I wonder if in Muslim countries there is a lively debate about new foreign military base being erected? I know Christian churches do not get a pass, but who doesn’t want new military base around in the neighborhood. Imagine, people who live there get to decide if a brand new foreign military base gets building permit.
Are you comparing a mosque (which is the Muslim equivalent of a Christian church) to a military base? Is that the analogy I’m supposed to take away from this post?
OP: Hopefully because it’s a stupid protest with no merit
No.
Former is a place where jihadis are recruited while the latter is an instrument of peace. Of course, if you watch enough media.
I was just pointing out that some in US worry about mosques being built in an “inappropriate” place while their counterparts in Muslim countries are worried about military base being built in an “inappropriate” place - wonder what happens when they explode (pun not intended) of all that worry. Just contemplating about the world we live in and how people go about their lives despite the elephant size of a dinosaur in a room as small as Saddam’s rathole.
If they didn’t want the American base, they should vote out the people who allowed it!
That easy, eh? In what bubble one has to live to think that that’s what it takes.
IIRC, citizens of most of Middle Eastern countries are not allowed to vote in US elections.
I was unaware that our presense was completely uninvited by the governments of the various nations. Our Marine Corps was a complete Badass in Gulf War 1, invading on such a short front directly into Quwait without being able to deploy on land ahead of time!
I mean, if we would have attempted to establish such a forward deployment, it would have been refused (since Hussein had no designs on the oil of his fellow Arab nations,) and would have been heartily opposed by the freely elected monarchy.
Most of the people I know here are for the building of a liberal Islamic center near the cite. The only people I know who are pissed off about it are people who are thousands of miles away and only know what they see on the news. I walk by this location almost every day and I have never seen anyone even look askance at the construction area. If I ever do I will expect them to be wearing a foam statue of liberty hat and a fanny pack, quite frankly. The media is just looking for something to whip people into a frenzy of fear because they don’t want you to change the channel to a Seinfeld rerun or anything that would draw your attention away from their network.
I’m impressed that this thread has not degenerated into a discussion of the grammatical land mines surrounding the use of ‘thee’ and ‘thou’.
Also, did they ever decide to build something at ground zero, or is it still just a big hole?
They’re building something: some low office buildings, another skyscraper, and a memorial - a very attractive and appropriate one, from the renderings, tree covered plaza with water pouring into two foursquare depressions in the footprint of the towers, which serves as the roof of the memorial museum. Renderings here.
In other words, it’s a large construction site. A very loud construction site. Did I mention I work 2 blocks from the site?
For those people who think they are showing some sort of freaky solidarity with New York by raising an idiotic stink over the muslim equivalent of Unitarian-Universalists setting down roots, let me quote from a tshirt that says
“go [heart] your own fucking city.”
On a related note, I believe the OP is from Canada.
I’m not saying they’re right to be upset. They’re wrong. But there are a lot of people who lost relatives on September 11th and I’m not surprised that some of them are offended by this. In a group that large it’s inevitable that some of them are going to blame all Muslims and refuse to think about this issue rationally. The ones who see this project for what it is deserve credit.
In the first place, I have never said this saintly, moderate, America-loving, non-homophobic, non-sexist, reasonable, peace-loving, pro-freedom, non-violent group of Muslims (gosh, those words look funny next to the word “Muslim”) could NOT build their Mosque near ground zero. Nor did the people at the demo on Sunday.
They said they should have the good taste not to.
Ah, the myth of moderate Islam. I suppose it may exist in a marginal way. But I will leave you with this quote from the new book, “Nomad” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of “Infidel”. As you may know, this beautiful and courageous woman who left Islam, and now is its harshest critic, lives in fear for her life and requires protection. Her comment: “I want to see the other face of Islam. But first I’d have to dig through all the bodies.”
This woman, who has known Islam first-hand, sees the western defenders of this ideology as the intellectual heirs of those who used to praise Stalin and ignore his piles of corpses. “It’s the seduction of totalitarianism. . . . .It’s a blind spot that left-wing intellectuals have always had.”
BTW, the moral relativists out there have come up with the usual “Christianity has Fundies too!” argument. Ask yourself this. Have you heard about Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens having to live in fear of their lives because they rejected and criticize Christianity?
Lol. I see conservative nonsense every day, but every once in a while, someone really gives it a 110%.
And they’re wrong. From what I can tell, this idea makes a great statement about tolerance and coexistence. The idea that Muslims should stay away from some undefined radius around the trade center site is ridiculous. Who decided that two blocks away is too close?
Here’s a map of the area, by the way. The arrow points to the proposed building so you can see where it is relative to the WTC. I posted this in another recent thread about this controversy. It’s also arguably misleading to call the building a mosque, even if it’s convenient shorthand. It includes a mosque but it’s a large community center that looks like any 13-story other office building.
What a great argument. Calling my comments nonsense! Did you think that up yourself? So now if I say your comments are nonsense, we can just go back and forth saying “Are not!”, “Are so!” ad infinitum. No wonder they call it Great Debates!
And they killed the Jews. Don’t forget that :rolleyes:
The reason the media didn’t cover the protest is because normal Americans hardly give a **** about the bigotry that you want to promote.
He doesn’t merely hate terrorism and extremism, he hates Islam and Muslims.
No, it doesn’t. E.g., I don’t know any leftie who wants to pull the FCC license of any fundie broadcasting network, or to stop them from putting up a church or a dumbass Bible college anywhere in particular. Tempting, but, no.