The impassioned wailing over the “Ground Zero Mosque” is troubling, sad, and, at times, hilarious. Troubling because of what the critics of the Islamic center reveal about how shallow many Americans’ commitment to religious freedom really is. Sad because of what the wailers reveal about too-many of our fellow citizens’ pure, unadulterated ignorance about Islam and its divisions — which is doubly dangerous in these times. Here are a couple of facts you may not have picked up during the current bitchfest, particularly if your information has come from the hyperpartisan goobs at FoxNews:
It’s not even a mosque. The building is slated to be something like a Muslim Y, with a gym, pool, restaurant, auditorium, galleries, a 9/11 memorial, and a “prayer room,” which people who are terrified of, or angry at, all Muslims believe qualifies it as a “mosque.” Calling the planned building a mosque, however, is like calling the Harris Y a Presbyterian church.
It’s not at Ground Zero. The building will be on Park Place, two blocks north of the WTC site, in what the New Yorker describes as “a neighborhood ajumble with restaurants, shops (electronics, porn, you name it), churches, office cubes, and the rest of the New York mishmash.” And one more thing: the building won’t even be visible from the WTC site.
The center’s builders are American citizens, including Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who worked with the Bush administration on Muslim outreach, for crying out loud.
The Muslims involved are adherents of Sufism. For a more complete discussion of what that means, read this article by William Dalrymple of the New York Times. The short version is that the Sufis are just about the last Muslims who would ever condone religious violence; think of them as the Islamic equivalent of Quakers, but with lots of dancing. They work tirelessly for understanding among religions, to the point that the al-Qaeda types within Islam kill them whenever they get the chance. And these are the people Newt Gingrich says are part of “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization”? I’m trying to watch my language lately, but there’s no other way to put it: Gingrich, as usual, is completely full of shit.
So where does the “hilarious” part of the anti-mosque gripe-a-thon come in? Well, only in a dark humor sense, but sometimes you have to laugh to keep from going nuts. If the ignoramuses, cynical politicians, Fox snake oil salesmen, and xenophobes and their way-over-the-top rhetoric and fearful, knuckle-chewing view of anything outside FoxNews World isn’t funny to you, at least some of the time, you may be on the way to a stroke. Sometimes ridicule isn’t just one way of dealing with outlandish viewpoints; it’s really the only way. I particularly liked journalist Greg Palast’s notion of diverting criticism of the Islamic center by disguising it as a Disney retail outlet, to be called, of course, Mickey Mosque.
This article appears in Aug 17-23, 2010.
The Victory Mosque is just the visible tip of a very large iceberg. Beneath the surface of Western societies, Muslims are waging a campaign of infiltration, subversion, sedition and social sabotage, with the openly stated objective of destroying our countries and way of life from within.
..and as for the taqiyya about Sufis being non-violent, take a look at the links under ‘Sufis’ at http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/everything-you-need-to-know-about-islam.html
I followed your links, Trencherbone, and it’s obvious that you are completely deranged and living in a paranoid delusion. Instead of relying on fellow nuts for “information,” why not branch out a bit to, say, reality-based, documented info?
As long as the Republican Party and their propaganda arm, Fox News, continue to fan the flames of fear, we will be constantly inundated with “news” stories about one wildly angry panic stricken ignorant group or another telling us our world is about to end.
While I am very disappointed in the Democrats, there seems to be no choice. There doesn’t seem to be an honest person in the Republican Party.
I have to go now. The Muslim, illegal immigrant president has ordered me to appear before his socialist death panel. But first he wants to take all my money and give it to the lazy people.
No one has mentioned anything about the fact that, regardless of religious freedom, the property they want to build on is PRIVATELY owned property. They can build whatever the heck they want on it. There will always be things people don’t like but that’s not a reason to try to tell them what they can do with their PRIVATE property. I wouldn’t want someone telling me what I can and can not build on my property. The problem with BOTH parties today is that they want to cite the Constitution only when it benefits what THEY agree with.
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I am a Muslim and a board memebr inone large Mousqe and an Islamic center. Can you please tellme where are those subversive Muslims are? I sure hell didn’t find any of themin any Mousque I attended.It mostly pickering and fundraising to fix the leaky roofs and the AC units. Our kids are tooooo damn Americanized to be Jihadies. We barely have enough support within our communites to keep the doors open and these bafoons talking about taking over America. Get real stupids.
If you are so afraid why don’t you people come and talk to us instead of blogging you shit all over. I dare you, hell, I will pay you $20 an hour to do so. Opn,they rather sit and bitch from afare as the Quran says, Blind, deaf and ignorant they can’t finds there way.
John Grooms, I salute you. I couldn’t have said that better myself. It’s easy to shop around for what we want to hear. But the truth is out there.
And someone just tweeted this: “If every crime in the USA were pinned with the person’s religion, the world would think Christianity was evil.”