Yeah, it’s kinda like blaming all Americans for something, or all Christians for something, isn’t it?
There’s nothing unusual about your views on religion, nor have I seen you cover any ground I haven’t long-ago explored on my own.
Ooh…keep waving those hands - the breeze is nice.
You apparently weren’t paying attention while you explored it however.
Which, one presumes, you would agree is asinine.
And yet you seemed quite happy to do it to the Muslims. 
There’s nothing unusual about your views on religion, nor have I seen you cover any ground I haven’t long-ago explored on my own.
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He wasn’t claiming exclusivity and the fact that an idea has been explored before does not in any way make it invalid.
You seem to be agreeing with things that argue for a stance opposite that which you are taking.
Then apparently you’ve made at least one invalid assumption about me. And apparently me saying this will prompt you to say something else along similar lines, and apparently this’ll give me an opening to say something along similar lines, et cetera and so forth. In an effort to cut to the chase, you tried to claim an authority that find neither impressive nor unique, and have no incentive to give any special weight.
Well, it’s asinine when he does it. Heh.
In a more generalized sense, my observation is that the quite justifiable complaints are unfortunately mingled in with complaints that are clearly not justifiable. It is not only Muslim states that help this along, but indeed any state inextricably linked to an official religion, because religion gives all complaints weight to followers of that religion, and a leadership eager to maintain power is all too happy to get its citizens to complain about outsiders in an effort to deflect complaints about itself. The exact religion doesn’t much matter. Heck, it could be devotion and reverence for the scripture of Marx.
I’m unclear what difference it makes if Al-Qaida attacked because of U.S. troops in Muslim nations, or Israel/Palestine, or Salman Rushdie… so with some of these motivations, the U.S. deserved it and with some they didn’t?
Instead of all these vague attempts at ‘point scoring’ why not actually say what’s on your mind?
What is the assumption?
What is wrong with it?
Which facts?
Which authority?
What did you disagree with when you ‘explored on your own’?
The religion in the US, presumably, being money or, perhaps, capitalism?
Cutting to the chase again…
Nothing. He and I have, as far I know, near-identical views on religion. I just object to the presumptuousness that he has some insight on this issue that I lack, and thus I should listen to him with something approaching reverence.
Anything beyond that runs the risk of getting more personal than a GD thread needs.
Or, perhaps more simply, Christianity and the not-inconsiderable efforts by a not-insignificant chunk of the population to make it the official religion.
Capitalism doesn’t quite fit, in the sense that it doesn’t inherently require adherents to ignore huge chunks of reality, though I’m sure some can convincingly argue otherwise.
This is false.
The Shah suppressed a lot of Muslim rights, even prohibiting the wearing of the hijab, (not the body covering chedor or sack-like burqa, but the simple head scarf). It was that sort of brutal intolerance that gave Khomeini the wedge to come back in with his own variety of brutality.
True. I attacked her credibility. We went through this dance with Valteron, earlier. Sultan has made numerous claims about what “Islam” does that are based strictly on her experience in Syria, encountering a Wahabbist organization. She has extrapolated those beliefs, to all of Islam in a way that Imam Rauf’s very existence belies. (She also has a record of making claims about her own experience appear to be contradicted by facts. For example, she claims to have been a witness to the assassination of one of her moderate Muslim professors, (even though she also denies that there can be moderates), but she was not even at the location where he was assassinated.) I would not challenge her credentials to talk about Islam as it was practiced in Syria in the 1970s, but her broader comments are in direct conflict with facts in regards to Islam as it is practiced in Turkey, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Europe, and North America.
As to the “victory,” if the haters had not made a point of pretending that all Islam was identical and throwing up the lies that Imam Rauf was some sort of Wahabbist, the community center would have gone in with no protests and there would be nothing to “celebrate.” Allowing a religious group to build a community center that is not even within sight of the WTC location is not going to give any Islamists something to crow about. It will simply be a building that provides a place for opponents of zealots to spread their message of cooperation and mutual understanding.
Yes, it’s ironic in the extreme that if it wasn’t for the zealots the Mosque would have been built and there would have been no question of it representing any kind of victory for anyone.
Thanks to their intervention there will, no doubt, be people who will see it as a victory when it is built.
On the plus side, for every extremist who might see it as some sort of very minor victory for whatever it is they support there will be a hundred who will see it as a victory for the very best principles upon which the US was founded. And, of course, a victory for freedom and common sense over mindless intolerance.
No one in his right mind should say that Muslims have no right to build their mosque anywhere they please. However, building that mosque so near the 9-11 ruins is foolhardy to say the least and those accusing people of bigotry for pointing that out are hypocrites. Let’s say the US bombed a historical landmark in Saudi Arabia or any ME country and Pastor Hagee decides to build a cathedral (oh, sorry - community center) near it, would these same people be as charitable to Pastor Hagee as they are to the imam in NY?
The last I checked, the US was not a Christian group. Analogy FAIL.
And, Saudi Arabia is not America. Double fail.
Islam is part of the battleground against terrorism, not the enemy. It is not monolithic, just like Christianity is not monolithic. Triple fail, with salchow.
I think that already goes without saying. It would be a futile and unconstitutional for government to try to stop it. Slowly but surely, they are making us more like them. Who’s winning this war anyways.
So they can build it anywhere they please provided no one objects to them building it there?
Yes. Just like blacks can sit anywhere they like on the bus, provided no one objects to them sitting in the front half.
I don’t need to make any assumptions; I just need to read this thread, where you refuse to treat Muslims like humans. Humans who respond to positive and negative stimuli, who aren’t all clones of each other.
I didn’t claim any “authority”.