Forgot which forum I was in. Apologies to all concerned, especially emarkp.
No, it is not.
However, “Ground Zero” has a specific meaning regarding the location of the actual impact or explosion of an attack, not all the area affected by subsequent trauma. Two blocks away from the WTC site and on the far side of the site from the locations of WTC-1 and WTC-2 is not Ground Zero.
Your imaginary definitions are not binding on other speakers of English. A community center that may include a Mosque is no more a mosque than a hospital that includes a chapel is a church.
I am not sure which liar you are quoting, here, but your statement is not correct. Imam Rauf has been an advocate of communication between the Muslim and other communities for years, (a position attacked by Wahhabists and the members of al Qaeda), and has, himself, been recruited by the FBI and U.S. State Department to help provide training to allow agents to better understand and communicate with the Muslim community.
False. The name invokes the city and period on the Iberian peninsula in which Muslim scholars shared their knowledge with Christian and Jewish scholars in an attitude of mutual respect. This period began decades after the Ummayad conquest and continued for several hundred years.
So, basically, every single declaration in your post was in error.
ETA: Newt Gingrich thought it was a big deal that one of the churches in Cordoba was turned into a mosque, (pretty much the way that Christians have converted pagan temples and Muslim mosques to churches over the years) but the name was actually employed by the Cordoba Institute, (not mosque), a Muslim community outreach association, for a decade or so prior to the WTC/Pentagon attacks in reference to the aforementioned period of mutual tolerance. Claiming that the Park51 location was being named in honor of the Cordoba Mosque is simply a lie pushed by ignorant xenophobes for political purposes. You might want to avoid associating with them.
Doesn’t the Pentagon have a space reserved for Muslim worship? Apparently that makes the Department of Defense a mosque!
A Ground Zero mosque, no less. I mean, it was hit by a plane.
Oh, where in the Cordoba center will Christians and Jews be worshipping?
The Cordoba Movement was founded by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. They claim that “the name Cordoba was chosen to symbolize the time in history when Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together in peace and harmony and created a prosperous center of intellectual, spiritual, cultural and commercial life in the city of Cordoba in Southern Spain.” Unfortunately, Cordoba was the center of the Umayyad caliphate in which Christians and Jews had to live “under restrictions” oh, and were sometimes executed for expressing their faith. The Muslim conquerors converted a church into the Great Mosque of Cordoba.
Rauf refuses to condemn Hamas, and said regarding 9/11, “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.” He also seems to respect Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Spiritual Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.
There’s no doubt that a significant fraction of Islam (a minority to be sure, but a significant one) approves of terrorism. The name and the man place the project squarely in that group.
The planes took down WTC1 & 2, and part of one of the planes damaged the Burlington building making it unusable. If WTC7 counts as part of Ground Zero, the Burlington building deserves it at least as much.
Then we’ll compromise and call the Muslim worship area inside the center a mosque? … which is a Ground Zero Mosque.
Was that before or after the martyrdoms of Christians? Maybe after the 1066 massacre? Please clarify.
No, you’re completely right dude, most Muslims are trying to kill dhimmis and convert them at the very same time.
You saw clearly into their game, one can’t fool you. I strongly advise you call the local offices of the FBI and share your discoveries. If you could also include a list of all people with suspicous behavior or a distinct Middle Eastern look about them, that you could have spotted in your neighborhood, that would be a definite plus
Yeesh. Read your own links. The Beeb article goes on at great length regarding the ways in which the Christians and Jews were tolerated in ways that Jews and Muslims and pagans were not tolerated at the same time in Christian Europe. The Wikipedia article notes that the martyrs were killed for deliberately insulting the Muslims and that their own Christian bishop regarded them as antagonistic fanatics who deservedly brought about their own doom.
I do not support killing people for their beliefs, nor do I support holding people as second class citizens, but considering the times–and contrasting the actions of the Iberian Muslims with those of the European Christians–there was significantly more tolerance at that time in Cordoba than among the Christians.
So what? How many pagan temples got converted to churches? I already noted that action. It is silly to get excited about the transfer of ownership of a building 1200+ years ago.
What Rauf did on a couple of occasions was to refuse to let some TV talking head get him to make derogatory comments about groups in the Middle East. Those two individual incidents are trotted out over and over again by zealot xenophobes as though Rauf had some long history of supporting terrorists. His comment about the U.S. political actions being “accessory” to events while noting that the U.S. still did not deserve to be attacked are actually pretty accurate and are a lot less inflammatory than the comments of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson indicating that the U.S. did deserve to be attacked.
And, again, you really need to learn to read your own citations. al-Qaradawi is, indeed, associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and someone who has no use for the United States, yet in the very article to which you linked, he was quoted as condemning the WTC/Pentagon attacks as not being justified, despite his own antipathy to this country.
