September 11, 2013 — Has Anything Changed?

Has anything changed since 2001? In many ways it would be justifiable to answer no. Politicians and the media are still pitifully reluctant to speak honestly about anything Islam-related. Stealth jihad is still progressing, and bloody jihad is going on as before.

However, many important things have changed. Many more people have awakened to the fact that Islamic doctrine is dangerous to non-Muslims, and our growing numbers have allowed some good legislation to pass. ACT! for America's membership is multiplying and its clout is growing along with it. Several states in the U.S. have passed American Laws for American Courts legislation, and more are in the process. But the one change that really stands out is the amount of good educational material available about Islam.

When the Towers came down, many of us tried to find answers. We wondered why it happened. Who did this and what motivated them? And those answers were hard to find. That has changed completely. When someone looks for information about Islam now, they can get real answers easily. If you Google the question, "Is Islam dangerous?" or "Does Islam promote violence?" or "Why do Muslims want to kill us?" you will find good answers on the first page of search results. The Koran, the Sira and the Hadith are available in readable form now. That wasn't the case in 2001. And of course, web sites like WikiIslam.net and TheReligionofPeace.com and blogs and Facebook pages and so on are all over the place now.

People are continually waking up to the disturbing truth about Islamic doctrine. I hear from people all the time who have only recently started looking into Islam because of the Lee Rigby beheading or because of the Boston Marathon bombing. Maybe they were too young on 9/11 to grasp what had happened. But the point is, when people look for answers, now they can find them, so the pace of awakening our fellow non-Muslims is accelerating.

I know it may not seem like it in your personal life sometimes. You reach impasses with people. Some of your own family members might refuse to talk any more about it. But it is also true that sometimes you don't realize you reached someone. You may have struck a nerve with them and even though they argued with you at the time, later they think about it or something else happens, like the Fort Hood shooting, or the Andy Long murder, and it becomes the last straw and they finally decide to look into it, and once someone looks into it sincerely, we gain another counterjihadist.

Some of us are finding new ways to reach people. Some have been creating excellent pamphlets and leaflets — which can help us reach people (some people are willing to read one just because it's short). Lots of DVDs and YouTube videos have been created since 9/11. And books, of course. We recently published an article (here) about a group with a booth in Santa Monica on a main thoroughfare every Saturday night to engage people about Islam. One of the comments on that article is illustrative about how new approaches are stimulating creativity in others. The commenter wrote:

I stopped by on Saturday to see the table (I'm visiting Santa Monica). Very nice people! I'm so glad to see them out there. There were lots of Muslims passing by; some stopped to stare or argue, and my friend engaged one of them to try to hear "the other side," but the only counterargument she got from him was, "This is crap." If I were doing a table like this — and maybe someday I will be, in a different part of the country — I might want to try a few different ways to hook people and see what works best, like having a poster saying something like, "Could Islam rule the world?" or "Speak up for American freedoms" or "Some conspiracy theories are true" — leading to a graphic of the Muslim Brotherhood and its tentacles. Because people who aren't already in the counterjihad probably have no idea why we're "bashing" Islam and they won't connect the dots, and making them aware in the first 30 seconds that there's a specific threat — an international movement to take over the world for Islam — would be good. Just an idea to try. God bless these people for being out there.

People are awakening. And it is getting easier to help them awaken. That may seem like a small thing compared to the magnitude of what we are up against, but a little more knowledge is what motivated Flight 93 to stop the hijackers from reaching their intended target. Just a little more knowledge made the difference. You and I need to make sure the people in our lives have a little more knowledge about Islamic doctrine. Let's roll.