Look man, I’ve grown to like and agree with a lot of what you have to say even if you are a little over the top, but if you think you are advancing the cause of American Kumbaya with Muslims by proposing a mosque directly on ground zero than I suggest you are a complete idiot. Comparison to the Dome of the Rock is just to freaking obvious. Too many people will will take up the crusader banner against American Muslims attributing your proposal to them as well. Furthermore if you expect to gain any traction for many of your more reasonable liberal ideas, I’m afraid to inform you that you’ve lost any credibility with the other side.
Actually, if you want to read he actually wrote, rather than a distorted summary by some no-name blogger, you can go here.
I realize that Moore stirs some deep-seated passions around here but, apart from a few over-the-top sentences that were clearly intentional hyperbole, i don’t find very much offensive or stupid about that post at all.
What’s the big deal about what he said? If you don’t see anything wrong with building the mosque two blocks from Ground Zero, then what’s the problem with doing it on Ground Zero? Michael Moore has said something insane things before, but this isn’t out there to me. Too bad more people aren’t following suit.
It is? You mean the towers were a Temple of Commerce, or… what?
I thought, some years back, that a multidenominational shrine, or several shrines, would be a nice thing to put there, except I suppose militant atheists would object.
Can’t see anything wrong with the idea, IF it would be part of a big complex of temples for different faiths. And, just because I’m about as militant* an atheist as you’ll find (you know what pisses me off about Richard Dawkins? I can put up with his arguments and his right to express them, but I can’t stand his tone. Why does he have to be such a fucking limp-wristed milquetoast kumbaya pussy?), a section dedicated to explaining the secular humanist point of view should go in there too.
*‘militant’ atheists being the ones who explain their points of view frankly, on the internet and in print - you know, just like those militant Christians who murder abortion providers, and those militant Muslims who fly planes into skyscrapers.
That’s not at all the equivalence I was making (please!)–I’d call atheists or religionists “militant” if they seemed to get angry in the presence of other views, and personally hostile towards holders of those views; we see this on this board. Lunatic murderers, whatever banner they carry, are beyond “militant”–though I suppose they tend to be that, too.
My problem is not with building a mosque on ground zero. It was simply an unneccesarry proposal that was a non-starter. The problem is that it will only further inflame the opposition to the present proposal and subsequently provide further fodder to present America as the enemy of Islam in Islamic media.
I agree that we must maintain the holiness of the site of the former Burlington Coat Factory. This former shopping outlet must never be desecrated by something as unclean as a community center run by people with an ethnicity different from you and me.
May the bargains of affordable outerwear be with you always.
(And also with you)
In the name of the Trench, the Plaid and the Quilted Coat, Amen
(Amen)
I meant, I imagined some atheists would object to any officially-sanctioned and overtly-religious structure or space. But I think forcing the various factions to acknowledge each other and coexist within the context of an official memorial would be great.
But if it does inflame people, so what? People have already been really inflammatory towards Muslims lately. If doing something that’s perfectly reasonable disturbs someone, then they were probably already too bigoted to reason with anyway.