I guess this is sort of journalistic, but IANAJ. Still: I asked 10 pointed questions to the lead developer of the Park 51 project (also known innaccurately as the “Ground Zero Mosque” in NYC). and he replied. very satisfactorily.
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“If you look at a map of Manhattan, most of our major cultural and community centers are north of Houston.”
Huh? Is Houston a street in Manhattan or something?
“If you look at a map of Manhattan, most of our major cultural and community centers are north of Houston.”
Well, he was talking to aziz. :)
OMG am I slow. I just noticed that I accidentally posted my comment in the wrong thread, McKiernan (through no fault of his own) responded… and I was able to move both, seamlessly, here. WordPress rocks! And I damn well wish I’d noticed I could do that sooner. %-)
Anyway, to the question: Houston? Huh?
That was terrific,
Just move the comments to another thread. :)
Eventually you’ll get it right. (through no fault of my own).
You seem to have found an excellent smoke and mirrors tool.
Anytime someone disagrees just shuffle them off to one of those stale used threads.
Heheh. I suppose I could do that too. The next time someone goes after me for being a terrible writer, I’ll move it to one of Ron Coleman’s threads and make him deal with it. ;-)
> I’ll move it to one of Ron Coleman’s threads and make him deal with it.
That’s probably a violation of Ron’s Intellectual Property rights. I know you have no $$$, so the new name of the blog will be “Ron’s (formerly Dean’s) World”. And you’ll have to post Donna Summer’s “Ring My Bell” repeatedly in Weekend Open Thread until you have completed your penance.
Yours,
Wince
Shame on you, Tom. Donna Summer? Try the splendid Anita Ward:
And I can think of worse punishments. :-)
Now, about this bit about Manhattan and Houston, I iz still confuzeded…
It’s the never being allowed to post anything else….
Yours,
Wince
Well we are close to hopelessly derailed, but anyway, as for Aziz’s interview, it’s really terrific and I recommend reading it.
I read his interview. And I think it nothing more than self-serving bullshit written for purposes of deadening the senses of a majority of New Yorkers who do not want a moslem mosque on or near the site of the World Trade Center. Inasmuch as the World Trade Center was destroyed by a trained suicide squad of moslem Arabs acting in the name of all that Islem represented to them, I think the instincts of most of those opposition New Yorkers are dead-on correct.
As a non-believer — at least in the sense that most of you would describe “belief”, I don’t really give a damn where or how any of the rest of you pray, or whether you spend your Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays getting tanked or mowing unwanted weeds on your front lawns.
But I can’t help but reflecting that if any Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu,Thorist, Wiccan or Whateverist wanted to put up a temple glorifying his/ her/their particular manifestation of what they think is God or the various Godlets, and if he/she/they tried doing this within sight of the Kaaba in Mecca, they would get their heads lopped of by the saudi Beliefpolice or whatever they call them. Probably the same would apply to any totally or predominantly moslem city anywhere. Because hands down, Islam over the past 1400 years has become the most intolerant religious faith on the face of this planet.
So go ahead and build the damned place, if that’s how you folks get your jollies. But I think you are headed for a pyrrhic victory, because you will wind up all the more distrusted and hated by the majority of Americans for what they already consider an act of supreme and willful insolence against the prevailing culture of this country.
My advice to you is just this: Don’t push your luck.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
“Huh? Is Houston a street in Manhattan or something?”
Yes, Houston Street, pronounced by most New Yorkers – not like the city in Texas – but as “how-sten”, is a street that bisects lower Manhattan. The area known as Soho is “South of Houston”.
As for Aziz’s interview? Sorry, but I tend to agree with Arnold on this one.
> also known innaccurately as the “Ground Zero Mosque” in NYC)
Hmmm. This is what the interview says.
> With respect to the mosque, which will take up only a small portion of the final space, it’s a question of meeting a need. This mosque will be open to all. There are probably one million Muslims in the tri-state area and several hundred thousand in New York City. We should understand that Muslim New Yorkers are part of the city and have been for a very long time. Just a few days ago, I stopped to pray at a midtown mosque, and the congregation was led by a New York City Police Officer. He was a Muslim serving our city, keeping us safe.
