Is Simple Attention the Islamists’ Greatest Enemy?
In a world paralyzed by political correctness and warped philosophies, attention is proving to be one of the greatest enemies of Islamist encroachment.
Consider the difference between pre- and post-September 11: A decade after the 9/11 jihad got the West’s attention, many people — perhaps not unlike yourself — have become aware of Islam and its doctrines, especially the “anti-infidel” ones, certainly many more people than before Sept. 11, 2001.
The result is that today, even nonviolent effronteries like the Ground Zero mosque – called by Newt Gingrich “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization” — create a stir, though they once would have passed unnoticed.
Here’s another, more personal, anecdote of how attention can backfire on Islamists (complete details here). After Seattle’s Everett Community College invited me to come and speak on May 5, one Jaffar (“Jeff”) Siddiqui, who has a long history of trying to quash free speech on Islam, began pressuring the college to cancel my talk, including by writing a letter — titled “Don’t Invite Bigots!” — to its president.
Likewise, the director of the radical Council on American-Islamic Relations Washington chapter, Arsalan Bukhari, asserted that “[i]nviting Raymond Ibrahim to give an alternative viewpoint on being Muslim is like inviting the KKK to speak about African American history.”
Then, the day before my talk, this same Bukhari wrote an op-ed in Seattle’s Herald arguing that “by inviting a known conspiracy theorist with a history of making unfounded claims about Islam, the college is doing a disservice to the public and risks creating a hostile learning environment for its students.” Also the day before the talk CAIR’s main headquarters issued a particularly nasty and accusatory press release that culminated as follows:
By issuing Mr. Ibrahim an invitation, giving him an audience, and in any way providing him a platform, Everett Community College is complicit in inflaming a tinder box of hate and violence against Islam and Muslims, and is abusing its public trust as a federally funded educational institution. Therefore, we urge the College to cease its promotion of bigotry and hate speech by rescinding its invitation to Raymond Ibrahim to speak on campus.
To CAIR’S chagrin, the college refused to cave in, pointing out that my appearance was “consistent with the belief that students be exposed to a variety of views.”
Now, consider how CAIR caused an otherwise local event to snowball into something detrimental to its cause — simply by complaining about it, that is, drawing attention to it:
For starters, much media attention followed — attention that would never have been if not for CAIR’s howling — including a featured story for MSNBC on whether Islam is a “Terror threat or peaceful religion?” The over 3,000 comments on this report alone reveal that, as “leftist” as MSNBC is, many of its readers are aware of the Islamist agenda; others wonder why CAIR is so scared of free speech.
Moreover, that CAIR cried wolf yet again — and was ignored — not only embarrassed but publicly belittled CAIR’s influence. A community college defying Islamist threats and intimidation must surely shine as an example for other institutions that may actually be interested in promoting diversity of views —institutions that would never have even known that bullies like CAIR could be so easily ignored, if not for all the attention CAIR itself created.
In short, politically active Islamists must walk a fine line, must choose their fights carefully: if they scream bloody murder to silence free speech — scream “racist,” “hater,” “Islamophobe” — they risk bringing unwanted attention that backfires on them; yet if they sit back and do nothing, they risk having more and more people speak up and expose them.
Either way — whether CAIR or its un-stifled opponents make the noise — the result is the same: Americans, wondering why Islam is always in the spotlight, begin inquiring; some become acquainted with reality, and go on to discuss it with friends and family.
The cycle of slow but steady awareness that first began when 9/11 got the world’s attention continues.
Because an enlightened, educated populace is the one of the best defenses to malevolence of the dark ages of islam. islam needs ignorance to grow. deny the food source and the disease should dry up.
On the other hand, mass distrubution of and training on AR-15 semi-automatics wouldn’t hurt. Want peace? Prepare for war.
From your lips to God’s ears! Democracy will ineluctably prevail if we refuse to abandon the relentless exercise of one of its bedrock tenets, “Give light, and the people will find their own way.”
