Mosque at 51 Park Place, NY, NY

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Where did I say that I support "the witch hunt over a private project"?

When you said..."Then they have nothing to hide and can account for every dollar donated to build said mosque to the public."

Why should they?

When you hold one particular private enterprise on private property to different standard that you hold all other private enterprises on private property....then IMO, it is a witch hunt.

Kitchens said it best...

http://www.slate.com/id/2266154/?from=rss

Kitchens just screams about the coming caliphate like a madman.

[classicman]

Most disturbingly, no authority within the faith appears to have the power to rule decisively that such practices, or such teachings, or such actions, are definitely and utterly in conflict with the precepts of the religion itself.

not in my mind - The fact that they don't WANT to or REFUSE to do so is more troubling IMO.

Of course I am on the record as saying that they should be able to build the damn thing - whatever it is being called this week.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

When you said..."Then they have nothing to hide and can account for every dollar donated to build said mosque to the public."

Why should they?

How the hell do you get that I support a witch hunt (your words) out of that?

Kitchens just screams about the coming caliphate like a madman.

Where is he wrong?

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

How the hell do you get that I support a witch hunt (your words) out of that?

Simple.

As I said, unless you hold all other private enterprises to the same standard...its a witch hunt.

Just my opinion.

Where is he wrong?

There is no evidence of this coming Caliphate (particularly among Muslims in the US) other than in the mind of Kitchens and other Islamaphobes.

I am all for the government investigating potential terrorists threats (within the limits of the law) where every they may be.

I am not for demagoguing a religion of 1+ billion, the overwhelming majority of whom just want to mind their own business and practice their religion without being subject to intolerance.

And I am not for imposing a double standard on one religion in the US based on fear.

[TheMercenary]

[classicman]

After a long absence while controversy over the mosque near Ground Zero smoldered, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf finally held forth this week both in the New York Times and on CNN.

Imam Rauf and his supporters are clearly more interested in making a political statement in relation to Islam than in the mosque's potential for causing community division and pain to those who lost loved ones on 9/11. That division is already bitterly obvious.

As someone who has been involved in building mosques around the country, and who has dealt with his fair share of unjustified opposition, I ask of Imam Rauf and all his supporters, "Where is your sense of fairness and common decency?" In relation to Ground Zero, I am an American first, a Muslim second, just as I would be at Concord, Gettysburg, Normandy Beach, Pearl Harbor or any other battlefield where my fellow countrymen lost their lives.

I must ask Imam Rauf: For what do you stand—what's best for Americans overall, or for what you think is best for Islam? What have you said and argued to Muslim-majority nations to address their need for reform? You have said that Islam does not need reform, despite the stoning of women in Muslim countries, death sentences for apostates, and oppression of reformist Muslims and non-Muslims.

You now lecture Americans that WTC mosque protests are "politically motivated" and "go against the American principle of church and state." Yet you ignore the wide global prevalence of far more dangerous theo-political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and all of its violent and nonviolent offshoots.

In your book, "What's Right With Islam," you cite the Brotherhood's radical longtime spiritual leader Imam Yusuf Qaradawi as a "moderate." Reformist American Muslims are not afraid to name Mr. Qaradawi and his ilk as radical. We Muslims should first separate mosque and state before lecturing Americans about church and state.

Imam, tell me if you can look into the eyes of children who lost a parent on 9/11 and convince them that this immodest Islamic center benefits them. How will it in any way aid counterterrorism efforts or keep one American any safer? You willfully ignore what American Muslims most need—an open call for reformation that unravels the bigoted and shoddy framework of political Islam and separates mosque and state.

There are certainly those who are prejudiced against Muslims and who are against mosques being built anywhere, and even a few who wish to burn the Quran. But most voices in this case have been very clear that for every American freedom of religion is a right, but that it is not right to make one's religion a global political statement with a towering Islamic edifice that casts a shadow over the memorials of Ground Zero.