In other words, it’s a mosque, Aziz. This is America. Both my wife and I went to Catholic churches as kids. The square footage of the attached schools dwarfed the church. But we didn’t call them community centers, in spite of the bingo. We didn’t call them schools. We called them churches. There is a Baptist church in Raytown with an attached health club and school. My children attend a school on the grounds of another Baptist church. We have churches all over where the attached schools / community centers are bigger than the sanctuary. And they all have activities which are properly community activities.
IT’S A MOSQUE! Stop saying it’s a community center. That is deceptive, not the people who call it a Ground Zero Mosque.
And now that I know that Manhattan island is so small, I say, don’t build any Ground Zero Mosques on Manhattan. Zero. Zilch. None. It’s offensive, and it’s bad P.R.
Generally, Arnold is right about this, and Aziz is wrong.
Yours,
Wince
Tom, you need to review my statements. No where did I ever say that there was no mosque on the project.
I said that the label “ground zero mosque” was innacurate. Its more the “city hall mosque” than it is the ground zero one. And if thats your standard, lets talk about teh ground zero strip club …
Tom,
Aziz is correct. He never denied there is a mosque at the site. He simply maintains that is not the focus of the site.
However, I tend to agree with Arnold so far as sharing the perception, when it comes to churches, for example, it doesn’t matter to me how large the attached school or what have you is.
It’s a church first.
This place is a mosque first. Community center second.
Stick in the eye third.
Just so I understand:
If these guys have a small consecrated chapel on their grounds, they’re a church first?
If these guys have a small chapel on the grounds, they’re a church first?
How about these guys?
These are just the first locations that popped up in a Google search on “catholic community center,” “baptist community center” and “christian community center,” respectively.
Just for the hell of it, I also tried “jewish community center” and to my delight I found the first link was to a place I actually know people who work at. A guy who recently gave me some old laptops works there, and he once gave me a tour. I’ll have to ask him if there’s any form of prayer room anywhere on the grounds, and if so whether the consider their community center a synagogue first.
Yep.
That was easy.
Heck, I’d even go so far as to say even without a chapel proper, it’s still a religious institution. Each example is a outreach ministry branch of its faith, without which the center wouldn’t even exist.
Personally, I don’t care if this building has a mosque in it or not. It’s the height of insensitivity to build it where they are, opening it when they are, spearheaded by a man with ties to organizations very sympathetic to Islamic terrorism.
Dean,
Did you read the description given? It’s not a chapel or prayer room. He is planning on having regular services to meet a need. So your comparison falls short.
Aziz,
> Its more the “city hall mosque” than it is the ground zero one.
You are the one claiming Manhattan is so small. By your argument, city hall is at ground zero.
> And if thats your standard, lets talk about teh ground zero strip club …
I’m surprised to learn from a Muslim that mosques and strip clubs are the same. Clearly Islam is much different than I thought! ;)
Yours,
Wince
Wince,
“Generally, Arnold is right about this, and Aziz is wrong.”
because you say so? because several extremists bombed a building and claimed religious motivation, now NYC (or people who live outside NYC in this case) gets to tell all co-religionists to die in a fire?
Last I heard there were a few new churches being built in Wichita, despite a Christian terror attack occuring there a mere 14 mos. ago.
Generally Dean is right about this and Wince is wrong.
The difference, Zach, is that the United States of America is a predominantly christian commonwealth, not a moslem commonwealth, and it was so assembled by the christian forefathers of the american nation 235 years ago.
I for one practice no particular religion, although I am strongly attached to Zionism, both jewish and christian. Nevertheless, I recognize that the living spirit that put our society together and held it in place through peace and war was and remains Christianity, and in my particularisms, that means the pentacostal and evangelical christianity of the bible-true Christians. In absence of that particular form of worship in this country, none of us would ever have achieved any kind of freedom from government, the spirit of individual responsibility, the freedom to worship as we all see fit, and a sort of divine hand that drives Americans to answerability only to God, combined with responsibility for their own conduct and their ability to bring grace into their own lives.
And even as a non-believer, I want to see America remain exactly that kind of country.
To my mind, this all means that Christians, who are the prevailing folk in America, have the right to put up churches anywhere and everywhere. Just as in islamic states, they put up their masjids and other religious institutions wherever it suits them.
