I have not replied until now because I wanted to give myself time to digest the replies I've received in this thread. And I wanted to make sure I replied in a thoughtful and careful manner. I do not want to say or do anything out of anger or irritation, because that doesn't resolve anything.
Let me reply, in no particular order, to some of the comments directed my way.
Ann wrote:
Terry, in explaining why 9/11 happened in the first place, you named several American women, Paris Hilton, the Kardashian sisters (whom I have never heard about) and Lady Gaga:
No, I didn't. All of these ladies were teenagers and not prominent in the news in 2001. There is no way anyone could reasonably blame them for anything which happened nine years ago. You are either not reading my statements carefully, Ann, or you are putting words in my mouth so you can refute something I didn't say.
I was trying to use those women as examples of the culture Americans often seem to want to export. Paris Hilton is famous for her family and her heritage and her explicit sex videos, Lady Gaga (real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta - no wonder she picked a new stage name) is famous for her music and her outrageous antics in real life and in her videos, and the Kardashian sisters (as far as I am aware) are famous for having Paris Hilton as a sometime BFF (Best Friend Forever - they really haven't done anything worthy of note on their own, except for having some famous boyfriends).
Ann also wrote:
Terry, I understand and share your concern about Muslim proselytizing in prisons.
You missed that one too. I am not greatly concerned with Muslim proselytizing in general (even in prisons), but I am concerned about the small percentage of Muslim prison chaplains who seek converts for violent ends. The vast majority do not do so, at least not as far as my (limited) research has shown.
Ann also wrote:
I think that suggestions from people like Jerry Falwell and Dinesh D'Souza is an attack on precisely the human rights that set the west apart from almost all of the Muslim world.
Wrong.
Dr. Falwell did not advocate a theological takeover of the government. What he advocated was that men and women with Biblical values be the ones who make the laws and the judicial decisions in the US. D'Souza advocates much the same thing. Dr. Falwell wanted an America where the people
choose to follow Biblical precepts, not one where everyone is
forced to do so.
And I can hear the objection already. "If those Bible-believing people get into government, then the preachers will run the country through them!" Not if they stick to Biblical values, because the Bible is available to everyone, and everyone can open it and point to a passage which will either support or refute a particular preacher's opinion.
As Rac pointed out earlier, it's not that way in the Muslim world.
In truth, many Muslims have no idea what the Quran says because they don't understand classical Arabic. Many have to rely on religious leaders to tell them what God's will is.
We don't. All we have to do is read it.
The famous phrase concerning the "wall of separation between church and state" was penned by Thomas Jefferson in the first year of his presidency. He wrote to a group of Christian pastors in New England to assure them that the Federal government would not interfere with the administration of their churches. This was never written in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. The US government was based on Biblical principles, one of which is that preachers don't make the laws and the lawmakers don't appoint the preachers.
Rac, I bow to your superior personal experience with the people with whom you have interacted. And I admit that my opinions on Middle East policy are based on information provided to me by others, so it gets filtered at least twice. I should have been more careful.
I have to remind you, though, that most Americans are pretty leery of the Muslim faith and its practitioners. And it's not hard to figure out why. We hear, almost on a daily basis, that some Muslim sect or sub-sect has set off a bomb in Pakistan or Iraq or Afghanistan specifically to kill other Muslims. You
never hear of Baptists bombing Methodists, or Methodists shooting Episcopalians, or Episcopalians killing Lutherans - you get the idea. And if someone wants to bring up Northern Ireland, remember that the conflict there was as much about armed rebellion against a (perceived) unjust and invasive government as it was a religious conflict. In fact, there are a great many parallels between those two conflicts, as well as many striking differences.
We also don't ambush and murder Muslim medical aid workers and use the excuse that they were carrying copies of the Quran and trying to convert our citizens. The Taliban (who, I know, represent only a small political minority in Afghanistan) did exactly that early last week. And while the Taliban is striving for political control of Afghanistan, they are driven by radical Muslim theological doctrine. That scares a lot of Americans.
Your point, Rac, that the US is not only exporting its culture to the Middle East and upsetting many conservatives there (both devout Muslims and others) but projects a strong military presence there is quite valid. We are indeed hated (and feared, I believe) because we are strong. And we have to deal with the fallout of our ventures, whether they are intended as peaceful assistance, as in Haiti following the earthquake, or in Iraq, to topple a violent and murderous dictator and free a nation.
And your point that other nations export potentially offensive media to the Middle East without suffering major reprisal campaigns is also valid. But from my own reading and from your comments, I get the distinct impression that the people in the Middle East perceive (rightly or wrongly) that the US is the ultimate source of that material. So we get the blame - and the rocket-propelled grenades.
To get back to the original point of this thread, I'm not in favor of the mosque in New York near Ground Zero. But not because I hate or fear Muslims. It's because I am not confident that it is intended to be a house of worship and not a recruiting center for radical Muslims.