No. The name indicates that Imam Rauf is in direct conflict with the terrorists. (I notice that you have to ignore his work with the FBI and State Department to make your claim.)
No it does not, any more than the outskirts of Hiroshima are considered Ground Zero in that city. That you wish to extend the meaning of the word for your own polemics does not actually change the meaning. It is just rhetoric employed by haters like Pamela Geller to get people like you worked up so that they can make more money.
That would be after the Golden Era that is generally considered to have come to a close about nine years earlier with the fall of the Ummayads.
It doesn’t matter if the proposed community center were to be a mosque or even if it were to be built on the very site of the destroyed World Trade Center buildings as those opposing it are so excellently demonstrating. But what they fail to grasp is that it would be perfectly acceptable to those not driven by their prejudice to have the building on that site.
The relative treatment is irrlevant. If Christians built a monument and called it Acre & the Saracens, it would be offensive to Muslims, no matter if there was also a good connotation somewhere. Yes, the martyrs were killed for “deliberately insulting” – read: testifying of their belief in Christ, while some also denounced Mohammed. Damn fine religion that. For over 1000 years killing people who disagree with them or who are perceived to be insulting their prophet. (And yes it’s not the whole religion, not even a majority of it – more on that below.)
Again, the relative treatment is irrelevant. The choice of the name refers to a time when Muslims were triumphant and allowed other religions to survive their rule – as long as they didn’t get uppity.
Hey, I didn’t pick the name. It was the capital of a caliphate, and it was a building expressly changing hands via conquest. Hence the negative connotation. Yes, it was common then. Unfortunately it’s still common now in the parts of Islam that are fighting against western culture.
No, what he did was refuse to condemn Hamas, which is an explicitly terrorist organization. It’s charter is to eradicate the Jews. You cannot be peaceful and yet refuse to condemn Hamas.
No, it’s not accurate. No more accurate than the Sharia man who says his wife forced him to beat her.
His “work” with the FBI? All I can find about that is participating in a forum. Saying in English that terrorism is irrelevant. Else Ararfat wasn’t a terrorist, nor is Abbas. Haven’t you noticed that Islamicists like to say how killing innocents is bad in English but promote terrorism in Arabic (or Farsi, or Pashtun, or whatever). It’s perfectly acceptable to lie to the west to deceive them. So you look to intent, not just boiler plate statements. And if he’s so against terrorism, why was he unwilling to condemn a terrorist organization? Even if only in English?
That’s poor reasoning. Ground Zero in Hiroshima is explicitly defined to be the point right under detonation. Ground Zero in New York isn’t defined the same way as Hiroshima.
Your claim that it’s just “hater rhetoric” is circular. It’s polemic if you object to the mosque, therefore whatever someone says in opposition to the mosque is polemic. I guess this particular logical fallacy is the genetic fallacy. I’ve made a clear argument why I see it as part of Ground Zero. Your assertion that it’s hater rhetoric isn’t an answer.
I’ve presented no arguments from Geller (in fact I only passingly have heard about her site, and was more familiar with it because of Paypal’s banning/unbanning).
Nothing you’ve said has directly addressed what I’ve said. You’ve presented added information and shown that some people can interpret the whole thing in a positive light, but it doesn’t negate the negative.
Do you refuse to believe that there is a substantial fraction of the world’s Muslims who sympathize with terrorism? Or who approve of the 9/11 attacks? If you do, then you’re ignoring reality. If you don’t (more likely) then it’s imperative to decide what we allow these people to do to us. Rauf is clearly not with us, and the Cordoba project is grounded in hate, with an attempt to disguise it as “understanding.” Clearly that isn’t the purpose, especially after the outcry against the project. An “understanding” imam would express apology and move the site. An “understanding” imam wouldn’t have tried to press forward for a 9/11/11 opening date.
Simply repeating that people who don’t agree are haters isn’t an argument or a debate.
Again, circular reasoning. If you’re going to call me prejudiced, call me it to my face. The oblique “they” is pathetic.
The problem is two-fold: 1) it is a mosque, and 2) it is at a site hit on 9/11. It is the two conditions together that make it so objectionable. You seem to fail to grasp this. A mosque or Islamic community center at the site of the United 93 crash is just as objectionable. Just repeating that people are “prejudiced” to avoid the effort of making a coherent argument isn’t terribly useful or insightful.
Piffle.
Cordoba was a seat of learning to which Christians and Jews were drawn because they could participate in that society. Making up an imaginary “Acre and the Saracens” monument, (which could not celebrate any similar event), would be equally insulting to Christians.
