The Fascinating Relationship Between Nazis and Islam During World War Two

In the prestigious magazine, The Wilson Quarterly, David Motadel, a Research Fellow in History at the University of Cambridge, wrote an article well worth reading entitled, The Swastika and the Crescent. You'll find some excerpts below. 

We've seen before that one thing both Nazism and Islam have in common is hatred for the Jews. Read more about that here. The information below has also been posted on Inquiry Into Islam and History is Fascinating for sharing purposes (in case the other blogs have a better presentation for the person you want to share it with).

Here are some excerpts from the article:

In 1941, with German troops fighting in North Africa and advancing toward the Middle East, policymakers in Berlin began considering the strategic role of Islam more systematically. In November, German diplomat Eberhard von Stohrer wrote a memo asserting that the Muslim world would soon become important to the overall war. After the defeat of France, he wrote, Germany had gained an “outstanding position” and won sympathy “in the eyes of the Muslims” by fighting Britain, “the suppressor of wide-reaching Islamic areas.” Convinced that Nazi ideology was aligned with “many Islamic principles,” Stohrer claimed that in the Muslim world, Hitler already held a “a pre-eminent position because of his fight against Judaism.” He suggested that there should be “an extensive Islam program,” including a statement about the “general attitude of the Third Reich toward Islam.”

In the following months, as more and more officials in Berlin became convinced of such a scheme, Nazi Germany made significant attempts to promote an alliance with the ‘Muslim world’ against their alleged common enemies: the British Empire, the Soviet Union, America, and the Jews. This policy was first targeted at the populations in North Africa and the Middle East, but was soon expanded toward Muslims in the Balkans and the Soviet Union. In the end, almost all parts of the regime, from the Foreign Office and the Propaganda Ministry to the Wehrmacht and the SS, became involved in the efforts to promote Germany’s as a patron and liberator of Islam.

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After inquiries from the Turkish embassy, which was concerned about legal discrimination against Turks and German citizens of Turkish descent, German authorities issued an internal decree: Turkey was part of Europe; other Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt and Iran, could not claim to be European. This statement soon leaked to the foreign press, and on June 14, 1936, Le Temps reported that Berlin had decided to exempt Turks from the Nuremberg laws, while Iranians, Egyptians, and Iraqis were considered “non-Aryan.” In the coming days, similar articles caused an uproar among Iranian and Egyptian officials.

At once, the German Foreign Office issued a press release stating that the reports were unfounded. The Egyptian and Iranian ambassadors were assured that the Nuremberg laws targeted only Jews. Whereas the Egyptian ambassador had merely requested clarification that Egyptians were not targeted by German racial laws, Tehran’s ambassador demanded a clear statement that Iranians were considered racially related to the Germans. A year earlier, Riza Shah had ordered that his country be called “Iran” instead of “Persia” in international affairs — the name “Iran” is a cognate of “Aryan” and refers to the “Land of the Aryans” — and Iranian officials made no secret that they believed this term useful given that “some countries pride themselves on being Aryan.”

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A number of high-ranking Nazis expressed their sympathy for Islam. Perhaps most fascinated with the faith — and enthusiastic about what he believed to be an affinity between Nazism and Islam — was Heinrich Himmler. Recounting a meeting between Himmler and Hitler in Berlin in February 1943, Edmund Glaise von Horstenau, a Wehrmacht general, noted that Himmler had expressed his disdain for Christianity, while finding Islam “very admirable.” A few months later, Himmler would again “speak about the heroic character of the Mohammedan religion, while expressing his disdain for Christianity, and especially Catholicism,” wrote Horstenau.

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Himmler, who had left the Catholic Church in 1936, bemoaned that Christianity made no promises to soldiers who died in battle, no reward for bravery. Islam, by contrast, was “a religion of people’s soldiers,” a practical faith that provided believers with guidance for everyday life. Himmler, convinced that Muhammad was one of the greatest men in history, had apparently collected biographies of the Prophet, and hoped to visit Muslim countries and continue his studies after the war was won. In discussions with Haj Amin al-Husayni, the legendary Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who sided with the Axis and moved to Berlin in 1941, from where he called for holy war against the Allies, Himmler lamented the failed invasions by Islamic forces in centuries past which, he said, “depriv[ed] Europe of the flourishing spiritual light and civilization of Islam.”

Hitler showed himself equally fascinated with Islam. After the war, Eva Braun’s sister, Ilse, remembered his frequent discussions on the topic, repeatedly comparing Islam with Christianity in order to devalue the latter. In contrast to Islam, which he saw as a strong and practical faith, he described Christianity as a soft, artificial, weak religion of suffering. Islam was a religion of the here and now, Hitler told his entourage, while Christianity was a religion of a kingdom yet to come — one that was deeply unattractive, compared to the paradise promised by Islam.

For Hitler, religion was a means of supporting human life on earth practically and not an end in itself. “The precepts ordering people to wash, to avoid certain drinks, to fast at appointed dates, to take exercise, to rise with the sun, to climb to the top of the minaret — all these were obligations invented by intelligent people,” he remarked in October 1941 in the presence of Himmler. “The exhortation to fight courageously is also self-explanatory. Observe, by the way, that, as a corollary, the Mussulman [sic] was promised a paradise peopled with houris, where wine flowed in streams — a real earthly paradise,” he enthused. “The Christians, on the other hand, declare themselves satisfied if after their death they are allowed to sing Hallelujahs!”

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Reflecting on history, he (Hitler) described the Islamic reign on the Iberian peninsula as the “most cultured, the most intellectual and in every way best and happiest epoch in Spanish history,” one that was “followed by the period of the persecutions with its unceasing atrocities.”

Hitler expressed this view repeatedly. After the war, Albert Speer remembered that Hitler had been much impressed by a historical interpretation he had learned from some distinguished Muslims:

When the Mohammedans attempted to penetrate beyond France into Central Europe during the eighth century, his visitors had told him [Hitler], they had been driven back at the Battle of Tours. Had the Arabs won this battle, the world would be Mohammedan today. For theirs was a religion that believed in spreading the faith by the sword and subjugating all nations to that faith. The Germanic peoples would have become heirs to that religion. Such a creed was perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament. Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous native, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.

While Hitler did not perceive Islam as a “Semitic” religion, the race of its followers remained a silent but persistent problem. To be sure, our knowledge of the ideas about Islam that circulated within the Nazi elite mostly comes from memoirs and postwar testimonies, which must be read with caution. Nonetheless, these accounts draw a remarkably coherent picture of the ideological notions prevalent among the higher echelons of the regime.

Throughout the war years, the Propaganda Ministry repeatedly instructed the press to promote a positive image of Islam. Urging journalists to give credit to the “Islamic world as a cultural factor,” Goebbels in autumn 1942 instructed magazines to discard negative images of Islam, which had been spread by church polemicists for centuries, and instead to promote an alliance with the Islamic world, which was described as both anti-Bolshevik and anti-Jewish. References to similarities between Jews and Muslims, as manifested in the ban of pork and the ritual circumcision, were to be avoided. In the coming months, the Propaganda Ministry decreed that magazines should depict the U.S. as “the enemies of Islam” and stress American and British hostility toward the Muslim religion.

