Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald offers an alternate plan to dhimmi governing officials:
A state policy of trying in every way to accommodate Muslims, including the policy of not offending them — or rather, not doing anything that they could conceivably claim offends them — is madness. It is obvious that Muslim groups, Muslim spokesman, Muslim individuals, are trying to force the Western world not to see what is in front of it. When appeals to the Idols of the Age (“Everyone Wants the Same Thing,” “Everyone Is Exactly Alike”) don’t do it, other methods are chosen. These include murder of the outspoken (Pim Fortuyn or Theo Van Gogh) which unfortunately tends to make some Infidels suspicious of Muslims. It includes threats of murder, which unfortunately do not always work (Geert Wildres, Ayaan Hirsi Ali). It includes lawsuits and threats of lawsuits, including those the State brings (the trial of Oriana Fallaci). It includes outrage and hints of economic repercussions (Arab governments might pull those glossy ads), which can cause critics to lose their jobs (Will Cummins at The Telegraph).
The main thing is to shut those Infidels up, to force them to watch every word.
But this is madness. This is not only wrong, this is the very opposite of what should be done. Everywhere Infidels should demonstrate, repeatedly, ostentatiously, that they have studied the Qur’an and Hadith, and that they have read a sufficient amount about Jihad-conquest and the subjugation of non-Muslims, over 1350 years, so that they cannot be fooled. The mere presence of a single Infidel who knows what he is talking about at one of those Mosque Outreach sessions, can destroy its value to the Muslims who are attempting to inveigle the unwary Infidels. Knowledge is everything; knowledge and the ability to articulate. Those Infidels who wish to carefully regulate the language in which Islam is discussed, because they have been told to do so by apologists for Islam (in many cases, Muslim propagandists and agitators; in other cases, non-Muslim collaborators; in still other cases, simpletons in positions of authority) are simply choosing to deny what Islam teaches, what attitudes it clearly inculcates, and what has been the perceived behavior of Muslims, animated by the immutable texts, from Spain to the East Indies over 1350 years. One can ignore all that and keep hoping and wishing, or one can decide to pull the pillow off of one’s head and face the day, however disturbing it may be.
The most intelligent thing to do is for Muslims to be put constantly on the defensive, to be constantly made aware that non-Muslims no longer will accept the nonsense about a “religion.” Call it a belief-system with elements of worship and a great deal of everything else — a political system, a social system — one which is based on a clear division of the Universe between Believer and Infidel. Let Islam be criticized, let Islam be mocked. There will be a gigantic campaign, by Muslims — there is such a campaign, uncoordinated, spontaneous, by all kinds of Muslims everywhere, to protect the Faith from those who do not discuss it exactly as Believers think they should — which is exactly in the way that Believers do. But as Ali Sina says, constant mockery, constant awareness of Islam as a totalitarian system, an awareness displayed on every occasion by Infidels, will force certain changes, not least among Muslims of good will and open mind — or at least stop the onward march of Islam.
Muslims are intent on remaining in the Lands of the Infidels and indeed on swelling their own ranks and power until they will not have to worry about what Infidels think at all. But at this point they still have to worry. They have to worry about whether or not the Infidels will come to their senses sufficiently, will look into history, and will look simply around the world to see how non-Muslims are treated in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in Iran and Sudan, in Pakistan and Bangladesh and Indonesia, in Malaysia and Afghanistan, and everywhere that Islam prevails and has not been systematically contained either by local despots (Ataturk in Turkey, Bourguiba in Tunisia) and their successors, or opposed by a very large and powerful non-Muslim population (the Maronites in Lebanon until recent decades).
Tell the truth about Islam. Tell it all the time, in different keys. Show that you know what you are talking about. Modify, at times, the way you tell those truths to fit the audience you have, but keep it up. That is the way to make Infidels safer. And it is also the way to hold out hope for those people who, born into Islam, yet not liking it, wishing to escape from it, secretly hope the Infidels will limit its influence, will force changes upon it or at least the perceived need for change to the teachings, and thus the texts, of Islam.
To limit what is said, to be so solicitous of those who do not wish us well, who wish us, our laws, our customs, our understandings, our freedoms, ill, who in many cases are delighted with whatever suffering they can inflict on Infidels anywhere, is crazy. We should worry not about offending Muslims, but about whether or not we have effectively conveyed to them that we understand Islam, and that we understand that it is only those Muslims who do not accept its full teachings — that is, the bad Muslims — with whom we can conceivably coexist. And that furthermore we cannot always tell which Muslim is a lax, unobservant, “bad” Muslim, and which is not, nor which children or grandchildren of “bad” Muslims will revert, for one reason or another, to the original, full-bodied, dangerous version.
To engage in self-censorship, to prevent Islam from being freely discussed using terms that are neither obscene nor vicious but only, unfortunately, grimly accurate, to worry about offending Muslim sensibilities, which only promotes (in advance of and in the absence of Muslim rule) the dhimmi mentality, the very theme of Bat Ye’or’s Eurabia — all this will do nothing to protect Infidels. It will do nothing to modify the beliefs of Muslims, nor to encourage the camp of those Muslims who wish that other Muslims would recognize the dangers of what Islam teaches, and work to somehow modify it. If Infidels will not tell the truth about Islam, those would-be “reformers” within Islam will have no one to point to, no way of creating the necessary atmosphere of defensiveness and alarm which is the only thing likely to force at least some Muslims to realize, and then to admit to, some of the dangers and faults of Islam.