Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Mosque at Ground Zero

What do y'all think of this? Yes, I know this could be a controversial subject, however, I am curious to know how other Americans feel about this - or even non-Americans.

Mosque at Ground Zero

Personally, I think it's a slap in the face.

I'm not happy about it.

While the proposed mosque is not literally at Ground Zero, it is within a few minutes' walk of it. Since the men who took control of the aircraft and flew them into the towers were all Muslim extremists, and since very few high-ranking Muslim leaders from anywhere in the world have repudiated their actions, it feels to me as if some Muslims are trying to move in and take over a place they've already torched. While there are many Muslims in the US who heartily disapprove of the events of 9/11, for the most part they are not influential leaders in the American Muslim community.

I remember seeing video footage of Muslims dancing in the streets in Palestine and Jordan and Pakistan and other Muslim-dominated cities when news of the collapse of the Towers got out. This does not help me to believe that the man who is the public face of this effort is truly a man who is interested in peace.

This is not original with me, but I do wonder if there should be a synagogue built in Mecca?

I wasn't paying that much attention, but...wasn't this debunked years ago? I understood that the footage didn't hold up to anything like close scrutiny - it was night at the time it was supposed to be taken, in that part of the world, and the footage is in daylight, for example? I seem to recall Fox eventually admitted it had taken footage of Palestinians celebrating a wedding or something....?

LabRat

I saw some of this footage on CNN, not just FOX. And if it has been debunked, I've not heard of it. If you can find some link somewhere debunking this, Labby, I'd be thrilled to learn the truth.

Seems like the debunk got debunked.
Snopes

Speaking of "wedding celebrations": Palestinian mothers celebrate sons\' Shahada death

The most positive spin I can place on the choice of location for the mosque is that it is in breathtakingly poor taste and shows a complete lack of sensitivity to and a callous disregard for the feelings of the friends and families of those who died at ground zero.

And that is the most positive spin I can come up with.

Joy,
Lynn

The footage was real, but to assume a significant percentage of Muslims in America hate the US or celebrated the attacks just because some Muslims in the Middle East did, doesn't make sense. I know plenty of Muslim Americans who are outstanding, patriotic citizens (some of whom are currently fighting to defend our country) and to tell them that a Muslim house of worship is offensive and "a slap in the face" does little more than provide evidence to support Osama Bin Laden's crazy, psychotic opinion that the United States is at war against Islam.

Some people argue that Ground Zero is different and they don't understand why Muslims would want a community center there - first of all, if Ground Zero is different, where are the fair minded Americans who should be denouncing attempts to prevent mosques from being built in other communities in the US? A credible Republican candidate for congress in Tennessee's sixth congressional district is running on a platform including opposing the building of a mosque in her district because it was and "Islamic training center" and part of "a political movement designed to fracture the moral and political foundation of Middle Tennessee." There is no evidence whatsoever the mosque is anything of the sort. If she'd said the same thing about a Catholic church or a synagogue, she'd be rightly driven out of politics for her xenophobic positions. In Texas, a mosque was desecrated and its playground burned down last week. I didn't hear anyone denouncing this.

In my parents' own city in southern California, (a place where the city council tried to limit access to local public parks because there were "too many Hispanic looking people using them" - the members who voted for the resolution were all re-elected, btw), the city rezoned a part of town with a Catholic church, a Jewish Community Center, a Presbyterian church, an evangelical mega-church campus, and a Mormon temple to avoid having to allow a mosque to be built there. Nobody came to the defense of the Muslims to have the same sort of community center and center of worship.

The reason the group wants to build the Islamic center in lower Manhattan is because there's been a mosque and community center in that neighborhood for sometime and they're looking for larger space to accommodate a larger community center. It's not like some brand new invasion of the Muslims into the financial district. Something I didn't know until recently was that that particular area of downtown was the heart of the city's first Muslim communities. In the early part of the 20th century, a sizable part of lower Manhattan was referred to as "Little Syria," as it was the home of the Arab immigrant community from the Ottoman Empire. Since that time, there has been a substantial Muslim community in lower Manhattan.

I've lived most of my life in New York, and I'm now in the Middle East on a government assignment. I'm often surprised by how woefully ignorant people here are of what America is like. I'm equally surprised by how ignorant Americans are about the Middle East and Islam. These are two civilizations that just don't talk to each other enough to have anything resembling an understanding of one another. What I am certain of, though, is that we shouldn't abandon the idea that government has no business telling people where to build their churches or synagogues, or mosques. So long as it doesn't violate neutral, non-discriminatory zoning laws, I don't see a problem with it. And if the mosque and community center does decide to preach and disseminate anti-American views, when I can come home, I'll be out there with a bunch of other New Yorkers, countering their hate speech with better speech.

