no doubt have fact-checkers on staff. How does this happen? How is it possible? Have I fallen into a rabbit hole and don't know it?

Holm writes, "Geert Wilders does not acknowledge the profound reform movement that is under way in contemporary Islam." I have been studying and writing about Islam for ten years. While I am aware of some Islamic reformers, characterizing it as a "profound reform movement" is stretching it. The problem, which Holm is apparently unaware of, is that "reforming" Islam means to deny or reject a substantial amount of basic Islamic doctrine such as the 527 unabrogated passages in the Koran advocating intolerance or violence toward non-Muslims, or the 91 passages telling Muslims they must take Muhammad as an example (a "beautiful pattern of conduct"), which means a reformer who would wish to create an Islam that is no longer a threat to non-Muslims would have to seriously edit the Koran or seriously edit the Sunnah and Hadith, which are mostly about Muhammad's egregious example. And such editing is strictly forbidden since the Koran is the word of Allah.

In her final two paragraphs, she asks four questions of Wilders. I will answer them here. Wilders can probably answer them better and I hope he does, but here's mine:

1. Does your hate speech produce physical or mental suffering or does it increase safety and quality of life? By the way, she asks these questions with a self-satisfaction which I'm sure makes her feel as if she "won her case."

There is a presupposition in her question, sort of like asking, "Do you still beat your wife?" I have listened to many speeches by Wilders and he doesn't do "hate speech." And in his first movie, Fitna, which created so much controversy, all the "hate speech" in the movie is done by Islamic doctrine and Muslims themselves.

But let's set that aside and answer her question, put in my language: Do Geert Wilders' speeches produce suffering or does it increase safety and quality of life? Answer: If he was heeded, it would increase safety.

2. Have you considered the available alternatives and compared them in terms of benefit to harm ratio? Yes.

3. Which alternative produces the best ratio? Making accurate knowledge widespread.

4. What good can come of Wilders saying the things he does? If people listened to him, they would have a better grasp of the real situation (rather than the situation we might wish for), and if there is a problem to be solved (and there is) a good place to start is with the facts.

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New Leaflet: You Must Accept My Religion

ONE OF OUR allies sent us a new idea for raising awareness. And we have a new leaflet. It's really good and different than the first two. (Read more about the first two and get links to them here.) It is entitled, "You Must Accept My Religion." This new one never mentions the words "Islam" or "Mohammad." Why not? Here's how the author explained it:

I have tried to reveal the essential thrust of Islam without once using those words. It’s like a gestalt. I think Islam is uniquely defined by its rules and the character of its founder that, hopefully, people will focus on those instead of being inoculated against the message by the hot trigger words that seem to numb so many peoples' brains. I would also like to think that someone trying to challenge what the leaflet says would be forced to admit that we all know it’s about Islam precisely because it sets out some of its defining features.

What a great idea! The author of these leaflets is very innovative about doing the most important thing we can do: Educate our fellow non-Muslims about Islam. Download a PDF or print the leaflet here: You Must Accept My Religion.

For the previous leaflets we used Google Docs, but so many people had problems with it, we've switched over to Scribd. Please let us know if it works better.

In a letter to us, another of our allies talked about a few other things he does to help raise awareness. Here's what he said:

I just wanted to share some things with you that I do to make a stand. I find these things empowering and I think a lot of your readers would also. They are small things but they make a difference. One of the things that really annoys me about living near Muslims is that their standpoint is written all over them and you’re just left feeling like a cipher. Isn’t there a way of saying “I reject your way of life” without getting arrested or beaten black and blue?

One thing I do is to wear a lapel badge of the Israeli flag — I live in an area where there are a lot of Muslims and (almost as bad) left wingers. I wear it in such a way that when my collar is turned up it doesn’t show so if there are some particularly aggressive people about I turn it inwards. When I’m in a public space where there are lots of security cameras, I show it more. Because Israel and Jews are such objects of loathing to Muslims, by wearing this badge I am implicitly rejecting Islam and its virulent anti-Semitism. Israel is on the front line in this worldwide struggle (though I realise in a sense we all are now) and supporting Israel is a way to rebuff some of the madness and evil. No-one can accuse you of a “hate crime” or “Islamophobia” (I don’t accept the validity of these but they are forced upon us) but you can still make a statement. Israel is a beacon of western civilisation and it is good to show our solidarity with her.

I also have an IDF cap with a Star of David and “Israel” boldly stitched across the front. I wear this when I go to the supermarkets or department stores as I think I would actually be very quickly assaulted if I wore it anywhere else. It’s a good bold statement of support for a great country taking a lot of flak from the Jihad and the wretched left-wing fools. You can easily get badges from suppliers on ebay and I got my cap from a company in Israel. It’s good to support Israeli companies too.

I think by wearing these things it also brings it into the awareness of less partial people too. It puts another dimension into the public space. If more people did it, it would have a much greater impact. If people challenge you about Israel, it opens up an opportunity to dispel some of the malicious mythology that has been built up over the last few decades. I must say no-one has said anything to me yet but a lot have noticed the badge and been made to wonder a little.

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Shareable Antisemitism Video Link

Yesterday I posted a link to video (see the post here), and I thought it might be more shareable for some people if it was on the Inquiry Into Islam blog. For some people, as you probably know, when you share a link to a site with the word "warrior" in it, they dismiss it automatically.

The video is something everyone should see. So here's the link to the Inquiry post:

Koran's Antisemitism Still Alive

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Video: New Trends in Arabic Antisemitism

FOLLOW THE LINK below to watch a remarkable video. This MEMRI production shows examples of antisemitism in modern-day Arab media. It was originally presented to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. The video is 23 minutes long. It is amazing. Ugly. Hideous. You should get everyone you know to watch it.

Click here to watch the video on Vimeo: New Trends in Arabic Anti-Semitism.

And here it is on YouTube: Muslim Antisemitism Compilation.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) explores the Middle East through the region’s media. MEMRI bridges the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic, Persian, Urdu-Pashtu, and Turkish media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East.

Founded in February 1998 to inform the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East, MEMRI is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization. MEMRI’s headquarters is located in Washington, DC with branch offices in London, Rome, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Shanghai and Tokyo. MEMRI research is translated to English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Hebrew.

Click here to visit MEMRI's site.

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