Simple confrontation,(“The Koran says such and such.Do you endorse or renounce this?”)will force the eyes of the West open.
CAIR only has a year and a half left- until the next (GOP) President declares the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
We can hope
CAIR must be banned from the USA! We do not need an Islamist terrorist-supporting agitator group pretending to look out for Muslim Americans operating on the American soil. CAIR is not welcomed here. Ban them!
No, we do not even ban Neo-Nazi or KKK parties. We expose them. They deserve to be left alone and shown for what they are.
Agreed. I cant stand islam, but to ‘silence it’ like that only provided ammo to their ‘victim’ agruments. while muslims will never speak the truth they do offer much ammo against them as long as you are willing to listen. thais is why so many leftists andespecialli islam are hyper reactive to silence any and all counter opinions. they KNOW that if given the chance to speak and and actually debate they would loose hands down every time without question. censorship is the dicatorships best friend. islam and muslims are slaves, they know this, and infact love it and have no other desire but to enslave others. its better to just kill them off and let them die as slaves than force freedom on the slave mentality
Even worse, banning them would only produce a profusion of new groups springing up to take up the slack. There’s no shortage of funding coming from the ME for these groups and as the Holy Land Foundation trial ably demonstrated, there are ties between many of the groups.
What we need to do is keep them under tight surveillance and see who else they’re working with on their mission.
Exposing the thinking and words of CAIR and Islam in general should help illuminate what is at stake. You can’t believe in the supremacy of Islam and the US Constitution and the freedoms guaranteed by most state constitutions simultaneously.
Our country doesn’t need to be pulled into the dark ages by the mysogeny and totalotarianism of a caliphate. Islam is antithetical to our way of life here in America. That is a fact based upon the words and deeds of Muslims and our seminal documents that govern us here in the states.
There are many nations where Muslims can practice what they believe and they can do it in the US, as long as they recognize that Sharia is not our way and the Caliphate ain’t happening here. If that is unacceptable, you need to find another place to live. We are governed here by a different set of laws and we need not change them to suit Muslim tastes.
Islam quite effectively condemns itself whenever its teachings are brought to light.
If Mohammed did in fact exist, and did indeed SAY AND DO the very things THEY claim he did, then he was clearly a despicable form of evil that all good poeple would certainly reject, if they had a choice.
CAIR and the rest are terrorists, because Mohammed was a terrorist.
Keep the focus on their faith, and it implodes.
Threats and lies are their tools, all we have to do is speak the truth.
CAIR has attempted to use similar political tactics as other “civil rights” groups such as the use of the word “Islamaphobe”. Why doesn’t it work? The race card is easily the most powerful force in American politics, but the Islamists fail to successfully use this ploy.
Is it because we’re dealing with a religion as opposed to an ethnicity, and people get the difference?
It is not a religion…it is a political ideology and cult.
And calling one an islaophobe holds a much weight as calling a Repub a Rhino or a democrat a socialist.
A phobia is an unreasonable fear of something….let me tell you, if you do not fear the death, destruction and utter misery that follows Islam wherever it infests a society…you are either blind to the facts, or a liberal.
I have a healthy respect for anything that can kill me out of hand for seemingly nothing…and Islam’s hair trigger on being offended by literally everything and using that as an excuse to kill everyone they see at random is WHY people can easily be called islamaphobes.
Muslims should try to learn why people loathe their existence. As has been said before…Know Islam…Know violence and death. NO Islam…NO violence and death. It’s so simple really. They want us dead.
“The cycle of slow but steady awareness that first began when 9/11 got the world’s attention continues.”
A very positive and encouraging outlook but there is little evidence that there is increased awareness anywhere in the upper echelons of America’s law enforcement agencies, the top military brass, the Congress, with few exceptions, the Executive, the mainstream media or in foreign capitals around the world. There remains a very a long way to go.
Three cheers to CAIR.
I only heard about Raymond Ibrahim’s talk at Everett Community College because of the publicity created by CAIR’s whining. This gave me just enough time to reschedule my day in order to hear Ibrahim’s talk.
