The decision by CNN anchor and Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria to return the 2005 Hubert Humphrey Award for First Amendment Freedoms to the Anti-Defamation League last week, along with the $10,000 honorarium, has introduced a much-needed layer of intellectual and moral honesty to the national debate over the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque," to be built a few blocks from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The ADL has taken a position in opposition to the planned building of the 13-story Islamic cultural center and mosque at that location, calling it "not an issue of rights, but an issue of what is right," citing "the anguish of the families and friends of those who were killed on September 11, 2001."
Zakaria pointed out that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Arab-American Islamic leader and author who first proposed the center, has spent his career promoting peaceful relations between Islam and the West. Said Zakaria of the proposed Islamic cultural center on Park Place, two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center and its proponent:
The man behind it, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has spent years trying to offer a liberal interpretation of Islam. His most recent book, What's Right with Islam is What's Right with America argues that America is actually what an ideal Islamic society would look like because is it peaceful, tolerant and pluralistic. His vision for Islam, in other words, is Osama Bin Laden's nightmare.
In returning the award, Zakaria challenged the ADL's position, questioning whether or not the esteemed religious freedom organization's perspective in this instance actually contradicted its own mission statement.
The ADL's mission statement says it seeks "to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens,"Zakaria wrote in his August 6th Newsweek column.
But Abraham Foxman, the head of the ADL, explained that we must all respect the feelings of the 9/11 families, even if they are prejudiced feelings. "Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted," he said. First, the 9/11 families have mixed views on this mosque. There were, after all, dozens of Muslims killed at the World Trade Center. Do their feelings count? But more important, does Foxman believe that bigotry is OK if people think they're victims? Does the anguish of Palestinians, then, entitle them to be anti-Semitic?
The 9/11 attacks, unquestionably the defining moment of this generation, took the lives of 2,976 people (not counting the 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists who hijacked the four commercial airliners, crashing two into the Twin Towers, a third into the Pentagon, and the fourth into a field in Stonycreek Township, near Shanksville, PA.) The dead included citizens of more than 70 countries and numerous faith traditions, including both American and non-American Muslims. The national and international wounds left by the 9/11 attacks won't heal during any of our lifetimes.
In addition, the attacks have spawned a horrific cottage industry of destruction.
They were cynically co-opted, repackaged, and sold back to the American people by the Bush presidency as a justification to invade Iraq based on two fallacious premises: that Iraq was hiding "weapons of mass destruction" (read: nukes) and that it was not-so-secretly working in concert with Al-Qaeda.
That hijacking of America's grief over 9/11 has, conservatively to date, cost the lives of between 97,182 and 100,000 Iraqi civilians, as well as 4,414 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen.
On the home front, "9/11 Inc." has run the gamut from the commercial ghouls who hawk everything from pictures of the towers in flames, to bits of Ground Zero rubble, to "commemorative coins," to well-funded evangelicals like Pat Robertson who said Islam is "not a religion" and Jerry Falwell who blamed "pagans," "abortionists," "feminists and the gays and the lesbians,"(oh, and the ACLU), to politicians who've made free with both 9/11 imagery and the word "terrorist" during the last presidential election, flinging it at, or near, candidate Obama, desperately hoping that the scary word would highlight his "otherness" from "middle-America."
On July 18th Sarah Palin famously tweeted "Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate."
Aside from highlighting, yet again, the degree to which basic high-school English vocabulary eludes her, Palin's tweet fundamentally insulted the Islamic-American electorate by drawing a line in the dirt: if they didn't "refudiate" this "spear through the heart," they weren't "peaceful Muslims," they were the other kind, the scary kind, the un-American kind, who were out of touch with "the heartland."
The fact that this folksy cri-de-coeur came from a woman whose home church once bizarrely brought in a Kenyan witchfinder to pray over her and keep her safe from "the spirit of witchcraft" during 2008 election lent it a certain surreal, Sarah-through-the-looking-glass quality. On the other hand, Palin has never shrunk from creating division and polarization. A significant portion of her failed candidacy for vice-president of the United States was predicated on division, and she showed herself to be no slouch when it came to using the hot-button word "terrorist"--and, by extension, 9/11 imagery--to taint the Obama candidacy with the implications.
Across the country, goaded, in some cases, by Republican candidates and Tea Party groups that have successfully fanned anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant sentiment, the establishment of mosques and Islamic cultural centers has been met with increasingly hysterical opposition.
