Mosque to be built two blocks from Ground Zero

Great Debates
281

Here’s one of the best articles on the subject I’ve read - from Christopher Hitchens at Slate.

The real issue here is the fact that the ground zero site is still an open wound - because the feckless government of New York can’t get its act together and actually allow someone to build something there. The outrage is that after ten years, there’s still a big symbolic open wound sitting in the middle of the most expensive real estate in the world.

I don’t think the mosque would even be an issue if a new tower had been erected on the site five years ago. The problem is the juxtaposition of a new Muslim building against the still raw and undeveloped 9/11 site. It’s rather pathetic. But that’s not the fault of the mosque.

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“HAD”???:confused:

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I’m not sure I follow you.

You seem to be saying that someone who, say, answers poll questions or signs a petition or whatever against this religious center is acting from bedwetting terror rather than hatred. What if they firebomb the place? Is that hatred, or bedwetting terror, or both, or neither? How about shouting vile insults at 'em? Maybe beating the crap out of someone for being Muslim?

I guess I’m just not seeing the point. Can’t the same instance of anti-Islam backlash – including, but not limited to, opposing this latest development – be rooted merely in hatred from one person, and terror from another, and both from a third person, and neither from yet a fourth?

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I notice President Obama just did a flip-flop back-track by saying that he only commented on the RIGHT of Muslims to build the ground-zero Mosque, not on the wisdom of their doing so.

This is in fact what the whole debate is about.

I remember a few years ago, hearing that the Italian festival in my home town had been held every year since 1900, except during WWII. For the obvious reason that Canada was at war with fascist Italy during those years. Now, I doubt if even the draconian security laws in place during wartime would have forbidden Italian-Canadians from holding a street festival, eating Italian food and generally celebrating their Italian heritage. But there was the question of good taste.

The fact that 99% of Italian Canadians probably despised Musolinni and Fascism was not really the issue. But for some people on this board, you cannot say a word against Islam until 100% of Muslims are card-carrying members of a terrorist organization.

Then there is the convenient argument that terrorists are people who have perverted “true” Islam. It is an interesting variation on the “no true Scotsman” argument.

Or take the yearly remembrance of the war dead. For at least 60 years after World War II, the German and Japanese Ambassadors did NOT show up to lay a wreath at Canadian war memorials. I seriously doubt if any German Ambassador after 1945 was a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer. There was no law against their showing up at the war memorial. But there is such a thing as good taste and sensitivity.

However, one of the most noticeable ascpects about Islam and Muslims in the west is that very few of them seem to care a rat’s ass about how the rest of the population feels. A woman who walks down the street in a western country in a veil and Burqua humbly behind her husband is virtually spitting on our traditions of sexual equality.

Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought and even starved themselves in prisons for the right to vote, and even today woman continue to combat sexism. What message does the Muslim woman in a veil send us here in the west?

Just like the German ambassador showing up at the war memorial, it is NOT a question of doing what you have a right to do. It is a question of doing the right thing.

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You are right, except that Obama’s cowardice is just one more example of political expediency in the face of stultifying bigotry.

Among the elements the opponents choose to ignore are that:

  • while “two blocks away,” the proposed building is in the middle of block with two existing higher towers on the intervening blocks, so that the sites will be invisible to each other,
  • the Cordoba Initiatve (and the Muslim community it serves) have been a part of that neighborhood of Manhattan for decades
  • no opponent has proposed just what distance is supposed to be acceptable.

It is just more hate for hate’s sake.
Your Italian festival is not a good example, any more than your “No True Scotsman” argument. Italy was a physical nation from which the Italian immigrants had come and the war was a specific event that had a know closure. (When was not known, but that it would end with an armistice or surrender was known.) In contrast, Muslims include many widely diverse peoples with no specific associatrion with the Wahabbists or al Qaida or even Saudi Arabia and there is no event that will mark the period when they will be permitted to simply live their lives as American citizens. (In addition, whatever the your town’s Italian-Canadians might have done, quite a few Italian-American communities never abandoned their Feast of the Assumption festivals during WWII.)

Your “No True Scotsman” claim fails on the clear fact that the Cordoba Initiative had been promoting actual communication between Muslims and non-Muslims for two decades, or more prior to the WTC/Pentagon attacks. There is nothing in their message that is remotely akin to the Wahabbist message. Your claim is rather like blaming the Quakers and Amish for actions by the Christian Identity movement because they all fall under a general heading of “Christian.”

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It is a 19 story building of which 1 floor is a mosque. People are getting work actually building something. That should be good news unless it is constructed of thermite. Then ,not so good.

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Your “No True Scotsman” claim fails on the clear fact that the Cordoba Initiative had been promoting actual communication between Muslims and non-Muslims for two decades, or more prior to the WTC/Pentagon attacks. There is nothing in their message that is remotely akin to the Wahabbist message. Your claim is rather like blaming the Quakers and Amish for actions by the Christian Identity movement because they all fall under a general heading of “Christian.”
[/QUOTE]

My “no true Scotsman” quote related to the way in which the apologists for Islam can conveniently brush away example after example after example of our vitual war with Islam on the grounds that since Islam is a “religion of peace”, anyone who is violent must not be a true member of Islam.

Are you for one second alleging that people like Osama bin Laden are not perfectly familiar with their religion and their Koran? Their interpretation may be different from some other Muslims, but does anyone doubt that bin Laden, the Taliban or any other similar organization could justify every one of their actions Surah and verse?

I am reminded of the pre-civil war debate over slavery that divided the US Baptists on a North-South basis. There are people today who will allege that the supporters of slavery did not properly understand Christianity. I beg to differ. If you look at records of debates between Christians at the time, you will see that the supporters of slavery had waaaaaayyyy more scriptural ammunition than the anti-slavery faction.

