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The Islamic Cultural Center! The ISLAMIC cultural center? The Islamic CULTURAL center? Depends on which news you watch and what papers you read. To some, it sounds like the second choice. Sarah Palin has weighed in. Jon Stewart made his views known. President Obama gave a speech, after Mayor Bloomberg finally came out of his civil rights closet to make a solid statement. And I really don’t get what the fuss is about. As if there are not already two mosques located within four blocks of the trade center site, one of which predated the building of the World Trade Center. In fact, none other than Fox news recently reported that “New York City has more than 100 mosques . . . more than 800,000 of its 8.21 million residents are Muslims, said Philip Banks III, chief of the NYPD Community Affairs Bureau.” My friends, New York City has more Muslims than the entire populations of two Islamic nations: Bahrain and Qatar. But it’s more than numbers. And here is the rub that I see. Just as Al-Qaeda Muslims lump all Americans into one world-destroying pile (conveniently labeled “infidels”), some American’s want to do the same thing to Muslims. We equate the God-fearing, peace loving Muslims of America with the militant nut cases duct-taping bombs under their button downs. By resorting to simple fear and ignorance, we end up denying Americans the same rights the terrorists tried to destroy. President Obama said it pretty well. In reference to the first responders on 9/11, he stated “We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights — and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.” I suspect that the Americans who are opposing the rights of Muslims to worship are heading down the same path as Al-Qaeda. Fearful of what they don’t understand, they strike out blindly, perhaps hitting their target, but injuring others as well. In their flurry of activity, they dehumanize people by denying them God-given rights that distinguish the United States from Afghanistan. If they succeed, it’s pretty clear where they are leading us. |
Comments
Hi Mark,
You completely mischaracterize the issue and I find that disappointing. First, your ad hominem attack against those who oppose the cultural center is anti intellectual or at best, ill informed. It is very simple, one whom opposes this cultural center is not going down the path of Al Qaeda. The reason people oppose this center is because they understand what this IMam is doing. First, the name is the Cordoba Center. Cordoba Spain was the head of the Caliphate for hundreds of years. This is because Cordoba represented the conquest of Christian Europe (part of it) by Muslims. Therefore, this center is a political statement built near ground zero signifying the conquest of NYC. This has nothing to do with religious tolerance or the Talibanization of the USA by Fox watching conservatives.
The facts are simple. No one is restricting the right of Mulsims to worship in NYC. This political symbol is a beacon to the Muslim world of what happens when you violently attempt to overthrow a free government. The goal of Islam is to subdue the world politically and religiously.
Now, I am a free marketeer and think that if they raise the money, they should have the right to build it. I am understand that you have created a false characterization of those opposing the Community Center. As many of you academic liberals say, your position is narrow minded, not nuanced and is in fact a non-sequitor.
Blessings
Dan