A Counter-Jihad phone app?

A few doors down, I lodged a posting yet again recommending that those concerned about Islam in the West do something about creating an Anti-Islam Manual (A.I.M.) in the form of an app available on all devices (phone and computer most prominently, of course).

The main purpose of this A.I.M. app would be as a handy resource to use when engaging with all those Westerners around us in the West (sadly, still a vast majority, it seems) who have a pleasantly uninformed -- and/or an annoyingly misinformed -- understanding of the problem of Islam.

Among the multitude (if not plethora) of subcategories about which an A.I.M. would provide compelling data would be, as I wrote in that other posting a few days ago, the subcategory of "Muslims faking hate crimes against them".

I gave one example in that posting:

Finland: Muslim migrant politician admits he fabricated story about man who told him “go back to Somalia”

Since I posted that, several others have come to my attention, fairly easy to find (but not as ready and easy as it would be if already available in an app grouped together as a subcategory, to be accessed immediately at the push of a button or swipe of a finger):

Muslim arrested for throwing eggs at a Jewish woman and at a Jewish synagogue in Brooklyn

Germany: Muslim migrant soldier invents story of Germans kicking him and saying “Only Germans should wear uniform”

Minnesota: Man accused of assaulting Muslim says he has video proof attack never happened

Wisconsin: Muslima who claims discrimination because of her hijab exposed as a fraud

And, just now, days after I posted this, I noticed this headline, also clearly part of this subcategory of the problem:

UK: Man who used sledgehammer to smash windows of mosques turns out to be Shia targeting Sunnis

Over the years, there have been quite a few attacks on mosques in the West.  As Robert Spencer aptly  notes:

How many of these attacks on mosques were presented by the political and media elites as instances of “Islamophobia”?

Key for the function of this A.I.M. app would be to provide links to mainstream sources to back up any fact and/or interpretation presented, in order to try to circumvent the eye-rolling sneers that would be aroused upon seeing that a source was "Jihad Watch" or "FOX News" or "Breitbart News", etc. As the reader will plainly see (if they actually click on those links above), for the purposes of this posting today, I didn't go to that extra trouble, for this isn't the context to do so; here, I am merely performing a meta-analysis of this issue.  As a relevant aside, in my efforts to communicate this, that or the other appallingly alarming fact about Islam, time and time again I've run into people who sneer at my linking as a source for that fact "Jihad Watch" or "FOX News" or "Breitbart News", etc.   After I got fed up with this I would show them the (usually) mainstream news source used by Jihad Watch, etc., for the report. This doesn't mollify everyone in the audience; many of them (if not most) remain impervious to the data that should at least begin the process of changing their mind about Islam. 

Niggling questions about the MRI

Not the magnetic resonance imaging used in medical diagnoses; but rather, my half-tongue-in-cheek phrase, "Muslim Relocation Initiative".

Among the niggling questions that inevitably seem to pop up -- often from people located more or less "in the Counter-Jihad" -- include:

"Where are you going to deport them?"

"How will you know if they are Muslim unless they identify themselves as such?" (I kid you not, this is a question asked of me -- and not just once, but repeatedly, by "Angemon" the Energizer Bunny of Jihad Watch comments; for example see this posting from last September.)

"What about all the Muslims you won't be able to deport because you can't find them?" (this being a silly variant of the above silly question)

"What about Muslims who are born here (in the West)? Where are you going to deport them?"

Let's take these one by one.  My following retorts aren't mean to be exhaustive in terms of refuting these stupid questions, but will just try to hit the main points:

"Where are you going to deport them?"

This question is not only stupid, it's odd.  It implies that there is no physical location to deport them to.  In fact, there are millions and millions of square miles of land comprised by the 56 majority Muslim nations that exist in the world. So if the questioner isn't implying that, what exactly is he asking? It seems that what they are really doing with their question is making a statement in the form of a rhetorical question -- and that statement is: You can't deport them, it's wrong.  I.e., the "where" is not really their concern, because anywhere would be wrong.

"How will you know if they are Muslim unless they identify themselves as such?" 

This question is so stupid, I don't even know how to begin. Let me have another sip of coffee (and Jack)...  First of all, we know that Western individuals and organizations that establish demographic statistics actually, and regularly, produce statistical conclusions (of course, tentative) about the numbers of Muslims in various places -- in the West total; in each Western country; in each Muslim country; in the Muslim world total.  So the first answer that comes to mind to wave away this annoying fly of a stupid question is: By the same method these mainstream demographic surveys use. DUH!