As for Islam, it is only recently that large numbers of their adherents have shown up on our shores so distant from their own lands. They are not yet fully trusted here, and it is becoming obvious that we are engaged in a worldwide clash of civilizations against Moslems who attack our country, our citizens, our allies and our interests, and all in the name of their islamic faith. We didn’t start this war, and some point to strong evidence their war against the non-moslem world began even before the death of their great prophet, and that it has never ended.
You want to live in our society as a devotee of a strange faith thought by probably a majority of Americans to be hostile to our freedom to worship however we please? Okay, go ahead and do so. But don’t expect to worm your way around the stumbling blocks that are part of the basic sociology of any culture. Just as in islamic states, the majority calls the shots.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
> because you say so?
Of course. I stand firmly behind my own opinions! ;)
> Last I heard there were a few new churches being built in Wichita, despite a Christian terror attack occuring there a mere 14 mos. ago.
One man murdered vs. 3000. Hmmm. All air traffic shut down vs zero churches shut down. Everyone remembers the date and what they were doing on one, and very few remember the other.
Get back to me when you have a valid comparison. This one isn’t worth spit.
Yours,
Wince
Oh and BTW, I am not advocating that the government should prevent mosques from being built on Manhattan. I am advocating that people should complain and the Park 51 people (and other Muslims) should respect those complaints and build somewhere else.
Yours,
Wince
Wince,
Why is the scope important? Compared to the total population of the US and the total number of Muslims/Christians, the number of those murdered and the number of those guilty of murder are approximately equal.
I just don’t understand why you want to punish the Muslims of Manhattan for crimes they had nothing to do with.
This is not about the Moslems of Manhattan. It’s about the theory and practice of Islam, which to a rapidly growing number of Americans, is now understood to be a not-too-distant future threat to their own religious freedoms, and a more immediate threat to the peace and safety of the people of this country. Just too many plots against us. Just too many actual incidents.
One day, a gang of 19 of these people, acting like a coordinated crew of malevalent zombies, destroys the World Trade Center, partially destroys the Pentagon building in Washington DC, and, as I understand, would have destroyed the United States Capitol but for the unarmed but brave passengers on one of the four hijacked flights who said “let’s roll”, fought the hijackers, and diverted the plane into a Pennsylvania hillside.
Then, another day, at a US Army training camp in Texas, yet another malevalent Muslim, this time no less than a commissioned officer, turned his guns on more than a dozen of his fellow soldiers, scraming “Alla hu Akbar” at them as he murdered them.
If I flew, I sure as hell would not want to trust my life or that of my wife to any such individual. And I no longer certain that they would respect any long term peace they made with any non-islamic state or culture.
For starters, I want legislation that permanently locks out any possibility of them establishing shari’a law in this country; we got rid of human slavery once, and I don’t want another civil war fought here again over the same general question. Then, I want some sort of restriction mandating extraordinarily careful screening of any of them who come here either to study, take up permanent residence, or request citizenship.
General trust of such people, in the long run, depends fully on them undergoing a thorough reformation of their religion and their islamic cultures. Short of that, they already have control of large portions of the surface of this planet. If any don’t want us bringing Christianity or Judaism to their countries, then they should have no right to islmasize the West.
And unlike others on this blogsite, I make no apologies whatsoever for what I write.
“Here I take my stand. I can do no other.”
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
> Why is the scope important?
Scope is important in P.R. Always. A better comparison would have been the Association of Unregulated American Militias opening a center near the Oklahome Federal Building. The American militia movement, like Islam, is decentralized. The American militia movement, like Islam, pretty much had nothing to do with the Oklahoma CIty Bombing.
Yet they would be stupid to open a center near the Oklahome Federal Building.
Similarily, to make a proper comparison out of your misshapen attempt, Kansan’s For Life should not open up a center near Dr. George Tiller’s church.
> I just don’t understand why you want to punish the Muslims of Manhattan for crimes they had nothing to do with.
I don’t want to punish the Muslims of Manhattan. I want the Muslims of Manhattan to be good neighbors.
Yours,
Wince
Wince,
I would say that telling somebody “if you have to worship your evil god, at least go do it in yonkers” is being a bad neighbor. If you concede that Islam had nothing to do with 9/11, then why is Park51 an issue?
