The Point Where This Conflict Will Be Won Or Lost

Orthodox Muslims continually put the free world in one double bind after another. In psychology, a double bind is "a situation in which a person is given conflicting cues...such that to obey one cue is to disobey the other." It is a "no win" situation, "an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, in which one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response."

"Double binds are often utilized as a form of control without open coercion — the use of confusion makes them difficult to respond to or resist."

The key to Islam's ability to affect the free world is their use of double binds (read more about that). Right now, Islamic hackers are interfering with the Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Wells Fargo, demanding that YouTube pulls the video trailer for the movie, Innocence of Muslims.

It is a double bind. The free world can either give up a little freedom of speech, or the economy may suffer. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. The recent rioting was another double bind: Either curb free speech or innocent people will die. It almost worked. White House officials asked Google to pull the video trailer from YouTube (Google refused) and many people would agree — this simple removal could potentially save lives in the short run.

Orthodox Muslims are involved in many projects, from altering American textbooks to supporting suicide bombers. But freedom of speech is where the conflict between Islam and the free world will be won or lost. If we lose free speech, we're done. Every encroachment, every concession, every accommodation they want to wrest from the free world will be easy once we can no longer communicate critically about Islam.

Free speech is the battleground where the future will be decided. And this is not a theoretical issue. Impeding free speech has already been successfully accomplished many times with Islamic violence. When these cartoons were published in a Danish newspaper (the Jyllands-Posten), for example, the ensuing riots resulted in the deaths of 187 people. What happened to free speech? Bruce Bawer wrote:

Not a single newspaper in Britain reprinted the cartoons. And both the Swedish and Norwegian governments provided textbook cases of cowering dhimmitude. But none of that was really a surprise. What did surprise, and disappoint, me was the American political and media establishment. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush condemned the Jyllands-Posten cartoons out of hand. The State Department denounced them too, and only reversed itself after getting an earful from the Danish government, one of its few allies in Iraq. In the entire United States of America, exactly one major newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, reprinted the cartoons. And while the major broadcast networks, as well as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, reported extensively on the cartoon riots, none of them ever showed the cartoons at all.

This means that by putting the free world into a double bind, Islam successfully created an accommodation to Islamic standards. To that small degree, Islamic law was established in the Western world. The West's proud tradition of free speech yielded to Islam. Why? We are vulnerable to double binds, and orthodox Muslims are exploiting that fact. Why are we vulnerable? Our collective feeling of guilt is our Achilles' heel. We must each resolve this in ourselves and then help our fellow non-Muslims resolve it, and we had better do it quickly.