"What about all the Muslims you won't be able to deport because you can't find them?" 

Of course, as I intimated above, the previous question probably really means what the questioner is getting it with this last question. And what they are really getting at (but are being cagey in not just spitting out) is the statement (put in the cagey form of a rhetorical question): You won't be able to deport all Muslims because some of them will slip out of your dragnet.  To which my response is: Yeah, so what? A lot of big complex projects (perhaps all of them) suffer from imperfection and thus fail to deliver absolute perfection. Does that mean we should refrain from embarking upon these projects?  If we refrained from doing things because we knew they wouldn't be perfect, we wouldn't get anything important done.  To even have to spell this out is a painful exercise, since it's so elementary, it should already be assumed and conceded.

"What about Muslims who are born here (in the West)? Where are you going to deport them?"

Now this question, finally, actually poses a substantive difficulty.  Taking the second part of the question, we can say that the questioner implies that where a person is born constitutes the "where" of his birthright; and this is an important, foundational concept in Western civilization, not to be lightly discarded.  The response is based on an informed recognition of Islam, wherein the Muslim has a higher allegiance to the Umma, which in Islam is a trans-national entity -- not an actual physical entity we can point to, but a work-in-progress; or we should say a jihad-in progress.  While we can't specifically point to a delimited entity on the map and say, "there's the Umma", we can say that the aforementioned 56 Muslim-majority nations on earth are approximately the historical and politico-diplomatic recognitions of that "jihad-in-progress" to date.  And this "jihad-in-progress" has been (and remains), for Muslims following their Islam, a goal to conquer the earth and replace its godless polities with the only rightful polity, a Caliphate based in Sharia. In this context, the political allegiance of any given Muslim born anywhere in the West is reasonably supposed to be not only founded elsewhere than in the (Western) polity of his birth, but in the Umma -- but also inimical in terms of an ongoing, protracted subversion to undermine the West, materially connected to the jihad of which one tentacle is terrorism. This by itself may not be quite enough to warrant deportation; it is arguable that a further, deeper appreciation for the concrete extent of this jihad would inform such a warrant.

This is not unprecedented. Recently in Jihad Watch there was reported the story of a Muslim from Alabama who went off to join the jihad in ISIS. A key sentence in the report:

A federal judge ruled Thursday that an American-born woman who traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State (ISIS) group and now wants to return to her family in Alabama is not a U.S. citizen.

As our old friend "The Big W" put it with his characteristically blunt (and refreshing) succinctness:

thebigW says
Nov 15, 2019 at 11:08 pm 

 Yep. And I don’t see why any damn Muslim should be recognized a citizen of any Western nation, even if they’re born here like this Muslima. IF we don’t expand this judge’s decision to apply to ALL Muslims in the West, the West won’t last. 

So I guess the West won’t last past another hundred years give or take a few beheadings.

I haven't yet checked to see what the response has been to Big W's comment; no doubt most of the surrounding Jihad Watch commenters will just ignore it, while a select few (such as the above-mentioned "Angemon") will attack it. Allah forbid that they should agree.

What exactly is the problem of Islam...?

For most of those who believe there is a problem of Islam, they seem to have a dim apprehension that violence is a part of that problem.  But how is Islamic violence a problem?  There are two ways it would be a problem:

1) Currently and in an ongoing manner, Islamic terrorists are killing people in order to try to destroy the West (in order to make Sharia supreme)

2) The current and ongoing terror attacks are not meant to destroy the West now, but rather to initiate a long "jihad of attrition" -- combining sporadic yet growing terrorism with increasing penetration of millions of Muslims into the West -- that will slowly, over a long period of time, transform the West to a state where Muslims will finally take off their masks because they will be able to destroy it violently (in order to make Sharia supreme).

The first one, #1, has a "soft perspective" and a "grim perspective".  The soft perspective of #1 is that, sure, there are some nasty "Islamist extremists" doing terrorism here and there, but a) they don't represent more than a tiny minority of world Muslims; so that b), their goal of destroying the West is highly unlikely to happen, and we will be able to manage the problem in the long-term by continuing what we're doing now. I.e., the problem is not systemic, nor is it metastasizing.