If you are interested in what holds the cult of Islam together, read my theory on “Islam is Fear” at: http://islamsfatalflaw.blogspot.com/ .
Notice how the Left has mostly stopped claiming that Conservatives, Christians, and Republicans are “conservative, right wing, fundamentalist religious fanatics” right after people started pointing out that described the Moslem terrorists better than it did the US “Right”?
I for one have to admit I haven’t. My impression has been that fanatical Islamists in the news get the simple descriptor “conservative”, which also happens to be the epithet of choice for actual conservatives. Unless our guys start criticizing Islam – then they’re “right wing”, which I guess is supposed to make us associate them with Hitler in our cognitive maps.
The other thing that I see from time to time is that an idea advanced by some Republican will be described as “more like the Taliban than America”, or something, apparently in all seriousness.
But no, what you’re describing appears to be more of a logical step in reasoning than the Left could ever take.
Mr. Ibrahim writes articles on the cruel persecution and suffering perpetrated by Muslims against non-Muslim innocents — and CAIR calls this “promotion of bigotry and hate speech”. Hate? CAIR is possessed with an all-consuming MURDEROUS hate for non-Muslims. And the goal of Muslim conquest of infidel America.
Council on American-Islamic Relations: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” – Omar Ahmad (CAIR co-founder).
Addressing a youth session at the 1999 Islamic Association for Palestine’s annual convention in Chicago, CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) founder Omar Ahmad praised suicide bombers who “kill themselves for Islam,”
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52184
I am deeply shocked and surprised that a school in the Seattle area did not immediately cave in when told they had invited a raaaaaciiiist to speak on campus. That’s very un-Seattle behavior.
Last Sunday there was an editorial in the paper written by a woman associated with the Muslim American Society. For every person who commented who actually knew something about Islam, someone else cried “racist” and said we didn’t, couldn’t know what we were talking about. That’s very Seattle.
So more power to Everett Community College. It was very brave, at least in this neighborhood, to stand up to CAIR.
Racist? How can anyone be racist against a religion/political system that follows a mad man who murdered, raped, and raided caravans named Muhammad?
Check all Mosques for hate speech against these United States, weapons, and C-4.
Thank you for supporting my freedom of speech.
“A community college defying Islamist threats and intimidation must surely shine as an example for other institutions…”
Now imagine our elected representatives, all 435 of them getting some needed backbone, spine, guts, balls to do the same. Rather than capitulate to this hysterical PC whining by the CAIR nuts. The FBI has taken notice,,,the IRS has taken notice. Now every muslim group should be prosecuted under the RICO Act as well as being terrorist fronts.
How many Nazis did we invite to speak at college campii during WW2?
Right…ZERO. Now why do we even have any muslim hate club within our borders.
Here is a copy of the Hamas Covenant, of 1988.
If you want to know whether a Muslim is an Islamist, all you have to do is invite the person to read the document. If that person does not immediately identify it as blasphemy, slander against Islam, and hirabah (unholy war — terrorism), that person is an Islamist.
I would like to see members of CAIR in the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt confronted with some of the many choice quotes from this document, and asked whether they agree with them.
Believe me, it’s been tried before. They have a million ways of weaseling out of it, up to and including saying that it doesn’t represent the mainstream view of Muslims on the ground and that they are not Muslim for promoting hate. This is of course a side point considering they continue their support of Hamas anyhow.
” A community college defying Islamist threats and intimidation must surely shine as an example for other institutions that may actually be interested in promoting diversity of views —institutions that would never have even known that bullies like CAIR could be so easily ignored, if not for all the attention CAIR itself created.”
Just curious, but have you been invited to speak at any of those public “Ivys” or the private Princetons, Yales, or how about Bizerkley? Until I finished your report I really expected the JC to cave in to CAIR and substitute the organization NAMBLA, picked as a replacement for the college’s tournament of ideas segment under higher education and the alternate life styles of the rich and famous.