Furthermore, I don't think the comparisons to Saudi Arabia are appropriate. We shouldn't base our standards of decency and respect for others on a country that denies women, racial, and religious minorities the most basic, fundamental human rights. We need to encourage them to come up to our level. Not lower ourselves to theirs.

Finally, my husband and I are deploying to a war zone in less than a year. We're going because we love our country. We're going because we believe we can do good work there. We're going because we were asked to serve. The easiest thing people in the US can do to put us and the tens of thousands of other Americans who will be serving there with us in greater danger is to feed the repulsive, false, poisonous narrative that America is at war with Islam by showing that Americans are intolerant of Muslims (like the pastor in Florida hosting a Quran burning).

I know that people's feelings on this issue are charged because of 9/11, but the Mosque isn't going to be at Ground Zero, it's going to be blocks away. Within the same distance of ground zero as about a hundred Starbucks's, a discount department store, a half dozen investment banks that helped almost blowup the world financial system, and a bunch of other things that don't really signify a hallowed and sacred space. That's just the nature of New York City. I agree, putting any house of worship physically on the site of ground zero would be a bad idea, but you can't turn the blocks around ground zero into an Islam-free zone just because 19 psychopaths and their supporters decided to try to create a clash of civilizations. The best way to fight them is by proving them wrong. America doesn't have a problem with Islam. The radical, violent extremists are the ones who have a problem with everyone (Muslim or not) who doesn't agree with them.

I have to add one more thing. I'm fluent in two extremely difficult Middle Eastern languages. I know the culture and I understand the religion. I have these skills because of the people who trained me. For every person like me, out there in front, there are the half dozen or so patriotic Arab and Iranian Americans who trained us, most of whom are Muslims. We can do our job because they did theirs. They're not asking for recognition or your thanks. But they do deserve your respect.

Sticking to my principles, I think it should definitely be legal for them to build a mosque there, or anywhere else that's zoned appropriately. But emotionally, it's adding insult to injury, and will only worsen Americans' perceptions of the Islamic world -- not only did Muslims kill people in 2001, but they were also obnoxious jerks in 2010. :rolleyes:

Plus, I'm uncomfortable with the name "Cordoba House" -- the original Cordoba was the capital of Muslim-conquered Spain (al-Andalus). It gives it a kind of "victory over the infidels" flavor which I resent.

Rac, thank you for your service. And your perspective. It's valuable. Let me run this by you:

One argument I've heard lately is that, when you think about it, Islam is really an ideology, not a religion. The ideology has religious components, true, but it also governs criminal and civil law and all sorts of aspects of society. (Including which hand is clean and which is unclean. Which was probably a big sanitary improvement at the time, but still...) In Islam, in the Koran, there is no separation of church and state. The church is the state is the church, and all is subject to Allah.

I know that there are many, many Muslims who just kind of ignore that part (just as there are many Christians who ignore the "God hates divorce" part of the Bible, for instance). But the Muslims who *do* believe it are, shall we say, deadly serious about it.

PJ

Chaos, thanks for that Snopes link. Fascinating (if depressing) reading. The page includes eye-witness testimony from an Italian journalist in Beirut that day.

And the whole "debunking" thing was from one student in Brazil, going on the verbal word of a teacher from a nearby university, supposedly. The student investigated further, and officially took it back a little bit later, but I guess a lie really can get halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on. Especially when so many people want to believe it.

PJ

Okay, I really need to go do some housework, but one more thing:

I get what you're saying, really I do. Moral high road, etc. But then there's such a thing as reciprocity. For instance, North Carolina and Missouri will let pharmacists licensed in one state practice in the other, because that's the deal that's been worked out. Many, if not all, states have similar arrangements with each other, because pharmacists licenses are handled on a state level. If North Carolina changes the rules and requires pharmacists from Missouri to be re-licensed in NC before practicing, then I don't see what would be wrong with Missouri implementing the same sort of arrangement re: NC-licensed pharmacists.

Plus, we get back to the "obnoxious jerk" factor. Seems like tolerance is demanded of us, but foreign to them. There's an inequality there, which can be seen as the moral high road, but which also could be seen as weakness and submission. Morality aside, the practical consequences of showing weakness are not good, in my view.

PJ

Pam, I take your point regarding the sensitivity of the issue, but again, I come back to not painting everyone with the same brush. I don't think it's at all fair to blame all Orthodox Christians for the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. That was done by the Bosnian Serb Army. Not all Orthodox Christians. Nor do I think you can single out Catholics and hold them responsible for the perpetration of genocide by several priests and nuns in Rwanda. Those were the acts of individuals, who should be held accountable as such.

