Jihad seeks to conquer the whole world, not just the US
Not sure if this has been posted … probably has, but just in case.
Let’s pretend, Monty, that we are in the 19th century and a plains Indian tells you that he fears the white man with his all-conquering doctrine of Manifest destiny? Would you have called him an anti-white racist? Would you have argued that there are “good” white people (which there obviously were)? Would you have told him to stop worrying because not all American whites agree with the imperialistic doctrine? Would you have pointed to “moderates” like Henry David Thoreau who opposed the expansionist war with Mexico on moral grounds?
Above all, would you have called him an anti-white racist? 
Great. Now, demonstrate factually how the proposed mosque is an element of Jihad, and you’re home free.
Everything is about how Valteron hates Muslims. Did you miss the last three threads in which Valteron totally lost his shit for absolutely no legitimate reason about Islam?
No, I didn’t. That, in fact, was my point.
Just to tell you I don’t answer ‘ad hominem’ arguments.
Hey, when the hominem fits…
We HAVE run out of arguments. At least a dozen very good arguments have been presented to you in this thread. You’ve ignored them all. Once every avenue of logic, reason and fact has been ignored, it’s time to accept that the party ignoring all the logic, reason and fact has probably got some kind of problem.
I figure that applies to you. I HAVE run out of arguments. If you figure Islam is just another religion, if you figure that anyone who sees a danger to us in this world-conquering warrior ideology is a “racist” even though Islam is not a race, then I also have effectively run out of arguments. But just to be clear, I did not start this thread, BTW. I only participated in the last day or two.
So, basically, you are admitting that your “No True Scotsdman” failure is predicated on introducing a straw man about all of Islam. (You really are supposed to leave your rants in the BBQ Pit.)
“Islam” is not really an issue. It is a very large belief system with a great many variants. Pretending that there is only one Islam and that it must either be all good (or acceptable) or all evil is simply the sort of lazy name-calling that has let demagogues rile up people against “communism” and “capitalism” without considering all the various permutations of those systems.
Unmitigated tripe.
Jihad is a word with various meanings in various contexts, but none of them actually mean world conquest. The closest you can get is that the specific Wahabbist sect believes that they have the duty to “defend” Islam from encroaching Western culture, with violence if necessary. Even bin Laden has never expressed a desire to have Islam overthrow the West; he just wants the West to stay out of lands that he deems Muslim. There are certainly Muslims who believe that Islam should become the world religion, but those Muslims do not believe that that phenomenon will occur through jihad.
If they’re trying to conquer the world they sure are doing a shitty job of it.
What about Turkey? Are they trying to take over the world, Valteron? Or is it just NATO they’re worried about?
If you’re going to paint yourself as an expert on Islam, it would behoove you to actually be correct about your [del]rants[/del] pronouncements on the subject.
I’m a life-long atheist. I would be perfectly happy if tomorrow morning all billion-and-half Muslims woke up, went “:smack: What were we thinking?!?” and became secular humanists. The world would probably be a better place as a result. (Of course, since I’m an atheist, in principle I feel the same way about the two billion Christians and the billion-plus Hindus and so on.)
Realistically, though, that ain’t gonna happen. The question becomes, how do we stop (some) Muslims from wanting to fly airliners into buildings and (many) Muslims from believing that the societies they live in ought to be governed according to systems of religious law which don’t guarantee equal justice for all, don’t uphold the rights of women, don’t provide for true religious liberty, etc.?
Here’s the thing–there are still lots and lots of Christians, but very few of them want any kind of real theocracy anymore. Theocratic Christians exist, but they’ve definitely been pushed to the fringes of modern Christian thought. And yet, even in the United States–consistently found to be one of the most if not the most religious (and specifically Christian) of all the modern industrialized powers–statements like “Everyone has the right to peacefully practice their own religion” find widespread acceptance, and even the principle of “separation of church and state” has so far managed to hang in there.
Modern Christendom managed to achieve this relatively happy state partly because people came to see religious liberty as a good thing in principle, but probably largely also because Christians were slaughtering each other wholesale in intra-Christian sectarian warfare, and they eventually stumbled their way into accepting that enforced religious uniformity, far from guaranteeing social harmony, was actually a recipe for civil war; while protecting the freedom of each individual’s conscience actually turns out to work very well for producing peaceful and productive societies.