Why does this have to be a PR issue? Why are the Park51 people responsible for the PR of Islam? And even if they were, wouldn’t a tolerant, community oriented, pluralistic, and most of all thoroughly American community center be a great way to do it? Yes yes, the mosque attached – but even that is surely intended as positive PR (just like any evangelical religion would do — “glad you like our community center, would you care to see our prayer room?”).
Sheesh, talk about your softball interviews.
at first the interviewee states:
This mosque will be open to all
Great! I thought. But then:
There are probably one million Muslims in the tri-state area and several hundred thousand in New York City. We should understand that Muslim New Yorkers are part of the city and have been for a very long time. Just a few days ago, I stopped to pray at a midtown mosque, and the congregation was led by a New York City Police Officer. He was a Muslim serving our city, keeping us safe.
Huh? So is it “open to all” meaning all peoples of any faith or no faith, or is it “open to all” muslims? That’s a pretty solid follow-up question that Aziz dropped the ball on.
5. Will you pledge make all funding sources fully transparent? What are your criteria for accepting funding from a foreign source, to assuage concerns about extremist influences?
to which the interviewee gives a lot of BS and blah, blah, blah. Saying really nothing.
I can’t say this often enough. We work in lower Manhattan, we care about lower Manhattan and we’re here to provide services to lower Manhattan.
Well, I would ask, why not “provide services” by opening a nonsectarian “community center” that is run by Jews, Christians, Atheists, Buddhists, and Muslims? Why make it a Muslim mosque with a community center attached? And why Cordoba House? That’s like building Reichstag House next to Auschwitz. Couldn’t they build a better house.
Look, you as a Muslim in America (even though you’re only 0.7% of the population) have the right to build a holy place here (unlike non-muslims in muslim lands), but wouldn’t it be better to not push that right in such an absurdly offensive manner? Is this how you try to fit in and increase tolerance and acceptance of Muslims by giving non-muslims the harshest and most painful backhand you can?
zach,
> I would say that telling somebody “if you have to worship your evil god, at least go do it in yonkers” is being a bad neighbor.
I would too. Quote me saying something like that. I’m sure you can find someone saying something like that – the internet generates ranting nincompoops for free and in large numbers! However, nearly all of the people who object to the Park 51 aren’t saying anything like that, so this not a fair argument for you to make. So don’t make it anymore. You could even apologize. It’s that bad.
> If you concede that Islam had nothing to do with 9/11, then why is Park51 an issue?
P.R. is driven by emotions, not reason. You know that. It is disengenuous for you to pretend otherwise.
> Why does this have to be a PR issue? Why are the Park51 people responsible for the PR of Islam?
All Muslims are responsible for the P.R. of Islam. Just like all Christians are responsible for the P.R. of Christianity and all Right-to-Life proponents are responsible for the P.R. of Right-to-Life and all militia members are responsible for the P.R. of the militia movement. It has ever been thus. You can complain about it if you like. I would prefer that the sky was purple, my favorite color. But I don’t complain about it. And I certainly don’t act as if it is purple. Why are you acting as either P.R. or good neighborlyness could be driven by logic?
By the way, if the mosque is built, good neighbors will stop protesting, stop grumbling and live with it, and be friendly. I’m not discussing how they should behave. Aziz hasn’t interviewed them. I’m discussing why outrage is appropriate now, and not when it stops being appropriate.
Yours,
Wince
Zach, after reading about three rounds of your comments and Wince’s responses, I have the idea that maybe I should be the guy to anwser you. Wince is polite and scholarly. I do a lot of research on topics of interest to me, but I’m as direct as a bayonet.
In that spirit, I do NOT concede that Islam had nothing to do with the attack on the World Trade Center. Or on Major Allah hu Akbar on his murder of a dozen of his fellow US Army soldiers. My entire point is that devotees of such a faith can be driven by the force of their religious faith to commit vile mass murder, and along with that, sacrifice their own lives in expectations of winding up in the afterlife paradise promised to martyrs who give up their lives in efforts to kill those whom they regard as infidels.
And because of all of the above, plus the particular background of the imam who would be in change of what they call their “community center”, I have no trust whatsoever in their planned project, and I am as insulted by it as I would have been if a bunch of Japs had been permitted to establish a community-oriented shinto established on Ford Island some hundreds of yards from 1941′s Battleship Row where their naval pilots all but destroyed the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet in the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
Moreover, I think most Americans feel this way. So if that building goes up, against the will of most of New York and most of America, distrust of Islam will grow, not shrink. And in time, the general feeling will grow poisonous.