In September 1943, the Nazi Party explicitly stated that it accepted members who were “followers of Islam,” emphasizing that as the party accepted Christians as members, there was no reason to exclude Muslims.

As German troops marched into Muslim-populated war zones in North Africa, the Balkans, and the borderlands of the Soviet Union, German authorities on the ground frequently considered Islam to be of political importance. As early as 1941, the Wehrmacht distributed the military handbook Der Islam to train the troops to behave correctly towards Muslim populations. On the Eastern front, in the Caucasus and in the Crimea, the Germans ordered the rebuilding of mosques and madrasas previously dismantled by Moscow, and the re-establishment of religious rituals and celebrations, with the intention of undermining Soviet rule. German military officials also made extensive efforts to co-opt religious dignitaries in the Eastern territories, the Balkans, and North Africa. Nazi propagandists in these areas tried to use religious rhetoric, vocabulary, and iconography to mobilize Muslims against Germany’s enemies. Perhaps the most important part of this policy was the recruitment of Muslims into the German armies.

In the autumn of 1941, after the failure of Operation Barbarossa and Hitler’s blitzkrieg strategy in the East, Hitler’s military command was confronted with a drastic shortage of manpower. By the end of November 1941, Berlin had registered 743,112 men as dead, wounded, or missing in action — almost a quarter of their entire eastern army. German soldiers, it became clear, could not win the war alone.

In late 1941, the Wehrmacht began recruiting among prisoners of war and the civilian populations in its eastern occupied territories. Azerbaijanis, Turkestanis, Kalmyks, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, and various others fought as part of the Wehrmacht’s so-called Eastern Troops. In mid-1943, the Eastern Troops numbered more than 300,000; a year later, that number had doubled, the vast majority were non-Slavic minorities from the southern fringes of the Soviet empire, and many thousands of them were Muslims from the Caucasus, the Crimea, the Volga-Ural region, and Central Asia. At the same time, Himmler began enlisting non-Germans into the Waffen-SS, first West and North Europeans and later non-Germanic peoples, among them Muslims from Bosnia, Herzegovina, Albania, and from the Soviet Union. It became one of the greatest mobilization campaigns of Muslims led by a non-Muslim power in history.

This recruitment campaign was not the result of long-term strategy, but a consequence of the shift toward short-term planning after the failure of the Barbarossa plan. Most of the recruits were driven by material interests. For many of the Muslim volunteers from the Soviet Union who were recruited in prisoner of war camps, a significant incentive was the prospect of pay and better provisions — fighting for the Germans was an attractive prospect compared to the appalling conditions of the camps. Others, most notably Muslim recruits from the civilian population in the Balkans and the Crimea, hoped to protect their families and villages from partisans. Some were driven into the German ranks by ideology, nationalism, religious hatred, and anti-Bolshevism. Under the banner of the swastika, the volunteers believed that they would be supporting the fight against Bolshevism or British imperialism and for the liberation of their countries from foreign rule. The Germans, for their part, did everything they could to play up the potential ideological motives of their foreign helpers.

In January 1944, Himmler greeted a group of Bosnian Muslim military commanders in Silesia. “What is there to separate the Muslims in Europe and around the world from us Germans? We have common aims. There is no more solid basis for cooperation than common aims and common ideals. For 200 years, Germany has not had the slightest conflict with Islam.” Germany had been friends with Islam, Himmler declared, not just for pragmatic reasons but out of conviction. God — “you say Allah, it is the same” — had sent the Führer, who would first free Europe and then the entire world of the Jews. The head of the SS then evoked alleged common enemies — “the Bolsheviks, England, America, all constantly driven by the Jew.”

German army officials granted their Muslim recruits a wide range of concessions, taking into account the Islamic calendar and religious laws such as ritual slaughter. A prominent role in the units was played by military imams, who were responsible not only for spiritual care but also for political indoctrination. They were educated at special imam courses, which the Wehrmacht and the SS established in Potsdam, Göttingen, Guben, and Dresden.

Initiated primarily to save German blood and balance the drastic shortage of manpower, the commands of the Wehrmacht and the SS also saw a propagandistic value of non-German units, which they hoped would damage the morale in the enemy’s armies and hinterland. German officials insisted that once these units were deployed, they would win over broader Islamic support — showing, in the words of one internal SS report, the “entire Mohammedan world” that the Third Reich was ready to confront the “common enemies of National Socialism and Islam.” This misconception — this notion that Islam was a monolith that need only be activated — dominated the views of the Nazi leadership.

In the end, Muslim units were employed in Stalingrad, Warsaw, and Milan, and in the defense of Berlin.

Read the whole article here: The Swastika and the Crescent.

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Good News: Some Things Changed This Year

Things change. Sometimes things improve. Here are a few changes from this year that demonstrate a weakening of orthodox Islam in Muslim countries: 

Child marriage was banned this year in Palestine and Saudi Arabia. They both made the minimum marriage age 18 years old. 

Honor killings have been criminalized in the United Arab Emirates. 

Pakistan has passed a new anti-rape law. 

After 30 years of being ruled by orthodox Muslims, Sudan has deposed them, abolished the death penalty for apostates, and made FGM illegal.

(Source: Future Crunch) 

Child marriage, honor killings, FGM, laxity about rape, and the death penalty for apostates are all basic features of Islamic law. For true believers, these are not negotiable. The fact that these countries are changing their laws to be less Islamic is a testament to a growing pressure from within the country and also international pressure. It is concrete evidence of a movement away from orthodox Islam, even in the Muslim world. It means Islamic law has been, to some degree, discredited for a greater number of people. This is what we're working toward. 

There is still a lot more to be done. We haven't won. But let's celebrate when we have something worth celebrating.

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The Key to Your Listener’s Inability to Confront the Disturbing Nature of Islamic Doctrine

Someone left the comment below on The Islamization of the West and it reminds me of many similar comments I've gotten over the years, and similar feelings I've had:

"I am at a complete loss as to why CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, MPAC or this NMLA is even allowed to exist in America?? Are some Americans so dumbed down that they don't see the enemy right in front of them? Is this or any political party in government so stupid that they just turn a blind eye to what's happening?"

Can you feel the commenter's exasperation? Have you had this feeling before? We are in a strange situation: We try to simply share new information we've learned, and we find ourselves unable to share it — not because we are incapable of articulating it, but because our listeners do backflips trying to invalidate the information. They contort themselves into impossible cognitive pretzels in order to reject simple, factual information. It has been baffling to many of us. I know. I have heard from hundreds of our fellow counterjihadists about this.

And I know how it feels. I sometimes want to write off my fellow non-Muslims as idiots, but I know many of them are not stupid, so what is going on? What could be the cause of their seemingly stubborn stupidity on this subject?

