Foehammer’s Anvil

An interesting proposal from Wolfgang Bruno at Global Politician: create and maintain a virtual library of the most important reading materials for “infidels” on the Internet itself. Can it be done? You decide. I’ve taken the liberty of linking all the books recommended in this list, although I’ve also had most of them in my own library section on this site for many months:

Fatima Houda-Pepin, raised a Muslim and active in the struggle against the use of sharia in Canada, warns that the public should make an effort to get to know those in the Muslim community who are lobbying for application of Sharia: ‘One of the strengths of Islamists is that they know you very well. They know our history, they know our culture, they know our justice system.’ The reason why so many Westerners reacted with defeatism and despair over the Muhammad cartoons affair is because we are mentally on the defensive. We are reacting more than acting, waiting passively for the next Islamic move. We haven’t even named the enemy yet. The attacks of 9/11, the London and Madrid bombings were reduced to the work of ‘evildoers who had hijacked a great religion,’ not Islam itself. Muslims have been carefully studying our weak points for decades, to find ways to exploit them. Meanwhile, we have largely been ignoring them, first because we didn’t take them seriously, and later because we would not want to get involved in a global clash with the Islamic world. Get real: This is a world war, at least a cold one. War has already been declared upon us, and it is irrelevant whether Westerners and infidels like this or not. We need to recognize this and start fighting back, before we lose this fight without ever having admitted that we were in it.

It’s time to turn the tables. We’re the most powerful civilization in human history. We’ve split the atom and sent men to the moon. We can deal with a cult from 7th century Arabia, if we put our minds to it. Yes, they have a head start, but they have weak points, too. Many of them, and sometimes huge ones. Find a pressure point and squeeze. As philosopher Eric Hoffer has said, you can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. If we had some basic understanding of our enemy and watched him closely, we would see that he made at least two major mistakes during these recent cartoon events that we could exploit. First, he showed us his hand and his true intentions, thereby waking up millions of infidels just a little bit too early. Second: He also clearly demonstrated some of his weak points, both the extreme arrogance and the ridiculous hypersensitivity to even the slightest criticism. During the Muhammad cartoon affair, the Islamic world might as well have worn a gigantic neon sign saying: ‘We fear freedom of speech above all else. Give us bombs, just don’t send us rational criticism or mockery.’ They scream ‘We love death,’ yet cringe like shivering Christmas puddings in front of a few cartoons. If this is what they fear most, then this is where we should push harder.

Jihadist Muslims are war fetishists. Their obsession with orgies with virgins in the heavenly Islamic brothel and the close connection between death and orgasm borders on necrophilia. You don’t frighten a war fetishist with war, and you don’ scare a death cult with death. Although the use of force will sometimes be necessary to win this fight, it is important to understand that this is not Islam’s weak point. Islam is a warrior creed, a very good one. War, death and mayhem are its home ground. Free speech is ours. We should draw the enemy away from his home ground by teasing his arrogance, lure him out into the open and over to our home ground, where we have the natural advantage.

Now is the perfect time to launch an ideological counter-offensive, using the Internet. Internet censorship is still less effective in most Muslim countries than in China, and there is now a critical mass of ordinary Westerners who understand that Islam constitutes a mortal threat to their freedom. Many of them could be mobilized, if somebody leads them and shows them how. The key to winning this struggle is not to engage the silent majority in the Islamic world, but to mobilize the silent majority in the West and in the infidel world, and perhaps the minority of ex-Muslims within the Islamic world.

The idea of using the Internet to spread critical thinking isn’t new, although it is not always directly linked to Islam:

In Arabic, “Internet” Means “Freedom”

Somewhere in Baghdad a man is working in secrecy to edit new Arabic versions of liberal classics. He has made Arabic translations of more than two dozen articles and nine books and booklets. Sponsored by the Cato Institute, he joins a small but growing assortment of Arabic-language blogs promulgating liberal ideas. “No more than 10,000 books were translated into Arabic over the entire past millennium,” says the U.N., “equivalent to the number translated into Spanish each year.” “The Internet is a historical opportunity for Arab liberalism,” Pierre Akel, the Lebanese host of one such site, metransparent.com, said. “In the Arab world, much more than in the West, we can genuinely talk of a blog revolution.” The U.N. report notes that in the Arab world’a region of 284 million’a book that sells 5,000 copies qualifies as a best-seller. The Internet, in contrast, makes possible worldwide, instant distribution, at a nearly negligible cost.

However, some books critical of Islam are already available online, and more will probably be added:

Call for Internet Publication of Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam.

This is a call for the Internet publication (and eventual translation) of the book Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam by Marywan Halabjaye. The book concerns how Islam is allegedly used to oppress women. Halabjaye’s book is based on an analysis of the Qur’an as well as recognized Sunnah and Hadith. This call for Internet publication is based on the belief that the best response to those who would suppress publication of a book is to increase publication, promotion and distribution of that book. The most efficient way to do that is on the Internet. This request is also based on the belief that it would be a powerful and timely lesson if the only thing accomplished by those who seek to suppress publication of the book Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam is to cause it to be published to the entire world.