Writing in the New York Times on August 7th, Laurie Goodstein quotes a grandmother, Diana Serafin, who believes that "in 20 years...we will be overtaken by Islam, and their goal is to get people in Congress and the Supreme Court to see that Shariah is implemented. My children and grandchildren will have to live under that."
The ugliest part of fear mongering is that the "they" and "them" being referred to are other Americans.
Perhaps the only honest justification for opposing the building of the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" is to admit that one believes Islam itself was to blame for 9/11, and that five to seven million Muslim-Americans share in the blame by association by virtue of their religion---and not the 19 Saudi, Lebanese, and United Arab Emirates-born criminal religious fanatics driven by a perverted, medieval vision of a theocratic Islamic utopia. That belief would, indeed, make the establishment of a mosque on, or near, Ground Zero an obscenity.
The only problem with that premise is that it's nonsense.
I freely admit that I myself initially flinched at the thought of a mosque so close to the site of the worst terrorist attack in American history, an attack that was intended to engender a primal and visceral feeling of terror. It's the same part of me, again entirely primal, that occasionally flinches when I see men and women in Muslim garb at airports before I board my flight.
At the same time, I realize that the part of me that feels that way is not one of the better angels of my nature, and certainly not the part of me I'd ever want to be defined by.
On some level, I know that those feelings can only be a form of symbolic and emotional internment of the millions of moderate American Muslims that want nothing more than to raise and educate their children in the same American dream shared by their Christian and Jewish neighbors.
Maybe the ultimate memorial to the murder victims of September 11th would be to categorically reject the forces of political and religious divisiveness who want this fear of neighbors to fester and spread, and in doing so, issue a clear, strong statement of mutual trust and unity to those who wish harm to America, to state unambiguously that the 9/11 murderers did not succeed in their assault, an assault that was as symbolic as it was literal.
Follow Michael Rowe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rowemichael
Stuart Whatley: Democratic Values, Islam and the Judeo-Christian Tradition Fallacy
I'm a Christian and would not like it if someone took an unfavorable quote from the Bible and then pointed to me as the guilty party.
All religions have passages in their holy books that may be violent, prejudiced against another group or simply out of date.
Most people are in a religion because they were born into it.
Stop this nonsense.
That is your common sense speaking to you. Too bad you choose to ignore it.
Mayor Bloomberg:
"It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11.
"On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn't want us to enjoy the freedom to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams and to live our own lives."
Wrong, Mayor Bloomberg. It makes sense to listen to your enemy when he tells you why he has attacked you.
Bin Laden:
“[O]ur talks with the infidel West and our conflict with them ultimately revolve around one issue, and it is: Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually?
Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission [i.e., conversion]; or payment of the jizya [poll-tax paid by non-Muslims], thereby bodily, though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword—for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live.
The matter is summed up for every person alive: either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die…. Such, then, is the basis of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred—directed from the Muslim to the infidel—is the foundation of our religion.”
(The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 42.)
No, I am not trying to start a Crusade, but to repel the global advance of sharia.
"That's only Bin Laden's interpretation of Islam."
Here is the Islamic law he was quoting:
THE OBJECTIVES OF JIHAD
o9.8 The caliph (o25) makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians (N: provided he has first invited them to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya, def: o11.4)—which is the significance of their paying it, not the money itself—while remaining in their ancestral religions) (O: and the war continues) until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax (O: in accordance with the word of Allah Most High,
“Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day and who forbid not what Allah and His messenger have forbidden—who do not practice the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book—until they pay the poll tax out of hand and are humbled” (Koran 9:29)
Do you see any difference? I don't.
That's what it comes down to, doesn't it, Mr McDaniel, when we converse with apathetic ideologues? "There's no enemy, that's just right-wing war/fear/hate mongering." I notice that Mr. Rowe didn't really address just how taking offense to this proposal is "nonsense." He simply issued the same relativistic, rose-tinted, politically correct response that is the staple of left-wing moral and intellectual lethargy.
Sure, it'd be nice if everyone we hugged would hug us right back. But they don't. The best revenge is indeed living well, but this isn't about retribution, it's about protecting ourselves, physically AND symbolically. The denial of the core beliefs of Islam, beliefs that are offensive not only to Americans, but to the free world as a whole, are, unfortunately, to be expected. But laying a guilt trip upon those individuals who refuse to be insulted after being attacked?
That's just low.