Go read up on those “martyrs,” again. All of them died during a three year period in which a small group of Christians went out of their way to irritate a small number of autocrats for which they paid with their lives. This is not some long period of constant persecution and harrassment. I think that killing Eulogius and his merry band of agitators was wrong–just as I think that killing Hus and Tyndale and Joan of Arc and Campion was wrong–but finding a few examples of religious people doing dumb things in the same way that other religious people did similar dumb things does not rise to the level of indicating that an entire society was repressive for long periods.
You mischaracterize what happened. The socety centered in Cordoba encouraged multicultural scholarship and cooperation at a time when similar scholarship was effectively prohibited in Christian Europe. Even if you do not like how that society was organized, it is recognized by actual historians as a period of growth and tolerance. It is that view of that period that prompted the choice of the name, not your revisionist view that it was a horrible place.
You can, however, refuse to be baited into condemning a political organization just to make some TV interviewer happy. You will note that all the people foaming at the mouth about Rauf’s “links” to terrorism can only cite this one single TV interview. If he is so supportive of terror, where are all the other similar statements? Israel has supported the Apartheid South African regime at different times. Mandela has refused to criticize Ghadafi or Castro at other times. Reagan praised the Nicaraguan Somozan terrorists. Lots of people find reasons to either support or fail to condemn bad people at different times for different reasons.
Simply refusing to be drawn into an off-topic condemnation of one group or another for a particular sound bite in a single inteerview is not the same as actually supporting bad people.
You were expecting them to deputize him and send him outr to round up dissident Muslims? He did not simply “participate” in the forum, he helped to organize it. He was also asked on several occasions to speak to Muslim groups to assure them that the U.S. was not going to round them all up and deport them. The U.S. State Department held similar meetings seeking his input and the Bush administration even asked him to go to the Middle East to reassure various groups that the U.S. was not going to wage war against Islam (which would be the opposite view that they would get from reading Beck or Geller).
It is excellent reasoning. The phrase has the same meaning in all cases, including in New York–except when a Geller changes the meaning to launch a hate tirade against a community organization.
Geller is the idiot that invented the term “Ground Zero Mosque.” Anything you say that employs that phrase is supporting her hate filled diatribes. Prior to her lies about where the community center would be built and the lies that it would be dedicated on the tenth anniversary of the WTC/Pentagon attacks, the community center was actually being lauded by people, (even on the political Right), as something that we should support so as to marginalize the extremists. Then Geller posted her lies and Murdoch sent out his marching orders and all of a sudden the community center was the “Ground Zero Mosque” and it was BAD IDEA. The opposition to it was created out of whole cloth, based on lies.
Actually, Rauf, who is Sufi–a group that opposes the Fundamentalists and which is condemned by them–has along history of promoting better relations between the Muslim community and the rest of Western society. He has spent twenty years, or so, in Tribeca, the neighborhood where the WTC stood, doing exactly that. He is clearly not supportive of terrorism, (unless you think the FBI and the State Department are in cahoots with him to foment Fundamentalist Islam). So you are simply wrong on that score.
As for moving the Park51 project, Rauf has already said that he would be willing to do so. However, his funds are already tied up in that building and he had done all the work to purchase the old building and get the correct permits during the months when Fox News was saying that he was doing a good thing. Once Geller spouted her lies and Murdoch told Faux News to change their opinions, Rauf was stuck with the building. Unless you are willing to buy the old building from him so that he can move to a different location, then criticizing him for not moving is simply joining the rank hypocrisy of Geller and Murdoch.
(And all of this information has already been posted, so your claim to have read anything (other than hate sites) rings pretty hollow.)
One rather suspects otherwise, re the last statement. But from history, Corduba represents the conquest of Islam over the Visigoths who were Arian christians who didn’t get along well with their Catholic subjects. What bloody lesson that has for modern history is all up to the fetid imagination of various partisans.
If a group takes the lesson away from that period that their best model is cooperation (which is the sponsors’ take-way very evidently) that rather seems a valid lesson, rather more valid than some odd-ball triumphalism read.
And your earlier statement about “Jihadi tourism”- pray tell where do you get that piece of creative assertion from? Silly assertion in any case, as if the Al Qaeda sorts need any particular excuse to fixate on New York, which they’ve been fixated on since the early 1990s…
There’s no particular reason to freak out over the Corduba centre, other than simple minded bigotry.
It’s only objectionable if one is so simple minded as to confuse Islam in general with the Al Qaeda folks. Else it is not objectionable at all. The position confusing Sufi Mulsims with Al Qaeda very much and fully merits the label bigotted.
That’s alright - the arguments against your point of view have already been made enough times. They were made earlier in this thread, and before that, they were made in a different thread. The same arguments have been made on both sides for months. After a while it’s valid to conclude that some people just aren’t interested in the facts. Meanwhile the people who lead the charge against the community center have mostly piped down because the issue already served its purpose in the midterm elections.