The would-be sponsors should take heed, and so should you.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
zach,
Arnold is a force of nature. When he grabs a theory that matches the facts he does not let go. Not all the theories he advances are perfect matches, but they tend to be rather good. And all of them are based on a deep understanding of human nature at a level we often prefer to gloss over.
The truth is that widespread bigotry against Jews which often approaches and sometimes surpasses genocidal bigory is the big problem. Bigotry against Muslims is, by comparison, small potatoes, and, due to the large number of Muslims in the world, effectively under control, so that when it is violent, the violence (though horrible) is localized, and not close to genocidal. Jews, OTOH, are not sufficently numerous for that natural control to protect them from genocide.
What I just said was not a direct as Arnold would say it, but I believe it partakes of his deep understanding of the unpleasantness of human nature.
Oh, and if you care to point out again that some of the outrage against the Park 51 project reflects the unpleasantness of human nature – you are right. But your arguments have, ironically, reflected the unpleasantness of human nature in the exact same way.
Yours,
Wince
Wince,
I have no idea what all your meta-psycho-blather means but I know one thing.
Arnold surely knows and I know that oil is still seeping from the USS Arizona.
Certain polite and sensitive asian visitors to HNL seem to recognize that as well, so perhaps certain members of Islam ought to remember that Ground Zero is not there/their place and intrusions by them is neither welcomed nor desired.
> I have no idea what all your meta-psycho-blather means but I know one thing.
Really? I’ll work harder. Hemingway was good. Short sentences rule. So do short words.
Yours,
Wince
Wince,
If Islam is not evil, had nothing to do with 9/11, etc., etc., why is it unneighborly to expect your neighbors to allow you to have a place of worship within commuting distance? Why is it not unneighborly to force people to trek out of the city to find a Mosque to service their religious needs? I’m sorry my comment offended, it certainly wasn’t intended. I didn’t mean to imply that’s something you were saying or thinking.
I don’t dispute anything about genocidal Jew hatred, I don’t see that as relevant to this discussion. I still have a fundamental misunderstanding of your position, because from everything you are saying it doesn’t sound like there is any outrage called for. Yet you are clearly outraged in a way I honestly have 0% comprehension of.
There is a shinto shrine near pearl harbor.
There is a shinto shrine near pearl harbor.
Ah, yes, the “two wrongs make a right” argument in it’s finest. I’m reminded of the commercials where the father finds out his son is doing drugs and the kid yells “well, you used to do it”.
It’s a pretty dangerous way to think. Heck the mythical “violent Islamophobes” if they lose their mythological status can just say “well, heck, there was a slaughter by Muslims against non-muslims in America” before they kill a few muslims.
Besides,
The Shinto temple is five miles from the bomb site. If you want to use that as a precedent, fine, build your Cordoba House outside a five-mile radius from ground zero; not within walking distance.
Pearl City to Honolulu is 11 miles.
So tell us how close the nearest Shinto Shrine is ?
And Bloomberg needs demonstrate some wiser leadership.
I mean,
Why can’t y’all build the “Mosque and community center” a few miles away from Ground Zero? Is it’s placement so important near that site that you’ll risk permanently damaging Muslim/non-muslim relations?
Heck, even mosque-building Muslims oppose it because they see what damage it could do. But, of course, they’re moderates.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/06/06/a_mosque_at_ground_zero/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed6
Mike,
Part of the reason is that “a few miles” means something very different in NYC terms where auto travel is not the norm. 5 miles in NYC takes you from Manhattan to the Bronx which is not a really swift trip.
> Yet you are clearly outraged in a way I honestly have 0% comprehension of.
I’m rather irrated by the arguments given, not outraged. New Yorkers are outraged. I’m trying to get you to understand why they are outraged. Take the Oklahoma City bombing instead. Would it be wise for the American Militia Association to build a community center 600 yards from the Federal Building? Does it really get better if it’s near the Oklahoma City City Hall? Wouldn’t the people of Oklahoma City be outraged? And yet we expect organizations in this country to be able to build where ever they want.
It’s the same thing.