But it’s not like Muslims don’t have their own intra-Islamic sectarian disputes. (See a depressingly large number of news stories about Sunnis bombing Shi’ite mosques and such.) Furthermore, increasingly large numbers of Muslims find themselves living in societies where they are not the majority. And it may be Pollyanna-ish of me, but I do think that by and large, whatever their religious beliefs, most people want to live out their lives and raise their families and enjoy social peace, personal security, economic prosperity, and probably even individual freedom. I do think it’s possible to persuade Muslims–as their sister Abrahamic monotheists the Christians have been mostly persuaded before them–that they can live peacefully in a secular society, and still be Muslims. They can live under a system of laws which makes no distinction between believers and “dhimmis”, which guarantees freedom of religion for all, and yet they can still profess that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad was his prophet; they can pray every day; they can fast during Ramadan; they can give their alms; and they can make the Hajj. They can be good Muslims and follow all the pillars of Islam, and still obey the laws of the land and be good citizens of the countries they live in. And maybe even, establishing free and secular governments in Muslim countries could actually lead to peace and progress, without forcing anyone to abandon Islam.
But we damned sure will never persuade them of this if we, in the secular and enlightened West, go around outlawing minarets, or saying Muslims can’t build mosques in the cities in which they live (and in many cases have been born in). Newt Gingrich and his ilk are giving aid and comfort to the enemy–every time some bigot says that Muslims can’t be Americans and still be Muslims, bin Laden no doubt grins with delight in whatever hole he’s hiding in. This is exactly what the jihadists want. (Even George W. Bush was smart enough to repeatedly at least claim that his “War on Terror” was not a war against Islam.)
You’re not going to get a billion-and-a-half people to abandon their religion, not in the lifetimes of any of us. But we just might be able to persuade Muslims that they too can enjoy the benefits of the free society we all claim to love, without abandoning their religion. Our society is a very seductive one. They don’t hate us for our freedom; they envy our freedom–not the fanatics like bin Laden, but the ordinary men and women. They want to get rid of the corrupt dictators and despots who rule too many of their societies, so they too can live in just and free societies (although no doubt they are angry at our hypocrisy when we help prop up those corrupt dictators and despots in contravention of our own values).
But every time we tell Muslims they must convert to Christianity (or secular humanism) at gunpoint (and all laws are ultimately enforced at the point of a gun, so any law against Islam is an attempt not to persuade Muslims but to attack them by force), we drive more Muslims into the arms of the jihadists and the theocrats.
You jest, of course. The Bible is not allowed in Saudi Arabia.
Exactly what relevance does the practice of the Saudi Arabian government have on the issue of a governmental act in the United States by a federal, state or local government of the United States?
Not having anything to do with this thread but Turkey is unique to the region. The Government oversees Muslim religious facilities and education through its Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı). This is primarily with the majority Sunnis. Shia’s do not have government financing for separate mosques and do not attend the government run institutions.
the secular Turkish government has control of all the mosques right down to the hiring of Imams and the sermons given each week. This is in contrast to other countries in the region which answer to a supreme religious leader.
I make the observation to note that in the Middle East, Islam exists at the discretion of significant top-down power structures regardless of whether it is secular or religious in nature. You could extrapolate that it requires a high level of control to contain the volatile intensity of it’s practices. I base this on the reactions to ideas (In the form of cartoons or books) put forth in other nations.
If the mosque in question is funded by people who are unfriendly to the United States than the proximity to the WTC is not really relevant. Anywhere in the US is going to be unpopular and controversial. That anyone would question a Mosque (versus any other religious building) is a function of recent history. The Imam in question condemned the 9/11 attack but also framed it as if to blame the US. This makes people pause and ask where the money is coming from.
Your theory is still begging for evidence. Aside from yourself I have not heard anyone else ask where the money is coming from. And certainly when people hold up signs saying “No 9/11 Victory Mosque,” they are not asking questions about funding, they are stating their opposition on religious grounds. I have only heard this discussed as an issue of religion and occasionally taste. Never money.
Although, strangely, it never makes them pause and ask themselves if he had any kind of point.
And so, since Saudi Arabia is an unfree theocracy, the United States should be one too?
The fact that freedom of religion doesn’t exist in various shithole countries doesn’t mean we should should become a shithole country.