Last night, I was reading Victor Davis Hanson's book, The Father of Us All, and he said something I've never thought about before. Namely, that people in the West are acutely aware of the inequalities of the world — we in the West enjoy a material quality of life far better than billions of other people — and for a lot of Westerners, this presents a serious ethical problem.

They feel guilty about it. They need to assuage their guilt in some way. But here is the key insight I've never thought about before: They need to assuage their guilt in some way other than giving up the goodies, because even though they don't like the inequality, they don't want to give up the high quality of life.

In other words, many people need to have a way to keep enjoying the material riches, but still rectify or expiate the guilt they feel about others being so poor.

The solution many have chosen is to go out of their way to see what's wrong with their own culture, and to give other cultures an undeserved reverence.


A FAMILIAR SOLUTION

This solution is something we are familiar with in our personal relationships. If you are more successful than a friend of yours, for example, one way you can help him feel better and prevent him from resenting you is to point out your own faults. Those who are exceptionally successful often habitually display humility, making it a point to underline their own personal imperfections.

The successful person can do this with integrity because everyone has faults, even very competent people, and because every success is partly a result of pure luck — the luck of being born in a free country, the luck of being born with ambition, a high energy, basic intelligence, good health, etc. Many people use this stratagem, knowingly or unknowingly, because it helps. The self-deprecation helps a successful person continue to enjoy the material goodies without feeling too guilty about it around other people, and without making other people feel bad about themselves or resentful of the successful person.

It shows no class to put down the "less fortunate" as lazy, stupid, ignorant, etc. It is the height of vulgarity to criticize or humiliate or ridicule or rebuke or denounce the less fortunate.

And I think the people who will not listen to you, or who argue in defense of Islam even when they know nothing about Islam, are doing the same thing on a cultural scale. In other words, when you, a fellow member of the fortunate class (a Westerner) start bad-mouthing another culture — when you start criticizing Islamic doctrine — you have violated an important code of etiquette. And for them to listen to you and accept what you say is for them to violate it too.

What we're dealing with is a "cultural humility" about Western culture and achievements. People are going out of their way to point out what is wrong with their own Western culture or their country in particular. They're not casual about this — there is an underlying intensity. They seem hell-bent on criticizing their own country or culture.

Now it makes sense that it seems so deeply felt, that your listeners seem so committed to stopping you from criticizing Islam and committed to criticizing their own culture. Many people rely on this criticism to allow them to enjoy their iPads and nice cars and cell phones without too much guilt.

They feel less guilty because they express a sufficient degree of contempt for their own highly successful culture, and they feel (or at least profess) sufficient admiration for all other cultures.

The simple, factual information about Islam you want to share threatens to undermine this whole unformulated creed, which endangers the linchpin of their emotional harmony and ethical congruence. They can't let it in.

To let it in would require them to rearrange an important feature of their worldview and their self-image. This is not a minor matter. This is not a small, inconsequential barrier we can easily sweep aside. It is a major psychological problem that stands in the way of our goal of educating people about Islam. Understanding what it is and what we're up against is the first step.


SURVIVOR GUILT

We are talking about a psychological problem similar to survivor guilt. People who have survived plane crashes or concentration camps or some other event where others have died sometimes suffer a painful, unrelenting guilt because they survived while others perished. It wasn't fair, and they have a problem dealing with the unfairness.

Westerners are in a similar position on a global scale. Think about it. We've seen close-up, full-color pictures of our fellow human beings starving in Africa, imprisoned in China, tortured in Iran, executed in Saudi Arabia, while we drive to and from our pleasant activities in clean, comfortable cars, go to grocery stores overflowing with food, come home to a comfortable shelter with cable television, microwave ovens, high-speed internet, and enjoy an immense degree of personal freedom. It isn't fair. Yes, we may have worked to earn the money, but had we been born in Iran or China, our lives would be tragically different, regardless of how hard we worked.

We got lucky and it definitely isn't fair. At some level, I think most of us feel some kind of guilt about this. I think we should have a name for it. Born in a Western Country Guilt? I don't know what to call it, but clearly some of us handle the guilt better than others.

How do you live with the inequality of the world? Some people think those of us in Western countries have created a superior culture, so we deserve our wealth. Some think the European or "white" race is genetically superior. Some good evidence indicates the inequalities are a result of geography. And some just consider themselves lucky and try to help others when they can.

We've all found a way to live with it, but the people we're having a hard time communicating with about Islam have found a less-than-optimal way of dealing with it. It's better than the path self-righteous racists use, but it is not ideal (or even adequate) — it's preventing them from confronting and accepting important facts about the real world.

Multiculturalism is one way this guilt manifests itself. Multiculturalism says all cultures are equal. None is better than others. Moral equivalence is another. Moral equivalence says, "Yes, that other culture does terrible things, but look, we've done terrible things too," so again, we are not better than others. White Guilt is another. Each of these different manifestations all stem from the same fundamental need to relieve guilt while still enjoying the safety and wealth and comfort of their Western society.

We have a need, wrote Hanson, for "cultural neutrality" — for seeing ourselves as no better than anybody else. This doesn't sound so bad, but the need for cultural neutrality can be so well-ingrained that it causes a kind of willful blindness that overrides common sense and the basic instinct of self-preservation. It has gone off the deep end. Hanson wrote: "...so strong is the tug of cultural neutrality that it trumps even the revulsion of Western progressives at the ... jihadist agenda, with its homophobia, sexism, religious intolerance, and racism."

It is important to clearly understand this perplexing, confusing, exasperating phenomenon we are all running into: The compulsive, undiscriminating reflex to defend Islam and criticize Western countries. The source of the resistance we're coming up against is this: People feel guilty for having so much more than others, and this prevents them from accepting your legitimate criticisms of Islamic doctrine.

With this understanding, we can begin to find more effective ways of educating our fellow non-Muslims on the basic facts about Islam.

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.

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Death or Taxes: A Dhimmi's Choice

Before Muhammad came along, the Middle East was made up of mostly Christians and Jews. But because of Islam's strong-arm tactics, those numbers have dwindled down to almost nothing.

According to Islamic doctrine, non-Muslim lands must be brought under the rule of Islamic law, and it is a religious obligation of all Muslims to work toward that goal. And when a new land is conquered by Islamic followers, the non-Muslim inhabitants are to be given the choice of either converting to Islam or death. Those who are Christian or Jews are offered a third option: Dhimmitude.

Dhimmis are allowed to practice their non-Muslim religion if they pay the jizya (a tax). If they convert to Islam, they no longer have to pay the tax, so there's a practical incentive to convert. Read more.

The tax takes money away from the dhimmis and their competing religions and gives that money to support Islam.

The income from these taxes (usually a 25% income tax) helped fund the Islamic conquests during the first two major jihads. They conquered vast lands, most of them already filled with Christians and Jews, many of whom did not convert at first, and their jizya poured huge sums of money into the Islamic war machine.

Eventually, the numbers of Christians and Jews dwindled down as they converted or escaped, until now, in most Islamic countries, Jews and Christians are very small minorities.

