We are all Dhimmi's now
In a way, we are already converting to Islam.
Since the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the evil ideology that is Islam has filled many aspects of our lives. There is no getting away from Islam. It has invaded our freedom because of increased security measures, which have become a necessary evil. It is costing us money, because of these same measures, and because of the marketing war being waged against us by our own governments, to try to maintain the myth of the Religion of Peace. The wars we wage abroad (in the hope that we don't have to wage them on our own soil in ten years from now) also cost us money.
Not an hour has gone by without something happening somewhere in the world where a Muslim either committed murder (often against other Muslims), or a Muslim was the 'victim' of some form of perceived offense, like Koran 'desecrations', 'torture' in an Iraqi jail or recently, some cartoons in a Danish newspaper, a boy gets fried in Parisian suburb powerstation. And it doesn't matter what the insult du jour is, it is ALWAYS, without exception, cause for riots, murder, bombs, Jihad. Almost always against the West.
We are infidels, who need to have their heads sawed off.
In its current intensity this has been going on for nearly three years now, and fatigue is clearly setting in. And herein lies the danger. This fatigue can have two possible effects. One is that we just stop caring altogether what it is this time that sets off the Muslim rage. It never mattered to begin with, but it certainly doesn't matter any longer.
It would be good if this happened, because it would allow the West to pick up where it left off, and live life the Western way, unencumbered by 7th century barbaric taboos. We would regard the Muslim hordes and their irregular but frequent outbursts of rage as mere temper tantrums, to be ignored or at worst punished by a smack on the behind. And we would not change our ways one bit because of these tantrums.
But this is not how we respond. What we (or our leaders, which amounts to the same thing) do is placate, appease, cave in. We treat every religious complaint they have as if it were something we should in fact pay attention to. We implicitly agree with Muslims worldwide that they are in fact eternal victims, we are their trespassers and tormentors, we do wrong and they are the injured party.
It may be distasteful to urinate on a book, but it is not illegal. And if that book happens to be the koran, that doesn't (or SHOULDN'T) change anything - FOR US.
It is simply not our concern that to a culture or an ideology that isn't ours, it isn't acceptable to create images of man, especially if that man happens to be very important to that culture. We don't care if you draw Mohammed with a dress on and a bomb in his turban. And if you do, than that is your problem, not ours.
It isn't torture to be photographed without clothes on. Just because you believe in Allah doesn't make it so.
And if you feel aggrieved by all these immoral offensive acts, and feel the need to force us to accept your standards as our own, you are in fact aiming to either convert us, or make us subject to your 7th century religious laws. There's a word for that.
Dhimmi.
When the standards and habits of our society are under constant attack by another culture, and we are told - against our own better judgment - that it is we who are in the wrong, that is we who should adjust, accomodate, change, and while at the same time the attacking culture shows us what happens if don't do what our own leaders tell us to do (namely, get sued, persecuted, threatened, attacked and/or killed), then it will seem like there is now way out. We are not really at war, at least not in the conventional sense, so it seems there's no enemy to fight. At the same time it is clear we are no longer free to move and act the way we were used to.
We have in a way become hostages. And we have already begun to show classic hostage behaviour.
The Stockholm syndrome. It means that hostages begin to identify with or feel sympathy for their captors. They will try to establish a bond, so hopefully their captors won't hurt or kill them.
It is not a conscious act. It seems it is instinctive in a situation where a person feels powerless and at the mercy of another, and has reason to fear for his life.
This is exactly what is happening in Western Europe these days. Against all common sense, nearly half of all Germans interviewed stated that respect for Muslim religious beliefs should outweigh freedom of speech, freedom of the press. This of course is not a rational position. It is the psychological response to years and years of indoctrination by our media and governments, combined with exposure to Muslim outrage (both domestic and global) to just about anything. And we just don't want to offend anymore, so we'll just shut up. And we'll conform.
So. We can convert. And become barbarians ourselves. "If you can't beat them, join them."
Or we can becomme dhimmi's. Become second-rate citizens in our own lands.
Or maybe, just maybe, if we elect REAL leaders, and if we throw out the barbarians (and teach them one way or another not to mess with our liberties), we can remain free. And in a few centuries, the barbarians might join us.