The grim perspective of #1 doesn't make the rosy assumptions of the soft perspective; but rather errs on the side of... grimness, to (tentatively) conclude that the problem is, in fact, systemic and metastasizing -- and thus involves many more Muslims than merely a "tiny minority" who are assumed (by the soft perspective) to be going against the Islamic norm of the "vast majority" of Muslims.

I'd say most in the Counter-Jihad subscribe to the grim perspective of #1 but haven't really given much thought to the prospect of #2, which doesn't have a "soft" side; it's just plain grim.  So basically they think that there are a whole lot of Muslim extremists out there -- many more than the comfortable deniers exemplified by the soft perspective of #1 -- but they haven't thought about what the Islamic end game must be, and what strategies Muslims would be pursuing for the long-term.  This majority in the Counter-Jihad, thus, seems to have an incoherent jumble of negative emotions & thoughts about the problem of Islam: sometimes they sound like they think Muslims can take over peacefully, just by "Sharia Creep" and steady demographic aggrandizement in the West. And even while they indulge this assumption, the Counter-Jihad majority continues to call attention to and decry terrorism -- yet never apparently connecting the two logically.  One wonders what exactly they are worried about when it comes to Islam.

If that isn't bad enough, when I have told them I think the full, grim effects of the problem (from the perspective of #2) probably won't unfold for another 100 years (give or take a few hundred beheadings), the typical response I get is of Chicken Little panic: "WHAT!!?? WE WON'T LAST THAT LONG!!! THE SKY IS FALLING NOW!!!!!!!"  But again, they seem unable to articulate precisely what this "sky falling" in the very near future entails, vis-a-vis Muslims and us.

Let's take a closer look at #2 (my position):

2) The current and ongoing terror attacks are not meant to destroy the West now, but rather to initiate a long "jihad of attrition" -- combining sporadic yet growing terrorism with increasing penetration of millions of Muslims into the West -- that will slowly, over a long period of time, transform the West to a state where Muslims will finally take off their masks because they will be able to destroy it violently (in order to make Sharia supreme).

If that is the case, Muslims aren't pursuing this modus operandi of more or less biding their time (in conjunction with terror attacks below a certain threshold now and again) for no good reason, but only because they are forced to.  And the obvious reason why they are forced to is because of the superiority of their enemy (mainly, the West).  They realize the West can't be brought down merely with a concatenation of terror attacks -- because of the West's comparative military superiority. Furthermore, unless they are blithering idiots (and it's tempting for those "in the Counter-Jihad" movement to denigrate Muslims as stupid, but that's a reckless temptation that underestimates the fanatical intelligence cultivated in Islam), Muslims also realize that, if they tried to "bet everything on one hand" and pull out all the stops by initiating a generalized mayhem of jihad wherever they are in the West, the West would at that point finally wake up to the danger and be able to definitively disable them, likely permanently.

As I noted above, from my sense of taking stock of "the Counter-Jihad" over the past decade plus (example, my "Taking the Temperature of the Counter-Jihad" series), its analysts (whether in the Leadership or part of the Civilian Readership) don't seem to have a view coherent enough position even to delineate where they fall along this division; let alone whether they proffer a third alternative.  One thing is clear, they hardly ever show signs of appreciating #2.  They thus have, as best we can piece together (since they never actually have a conversation about the nuts and bolts of this issue in these terms), a confused sense of #1 that splits off into variants; but none of them clearly making sense in terms of clarifying precisely how Islam is dangerous to us -- which, of course, is intimately connected to how dangerous one considers Islam to be.

Note (Friday, November 22):  

A day after I published the above essay, I realized that my #2 point hadn't fully articulated its gist.  The original version was this:

2) The current and ongoing terror attacks are not meant to destroy the West now, but rather to initiate a long "jihad of attrition" -- combining sporadic yet growing terrorism with increasing penetration of millions of Muslims into the West -- that will slowly, over a long period of time, transform the West to a state where Muslims will be able to destroy it (in order to make Sharia supreme).

But what I realized was missing were two crucial factors of that future process: (i) when Muslims will "finally take off their masks because they will be able to destroy" the West; and (ii) that this future destruction will be "violently" (obviously meaning more violently than theretofore -- with no more need [or at least much less need] of taqiyya and its various modes of dissembling peacefulness).

The reader can see I already made the changes to the two instances in which I quoted #2.