In the spaces that will be set aside for them.
“At Cordoba House, we envision shared space for community activities, like a swimming pool, classrooms and a play space for children. There will be separate prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, Jews and men and women of other faiths. The center will also include a multifaith memorial dedicated to victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.”
A structure they bought, not took.
(See also here)
He said that in a 60 Minutes piece about the horrified reaction to and denouncing of the 9/11 attacks by Muslims. The full transcript of the whole thing can be found here.
This is Imam Rauf’s bit:
That last part is also something that has also been said, using virtually identical language, by such America-hating terrorist-supporters as:
Glenn Beck: “When people said they hate us, well, did we deserve 9-11? No. But were we minding our business? No. Were we in bed with dictators and abandoned our values and principles? Yes. That causes problems.”
Bill O’Reilly: “The prevailing wisdom in the Muslim world among moderate Muslims and even Muslims who like America is that America foreign policy, the way it was handled for 30, 40 years was responsible for radicalizing some people because we have a presence in the Gulf. We take their oil. We support death spots in some countries. Saudi Arabia and others, that we do all of these things that we intrude on the Muslim world. That’s not a radical position. You can debate it one way or the other, but it’s not radical.”
And Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Chairman and Vice-Chairman, respectively, of the Congress-appointed 9/11 Commission: "U.S. foreign policy has not stemmed the rising tide of extremism in the Muslim world. In July 2004, the 9/11 commission recommended putting foreign policy at the center of our counterterrorism efforts. Instead, we have lost ground.
…
We have not been persuasive in enlisting the energy and sympathy of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims against the extremist threat. That is not because of who we are: Polling data consistently show strong support in the Muslim world for American values, including our political system and respect for human rights, liberty and equality. Rather, U.S. policy choices have undermined support."
No, he doesn’t. He described al-Qaradawi as “the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.” That’s not a statement of approbation, but an accurate description of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, as even a quick perusal of the sources linked at his wiki article will show.
And in any case, Imam Rauf wasn’t talking about al-Qaradawi’s pre-eminence because Rauf agrees totally with the man, but because of al-Qaradawi’s fatwa in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that Muslims were permitted to fight other Muslims in order to combat terrorism and the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, as his quote in the New York Times article about the fatwa makes blatantly clear.
That, by the way, is the extent of Imam Rauf’s comments on al-Qaradawi. In his book What’s Right With Islam is What’s Right With America, Rauf talks about al-Qaradawi’s fatwa and the above-quoted New York Times piece, saying:
In other words, Rauf’s entire point in mentioning al-Qaradawi is because the fact that a hardline (and widely-respected in the Muslim world) cleric like al-Qaradawi issued a fatwa condemning the events of 9/11 as terrorist attacks and permitting Muslims to fight other Muslims to stop further such attacks would only strengthen and reinforce the statements that moderates like Rauf (such as the ones featured in the above 60 Minutes piece) issued about the same things.
That statement is about as wrong as it’s possible to get.
You mean the phrase that was linked to this NY Times article? I guess you didn’t click or even hover on it? I could also have linked this Time article as well, but didn’t bother. Are these right-wing rags?
Wow. Impressive misreading. So you think that only Al Qaeda is hostile to western culture? My point was straightforward, and I can only conclude that you’re intentionally obtuse here. Let me state it more clearly: many Muslims want to subjugate the west. I beleive Rauf is in that subgroup. Al Qaeda is also in that subgroup. The two subgroups need not overlap. Do you need a Venn Diagram?
This is such a ridiculous logical fallacy, I’m just stunned. I’ll let you get back to your remedial logic classes.
Got it. Anything which disagrees with you is a hate site, including NY Times, Time Magazine, wikipedia, etc.
Post more often, Kokopilau.
Really? That would the same Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who has written such things as
and
and
and
and
and
*That *Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf?
I made no mention of "right wing"mate and frankly don’t give a fig as to the political colours of your press.
You rather highlight the sheer absurdity of your use of that most infelicitous phrase since rather clearly the Germans - as interpreted by American reporters - are worried about an otherwise obscure building attracting attention.
Given decades of Al Qaeda obsession with New York, your wanking on about this site as a draw is risible and absurd as a ‘concern.’
Save the immature little expressions. There is no misreading, you’re dance and pretence and vague ad hominems as obtuse, misreading etc don’t obscure it at all.
Your beliefs re Rauf… eh others have dealt with that. Boring bigotry. Boring.
More ad hominem without substantive reply. Although I do note that the comment which this was on was not mine, although the poster included it under my banner.
And this is merely a shrill straw man, as of course I made no comment re hate sites, etc. (although in review I see it was to a comment that was not mine).