What Would You Ask Geert Wilders or Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff?

We're planning a second book. It will be based on a series of interviews we will conduct with the leaders of the counter-jihad. We will ask them for their advice about talking to our friends about Islam. But before we start the interviews, we wanted to ask you what questions you would want answers to.

We already have several questions in mind:

• One of the most common responses we get when we criticize Islam is, "The Bible has violent verses too." How do you answer that one?
• Is there anything you make sure you avoid saying?
• What few points do you make sure you always say?
• What do you do, or what do you think, when you get discouraged?
• What's the best advice you ever got about how to get through to people?

What would you like us to ask the leaders of the counterjihad? What do you have the most trouble with? You can leave a comment here, email us here, or contact us on Facebook here.

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A Hateful Allegation of Hatefulness

Citizen Warrior was designated a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). But since we shared the designation with the likes of Political Islam, the Tennessee Freedom Coalition and the Center for Security Policy, we feel pretty good about it.

Fred Fleitz, senior vice president for policy and programs with the Center for Security Policy, wrote an article with some interesting facts about the SPLC. Here are some excerpts from his article:

This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) named my organization, the Center for Security Policy, a “hate group” because of our work highlighting the threat from radical Islam.

The SPLC is best known for its work decades ago fighting legal battles against segregation in the South. But it long ago morphed into a far left group with one purpose: manufacturing material to slander conservatives for use by the news media and on the Internet.

The SPLC is not a civil rights organization — it is a far left advocacy group that tries to discredit its political enemies on the right with incoherent hate lists that wrongly associate them with notorious bigots to advance a liberal agenda. This is consistent with #12 of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

SPLC also demonized conservatives with bogus hate charges because it has found this kind of fearmongering to be very lucrative. According to the SPLC’s 2014 tax return, this non-profit organization had $54 million in revenue and $315 million in assets.

Back in 2000, an investigative report into the SPLC’s activities was published by Harper’s Magazine titled The church of Morris Dees: How the Southern Poverty Law Center profits from intolerance. It described the SPLC and its activities as “essentially a fraud” that “shuts down debate, stifles free speech, and most of all, raises a pile of money, very little of which is used on behalf of poor people.”

Perhaps the main reason the SPLC has been able to raise such huge sums because its president, Morris Dees, is so skilled at using scare mongering mailings for fund raising that in 1998 he was inducted into the Direct Mailing Association Hall of Fame.

Based on its 2010 tax return, the liberal website Daily Kos criticized the SPLC in 2012 for its enormous wealth, offshore bank account in the Cayman Islands, and ownership in several foreign corporations.

The author of this article asked, “What I’m very curious to learn is how keeping hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in assets, several offshore bank accounts and part ownership in foreign financial firms in any substantive way addresses poverty in America.”

I believe the SPLC’s new focus on Islamophobia is because the organization has identified attacking critics of radical Islam as the ultimate money pot. For example, Saleh Abdulla Kamel, a Saudi banker believed to have been a financer of Usama bin Laden, gave $10 million to Yale University in 2015 to build an Islamic law center.

Given the SPLC’s lack of scruples, greed and offshore operations, I believe it is very likely that this group is receiving funding from Gulf state billionaires like Kamel to discredit anyone who criticizes radical Islam and the global jihad movement.

The news media must stop being manipulated by the SPLC’s calumny of its political enemies.

Reporters should realize that an organization which attacks all critics of radical Islam as Islamophobes, refuses to mention the extremism and intolerance of radical Islamist groups, and is silent on the growing anti-Semitism on the left and violence against Jewish university students cannot be considered a neutral and authoritative source.

Read the whole article here: What do Ben Carson, Frank Gaffney share? Both are victims of a left-wing smear machine.

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Tough Questions for Islam

The latest from the inimitable Bill Warner:

When people go to an event where they might be able to ask a question of a Muslim, what is the best way to ask?

I recommend a specific technique. Do not ask about the Koran. Do not ask about Islam, instead ask about Mohammed. State some idea from the Sunna (what Mohammed did or said) and then ask the Muslim a question about obeying that Sunna. Your goal is to educate the audience.

Here is an example: "The Sunna of Mohammed includes wife beating, as does the Sharia. Do you agree that wife-beating is a good practice?"

You will never get a straight answer, but the audience learns about Mohammed and Islamic doctrine from your question.

WATCH BILL WARNER TALK ABOUT THIS

Bill Warner, Center for the Study of Political Islam
www.politicalislam.com
(c) copyright 2016
Permalink — http://www.politicalislam.com/tough-questions-for-islam/

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Why Sensible People Are Bothered When Women Wear Hijabs

There are Muslim women all over the world who don't wear a hijab, yet consider themselves Muslim. But the doctrine says a believing woman should cover herself.

So when Muslim women begin to cover themselves, it is a visible signal of increasing orthodoxy. In other words, if there are Muslims in your area, and the women start covering themselves, it is an indication that the Muslims in your area are beginning to take the written doctrine more seriously.