Further Reading:

An apropos posting I wrote a couple of years ago on The Hesperado, my former blog:

The Psychology of the Counter-Jihad Softy

Indeed, I noted just now that in the comments section of that posting, my comment to a reader touched on the very issues my posting here today deals with.  I wrote back on January 20, 2017:

We also need to understand what "enemies" in this context means, in terms of their willingness and concrete ability to not only pop up at random with violence against us, but also infiltrate in myriad subtle ways so as to enable far more horrific attacks on us in the future -- after decades of economically and infrastructurally and psychologically destabilizing attacks (and fear of attacks) have had their effects, at some future date (I estimate approximately 100 years, give or take) reducing us (the entire West) just enough to be brought down by bigger, more concerted attacks into general breakdown.

Thus, even if a Counter-Jihadist Softy may understand generally what you say about all Muslims being potentially/actually our enemies, their soft perspective will minimize the "enemy" part to merely a static stance of actual/potential enmity in a vague way, not the metastasizing enmity it actually is -- motivated, inspired, and guided by the blueprint of fanatical hatred and infiltration encoded in Islamic texts, tradition, history, and culture.

Imagine an A.I.M phone app for the A.I.M.

The first A.I.M of my title today stands for "Anti-Islam Manual". The second one, "Anti-Islam Movement".

Neither exists; but it's long past time they should (if it ain't in fact too late).

About this I've written many a time on my old blog, The Hesperado -- particularly this one, which zeroes in on the point:

The aim of the A.I.M. should be an A.I.M.

I was reminded again of this need by a recent Jihad Watch headline:

Finland: Leftist Muslim migrant politician admits he fabricated story about man who told him “go back to Somalia”

Aside from the unfortunate absurdity of Robert Spencer's "Leftist Muslim" (as if a Muslim can be a Leftist any more than he or she can be anything Western), the story concerns one of the multitudes of sub-categories of the Problem of Islam (and the secondary Problem of the West Inadequately Dealing with the aforementioned Problem of Islam).

What subcategory? Well, I'm glad you asked, Pepe.  This particular subcategory is "another Muslim fakes a hate crime".

The main theater of the problem of Islam is currently the war of ideas; and the main "warriors" in this war of ideas are ordinary civilians (and their book-selling Leadership) more or less coagulating into a "Counter-Jihad".  And as warriors of ideas, we civilians who care are effectively "deputized" -- and being deputized involves more than a plastic badge and a squirt gun: It involves arming yourself with information.

In our age of digital information, "the Counter-Jihad" has no excuse for not developing an A.I.M. (Anti-Islam Manual -- see my essays linked up top for details).

What such an A.I.M. would contain, amongst the multitudes of sub-categories, would be every story about a Muslim faking a hate crime.  Oh Mammy, there have been many of these over the years. My favorite was from back in 2014 in California, the Muslim man who claimed his murdered wife was murdered by Islamophobic haters; the only problem was that the Muslim husband who murdered his own wife in an "honor killing" had faked the note he claimed to have found in his home which read, "Go back to your country, terrorist".

So, with an A.I.M. app, alls ya needs ta do is just punch in key words onto your phone (or speak into it) "faked hate crimes against Muslims", and voilà! There you have all the data you need to fend off some snarky Westerner who thinks that particular subcategory is not a problem. Armed with this data, the civilian deputy for the Counter-Jihad can then make a case for the speciousness of the "hate crime" stats inflated by Islam apologists.

Tooting my own horn

This old posting of mine from May of 2015 is, if I don't say so myself, a wealth of a superbly detailed argument for a tougher stance on Islam, and against the bluff-calling incoherence of a Robert Spencer:

Noah Webster (Peace Be Upon Him), and these “defining days”

If all caffeine became lethally toxic, would you only avoid "extremist" ("pious") espressos...?

Am I right, or am I right...?

So let's examine a recent Robert Spencer editorial remark, expounding on a recent threat by Turkey's Interior Minister to send captured ISIS combatants back to "their" countries (i.e., to the Western country where they had sojourned prior to leaving to join ISIS):

The captured Islamic State jihadis don’t believe that European states are their countries at all. They consider themselves to be citizens of the worldwide Islamic umma. When back in Europe, many of them are likely to continue their jihad there.

Leave it to our old friend "The Big W" to zero in on the problem with Spencer's observation:

Ain’t this likely true of ALL Muslims? What’s the risk of NOT assuming this, and WHY fer Crissakes wouldja not assume it…..???