I have advocated the idea of creating an organized network to promote Islam-critical books in cyberspace. Maybe a dozen or more blogs and websites could form the global backbone of this network, the cyberspace version of Radio Free Europe. This to make it more difficult for hackers to block the efforts, and to disseminate the books as much as possible. The websites should preferably be based in the USA, since it has the strongest protection of freedom of speech, or at least outside of the jurisdiction of the Eurabian Union. Start with those who are already in the business, for instance Jihad Watch, Faith Freedom International, Little Green Footballs, Michelle Malkin and others. These ‘backbone’ websites should receive financial compensation for this task. Anybody, anywhere should be able to download the books or republish them at their own websites. This would bypass media censorship and create an Online Infidel Library. It would mirror the online library Google is trying to create now, but with books about Islam only. The information would spread around the planet faster than CAIR can say ‘Islamophobia’. The genie would be out of the bottle, and no amount of intimidation, hacker attacks or ‘hate speech’ lawsuits could return it to the bottle.

I have been contacted by at least one person who was pondering the possibility of financing and hosting critical books on Islam on the Internet, and wondered whether this was feasible. To publish in English a handful of these books on the Internet isn’t too complicated, it just requires some private individual or group of people with sufficient means to buy the copyrights and support the backbone websites and it could be done quickly. I don’t know all of the practical details of how much such an operation would cost. But since the entire text of these books would be put online for free, I reckon one would have to pay significant sums to buy the copyrights. The good thing about starting out with private citizens is that we would directly engage the silent masses who are fed-up with Islam and Islamic demands. If our so-called leaders won’t lead this fight, then we will have to push them and force their hand. They only feel pressured by Muslims now, it’s time they feel some pressure from infidels, too. That goes for European politicians in particular.

However, when you increase the number of books and thus costs, and certainly when you start with translations into multiple languages, it probably becomes too complicated and time-consuming for private citizens to undertake. I have suggested publishing Bat Ye’or’s book ‘Eurabia’ online, both in the full version and in abridged versions, translated into multiple European languages. Some of the most important Islam-critical books should also be translated to major non-Western languages, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and so on. I envisioned this to receive clandestine support of, for instance, the US government. It is unlikely whether they can or want to do so openly, but the amount of money it would cost would be peanuts compared to what the Iraq campaign costs on a single day and could be provided secretly. This could be called Operation Theo van Gogh, or perhaps Operation Asma bint Marwan, after the poetess who was murdered by Muhammad’s thugs for mocking Islam.

NOTE: The following list of books is based solely on my own subjective views. The authors have not been consulted about whether they would agree to publish their books on the Internet, and it is quite possible that some of them might object to this. However, it is likely that several of them would agree to this, provided that they get adequate financial compensation for this. The number of suggested titles could easily be doubled, but any such Online Infidel Library would probably include some of the books I have listed here. I have read most of these books myself, but include some by reputation or recommendations from people I trust:

Group 1:

“Leaving Islam - Apostates Speak Out” edited by Ibn Warraq

‘The Islam Threat’ by Ali Sina from www.faithfreedom.org, whenever it gets published. I have had the pleasure of reading it, and it is good.

‘The Legacy of Jihad’ by Andrew G Bostom

“Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis” by Bat Ye’or

“Onward Muslim Soldiers” by Robert Spencer

‘The Force of Reason’ by Oriana Fallaci

“Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries” by Paul Fregosi

‘While Europe Slept : How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within’ by Bruce Bawer

“Mohammed and the Rise of Islam” by David S. Margoliouth

‘American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us’ by Steven Emerson

Group 2:

“Why I am not a Muslim” by Ibn Warraq

“What the Koran Really Says” edited by Ibn Warraq

‘The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam And the Crusades’ by Robert Spencer

‘Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples’ by V.S. Naipaul

‘Militant Islam Reaches America’ by Daniel Pipes

‘Islam and Dhimmitude’ by Bat Yeor

‘The Sword of the Prophet’ by Serge Trifkovic

‘Rage Against the Veil’ by Parvin Darabi

“Women and the Koran” by Anwar Hekmat

‘View from the Eye of the Storm: Terror and Reason in the Middle East’ by Haim Harari

Group 3:

‘The Quest for the Historical Muhammad’ by Ibn Warraq

‘Twenty Three Years’ by Ali Dashti

‘The West’s Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations’ by Tony Blankley

‘The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat’ by Roger Scruton

“Muhammad” by Maxime Rodinson

“Among the Believers” by V. S. Naipaul

‘The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs’ by David Pryce-Jones

‘Menace in Europe : Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too’ by Claire Berlinski

Wolfgang Bruno is a European author. He is writing a book about the Internet movement of ex-Muslims.