Several rules within Islamic law extend this effect. For example, dhimmis are not allowed to build any new houses of worship. They're not even allowed to repair already-existing churches or synagogues. This puts Christian and Jewish houses of worship in a state of permanent decline.

Also, non-Islamic prayers cannot be spoken within earshot of a Muslim — again, preventing Muslims from being influenced by a competing religion. No public displays of any symbols of another faith may be shown either.

All of this prevents the spread of any competing religion, and makes competing ideologies die out over time. That's why today there are so many "Muslim countries." Almost every other country in the world is made up of many different religions. But Islam has built-in features that eliminate all other religions over time.

One added rule makes it that much easier for Muslims to dominate non-Muslims within an Islamic state: Dhimmis are not allowed to own weapons of any kind. To subjugate a people, all dictatorial rulers in the history of the world have done the same thing: Disarm the subjugated people. They are much easier to manage, less dangerous, and less capable of upending the status quo.

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.

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Why Isn't Anyone Trying to Convince Us to Be More Tolerant of Buddhists?

If some of your friends or family are still reluctant to believe a religion could actually promote hatred or intolerance or violence, ask them some questions. Don't try to get them to answer the questions. Just ask them to think about or wonder about this:

Why do we have so many problems with Muslims but not Buddhists? Why are we constantly urged to tolerate and co-exist with Muslims but not Buddhists? Western culture isn't more similar to Buddhism than Islam. So why doesn't anybody feel the need to convince us to tolerate Buddhists?

Could it be that the tenets of the religions themselves are dramatically different?

I like to use Buddhism for comparison because if you are in a Western country and talk about Christianity or Judaism, it doesn't work as an example, because most people consider Western culture to be a "Judeo-Christian" culture. Buddhism is outside of the normal biases, so can be used as a good comparison.

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Talking to People You Love About Islam

When you try to tell people what you've learned about Islam and they argue with you or it seems like they just won't understand what you're saying, your first impulse might be to forget it, at least with that person. But that's the wrong response.

One great thing about these conversations is that they are upsetting. That may sound strange, but those kinds of discussions keep you awake at night thinking about them, which means you will get better. Next time you'll have better answers to those objections because you thought about it (maybe even obsessed about it). You gave it so much thought because it was upsetting. So don't fight it. Your feelings of upset are not pleasant, but they aren't a bad thing.

Several things will help you live with this kind of upset:

1. Take breaks in between. Don't have so many upsetting conversations that you aren't getting any sleep.

2. Take your time with the discussion. You don't need to respond immediately. You can take all the time you want, and then come back and say, "I've been thinking about our conversation and..." And you don't need to "win." You don't need to convince someone you are right. Just plant some solid facts, and let it go. They'll sink in and the person will have to alter the way they look at the world, even a little bit, to accommodate the new information. They might even look it up to see if you are correct, and when someone discovers the truth on their own, it is even more powerful.

3. Never overstate your case. Understatement is far more persuasive in the long run than overstatement. Try to be as accurate as possible, but if you're going to err, err toward understatement.

4. Don't spoil family gatherings with upsetting arguments. It's not worth it. And group settings are usually not the best venues for changing someone's mind anyway. If you have Islam on your mind at a family gathering and want to do something, build rapport. It'll help future conversations.

5. Think about the upsetting feelings differently. Rather than being a bad sign, think of them as a good sign that you're fighting for a cause that's important enough to get upset about.

6. Use your upset as fuel and focusing power, motivating you to look up facts and craft your arguments carefully. Use our Answers to Objections list to help you. Use the non-Muslim forum to request possible answers to an objection that has stumped you. As you obsess, take notes. It will help you remember the points you want to make.

7. Always try to give some fundamental information. Primary information can help change someone's world view in the long run. Muhammad killed people and took slaves. The Koran says 91 times that a Muslim should follow Muhammad's example. Simple facts like these are something solid that can help someone think differently about the problem of Islam.

These conversations are happening more frequently these days and with less resistance. But there are still plenty of holdouts who don't want it to be true and will fight you tooth and nail before they will admit (even to themselves) that the facts have overwhelmed their denial. This is a bitter pill to swallow, and some people will go through all five stages of resistance to the truth about Islam. Help them get through it and never give up.

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.

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Available as a Kindle Now: A Handbook For The Counterjihad

Our handbook for citizen warriors entitled, Getting Through: How to Talk to Non-Muslims About the Disturbing Nature of Islam has been released in a Kindle version.

The book has a section on different ways to approach conversations about Islam, and another section on how to educate people in other ways besides arguing. The book includes Answers to Objections and The Terrifying Brilliance of Islam in their entirety.

Our mission is to make it universally understood that Islam is not a religion of peace, and that Islamic doctrine outlines a clear political goal: The global application of Sharia law.

This mission is much harder than many of us expected. Our new manual should make our task easier and more enjoyable for everyone. Click here to get the book on Amazon.

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Militant Scientologists Gun Down 15 People in Shooting Spree

Last week, at a private event in New Jersey where ex-Scientologists gathered to air their grievances about the Church of Scientology, three masked gunmen burst into the room and opened fire, killing everyone present. Most newspapers have criticized the ex-Scientologists for holding the meeting. They should have kept their grievances to themselves, said MSNBC. CNN and the NY Times said the ex-Scientologists knew how offensive any kind of criticism is to the Church, so they were asking for trouble.

The headline and the above paragraph are fiction. This was a way to illustrate how ridiculous it is for any non-Muslim to criticize anyone for holding a Muhammad cartoon contest.

In Islam, it is not okay to draw Muhammad or satirize Islam. Fine. Muslims shouldn't do it. But should that rule be applied to everyone, whether they are Muslim or not?

In the same way, if it is a sin for a Scientologist to criticize Scientology (and it is) a non-Scientologist can do it if they want to. We all know this. A person who is not a member of the religion can criticize it all they want. None of us are bound by the rules of a religion of which we're not a member. Obviously. Right? It should be obvious.

It used to be a Catholic rule that Catholics were not supposed to eat meat on Friday. In some places in the world, this rule is still in effect. Fine. Non-Catholics don't care, and don't worry about whether they eat meat or not on Fridays. But what if Catholics became offended when anyone ate meat on Fridays? What if they started killing non-Catholics who were found eating meat on Fridays? Would the pundits say the meat-eaters had it coming? Would they say that by having a hamburger barbeque in their backyard, they were obviously provoking the Catholics and got what they deserved? That would be ridiculous. Right?

What if they weren't just innocently and quite-by-accident having a hamburger barbeque, but knew Catholics didn't like it, and to prove they had the right to eat what they want, they went ahead and ate the burgers anyway? And then Catholics killed them for it? Now did they get what they deserved? Should they be criticized for provoking the Catholics? No. The Catholics are the ones to be criticized, and the rule that non-Catholics should follow Catholic rules — that is what should be criticized. Obviously.

What ought to be criticized is the Islamic rule that non-Muslims must follow Islamic rules.

This commentary is also posted on Inquiry Into Islam here for your sharing convenience.