As an American Muslim, I look at that pit of devastation and contemplate the thousands of lives undone there within seconds. I pray for the ongoing strength to fight the fanatics who did this, and who continue their war against my country with both overt violence and covert strategies that aim to undo the very freedoms for which so many have fought and died.

Imam Rauf may not appear to the untrained eye to be an Islamist, but by making Ground Zero an Islamic rather than an American issue, and by failing to firmly condemn terrorist groups like Hamas, he shows his true allegiance.

Islamists in "moderate" disguise are still Islamists. In their own more subtle ways, the WTC mosque organizers end up serving the same aims of the separatist and supremacist wings of political Islam. In this epic struggle of the 21st century, we cannot afford to ignore the continuum between nonviolent political Islam and the militancy it ultimately fuels among the jihadists.

Dr. Jasser, a medical doctor and a former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, is the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Ariz

WSJ

[Pete Zicato]

Originally Posted by Redux

As I said, unless you hold all other private enterprises to the same standard...its a witch hunt.

True. Have they asked all those guys building men's rooms where their money came from?

[Undertoad]

If "Ground Zero" is four blocks by four blocks (16 blocks), and no Islamic Cultural Center is to be built within 3 blocks of it (10x10=100 blocks), that is a prohibition of 84 city blocks where no Islamic Cultural Center can be built. (GZ is not exactly 4x4 and there are not exactly 3 buildable blocks in every direction. But you get the point.)

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Redux

There is no evidence of this coming Caliphate (particularly among Muslims in the US) other than in the mind of Kitchens and other Islamaphobes.

Evidently you have no knowledge at all of the Islamofascists' mind, their expressed goals, and so forth, all out of their own mouths.

The Muslims in the US are less inclined to such things than overseas fascists, and that's a saving grace. And yet... the overseas fascists remain capable of recruiting among Americans.

Consider the potential reduction of our troubles if there were no Islamofascists. (Cue John Lennon's "Imagine") Now wouldn't that be nice? Lots fewer non-fascist Muslims getting blown up every other day, too, not so?

You persistently don't seem very capable of understanding an enemy, Redux, and you exhibit this inability in writing. That's why I keep telling you you're fatuous -- you can be relied upon to show it.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

If "Ground Zero" is four blocks by four blocks (16 blocks), and no Islamic Cultural Center is to be built within 3 blocks of it (10x10=100 blocks), that is a prohibition of 84 city blocks where no Islamic Cultural Center can be built. (GZ is not exactly 4x4 and there are not exactly 3 buildable blocks in every direction. But you get the point.)

There has been a small mosque/Islamic center within four blocks of "Ground Zero" for years.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/0...r-ground-zero/

The small mosque within the proposed cultural/community center would replace that old existing mosque.

But the cultural/community center would be much more. With a proposed board of directors including Christian and Jewish religious leaders as well as other community leaders, its mission is to facilitate a greater understanding of each others religious beliefs and strengthen relations to help counter radical ideology and religious intolerance where ever it exists (and that includes dispelling the myths of Hitchins and his followers here).

Seems like a reasonable goal to me...but haters (and those with a political agenda) will still find a reason to hate....on both sides.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Redux

The small mosque within the proposed cultural/community center would replace that old existing mosque.

I heard not replace, but augment, as the current mosque is seriously overcrowded, with people waiting in line to get in.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

With a proposed board of directors including Christian and Jewish religious leaders as well as other community leaders, its mission is to facilitate a greater understanding of each others religious beliefs and strengthen relations to help counter radical ideology and religious intolerance where ever it exists (and that includes dispelling the myths of Hitchins and his followers here).

Sorry but this is just to funny. "Proposed". I guess that is why there are so many people standing up to support it. Like I said earlier, he certainly has a right to build it. And people have a right to protest it and block it by any legal means. That is the way the system works.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I heard not replace, but augment, as the current mosque is seriously overcrowded, with people waiting in line to get in.

I stand corrected.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Not a big deal, but I think it's important to note there's a need, or at least desire, the builders are responding to, not simply provocation.