Make Them Contagious
Sunday
A couple months ago at work, two guys were talking about ISIS and the truck attack in Nice, France. It was a perfect opportunity to inject some solid facts into two minds. I said, "Do you know why ISIS kills people in France? Do you know what they hope to achieve?"
The look on their faces was kind of funny. It was simultaneously a look of surprise that they actually didn't know, and curiosity.
I said, "They're following the work of an Islamic strategist who wrote a paper in 2005 called The Management of Savagery. The strategist pointed out that Islam can't just take over countries by force like they used to do in the old days. Non-Muslim countries would intervene and stop them."
I went on to explain the strategy: To produce enough random murders that people feel anxiety and don't trust their own government to protect them. The idea is to make people motivated to accept Islam is the ruling force just to find some kind of relief from the perpetual feeling of fear. I could tell this made something click in their heads. The strange phenomenon of random acts of horrific violence suddenly made sense, but it made sense in a way that awakened them to the determined scheming behind it. What they were witnessing in these violent acts was not just "extremists" with a grudge, but a much larger and longer-range plan than they had imagined. The immediate victims of the violence weren't the only victims. The strategy aims to make the whole country the victim.
I have the email address of one of those guys, so after work, when I got home, I shared An Inquiry Into Islam article with him (it explains more about Management of Savagery). He doesn't know I have anything to do that website (Inquiry Into Islam) or this one (Citizen Warrior), and doesn't know I wrote the article. The next day he said, "That was very interesting." I used this opportunity. I said, "This is a big deal. There are attacks all the time now. Everybody is aware of that. But if you asked a hundred people why they're doing it, I'll bet not one of them would know the answer. And we should all know at least that much."
In other words, I made it clear that he was now in possession of important information that everyone should know and that most people don't know. My intention was to motivate him to share it. And he did.
He shared it with another guy at work, and then sent him the same article. Then he shared the article on his Facebook page. When someone made a comment on his Facebook post arguing with the article, he came back to me and asked me what I thought of the comment. Since I'm a friend of his on Facebook, I answered the person's comment.
The reason I'm pointing this out is that I stumbled upon one good way to motivate people to share what they're learning with others. First I made him curious. Then I provided a very interesting and relevant piece of information. And then when he showed interest, I made him aware that he was in possession of important knowledge that his fellow citizens were unaware of, which motivated him to spread the word. I'll have to do that some more. I encourage you to try it too, and let us know how it goes.