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.

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What Does ISIS Hope to Achieve With Random Violence?

What is ISIS trying to accomplish with their seemingly random murders of non-Muslims like the recent attack in Vienna? This puzzled me for a long time. I know terrorism is supposed to scare people, but for what ultimate purpose? People will be scared for a while, and then normal life will resume. ISIS is not going to conquer Europe by killing a few people. What are they doing? They're obviously investing time and money to plan and carry out these attacks. Why?

The bigger goal, the central Islamic goal is to bring non-Muslims under the rule of Islamic law. That goal is laid out clearly and unmistakably in standard Islamic doctrine. But why does ISIS think that randomly blowing up and shooting infidels will achieve this?

The strategy ISIS and other orthodox Muslims are now following was laid out by by the late Sheikh Abu-Bakr Naji. His big insight was this: It is impossible now to achieve Islam's prime directive the traditional way, which was to invade countries and establish Islamic law by force. This method may have worked fine when non-Muslim countries were unconcerned with things happening in other parts of the world. Back in those days, using the traditional method, Islam successfully established most of the now-existing 56 Muslim countries. But these days non-Muslim countries are too powerful militarily and would stop it. Naji thought the Taliban did a great job setting up a true Islamic state, faithful to Islamic law, but look what happened: The "crusader nations" destroyed it.

Osama bin Laden thought he would make the cowardly infidels succumb to fear with a few very big violent attacks, such as 9/11. But that strategy failed. It only strengthened non-Muslim resolve and triggered a massive retaliation.

So in 2005, Naji proposed a new strategy: He said the way to ultimately accomplish the prime directive is to fight the entire non-Muslim world everywhere at once, and to create an increasing occurrence of ever-more-violent events so non-Muslims everywhere would feel insecure and would eventually live in constant fear of violent death. They would lose trust in their government's ability to protect them. They would become exhausted from insecurity and fear, and would then be willing to embrace Islamic rule just to make the violence stop and to be able to live in some sort of peace.

In an article about the Friday 13th attack in Paris (in 2015), the New York Times quoted a 42 year-old French accountant: "I feel sickened, angry," he said. Coming so soon after the attacks the previous January, he said, "It is starting to be too much." This struck me as an expression of exactly the state of mind Naji was talking about.

In order to accomplish frequent attacks, Naji said Muslims must create bases of operations inside the non-Muslim nations. That means Muslim immigration is necessary, coupled with the Muslims' refusal to integrate into the non-Muslim society, leaving areas of Muslim-only populations (what many have called no-go zones) within non-Muslim countries. This way, terrorism operations could be organized and carried out more effectively.

ISIS and other Islamic groups have embraced this strategy worldwide.

Muslim immigration into non-Muslim countries has increased, especially with the new influx of refugees (created by ISIS). And no-go zones are being created in most non-Muslim countries. The number of violent events is accelerating. We in the West usually only hear about the very large events, but constant random killing of non-Muslims is happening all over the world now, as chronicled by thereligionofpeace.com. A general feeling of insecurity is increasing.

But ultimately, I believe this strategy can only fail. The people in Western nations are not as weak or as easily cowed as we may appear. They are mistaking a reluctance to fight with an unwillingness to defend ourselves — a mistake they will pay dearly for. We are nice people, for the most part, and we bend over backwards to give people the benefit of the doubt, but when we understand what is really happening, we suddenly and completely change our tune. Look what France's response was to its 2015 jihad attacks: They immediately bombed the hell out of ISIS strongholds, closed their borders, arrested 104 suspected jihadis, and are shutting down the orthodox mosques in France.

People in the West are like the little old man being harassed and taunted by the punks in this video. He just wanted them to go away so he could go on about his day, but when he realized they were not going to leave him alone, he knocked them out.

That's why all over Europe (and Canada and Australia) there have been protests against the influx of refugees — partly out of a new understanding of the facts surrounding Muslim immigration — it produces more rapes, more criminal activity, and in the process of trying to create Muslim-only areas, non-Muslims are forced out by constant harassment. The trend is toward a growing resistance to Muslim immigration.

We can look at Flight 93 on 9/11 for a good illustration of how people in the West change their stance from relatively passive to ready to fight. The jihadis on board all the planes that day told their passengers to stay calm, and everything was going to be all right. But the people aboard Flight 93 found out about the other planes. And once they understood what the hijackers' real intentions were, they attacked and stopped the plane from reaching its destination.

Like the people on Flight 93, our fellow non-Muslims may only need accurate information. We need to share with our fellow non-Muslims what ISIS plans on doing. It will create a resolve to thwart them.

The above explanation of Naji's strategy is summarized from an article by Amir Taheri. Read his article here: The Jihadis' Master Plan to Break Us.

Read more about Naji's strategy: The Management of Savagery.

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Oops! Not on Sale Yet

Yesterday we posted the great news that the Kindle version of Getting Through is available and on sale. Several people wrote to us saying the links didn't work, and the Kindle version is not on sale. 

Turns out, Amazon rescheduled the sale to November 24th! It's apparently against the rules to put it on sale until 30 days after the original release of a Kindle book. 

We're sorry to tease you like that! We will post something about it when it is ACTUALLY on sale. 

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No One Would Listen

If you haven't read the powerful book, Night, by Elie Wiesel, you really should. It is his account of what happened to him during WWII. He was a young teen living in a small village in Hungary when, in 1942, the Hungarian police arrived to announce that all foreign Jews had to leave. The police loaded them all into trains and took them away.

The people in the town were disturbed, of course. It was a sad day. But after a few months, the memory began to fade, and life eventually returned to normal. They felt they were far enough removed from the war that it would end before it ever came to their remote village.

Then one day, one of those foreign Jews found his way back to the village. His name was Moishe. He was an old man, but the young Elie Wiesel had known him fairly well. Moishe had an extraordinary story to tell. He said when the trainload of Jews crossed the border into Polish territory, the Gestapo loaded them into trucks and took all the Jews into a forest where they were forced to dig huge trenches, and then they were all shot! Moishe himself was shot in the leg and left for dead. But he escaped and had been struggling to get back to the little village so he could warn people of what happened. He was urging everyone to flee; to get away before the Germans came.

He went "from one Jewish house to the next," wrote Elie Wiesel, "telling his story..." And he repeatedly and urgently told his story at the synagogue.

But nobody believed him.

They thought he must have lost his mind. Why would the Germans just kill Jews like that? Germany was a modern, industrialized, enlightened country. They wouldn't simply murder people so heartlessly and for no reason. Moishe must have lost his mind.

Moishe was insistent. He begged people to listen to him. He cried. He pleaded. But not one person believed him. They didn't want to believe him, and that's a formidable barrier to communication.

Our message — that what is written in Islamic texts is dangerous to non-Muslims — is also something many people do not want to believe. The implications are too heavy. The people of Elie's village didn't want to contemplate what it would mean if Moishe's story was true. It would mean tragedy and heartache and a loss of faith in humanity. It would mean a drastically different future for everyone. If they believed Moishe, the wise course of action would be to immediately pack up or sell everything they own and move somewhere they'd never been before. They'd have to start over. The journey would be fraught with uncertainty and danger. Most of them had lived their whole lives in that little village.

