Now that the Obamessiah has weighed in on the issue of building a mosque near the site where Muslims flew airplanes into the Twin Towers, it’s time for a little plain talk about the subject.
The Muslim in charge of this project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, famously claimed that the U.S. was an “accessory to the crime” of 9/11, and that Osama bin Laden was “made in the U.S.A.” He also refuses to acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organization, claiming that terrorism is a “complicated issue.” No it isn’t. If this is the most moderate voice that the Muslims could come up with, then there’s a serious problem with Islam.
With that in mind, it’s also important to acknowledge that Muslims like to build mosques on places where they have achieved victory through force of arms. No doubt that militant Islamists feel that destroying the Twin Towers and murdering almost 3,o00 people in the process is a triumph, especially in light of the fact that New Yorkers lack the courage to rebuild on the same site. The proposed name, the Cordoba House, is deliberately provocative, as it refers to a famous Muslim victory over the Spanish. The proposed opening date is September 11, 2011: the ten-year anniversary of the attacks.
Supporters of building the Ground Zero mosque like to claim that the First Amendment makes it perfectly legal to do so (and that if you disagree, you’re hateful, but we’ll address that later). However, the First Amendment isn’t absolute. My homeowner’s association contract doesn’t allow me to paint my house a certain color, for example. There are laws about building bars near schools and churches. Saying certain words in certain places is considered “hate speech” and you can be prosecuted for it. There are decency laws that prevent people from absolutely exercising their supposed First Amendment right to publicly depict sex acts. So the First Amendment claim is a dodge. It’s not a First Amendment issue. It’s a decency issue.
According to Islamists, President Obama, and everyone else who needs to show the world how inclusive and non-judgmental they are, not showing support for the Ground Zero mosque is hateful. They claim to not understand how anyone could be against it except as a symptom of Islamophobia. It insults our intelligence that these too-clever, morally preening imbeciles refuse to accept the idea that there’s a decency issue at stake, and that there may be some people who have a legitimate reason to be angry at the idea of Islamists building a victory temple at the same site where other Islamists murdered thousands of their countrymen. Why not build a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor, or a Richard Wagner opera house at Auschwitz? You have to give them credit, though: they’ve not backed down on their support. The common human decency argument won’t move them. And, as they’ve done for years and will continue to do for as long as it works, they’ll call you racist if you disagree.
The Obamessiah supports the mosque, and won’t even debate the decency issue, which shows how weak, vacillating, and completely at odds he is with most Americans and their values. I’m surprised that he managed to find the time to speak about it in-between vacations. I am willing to allow this, though: New Yorkers have elected politicians who support this mosque. They still haven’t built anything on Ground Zero. Is that’s how they want their little slice of heaven, they’re welcome to it. Perhaps Obama’s former pastor was right: the chickens have come home to roost. And you can’t make an Islamist omelet without breaking a few American eggs.
Or, alternatively, you can focus your attention on what two essentially meaningless politicians think. I mean, let’s get our priorities straight.
It’s nice to finally see a new post. A few quibbles:
(1) On “victory mosques:” Most mosques are in places where there was no “victory.” Also, Christians do the same: see the history of Alhambra in Granada, Spain. After the Christians overthrew the Muslim government, they built a huge Christian cathedral on Alhambra, a magnificent Islamic empire era fortress where there was also, before the Christians came, a mosque.
(2) The only one who ever said the opening of Cordoba would be 9/11/11 is Andrea Peyser from the New York Post, and she does not source her information and no one else in the whole world has reported it independently of her. I think she made it up.
(3) My priorities cannot be judged by taking the occasional swing at low hanging fruit, i.e. terror babies. As you and Chip Mango know, I posted on Wikileaks, gay marriage, Afghanistan women, Israel’s changing of birthright citizenship laws, and Raul Castro’s changing Cuban economic rules before the Terror Babies post.
(4) It’s Timmy Time.
Thank you.
On (1): source, please, especially when it comes to mosques built outside of what are now Islamic countries. Also, it’d be interesting to compare the number of Victory Churches vs. Victory Mosques. I’m willing to bet that there are more of the latter than former.
Oh by the way, what do YOU think of the Ground Zero Mosque?
On (1). What source do you need? Let’s see: According to Wikipedia, “There are 1,209 mosques in the United States and the nation’s largest mosque, the Islamic Center of America, is in Dearborn, Michigan.” No rational person would assume that there are 1200 “victory mosques” in the U.S. I also doubt that Dearborn, Michigan is a place of “victory” for Islam. Places of worship are built where there are adherents to the faith. In New York, there are more mosques than in, say, Boulder. Synagogues, Churches and the like are built where there are enough people to fill them. I think the confusion between basic ecological principles that guide where mosques are built and the historical examples that purport to show the existence of “victory mosques” is that when when any group arrives en masse into an area, they build a place of worship. The “victory” is just the way they have been able to migrate into an area they had not been in control of previously.
I don’t know of any research that compares “victory mosques” to “victory churches,” and I would bet neither do any of the sources that you cited. I say that because none of them cited the obvious victory church — in Alhambra — when a balanced reporting job would have done so. We know that both happen. Let’s go back to history. By the “victory” logic, any church in the south of Spain built after the Christians overthrew the Islamic empire — historians date it to July 16, 1212 (according to Wikipedia) — is a “victory church.” There are a lot of churches in the south of Spain. Are they all victory churches, or are they simply places where lots of Christians gathered and wanted a common place of worship?
There are already two mosques near Ground Zero, both built there before 9/11 (see the NYTimes article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/nyregion/14mosque.html. Apparently there are enough muslims to fill the carpets.
Finally, by the way, you ask what I think of the Ground Zero mosque. I agree with Obama that this is America and there should be no religious persecution. The arguments against the Ground Zero mosque are weakest when they point to victory mosques and strongest when it comes to what the community want. If the community want a mosque near Ground Zero, I see it as no different than somebody wanting a church or a synagogue or a Buddhist temple. Like Presidents Bush and Obama said, we are not at war with Islam. The majority of Muslims in the U.S. have been saying for almost ten years now that they do not agree with UBLs interpretation of Islam and they want the same freedom to practice their religion as any other religious group. It’s not up to me, or you, or Wafa Sultan or Andrea Peyser where mosques should be built. Let NYC poll the community in Lower Manhattan — the community most directly impacted by the terror attacks of that day — and ask them what they want. The local community board approved it (“Community Board 1 gave overwhelming backing to the project.” http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/park51/index.html). If they don’t mind, I certainly don’t mind.
Now, what do YOU think of Timmy Time?
I’m glad you agree with Obama on an issue nobody serious is arguing about: religious persecution in the U.S.
Just because there are mosques that aren’t Victory Mosques, it doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as a Victory Mosque, or that the Cordoba House is not a Victory Mosque. There’re already plenty of mosques in NYC. That you lump together the idea of a church or synagogue built on the same place as being the same thing as building an Islamic temple right near the place Islamists murdered thousands of Americans tells me all I need to know.
Islam is a religion of peace. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a moderate Muslim. There’s no problem with building a mosque near the spot where Muslims murdered your fellow countrymen. Got it.
To be perfectly honest and dead serious, I don’t have the time or interest in looking at Timmy Time. The issue of Islam’s fundamental disagreement with how I and most of the people in my country live our lives has captured the majority of my attention.