Ideologues abound. Be they bible-thumping, Palin-worshiping "Tea Partiers," or multiculturalist enablers and apologists who receive their information from The Jon Stewart Show and Wikipedia, they all do the same thing, which is to defer their judgment to whatever infallible organization or philosophy they've pledged fealty.
In this particular case, it's the left-wing yet again shrugging its shoulders.
You see, Mr McDaniel, there's no sense in letting something like an insult to a nation interfere with one's twittering time.
For every religion 'quotes' can be pulled to demonize that religion. It has been done by Jews, Christians and Muslims.
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It is easy to display 'out-of-context'....or to present a 'preconceived notion' to demonize the other religion.
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Religions are founded on faith and the desire to be peaceful, compassionate, and submitting to the 'will of God'. This is rarely taken out of context...as it is rarely practiced..
Such excellent logic, Michael. Thank you. Keep writing.
1. Buy the property.
2. Get the government to make the property a national monument at the taxpayers expense.
3. Get the billionaires that are giving away half of their fortunes to buy the property. Then tell them what to with it.
4. Take donations to buy the property.
Nothing is free. You can't just tell people what to do with their owned property if they are within the law, without cost to you. No matter if you like it or not. You need to work on changing the private property laws through the proper channels and not attack the ones operating within the law.
"Nothing is free."
Bromide for bromide, everything that is legal is not right. Do not underestimate the power of public opinion. It is what gets people elected and everyone is aware of that--even as they denigrate dissent as racist and bigoted.
Extra bonus bromide: Enough is enough.
The cordoba initiative has the constitutional right to build, but those who oppose the building have the constitutional right of free speech to voice opposition. Rational opposition to this is not because they want to build a mosque/cultural center, it's in opposition to where they want to build it. They have the right to build, but is it right to build it there ?
If you think it's a good idea and will foster better relations between faiths, and that islamist supremicists abroad will lose face because of our tolerance, then it's a good idea. If you think it will cause more dissension between the faiths, or become a propaganda point to the islamists abroad, then it's a bad idea. I disagree with the authors comments that the only justification to oppose the buiding is because people are opposed to Islam itself is naive, and does the same thing he accuses palin and others of - inflamming hatred and fear.
This has become a bizarre dream that doesn't seem to be fully embracing the full-spectrum of emotional and intellectual reasoning both pro and con.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080603006.html
But seriously, it's an attempt to have a moderate muslim voice near a location that will now forever have a connection to radical islam. I think we should build it on ground zero personally, but they've decided to put it two blocks away from the site. So... case closed?
Imam Rauf is not moderate simply because he chooses that name for himself. A moderate American Muslim, in my opinion, is one who rejects sharia law in America. Rauf does not.
I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
Apparently I read a deboned version – I could find nothing objectionable.
“[Qur’an Surat 8:39] You shall fight them to ward off oppression, and to practice your religion devoted to GOD alone. If they refrain from aggression, then GOD is fully Seer of everything they do.”
So I tried visiting a mosque to hear for myself – I received a very hostile reception and was not allowed to listen.
This is why:“[Qur’an Surat 8:39] “Wage war on non-muslims and kill them until they submit and the only religion is Islam.”
31 different translations are available at http://www.islamawakened.com/quran/8/39/default.htm
But it comes down to:
NO Muslim can take the oath of office or naturalization without giving probable cause that they are perpetrating a fraud;
justifying civil prosecution where discovery could ask the questions regarding the version of Islam’s Qur’an ascribed to. The protection of our law and witness is needed in that other Muslims are instructed to kill those 'heretics'.
Muslims and other citizens could see that our oath law was expanded to include those terms made so general that they applied to all – and that the oath was required of ALL voters and all resident aliens as well.
Your comment is off topic and falls into the logical fallacy of tu quoque ("you do it too, so you can't cirticize me").
It is legitimate to criticize religions one at a time.
In those fraudulently perpetrated conceits of authority against liberty under law
those actions that are classified as:
mustahabb = recommended actions,
mubah = permissible actions Or
makruh = discouraged actions;
are shifted by means of progressively escalating conceits of authority, fraudulently perpetrated by disciplined equivocation and dissemblance into the classes of
fard = obligatory actions of duty and
haraam = forbidden actions..
If the oath required of all also included acknowledgement of existing statutory duties such as 18USC4 “Misprision of Felony” then most of the current problems arising from justifiable fear could lose 95% of their cause.