But they had another option, didn't they? They could explain away Moishe's terrifying story. They could decide there must be some other explanation.

That's what we run into also, isn't it? People are desperately trying to explain it away. If it's true that the doctrines of Islam are dangerous to non-Muslims, we should all drop what we're doing and address it. What's the point of going on about our lives, as they did in Elie's village, if it will all go terribly wrong in a few years? No, there would be no return to normal. If someone truly and fully grasps the real situation, they're in a whole new world, and the "important goals" they were busy trying to accomplish up until now would be abruptly abandoned in order to handle this new (and far more pressing) reality.

But they have another option, don't they? They can decide there must be some other explanation. You must not understand it correctly. You must be taking the Koranic passages out of context. Muslims who believe in Islamic doctrines must be a very small minority. There must be some other explanation.

I invite you to read Night and think about this: What would you have done if you were in Moishe's situation? Do you think you could have gotten someone to believe you? How would you get through to people? Or would you have given up, as Moishe did, and leave them all to their fate?

In 1944, the German Army arrived at Elie's village and immediately initiated new policies to limit freedoms for Jews. The noose closed in tighter and tighter, one policy at a time, until one day all the Jews of the village were imprisoned in a ghetto and ordered to board the transport trains. People were terrified. What did this mean? They were busy in Elie's house frantically packing up food for the trip when Moishe came up to the front door and shouted, "I warned you!" Then he turned and left without waiting for anyone to respond.

It was too late to do anything about it. They were transported to Auschwitz, and all of them suffered terrible, unbelievable physical and psychological torment. Most of them ended up dead.

If Moishe had been able to make people believe him, everyone in the village would have had plenty of time to flee.

Let's not repeat the same mistake. Let's get through. Not with force. Not with crying or pleading or intensity. Let's find out what allows our message to penetrate, and let's use it with ever-growing skill. If you need help, it is available here: Tools.

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.

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The Importance of Blasphemy

The following was written by Daniel Greenfield, creator of the Sultan Knish blog. He makes a vital point: We need to allow blasphemy. The only religion threatening violence against blasphemers is Islam, and so if we wish to keep the freedom of expression which is so vital to all the other freedoms we cherish, blaspheming against Islam is not just a good idea, but necessary. 

As a deeply religious person, I have no fondness for blasphemy. My religion and its holy books are sacred to me. And I understand perfectly well why a Muslim would not relish a cartoon of a naked Mohammed.

But the debates over freedom of speech and the sensitivity of religious feelings also miss the point.

Blasphemy is the price we pay for not having a theocracy. Muslims are not only outraged but baffled by the Mohammed cartoons because they come from a world in which Islamic law dominates their countries and through its special place proclaims the superiority of Islam to all other religions.

Almost all Muslim countries are theocracies of one sort or another as a legacy of the Islamic conquests which Islamized them.

Egyptian President Sisi’s gesture of attending a Coptic mass was so revolutionary because it challenged the idea that Egyptian identity must be exclusively Islamic.

And Egypt is far from the most hard line of Islamic countries in the Middle East, despite a brief takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of Obama’s Arab Spring.

In a theocracy, not only is government Islamic from the top down, but society is also Islamic from the bottom up.

Citizenship is linked to religion and even in countries such as Egypt, where non-Muslims may be citizens, there are fundamental restrictions in place that link Islamic identity to Egyptian citizenship. For example, Egyptian Muslims who attempt to convert to Christianity have found it extremely difficult to have the government recognize their change of religion by issuing them new identification cards.

While we may think of blasphemy in terms of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, each religion is mutually blasphemous.

Muslims argue that the West should “respect prophets” by outlawing insults to Mohammed and a panoply of prophets gathered from Judaism and Christianity. But the Islamic view of Jesus is equally blasphemous to Christianity. And Islam considers Christianity’s view of Jesus to be blasphemous.

If we were to truly prosecute blasphemy, the legal system would have to pick a side between the two religions and either prosecute Christians for blaspheming against Islam or Muslims for blaspheming against Christianity. And indeed in Muslim countries, Christians are frequently accused of blasphemy.

Malaysia’s blasphemy laws were used to ban Christians from employing the word “Allah” for god and to seize children’s books depicting Noah and Moses. The reason for seizing the children’s books was the same as the reason for the attack on Charlie Hebdo; both were featuring cartoons of prophets.

While Charlie Hebdo pushed the outer limits of blasphemy, every religion that is not Islam, and even various alternative flavors of Islam, are also blasphemous.

It isn’t only secularist cartoonists who blaspheme against Islam.

“Mohammed seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure,” St. Thomas Aquinas wrote. Maimonides called him a madman.

To Bill Donohue, there may be a world of difference between Charlie Hebdo and Aquinas, but not to a Muslim.

In a multi-religious society, in which every religion has its own variant theological streams, the right to blaspheme is also the right to believe. Liberal theology can contrive interchangeable beliefs which do not contradict or claim special knowledge over any other religion. But traditionalist faiths are exclusive.

Everyone’s religion is someone else’s blasphemy. If we forget that, we need only look to Saudi Arabia, where no other religion is allowed, as a reminder.

Muslims who question freedom of speech are not calling for a special status for all religions, but only for their religion. They don’t intend to censor their own Hadiths which claim that Jesus will return and break the cross or that the apocalypse will climax with Muslims exterminating the Jews. Their objections aren’t liberal, but exclusively theocratic. They want a blasphemy law that exclusively revolves around them.

Islam relates to other religions on its terms. It grants special treatment to Christianity and Judaism, despite nevertheless persecuting them, because of their relationship to Islam. It persecutes other religions even more severely because of their greater distance from Islam. Islamic theocracies are not respectful of religion, but respectful of Islam and disrespectful of all other religions.

Religious people need not embrace the extremes of French secularism or the anti-religious positions of the ACLU to see that some distance between religion and state is a good thing for both. A separation between religion and state should not mean compulsory secularism, but at the same time it avoids the religious tests for office which existed in colonial times in states with established churches that banned Catholics, Quakers and Jews, among others, from holding political office.

A neutral state allows us to believe what we please. Islamic efforts on blasphemy however warp us all around the theology of Islam.

When governments prosecute tearing the Koran or drawing offensive cartoons under hate crime laws, they are eroding the separation between state and mosque. Their efforts, even if well intentioned, lead inevitably to a theocracy which not only hurts critics of Islam, but destroys the religious freedom of all religions.

The legal distinction between secular blasphemy and interreligious disdain disappears in a theocracy. Each religion has beliefs that offend the other, actively or passively. When one belief becomes supreme, then religious freedom vanishes, as it has throughout the Muslim world where the practice of Christianity and Judaism are governed by how closely Muslims choose to be offended at other religions.