And it is rarely just that particular written doctrine only — it is usually all the written doctrine, which includes hatred toward non-Muslims, political action to put the reins of power in Muslim hands, increasing demands for Islamic standards of dress, behavior, Islamic limits on free speech, etc. Because of the political nature of Islamic doctrine, these Islamic standards are not to be only applied to Muslims; as Muslims gain political power, those standards are to be applied to everyone.

Already in some parts of European countries where there is a high Muslim percentage, non-Muslim women are harassed (or worse) if they don't cover themselves.

Many of the signs of increasing devotion to Islamic ideals cannot be seen by non-Muslims. But the hijab can be seen by everyone.

This has also been published here for sharing purposes.

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. 

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Use Your Body to Help You Reach People

You want to educate your fellow non-Muslims about Islam. Excellent. Bravo. And sometimes you have a difficult time getting the message across. They seem to turn against you. They want to reject your message. You lose rapport. It can sometimes be upsetting.

People who also need to gain rapport so that they can influence others (therapists) have discovered many intelligent ways to gain rapport and prevent losing it. One of those ways is by using your body.

I want you to try an experiment today and tomorrow. You'll be talking with many people in the next two days. Try this: Every time you're talking to someone, notice how they're positioning their body, and make your body's position similar to theirs.

You don't have to match it perfectly, although they probably wouldn't notice if you did. But if the person's head is tilted slightly, tilt yours slightly. If the person has all his weight on one leg and the other one slightly bent, do the same.

Notice how he has positioned his arms and hands. Make yours somewhat similar. Notice his posture. Make yours similar.

This is one of many ways to gain and keep rapport with someone. We'll be covering other ways in the next few weeks. But for now, just concentrate on your body, and see what happens.

What will happen is that people will respond to you better. They will feel closer to you without knowing why. And oddly enough, you will feel closer to them. Over the next couple of days, concentrate on this. If you keep it up, it will begin to come naturally. At that point, you will have increased your ability to influence people.

If we want to reach people, if we want them to listen to us, if we want our message to penetrate, gaining rapport is a skill worth learning. And using your body is a good place to start.

When you can influence people using methods such as the one above or the one in our last article, it's like playing three dimensional chess with someone who is only playing two dimensional chess. They have no idea what you're doing and they have no idea why you are so persuasive. Read more about that here: Influencing People Who Live in a 2D World With 3D Techniques.

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How Would THEY See This?

We need to reach people with the message that Islam's relentless encroachment must be stopped. The question is, "How can people be reached?" We obviously can't just blurt out what we know self-righteously with the attitude that if you can't handle the truth, then you're a wimp. Anyone coming across like that would help the cause more to keep silent.

We've got to think in terms of "What would a blind multiculturalist think about this?" How would they see it? How do they hear you? We've got to reach them. They are looking for a reason to discount this.

What can we do to become more effective? My first suggestion may sound elementary, but it's important: Spell correctly. If you write anything anywhere, double- and triple-check your writing. Make it as free of mistakes as you can, as professional as you can, and as articulate as you can. Avoid emotional rambling. Make your point as succinctly as you can with as much logic, reason, and evidence as you can.

Same goes for what to do when you're speaking to someone in person too. Give them no easy reason to dismiss what you're saying. Go out of your way to avoid hitting their triggers. Don't throw in conspiracy theories in the middle of your comments. Don't go off on tangents about anything a multiculturalist would consider "right wing," like gun laws or stockpiling weapons and ammunition.

You've got to get inside their heads and imagine looking over at you through their eyes, with their point of view. You have legitimate information and, if they understood it, they would change their mind, and might even want to do something about it.

And don't come off as if you know something and they are ignorant, even if it's true. Don't come off as better than others. We are not better than others because we know about Islam and they don't. It doesn't make us superior — it burdens us with a responsibility that we had better take seriously: The responsibility to get through to our fellow citizens and help them understand something they wish wasn't true.

Being right isn't good enough. Plenty of people in history were right and failed. Those who opposed the Communist revolutions in Russia, China, and Cambodia were right — and they lost. We have to be effective, not just right. You will make no converts being an obnoxious know-it-all. I've tried it. ;-)

Think back to before your eyes were opened. If someone came at you wild-eyed and full of seemingly-racist conspiracy theories, you would probably have recoiled from it, and recoiled from the point of view, and recoiled from the idea that Islam might be dangerously different from other ideologies you're familiar with, and you may never have given that idea any serious thought again.

We need to be careful. We cannot afford to lose people like that. We need to present our information as a realistic, unexaggerated, well-grounded, authoritative understanding of world. We need to make it clear that important people "in the know" also see it this way. We need to avoid presenting it as something "nobody else knows," because they will think, "Yeah, right. You have figured out what the mucky-mucks in the Pentagon haven't figured out? Sure, buddy. Why don't you calm down and we'll give you a sedative."

We need to be perceived as reasonable. We need to have our facts straight and well-memorized. We need to be persuasive. We must win people over to our side, and we must do it as quickly as possible.

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

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