Similarly, the supporters of radical, murderous Islam have the Koran on their side, frankly, especially if you consider the convenient “doctrine of abrogation”. For example, did you know that the more “tolerant” Koranic quotes such as “there is no compulsion in religion” are held by most Muslims to have been “abrogated” by later revelations of Allah? Or in other cases, Mulsims will say that this means that you cannot be forced to become a Muslim (but you can be oppressed as a dhimmi), but once you decide to joinm, THEN they can kill you for apostasy.

What you have to understand is that so-called “moderates” like the ground-zero Imam are experts at throwing these quotes out at gullible westerners to produce the desired effect that they are “moderate” “good-guy” Muslims.

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So, you’re claiming that there are no peaceful Muslims? I don’t know any other way to interpret what your wrote.

BTW, have you read the Bible? There are some pretty vicious sentiments in there that can and are being used to justify violence against people that some Christians don’t like.

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So you’re claiming that as long as there are peaceful Muslims that makes Islam A-OK?

Yes, I have read BOTH the Bible and the Quran. Maybe not every last page but substantially most of both books.

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tomndebb: Do you happen to remember this thread?

Here’s something I posted on another site this past weekend:

And this on yet another site:

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Is there some sort of rule now that racists have to be really, really bad at understanding and creating analogies?

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Racists aren’t usually the smartest people. So I can see a bad-analogizing being a symptom.

293

There is a rule, or at least a phenomenon, that people who have run out of arguments use personal insults like “racist”, or say that their opponents are “not the smartest people”.

294

That may well be the case.

It doesn’t alter the fact that racists are not the smartest people. Whether you are talking about intellectual smarts or emotional smarts.

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I wasn’t insulting you. I just made a comment about stupid racists. :dubious:

If you don’t believe racists exist you’re wrong. If you don’t believe that stupid people are more likely to hold racist attitudes, you may be right. I’d sure like to see some numbers on that though.

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[quote=“Telemark, post:288, topic:539432”]

There it is again! The old “tu quoque” argument. Since the Bible, mainly the Old Testament, contains bloody and barbaric recommendations, we have no reason to fear people who are motivated and inspired by the Koran, do we?

Except that the modern realities of how one and the other are applied in today’s world are as different as chalk and cheese.

The Old Testament says “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”. How many so-caled “Christian” western nations burn witches? The Bible also says that adulterers should be stoned to death. Do you know any “Christian” countries that do so?

Are declared atheists put to death in the West? When was the last time the Roman Catholic Church burned a heretic at the stake? Are apostates from Christianity liable to the death penalty? What about apostate Muslims?

The Hebrews were commanded to kill every human and animal in Jehrico for the “crime” of being in the way of the Hebrew conquest. Have you heard any western politician use that as a justification for anything?

Do Christians run military training camps all over the world where they indoctrinate young Christians to fight the “infidel”. (Yes, yes, I know there are some extreme right-wingers in the US who stock weapons, read the Turner Diaries, etc. But are you honestly comparing them with the world-wide jihad being waged in a dozen or more countries by tens of thousands of Muslim fighters?)

Do young Christians leave their homes and go to Christian military training centres on a regular basis?

The Bible says that homosexuals should be killed. Do you know any western “Christian” countries that do this apart from the nut job in Uganda? But of the 80-some countries that criminalize homosexuality, the majority are Muslim, five of them providing for the death penalty.

The fact is that in so-called Christian countries in Europe and North America, millions of people are in reality atheists (in some countries in Europe it is the majority of people). To them, the quaint and barbaric passages of the Bible are just one more reason to reject religion.

The Koran, on the other hand, is held by even so-called “moderate” Muslims to be the actual word of God, to be obeyed.

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Valteron: Care to discuss Manifest Destiny?

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[quote=“Lobohan, post:295, topic:539432”]

Of course I believe racists exist! And the ones I have seen or learned about are pretty damned ignorant, from Hitler (who was not stupid but truly ignorant) to modern racists. I despise them.

What I fail to understand is why you would apply the term “racist” to people warning you about the dangers posed to our western way of life by Islam, an religioous ideology based on fighting to make the whole world submit to the will of Allah.

I will say it yet again: WHEN THE HELL DID ISLAM BECOME A RACE?

I happen to be part European, part African, and part American Indian. Part of my family is Jewish.

Muslims can be blonde and blue-eyed as in Kosovo, blue-black as in Africa, Arab-tan, Pakistani-brown, Indonesian-tan, or Chinese as in western China.

So what is this ridiculous charge of “racism” that you people keep using?

When most Communists were Slavs, in the 1930s, was an opponent of Communism considered an anti-slavic racist?

299

You know, I could have sworn this thread was about the building of a mosque in New York City. Apparently, I was mistaken, it’s actually supposed to be about how much Valteron hates muslims.

Nevertheless, regarding the quoted remark, so what? The first amendment of the US Constitution guarantees freedom to practice one’s religion, full stop.

I suggest you become a US citizen and agitate for a constitutional amendment to exclude Islam from protected faiths, if you feel that strongly about this issue.

300

Okay, but only as long as you restrict yourself to cases in which the doctrine of Manifest Destiny is being used today (or say in the last 10 years) by American leaders to justify terrorist attacks like 9-11, or the bus bombings, suicide attacks, violation of human rights, etc. Otherwise, I will have to suspect you of trotting out old examples that no longer apply in a pitiful attempt to pretend that they are morally equivalent to a world-wide jihad being waged by a world-wide warrior religion right here and now.