Bullshit. People ARE saying they shouldn’t be built anywhere. Is Murfreesboro, TN too close to Ground Zero for a mosque? Apparently some people think so.
You can’t have it both ways. You either hold all Muslims culpable for 9/11 or you don’t. If you admit that all Muslims are not responsible for 9/11, then you have NO excuse to be against a mosque anywhere.
I will never understand why people who judge an entire group by the actions of a few and are proud to do so then cavil at the word “bigoted.” Embrace it, people! If it’s something to be ashamed of, try to change your stance rather than trying to change the word.
Seriously? How about Fred Phelp’s church has distasteful beliefs much as OBL’s Wahhabism has distasteful beliefs? Nazis - fucking Christ.
I must have missed the transnational movement with a massive fucking army and bureaucracy geared to destroying the US. Given the millions of Muslim citizens in the US apparently crouched and ready to spring on a helpless nation you should be able to show a significant portion are Nazi-ish. Should be easy right?
Actually, it seems to me that you are. You seem to believe, or at least have argued here, that Islam and its adherents are a monolithic force, and all share the same beliefs re
That seems, per the definition of bigotry, to be bigotry.
I mean, isn’t everything you’re saying square within #1?
If you want the analogy to actually work, you’d have to hypothesize a National Socialism as neutral as Sufism–one that believes they are the best governmental system, and evangelizes to that effect, but does not engage in terrorism or in discrimination against non-members of any stripe. Oh, and they’d have to be working against genocide.
Those guys, IMHO, can build wherever the hell they want, too. If a person is so sensitive that the mere fact that someone with a worldview that’s superficially barely related to an evil one (and is actively working to suppress/marginalize the evil one!) might be nearby to someplace that the separate, evil group did something evil at, then to hell with 'em. I don’t get bent out of shape by Sunday School still taking place in the Diocese of Los Angeles, either, and the subset of Catholics currently running the place is SIGNIFICANTLY closer to the subset who was actively hiding the child molestations taking place there than Cordoba Initiative is to Al-Qaeda.
I don’t know how you’ve managed to miss it, because it’s all over the news, but building of new mosques are being protested all over the country, and people are saying that they shouldn’t be built anywhere.
While a high-profile battle rages over a mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, heated confrontations have also broken out in communities across the country where mosques are proposed for far less hallowed locations.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8300-503544_162-503544.html?keyword=American+Family+Association
You keep repeating this but you haven’t offered one reasonable argument to support it. All the factual details about Rauf and his work, Muslim victims of the same attack, and everything else that’s been listed repeatedly show nothing insensitive about this particular group wanting to build there and contribute to the community. The only connection you can point to to justify your accusation is they are Muslim, and the 9/11 attackers were also Muslim. {like a couple of billion other people} Since the only possible connection is a common name of a religion {with extremely different beliefs} that, my friend, indisputably qualifies as bigotry.
Maybe hatred is too strong in a lot of cases but intolernce seems spot on.
American citizens trying to exercise a right we celbrate and proudly defend, are protested against and called assholes for the single reason that they share a religion in name only with some crazies that they have no connection to. IMO it can’t be anything but intolernce and the definition of bigotry.
I assume you’re familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church Can you imagine how Matthew Sheppard’s family and friends feel when they see those protests?
If some Christian church managed to buy some property a mile or so away from where Matthew was killed and wanted to build a community center would they be assholes? Is their Christianity somehow automaticially connected to the crazed haters of WBC, or woyld that be kinda ridiculous?
Comon man. Just find an analogy that works better if you can. I suggest you don’t start with the kinder gentler KKK.
If the Nazi’s had existed for a thousands years with a similar mixed and rich a history and with as much diversity as Muslims you might make this work. Nazi’s are pretty much only identified by the horrors of WWII.
How about this
If Hindus wanted to build a community center two blocks from a Holocaust museum in DC would they be assholes because one of their religious symbols is remarkably similar to a Swastika?
And it would still fail, unless you further posit that this “neutral” Nazi party existed at the time of the Holocaust, and had members who were victims at Auschwitz.
What Anduril seems unable to grasp is that the attack on 9/11 wasn’t aimed at a religion, it was aimed at a nation. That nation contains a great many Muslims. Those Muslims, too, were victims of the attack, every bit as much as any other American. To say to Muslims, “You have to stay away from this area, out of respect for the victims,” is to say to them, “You are not really Americans. You were not victims here, we were.” That is a reprehensible thing to say under almost any circumstances. In this particular situation, to say it to Muslims who lived and worked near the WTC for more than thirty years, who lived through the attack and who may have had family or friends die in it, is inexcusable.
I don’t have the faintest idea what this is supposed to mean.
Actually Imam Rauf mantains that the spiritual practices of Islam have a lot in common with the principles of our democracy, equal rights, equal opportunity, etc. He even wrote a book about it. I’d think those are exactly the kind of beliefs and practices we want to support.
It seems to me that you are unable to accept that several billion Muslims can have widely varying beliefs about how Islam is practiced even though it’s so plainly obvious in Christianity.
hijack;
I wear almost no jewelry but years ago I bought St Brendan’s Cross at a coastal shop. I like it, and my girls all have one.
Every so often someone would look at it and ask with a trace of suspicion, “Is that a Swastika?” The first few times I explained what it was. One guy said “Well sometimes people hide a swastika in some other design” as if I was some secret Arlan supremacist of some crap. Finally I got tired of explaining. It doesn’t look like a swastika to me. So, when people asked my response was a Colonel Klink voice and " Yah! …und?" Then they just walked away looking bewildered.
end hijack;
That’s pretty cool.
If it makes you feel any better, my wife and I had a secondary Hindu wedding ceremony and there were swastikas everywhere.
Not really.
Speaking of which, I’m still waiting for my crowing Muslim. Or did you think you’d get off the hook by keeping quiet a few days ?
I don’t get this. On one hand some conservatives (and I lean conservative) tell us that we shouldn’t pay attention to what foreigners think and do what’s best for America. Then they tell us we should violate the 1st Amendment because of what terrorists might think. Doesn’t compute.
It means them Muslims think the people who don’t believe in Allah are different, and live poorer lives for not knowing the light of God. Sort of like Jews and gentiles, or Christians and heathens… but evil. Evil I tells you !
no fooling? I didn’t realize it was a Hindu symbol until today. Has anyone ever commented on it?
My Dad was a WWII anti Aircraft gunner, his boss years ago was an ex german WWII pilot. They actually joked about it. So why can’t we get along?
How do you propose to do that when the US Constitution (you do care about the Constitution, right?) says:
Derailing anecdote but : you wouldn’t believe the fuss her parents made when an old GF of mine, who happens to be Jewish, came home with a Japanese omamori good luck charm featuring a big old manji.
I agree that xenophobia and hatred is being stirred up, but these people are completely incoherent. If they actually were worried about this Muslim threat, they would be furious about how intertwined our economy is with various Middle Eastern countries. But I don’t see them calling for divestiture from Saudi Arabia. I don’t seem them down at Fox News protesting the fact that a member of the Saudi Royal Family is the largest shareholder of News Corp after the Murdoch family. Hell, I bet if this were a Sunni Mosque, Fox would have avoided the story like the plague so as not to offend one of their biggest shareholders.
