Mosque mania
The frenzy continues over the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” (it's actually two blocks from the site, and is being billed as an Islamic community center with a prayer room).
As Politico’s Ben Smith noted, supporters of the project are starting to compare the opposition to anti-Semitism. Daisy Khan, the wife of the imam behind the project, on ABC’s This Week With Christiane Amanpour: "This is like a metastasized anti-Semitism. That's what we feel right now. It's not even Islamophobia, it's beyond Islamophobia. It's hate of Muslims. And we are deeply concerned.” And Jeffrey Goldberg: “I find it particularly disturbing to see Jews, of all people, participating in this type of questioning. Worse, some Jews are joining the online anti-Muslim mob. Anti-Muslim sentiment in America today has many of the hallmarks of the anti-Semitism of yesteryear. American Jews should be able to see that.”
Goldberg recalls Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf’s speech at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl. Read the full text.
Video from the rally held against the project on Sunday (here and here).
Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes in The Wall Street Journal that fighting the project is part of the need to actively defend Western civilization.
Victor Davis Hanson argues that President Obama should stop fanning the flames of local controversies.
The Associated Press reports that Muslim prayer services have long been held at the other site of the September 11 attacks -- the Pentagon.
The Washington Post rounds up efforts to fight the construction of mosques in other parts of the country.
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All this hand-wringing about “Islamophobia” does not explain the prolifiration of Islamic “places of worship” in the United States over such a short period of time. Is this what Obama meant with “Islam has vbeen with America ever since its beginningws”? All this Islamicization of America is not at all as innocent as the very all-to-clever writer of this article wants us tio think. We all, Christian and Jews alike, have much to worry about - the article’s mindless “tollerance” aside. Who finances all this mosque building? Why does this “cultural center” carry a monicker referring to the Moorish conquest of the Iberian pennislula? Is this some kind of foretelling of Muslim intent here in America? Why does the significance of the name disinterest all the liberal defebnders of “religious tollerance?”
The writer’s snide style ignores too much as he hits out at the usual bete noires but completely misses the story.
It’s so tiresome and juvenile.
I totally agree with the previous posters and couldn’t say it any better. When will Americans realize we’re under attack on the religious front.
What my fellow Jews who defend this supremacist mosque at Ground Zero fail to mention is this. It was not 19 Jewish hijackers that flew those planes into the World Trade Center towers. It is not Jews who are sending their children out as suicide bombers.
Just became aware of Arthur Waskow’s comment re: Jewish (i.e. a few Jews) welcome for the Cordoba Center. This too is, unfortunately, typical behaviour among some Jews: bowing down and scraping before the oppressor. Have they no pride? Does the blood of countless innocent Jews at the hands of the followers of the “religion of peace” not scream out at them? Have they taken their cue from Obama’s genuflecting to the king of Saudi Arabia? How pathetic is all this fawning for people who are yet to repudiate, publicly and clearly, Islamofascism and embrace the true spirit of diversity by supporting Jewish legitimate rights in their homeland.
Until they do that, I, for one, am not about to be part of this undignified welcoming committee.
I too am alarmed by this rapid encroachment of Islam. A few examples can show clearly why.
(1) When Paul Hill killed Dr. John Britton over the abortion issue in 1994, 3% of Christians cheered. The outspoken condemnations from both Christians and Jews was deafening.
(2) After 9/11 Islamic leaders - you can look these up yourself - declared that Islamic extremism represented only 10% to 15% of Muslims. A few short years later the number was “only” 20% to 30%. So there are “only” anywhere from 150 million to 450 million Muslim extremists. That certainly calms me to no end.
(3) When I was in Malaysia a few years ago the Straits Times (Malaysia’s largest English language newspaper and their best overall) ran a half-page interview with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. In short he declared that the Saudi family paid extremists extortion money to leave the family alone. He decried this move because Saudi money has financed the building of 100’s of thousands of Wahabbi mosques and schools around the entire world. Abdullah declared, “We have created a monster that we can not control and we have great fear where this will lead.”
Nice guy, huh? So much for tolerance and love. The Wahabbi sect is the most extreme, austere and violent form of Islam and dominates Islam’s spread.
Finally, Jews who equate this mosque resistance as tantamount to Anti-Semitism ........ welllllll, they need to study a little history.
Sleep well, my friends. Sleep as though it will be your last night of peace. it just might be sooner than we think.
Tom
Sleep well, my friends.
It would be nice if posters like Kerry Winn would acknowledge that their entire knowledge on this subject comes from talk radio,which is the equivalent of a one-eyed man leading the blind. An example: The Dome of the Rock is NOT a mosque; it is a shrine. The structure is on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and is built over the rock--hence the name--that Mohammed is believed to have ascended to heaven from and on which Abraham was supposed to have attempted to sacrifice Isaac. Next to the shrine is the less photographed Al-Aqksa Mosque, which also has a dome, the color of weathered, corrugated aluminum and overall is not anywhere as ornate as the next-door shrine.
It’s always nice to hear from people like Leonard Goldstein, so much better informed that some us “whose entire knowledge comes from talk radio.” His explanation of the difference between a mosque and a shrine is most helpful and has a kind of travelogue innocence. But the Muslims have still built their shrine, or is it mosque, on the ruins of the Jewish holy site, have they not? And, how does it explain Muslims’ intolerance, violent intolerance, to members of other “Abrahamic religions?” How, pray tell, does this explain their triumphalist behaviour?
Do enlighten us, pray.
Hate has a habit of proliferation. Mr. Klein, above, evidently thinks that because a tiny minority of Muslims have done things that are admittedly unforgivable, that all Muslims are to blame. If in fact that is the case, Then my fellow Jew also evidently thinks that because the Jewish army of Israel killed 1,400 unarmed civilian Palestinians in Operation Cast Lead, that he, as a Jew, is also to blame.
The blame game can be played 24/7 anywhere in the globe, but it is based on rotten logic, and often serves only to broadcast previously hidden prejudice and bigotry.
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Kerry Winn
08/23/10 05:24 PM
The problem with the Mosque stems from Islamic history, and building mosques on significant religious sites of those they have conquered. They have done this in every land conquered. An especially significant example of this is the Dome of the Rock build on Temple Mount.
Remember, many Muslims cheered on 9/11, and view this attack as a victory against the Great Satan. Hence, the problem with the mosque being built on a building hit during the attack.