IF YOUR GOAL was the eventual overthrow of the government and establishing Shari’a Law as the law of the land, but you didn’t have a large enough majority to do it by voting or by force, how could you do it? One good way would be to keep pressing for small, incremental concessions. And when you gain one, to hold it, and try to gain another. And if you were using this strategy, what is the first concession you’d try to gain? I think it would be to establish laws and cultural norms that prohibit criticism of your group or its goals in speech or writing.
This could effectively prevent an organized effort to block the next concessions you try to gain. I believe that is exactly what Muslims are trying to do. Here are a few recent examples:
1. Giving in to political pressure by Muslims and their supporters, a National Counterterrorism Center memorandum prohibited the use of terms such as “Jihad,” “Islamist,” and “mujahedeen.”
2. The United Nations General Assembly is considering a resolution sponsored by the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference in an attempt to “mainstream†prohibitions on any speech that could be considered critical of Islam.
3. Told by Muslims it could incite acts of violence, Random House decided not to publish a book on Mohammad — after it had already bought the rights. All three are Muslim attempts to accomplish the same goal: To hamper a non-Muslim’s ability to criticize Islam publicly. Every totalitarian state that ever ruled a nation has done the same thing, and did it first. If you can’t criticize something in public, you are left with your private thoughts and your few intimate friends. Are you the only ones who think this way? You don’t know. Silencing criticism isolates the dissenters. And it prevents important public discussions from taking place. Silencing criticism makes it possible for other concessions to be gained without effective opposition.
Earnest Muslims are using every method they can think of to shut down criticism and free speech. They legally lobby politicians and media outlets, pressuring them to silence or fire someone who criticized Islam. They slander anyone who criticizes Islam by calling them ” Islamophobic” or ” racist.” They bring lawsuits against people even if they know they will not win because the bad press is damaging enough. And they riot in the streets. After a Dutch newspaper published a cartoon depicting Mohammad, Muslims rioted all over Europe, leaving 187 people dead and making publishers think twice about publishing something critical to Islam again. And this aggressive religion will keep pushing unless we stop it.
A sufficient number of them will not try to be fair, will not try to “assimilate” into the European or American culture, and will never let up on the pressure to take over. It is their religious duty. The way to stop its spread without being cruel or violent is to establish the policy: No more concessions to Islam. I once had a job working for a seminar company. My job was to call people who had taken an introductory seminar and convince them to take the main seminar we were selling. I was given a stack of cards participants had filled out at the introductory seminar and I was told how to handle the calls: “If they give you a definite ‘no,’ throw the card away. Otherwise put it here and we’ll call them again later.” And we would keep calling these people, harassing them for years because those people were too nice to simply say, “I am not interested.” People would say, “I don’t know, let me think about it.” They would say all kinds of things other than “no.” I could hear in their voices that most of them really wanted to say no, but they wouldn’t. I felt sorry for these people, and yet I couldn’t help but think they were stupid. Why not be firm? Why not be honest? It would save them a lot of stress. If only they knew my instructions, they would have said no firmly right up front.
But the thing is, most of us are used to dealing with people who will not exploit our “niceness.” We deal with fair, considerate people almost all the time, and our ways of dealing with fair people work very well. I’m assuming you are a fair person. What do you do? If someone gave you a “socially acceptable” excuse like “I’ll think about it,” you would let them bow out, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t ignore their signals and keep pushing. But here’s what we all have to learn sooner or later: For people who ignore your signals and keep pushing, you had better develop a different approach — an approach with more firmness and strength, an approach that protects yourself and defends your interests. The same goes for dealing with aggressive vacuum-cleaner salesmen. Have they ever come to your door? If you show the slightest interest, you’ll be stuck talking to them until you say yes. They are relentless, and to deal with it, you had better be firm. If you say, “I’m busy right now,” they will say, “That’s okay, when would be a good time to come back?” Islam operates much the same, except on a much larger scale with a political agenda.
Islam is pressing for concessions constantly, trying to find the weaknesses, trying to find the cracks, the loopholes, and it will keep pushing until it accomplishes its goal: A world in which every country is ruled by Shari’a law. This is not one of those problems that will go away by itself. It is up to us to be firm. They are not going to stop on their own. They must be stopped by us.