The phenomena of mass violence, whether the state terrorism of the West or the free-lance violence of al-Qaeda and its offspring, has at its roots the manipulation of a large body of people by a tiny group capable of commanding considerable methods of persuasion and targeting those insecurities endemic to the host socieities. In the Western world, the ruling elites have the full run of both the state propaganda machinery and the commercial media. The peoples of the West can be made to go along with breathtakingly immoral policies (such as the Iraq War) by a two pronged effort: convincing them that the actions, no matter how extreme, are necessary in order to protect their own safety and livelyhood and inducing in them, often subtly, the belief that their own beliefs and opinions are irrelevant, that the policies have already been decided by the experts, and that any attempt to oppose the desired policies is both doomed to failure and possibly criminal. In the Islamic world we find a network of websites and a veritable flood of literature which, while highliting very real offenses of the West against the Muslims and taking advantage of poverty in which the majority of Muslims find themselves mired, offers as a solution to the modern Islamic malaise the return of the Khalifa system via revolutionary violence. The social mores of this new order, reflecting the very worst of the misogyny and xenophobia of the Wahabi and right-wing Salafi movements, are also intensively propagated via numerous pamphlets, websites, and television shows. The response to this must be two-fold: a.) social policies, both in the West and in the Islamic world must be changed in order to allow the wealth of society to benefit all of it's members (regardless of gender, ethnicity, or sect) instead of a narrow elite, b.) progressives, both Muslims and non-Muslims must compete in the propaganda war. The latter entails not merely setting up a few websites or on-line networks of like minds. We must also be engaged in producing the same type of literature (pamphlets, periodicals, and books) that the Western Right and the Islamic Right produce. For my fellow progressive Muslims I think it will be necessary to form our own Masajid as well. I think the weakness of the Progressive movement within Islam is its lack of commitment to propagating its ideas. We like to go online and complain about the Maulvis, or hold forth over a cup of coffee at a monthly meeting, but we do not wish to make the commitment of time and resources which is necessary to make Progressive Islam a viable, popular social movement with its own ideological arsenal and physical infrastructure. In the end this limits are appeal to those members of the upper and middle classes who are already predisposed to agree with us. In order to be succesful we must propagate our ideas among the people; to do that we must meet them where they are. This means not assuming that they have an internet connection or the initiative to search us out. The Progressive Muslim Union offers resources, on-line, concerning female lead prayer. Why not produce a pamphlet which can then be distributed in the Masajid, in Halal grocers, and Islamic book stores? Why not produce cheaply printed copies of books we consider to be representative of our views? Why not rent store fronts to use as Progressive Masajid? We cannot win this battle for the heart of our din by posting diatribes on a handful of websites. We must be willing to do the leg work.