This is Big W's characteristically blunt way of wondering why Spencer is implying that this problem of returning ISIS Muslims is somehow different from the problem that any and all Muslims, anywhere in the West, pose.

It's a good question, and the Counter-Jihad Mainstream not only has no answer, they routinely flinch from facing the question, and if someone raises it too persistently, they tend to attack that person (as they have moi for years on various forums, including Jihad Watch comments).

P.S.: 

Big W only got two responses. One guy ("CogitoErgoSum") didn't seem to object to Big W, but his pointless defense of Robert Spencer in that context indicates he didn't get Big W's point. The other, from our old Rabbit Pack member, "gravenimage", ostensibly agreed with Big W, but with one glaring flaw:

gravenimage says 
Nov 4, 2019 at 5:19 pm 

True, thebigW. No pious Muslim considers any Infidel nations to be their countries. They are just places to use as bases from which to wage Jihad. 

Can the reader spot the flaw? A gold star for anyone spotting "pious".  Why would gravenimage delimit the problem from plain old "Muslim" to a "pious Muslim"?  Evidently because she's too timid to abandon all qualifiers insulating her from the dreaded A word.  It's doubly ironic when Big W himself not only pointedly referred to "all" Muslims, but emphasized it in ALL CAPS.  So gravenimage is peculiarly dense, or is adjusting the problem on purpose, in her role as hall monitor/crossing guard for the Counter-Jihad.  The only problem with this delimitation of the problem to "pious Muslims" is that, on the macro level, we can't  tell the difference sufficiently between "pious" Muslims and "non-pious" Muslims.

P.P.S: 

About a year ago, Spencer articulated the same thing, concerning a story about an ISIS fighter who wanted to "return" to Australia, but the Australian government stripped his citizenship and deported him:

All free nations should do this as a matter of course, but the suicidal British and others have instead welcomed them back.

They joined an entity that has repeatedly declared that it is at war with their home countries. That should have been taken as a renunciation of citizenship.

Again, what's the difference between this ISIS jihadist and any old Muslim?  I note that even back then, Big W lodged essentially the same retort:

What’s the difference between ISIS and Islam? Yeah they are different, Islam can fool people (or make us fool ourselves) into thinking it’s not a condition for deporting.

And of course, no other Jihad Watchers said it (and none commented substantively, other than one regular, "Mark Swan", whose response implicitly contained essentially the same delimitation gravenimage provided:

Mark Swan says
Dec 30, 2018 at 10:11 am

“Islamic State is opposed to Australia, their interests, values, democratic beliefs, rights and liberties” Islamic State is just “go by the book” Islam.

And, characteristically, Big W's rejoinder is right on the money, and fills in the blank Mark Swan either obtusely, or purposefully, left missing:

thebigW says
Dec 31, 2018 at 1:46 pm

Yeah and if you see any Muslims who don’t seem to be “go by the book” it’s only because they’re pretending to be different from ISIS.

Post-Post-Postscript:

Notice how in another, related context, Spencer suddenly pulls his punches:

“The court heard Kocoglu had renounced Islamic State, had no prior offences and had not re-offended in the past five years and was not a threat to the Australian community.”
A great deal is riding on Kocoglu’s being honest about this. Australian citizens can only hope that he is.

Notice Spencer is not using the robust language he used in the case of ISIS-joining Muslims returning to a Western nation and the prospect of their deportation and/or stripped citizenship, as we examined above in the main body of today's posting, and in the P.S. and the P..P.S.

Yet another example of the Problem of the Problem of the Problem

Over on the Sam Harris discussion forum (where Sam Harris himself never participates), I weighed in on the Problem, not of Islam, and not of the West inadequately dealing with Islam -- but of the Counter-Jihad (such as it is) inadequately dealing with the aforementioned two problems.

As the reader will note if he goes over there to read my comment, I've been to that forum before, a few years ago (see this Google page which shows some of my past history there, with many of the dates being 2015).

The particular person over there I addressed in my new comment (one "icehorse") doesn't really answer my question (a typical experience Ive had over the years), though he addresses me sort of sideways. If anything of significance happens, I'll report it here.

UPDATE (11/7/19):

Nothing much to report -- other than that the two who deigned to respond to me (icehorse and Traces Elk) are just wasting my time.