> I don’t dispute anything about genocidal Jew hatred, I don’t see that as relevant to this discussion.
You are concerned about bigotry against Muslims. I have the habit of bringing up genocidal Jew hatred whenever the subject of bigotry comes up, because it is so important. It also puts this in perspective. When put in perspective, Park 51 is a tempest in a teapot. It’s good for a few solid dollops of righteous indignation. This allows the opinion machine to sell some advestising time at good rates.
However, at some point this country is going to have to improve the way we assimilate Muslims. I think the main change right now needs to be the way we talk about it. We have alienated Muslim men who periodically go and kill a bunch of people. They are not essentially different from the alienated men who read The Turner Diaries and kill people or who read radical Right-to-Life web sites and kill people or who write anti-technology screeds and kill people.
Right now, responsible militia movement people and people who hate the militia movement both say that the militia movement needs to be careful what they say, even though the militia movement was not responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing. I believe militia members actually warned the authorites about McVeigh.
Right now, Right-To-Life and people who hate the Right-To-Life movement both say that the Right-To-Life movement needs to be careful what they say, even though the Right-To-Life movement was not responsible for Tiller’s murder. I would not be surprised if Right-To-Life people had been working with the authorites about it.
Right now, people who hate the environmental movement say that the environmental movement needs to be careful what they say, even though the environmental movement was not responsible for the Unabomber. I would not be surprised if the environmental movement people also say they need to be careful what they say and had been working with the authorites about the Unabomber. I just don’t know.
Right now, responsible Muslims (yes, I mean Aziz, for example) and people who hate Islam both say that Muslims need to be careful what they say, even though Islam was not responsible 9/11. (Although I’m still angry about the Palestinians dancing in the streets and the relatively large numbers of Muslims who really did applaud the attacks.) I believe Muslims actually worked with the authorites about 9/11.
But General Holder needs to be able to say that some Muslim clerics are not being responsible in the way they preach the faith, not just dodge the question. His critics (including Robert Spencer) need to recognize and say that alienated men are dangerous, no matter what they latch onto to justify murder.
I don’t cut Islam as practiced a complete break on this. As practiced, both tribalism and nationalism have been grafted onto Islam – just like the Church of England (among others) became an expression of nationalism, not just Christianity. As practiced, Islam appears to be where Christianity was during the Thirty Years War right now. That’s a dangerous place – mainly for Muslims, but also for everyone else, particularly Israelis.
> 5 miles in NYC takes you from Manhattan to the Bronx which is not a really swift trip.
I’m not sure how this compares to Hawaii. In Kansas City, which sprawls like mad, five miles is short. I suspect Honolulu is more compact.
Yours,
Wince
McK,
I do in fact surely know that diesel fuel oil still trickles up to the surface from the probably rusted out bunkers of the sunken battleship USS Arizona, at rest forever off Ford Island, its port side perpendicular to Southeast Loch, from which the torpedo bombers launched their deadly runs against Battleship Row, that never to be forgotten morning in December 1941. Ironically, it wasn’t one of the torpedo bombers that did in the Arizona, but a single high-level horizontal bomber carrying a heavy naval artillery shell fitted out with fins — specially designed to pierce even thickly armored decks of battleships.
I was only a 7-1/2 year old kid that Sunday, sick in bed with the sniffles, and my mom and dad told me what had happened in the faraway Hawaiian islands.
My older cousins and younger uncles enlisted in the worldwide fight. One of my cousins, a tough little monkey of a guy, joined the US Marine Corps. All Marines, then and now, first and foremost are combat troops, and my cousin was no exception. He saw service on some of the noted jungle hellhole islands of the central and southwest Pacific. His younger brother, who was going on 18 years of age when Pearl Harbor was attacked, joined the US Army Air Force and served as a flight crewman — a radio operator, I think — on one of the C-47 two-engine transport planes that carried personnel and war materiel to and from every combat theater around the globe. Not of few of these flew the “Hump” — the Himalaya Mountains in the China-Burma-India theater of operations. Lots of planes were lost on those runs. A few parachuting aircrew eventually found their way home to an Allied base. But many died in the mountains and jungles, or in the oceans.
It was not until after the end of WWII that Americans of that generation started feeling friendly to anything or anybody Japanese once again. And certainly until we had forced their surrender by destroying two of their large cities with nuclear weapons.