While some religious people may take issue with the celebration of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, equating them with such things as the infamous “Piss Christ,” there’s a fundamental difference between blasphemy against the innocent and the guilty.

Piss Christ or a museum which exhibited photos of naked women dressed in Jewish ritual garments are committed against the unresisting, making them the theological equivalent of spiteful vandalism. There are no Jews or Christians murdering artists or bombing museums. By attempting to enforce the theocracy of blasphemy laws, Muslims made the Mohammed cartoons into a symbol of free speech.

It was not the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, who specialized in offending all religions, who made their Mohammed cartoons into a symbol. It was their Muslim enemies who did it by killing them. It is intellectually dishonest for Muslims to create martyrs and then complain about their martyrdom.

Blasphemy against Christianity and Judaism fizzles because the lack of a violent response makes those responsible seem like bullies. Instead of revealing flaws in those religions, works like Piss Christ or Monster Mohel reveal the flaws in their makers. Their attempts at blasphemy prove self-destructive.

Muslim violence against the Mohammed cartoons however turns them into the bullies. The Hebdo cartoons did no damage to Christianity or Judaism. They did a great deal of damage to Islam, not because they were well done, but because Islam is shot through with violent anger and insecurity.

The spiritual power of religion balances between violence and non-violence. Most religions believe that there is a time to fight, but only Islam believes in violence as the first and final religious solution.

Mohammed cartoons exist because of the Islamic inability to cope with a non-theocratic society. Islamic Cartoonophobia is not only a danger to cartoonists. It’s a threat to all of our religious freedoms.

Written by Daniel Greenfield, originally published here: The Importance of Blasphemy.

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People Should Be Able to Say What They Wish Without Being Killed For It

“This has become the flashpoint for the defense of the freedom of speech,” said Robert Spencer at the recent Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest. “These cartoons are offensive to Islam, and there is a death penalty for those who blaspheme against Muhammad. The jihadis believe that these cartoons cross the line, and those who draw them and publicize them have to be killed.

“If we believe in free speech in a free society, then we have to stand up for the right of people to offend Muslims or even subject Islam to mockery. If it were anything else, it would be the same,” he said.

Spencer said he thought some of the cartoons were “in poor taste.”

“But that’s not the point,” he said. “The point is that there are people who can say what they wish without being killed for it.

“To say that we will succumb to violent intimidation and allow ourselves to be silent in the face of it is just to encourage more violent intimidation.

“Either we knuckle under or we stand. And we are standing.”

Read more at Texas Terror: Inside Event Targeted by ISIS.

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What Does Niceness Tell You About Someone's Goals or Plans?

One of the employees at the company where I work is a man named Muhammad. He is originally from Ghana but he speaks excellent English. He's a really nice man. He works in a different department, but we have brief interactions once in awhile. He is helpful. Kind. Always quick to say hello and smile. I've talked to him briefly a few times, but earlier today we were alone in the break room and we got to talking about a wine tasting taking place nearby. I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn more about him (he doesn't know I know anything about Islam), so I asked him, "Do you drink?"

"No, never," he said.

"Have you ever tried it?"

"No, never in my life. I'm Muslim and we don't drink." He thought for a second and then he said, "Well, some of my friends drink, but they're not supposed to. When they do, I don't do it with them."

His answer seemed to indicate that perhaps all his friends were Muslims. So, being the curious type, I asked him, "Do you have any non-Muslim friends?"

Without any seeming embarrassment or hesitation, he said, "No."

So far, this was a perfectly pleasant conversation, with no defensiveness on his part or aggression on my part. Just two people chatting.

I had to get up and go do something. When I came back, another man was talking to Muhammad, and I overheard Muhammad say, "I will do it for one of my children."

I asked him, "How many kids do you have?"

He said, "Thirteen."

I wasn't sure I heard him right, so I said, "Thirteen?!"

He looked very proud and nodded yes. He is 39 years old. It has been a very long time since I've met someone with thirteen children. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever met anyone with that many children.

Of course, all this got me to thinking. He must be somewhat devout (orthodox) if he doesn't drink and has no non-Muslim friends. Those are two clear Muslim rules (written in Islamic doctrine). I was wondering what he might be like if Muslims became the majority here in America (I was thinking of Raymond Ibrahim's Rule of Numbers). Would Muhammad stop being nice? Would he be willing to threaten me with death if I didn't convert to Islam? I don't know for certain.

Even a genuinely nice person who grew up as a Muslim might impose the choice of conversion or death (or dhimmitude), even if he and I had a cordial and pleasant relationship up to that point, because after all, if he is truly devout, he already feels quite sure I'm doomed to eternal torture in hell. But if he could force me to convert, or scare me into converting, he might think he gave me a chance to make it to paradise (which would, from his point of view, be a nice thing for him to do for me, and plus, of course, it is also a clear Muslim rule, written in Islamic doctrine that when Muslims hold the power, they should offer this choice to non-Muslims).

One of the objections in our Answers to Objections series is, "My friend is a Muslim and he's really nice." People have said this to me and I've heard from many people over the years who have heard this objection from their friends and family. The statement is usually spoken like it invalidates the facts about Islamic doctrine.

And I could say it myself: Most of the Muslims I've ever gotten to know have been very nice people. But it has also become clear to me over the years that "niceness" doesn't really mean anything. Salespeople can be very nice. Politicians are often nice. Sociopaths can be nice. A lot of people who knew Ted Bundy thought he was nice. The same was true of Adolf Hitler.

Niceness doesn't reveal anything about ideology or intent. Niceness tells us nothing about a person's goals or plans. When we are talking about the problem of Islam, niceness is literally irrelevant to the issue. Islamic doctrine says what it says, and Muslims are committed to applying that doctrine in their lives or they aren't. Some of those who are committed to applying the doctrine are nice and some are not. Niceness doesn't tell us anything of real importance.

Let's point this out to everyone who brings it up in our presence. And let's remove this barrier to seeing clearly. Once it is removed, the person you're talking to may discover that she or he really knows nothing else about Islam. And that is a great place to begin a real conversation about the problem of Islam.

This was posted on Inquiry Into Islam for your sharing pleasure here.

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.

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Three Things About Islam

A group of activists who call themselves The White Roses created a video entitled Three Things About Islam. The authors write, "Parts of the text (of our video) have been strongly inspired by the website, http://www.citizenwarrior.com." In case you haven't seen it, you can watch it on YouTube: Three Things About Islam. It's a great 8-minute introduction to Islam for your friends and family.

We've posted the video on Inquiry Into Islam here so you can share the video with your friends and family on a site that will give them more information about Islam.

Now, more than ever before, more people are willing to discover the true nature of Islam. This video can help.

You can read more about the video here:

About the Video "Three Things About Islam"

Full Transcript for the Video "Three Things About Islam"

And the good people at Islam Exposed have created a detailed list of links and references to support the statements in this video. See it here: 3 Things You Should Know About Islam.

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News Plus the Question Why

I posted this awhile ago, but since the much more recent story about a video encouraging Muslims to start forest fires got me thinking about it, I thought I would re-post this. It is a great way to work some good information about Islam into a casual and innocent, non-confrontational conversation (as part of our mission to awaken our fellow citizens about Islam):

I did something tonight that worked pretty well. I was talking to a man I work with. We haven't talked much because he works in another department, but we get along great. He was telling me about camping on the other side of the mountains last week, and that they couldn't have a campfire because of fire danger (there have been several forest fires around here in the last month).

This seemed like such a great opening, I couldn't help myself. I said, "Just yesterday I saw a video of a former NSA official talking about forest fires. Apparently, when they killed Osama bin Laden, they also captured a bunch of computers and stuff, and they've found out al Qaeda had plans to inflict economic damage on the United States with forest fires. And already they've busted two al Qaeda operatives in California actually doing it! It's a great way for al Qaeda to harm our economy without costing themselves anything."

He said, "That sucks!"

But I had been thinking about asking my next question sometime as an experiment, and this seemed like such a perfect opportunity. So I asked, "Do you know why they want to harm the U.S.?"

He said, "Well, we haven't really been very cool to them in their homelands. It seems like a lot of Arabs probably hate us."

"It's not just Arabs," I said. "Orthodox Muslims all over the world, including some homegrown Muslims — people born in the USA — want to destroy America. It's what they're supposed to do if they are really believing Muslims. It says in Islamic doctrine that they're supposed to fight to impose Islamic law on everyone eventually. And they're at war with anyone who's not following Islamic law, which of course, includes the United States more than anywhere."

"What about all this stuff about our troops in Arabia?" he said, but not really in a challenging way. It almost seemed like he wanted to know what I would say about that.

"It's a pretext," I said. "A Muslim trying to follow Islamic teachings really strictly is supposed to follow Muhammad's example, and that's exactly what the al Qaeda dudes are doing. And Muhammad always had an excuse to attack non-Muslims. Any excuse would do. If we met every one of their demands, they would find some other excuse; they would not leave us alone. They'd attack us because we don't cover our women or something."

He seemed to accept this. He said, "And they'd probably just see us as weak and get more aggressive."

"Yeah, probably," I said, nodding. Now, at this point, the conversation felt complete. I'd gotten a little solid information into his mind without much resistance and I didn't want to "sell past the close," so I let it drop right there, following the principle of small bits and long campaigns. Someone else came into the room, and I brought up a different topic. I said to both of them, "Did you hear about the guy who proposed marriage by faking a car accident?" And we started talking about that.

I think these small conversations, sprinkled in with normal conversation — and as much as possible, making it seem like normal conversation — are really valuable. It helps change beliefs gently, and that's probably the best way to change the beliefs of another person. And this "technique" (if we can call it that) of telling some interesting bit of Islamic-related news, followed by the question, "Do you know why they're doing that?" might be a useful format or blueprint for getting some good information into the minds of our fellow non-Muslims.

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In July, Orthodox Muslims Were Urged to Start Forest Fires

On July 26, 2020, the Al-Hayat Media Center uploaded an animated video titled "Incite the Believers" to its Telegram channel. The narrator called upon Muslims living in non-Muslim lands to avenge their Muslim brothers using whatever weapons are available to them and to carry out jihad. Follow the link below if you want to see the video.

The narrator of the film said Muslims should use commonly available items to carry out their attacks and specifically gave the example of fire. He elaborated that fires such as forest fires have killed many non-Muslims and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. The video encourages Muslims to start fires in a fashion that doesn’t draw attention to themselves and to dispose of all forms of evidence as they leave. The video urged viewers to set fire to forests, factories, agricultural fields, and buildings.

The video showed a man marking a location in California on a map to set ablaze.

The above is excerpted from a longer article at MEMRI. Read the whole article and watch the video here:

Pro-ISIS Media Center Urges Muslim In The West To Set Forests, Factories, Agricultural Fields, And Buildings On Fire

MEMRI translates television and video clips from the Muslim world into English.

Read more about the video from Homeland Security Today:

ISIS Video Urges Arson as ‘Five-Star’ Terror Tactic, Shows California Burning 

According to Wikipedia, the Al-Hayat Media Center is the media wing of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. It was established in mid-2014 by ISIS, which targets Western audiences and produces material in English, German, Russian and French. Read the Wikipedia page: Al-Hayat Media Center.

This call to destroy non-Muslims is consistent with Islamic doctrine and Islam's Prime Directive.

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What I Have Learned Since 9-11

I was on my way back from a vacation when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. My wife and I were listening to music on a CD and enjoyed our ride home, and knew nothing about it. When we got home, we listened to our messages. The first two were from family members hysterically crying, "We've been attacked! America is at war!"

My first thought, of course, was the ever-eloquent, "What the fuck!?!"

We watched the news, and I was baffled. Why would anyone do such a thing? I was about as ignorant about this as someone can be. But I'm a learner. It's what I like to do. And since that day, I've learned a lot.

I learned that this was not an isolated incident. Attacks had become more frequent and more deadly over the years. I just hadn't noticed.

And I eventually learned that this is not just a problem of generic "terrorism," but a global movement based on teachings from the Koran and the example of Muhammad. I learned that Islam is a unique religion because it's a political system and a system of law as well as being what most people would call a religion. Its goal is world domination, it has explicit permission for (and approval of) violence in its holy books, and it is intolerant of non-Muslims. Its laws even include legally-imposed discrimination against non-Muslims (and all women). (Read more about that here.)

I learned that an almost-uninterrupted jihad has been waged against non-Muslims for 1400 years. The attacks are near constant. Most of us don't see it as a war. We see isolated attacks. If you take in the whole global view, however, or listen to the point of view of an orthodox Muslim or read this, you will see it for what it is: A global war — orthodox Muslims against everybody else.

I also learned that one of the main reasons democracies have so much trouble dealing with Jihadis is because of an important conflict within democracies. Specifically, most people in the free world believe 1) everyone has a right to worship as they wish, and 2) discrimination of any kind is wrong. These are important foundational principles of liberal democracies around the world.

Why is this a problem? Because the simplest way to deal with Islam would be to discriminate against it. In other words, to openly admit Islam is unique (because of its political aspirations and religious duty to overthrow all other forms of law and government), and stop all concessions to Islam and roll back any concessions already made.

We "can't do that" because it violates important values of our societies. Or does it necessarily? This dialog needs to happen and solutions need to be created for it. But of course, that can't happen as long as the majority of people in free countries remain ignorant of the most elementary facets of Islam. And it's not just ignorance. Many people have a real resistance to hearing anything about it because even talking about it seems to violate the principles of decency and kindness!

So the final thing I've learned is that the solution to this problem starts with a grassroots movement: Those who know something about Islam's dangers to the free world must talk to people who don't, and successfully educate them. Once enough people are educated, national conversations can happen that could result in new, carefully-crafted policies that retain our democratic freedoms while limiting the destructive and insidious encroachment of orthodox Islam.

Please add your comments below. What have you learned since 9-11?

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.

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