Many Americans think we are in fact at war with Islam. Maybe not all Moslems, but with Islam in general. The more I read their own statements about their own faiths and cultures, the more I comprehend that they view western civilization as enemy territory that they want to capture for their religion and in service of the memory of their prophet.
So I think it would be inappropriate to let them expand here too greatly, and I would not approve of their building their own cultural centers, masjids, etc, anywhere close to sites of their attacks against America or Americans. Maybe some time in the long future. But certainly not now unde circumstances that prevail in the early 21st century.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Tom,
I hope I am not too irritating. Thank you for the response. I do think I understand your position better, and I think we are almost in agreement, actually.
If I read you correctly, you want Muslim-American/Everyone-else-American relations to improve. You think Park51 will cause those relations to deteriorate. You believe those relations will deteriorate because Park51 will be seen as a Muslim holy place within walking distance of a location of what some see as the remnants of a Muslim attack. Obviously this is a too-concise summary of what you have said thus far, but I believe it distills the essence – if not please correct me.
I want Muslim-American/Everyone-else-American relations to improve. The rest is details. I believe that Park51 will improve relations. I believe that once the center is built people will wonder what the fuss was about. I also believe the same will be true when same-sex marriage (another outrage-inducing topic – on both sides) is legalized. That’s just my worldview, I guess – those are beliefs and as such I am skeptical an internet discussion will change them.
In fact I think, upon close examination, we are both arguing from a position of belief. We have different beliefs but they stem from the same desire.
Obviously, I hope I am right, because I would rather the country be in the position of being able to say that there are many bad people doing bad things in the name of religion – but we value religion as a whole and we do not condemn those who practice religion with peaceful intentions commensurate with American values. Much like President Bush articulated at the outset of the GWOT. I think what you are saying is something more like “Our country is not there yet but I would like it to be there in the future. And to achieve that I think everyone should be careful and move this thing along pretty slow to keep anyone’s dander from getting up.” I want to believe we are past that point. I admit I may be wrong.
> I hope I am not too irritating.
You aren’t. I’m too irritable.
> I think we are almost in agreement, actually.
So do I, although there really is a clash with Islam as a political movement.
Yours,
Wince
Wince,
“So do I, although there really is a clash with Islam as a political movement.”
I absolutely agree with this – I believe there is a clash whenever religion lays claim to politics and whenever politics lays claim to religion.
Unless and until Islam undergoes some sort of fundamental reformation similar in scope to that of Christianity in the 16th century, worldwide Islam will continue regarding — and treating — western civilization as little more than new lands and people to be put under the submission of the will of Allah, with all the implications of that defined in accordance with the will of a fanatic and power hungry bunch of imams — each attempting to outdo one another in their fanatacism.
Meanwhile, the targeted but still-free peoples of the West — who may be uninformed but whom the master planners of Islam cannot count on being stupid or necessarily complacent in the face of conspiracies aimed in their directdion — will resist the blandishments of these latest in a long list of would-be conquerors of the world.
Which plainly means that the harder their friends try to toss sand in our eyes in countries such as the United States, the more distrustful non-Moslems here will become. There already are signs of growing and well-organized opposition to Islamization and recognition of Shari’a all around this country. Attempts to build an islamic masjid at or near the site of the World Trade Center feeds these groups yet additional nails that will be pounded into the future coffins of american Islamization.
No argument any of you can raise will change the dynamics of this coming struggle. You will lose, because the christian United States is not a playing field friendly to Islam. And distrust is growing here, everywhere. His suspected family and personal connections to Islam — and not his racial identity — is becoming the single most significant factor that will cost Barack Hussein Obama a second term of his presidency. There are many, many Americans who think that getting him elected for his first term was itself the act of a semi-hidden political conspiracy involving — guess whom?
Chances are that many of you reading this are appalled by what I write here. But some of you, upon deeper reflection, may well admit that I am more or less accurately describing the growing mood in this country. One of my personal characteristics is that I always reason out even nasty trends to their likely ultimate conclusions. That is the essence of logical analysis as opposed to wishful thinking.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
> One of my personal characteristics is that I always reason out even nasty trends to their likely ultimate conclusions. That is the essence of logical analysis as opposed to wishful thinking.
Yes you do.
Yours,
Wince
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