Is Islam an ideology instead of a religion? Only if you think Judaism is an ideology and not a religion. Islam and Judaism are almost identical in their treatment of the role of religion in law. In Christianity, there was a series of long and bloody wars that finally led to the separation of church and state, but for most of the history of Christendom, between Byzantium and the Germanic State, there has been something called "The Holy Roman Empire." Don't get me wrong, I think the separation of church and state is one of the best ideas anyone's ever had, but at one point, the Pope had the power to put Galileo under house arrest for life for having the impertinent idea that the Earth revolved around the sun.

There is in fact secular law in almost all majority Muslim societies. Even in a self proclaimed theocracy, that great pillar of secularism Ayatollah Khomeini (I'm kidding, folks) once said, "God does not care about the price of watermelons," when asked about the Islamic position on agricultural subsidies. Many Muslim countries have a civil code and in countries like Tunisia, Turkey, and Morocco, these laws are pretty progressive by regional standards.

As for the name Cordoba, I think they are trying to hearken back to a period when Islam was known for scientific advancement, enlightenment, and tolerance (it was way better, after all, to be a Jew in Cordoba than in Russia or France during the Moorish rule over Spain).

Pam, I don't really think reciprocity applies here - we're not talking about the same people, after all. If the Saudis don't respect the rights of women, Jews, Shi'a, everyone who isn't Saudi, etc, that might justify us saying we don't recognize the rights of those Saudi wahhabists who propagate and enforce these ignoble and degrading opinions. However, I don't see what the bad behavior of the Saudi government has to do with the Lebanese American guy who owns a halal truck (man, those guys have tasty shwarmas), or the Egyptian who delivers pizzas, or the Sudanese taxi driver, or the Syrian banker whose family has been in America for a hundred years, or the Jordanian American translator/analyst on New York's counter terrorism task force. These people and their families are the ones who will actually worship at the mosque and community center. Not the Taliban. Not al Qaeda. Not the radical Saudi fundamentalists. When we fail to make that distinction, we concede Osama bin Laden's key point - that America is at war against Islam.

-- General Colin Powell

The quote was given in the context of claims that then candidate Obama was a "secret Muslim," but I think the point is still valid here - Muslims, like Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Atheists were all killed by terrorists on 9/11. And members of all of these faiths (and no faith in particular) have all fought and bled and died for our country. None of them are more American than others. None should feel obligated to apologize for their heritage or faith. They're Americans. Full stop.

You Tube Video

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Good discussion

I'm all about treating individuals as individuals. But people who build "Islamic community centers" are kind of seen as speaking for a group. I believe they've claimed to want to be seen as speaking for the group. It's a perception issue. It might not be fair, but the stereotype of Islam involves terrorism. The Koran, the five pillars, sharia law -- most people don't know much about those things. But they have heard of terrorism in relation to Islam. These Cordoba characters are not doing *anything* to improve that.

Judiasm was certainly meant as a theocracy, so I'll concede that point. Jews have never been big on prostelytizing, though, and they haven't really conquered much of anything since 5000 BC so there doesn't seem to be as much of a threat there.

Jesus, however, said things like "my kingdom is not of this world" and "render under Ceaser the things that are Ceasar's". The epistles talk about obeying the civil authorities (at a time when the civil authorities were brutalizing Christians, btw). Has that been followed consistently? Hell no. Human beings generally screw things up, if given time. The early church was good but when they started converting Roman Emperors (real Rome, not the HRE) then church and state got way too close, for a long time. That was bad for both church and state, but it was *not* Christian doctrine

The thing about religion vs. science, btw, is a myth invented during the Enlightenment.

Anyway, point is, the concept of separation of church and state is explicitly in the New Testament, but explicitly not in the Koran. Their respective adherents may or (more likely) may not follow their scriptures, but that's the foundation. One's based on love, the other on a sword.

Speaking as an American, I do not *want* to be at war with Islam. Considering how American forces were used in the Balkans, in Kuwait, and in Iraq, to the overall benefit of Muslims, I don't think a rational case can be made that we are at war with Islam. But that's western logic, and it's not even all that popular in the west right now.

And it's hard to escape the notion that at least parts of Islam are at war against America.

I don't hate Islam or Muslims. But there are undoubtedly some Muslims that hate me, for specifically religious reasons. That fact is going to color my emotions. Like I said, I think they have the right to build this mosque, in accordance with our law. But I really really don't like the idea. It is seen as a thumb in the eye by many people who are not going to improve their opinion of Islam over this.

PJ

No argument here. One of the things I love about America is that people can start out anywhere in the world and then become Americans. That's awesome, when you think about it.

PJ

That's one of my favorite things about America.

Rac

Pam, I agree that Christianity has a concept of separating civil and religious authority baked right into its foundation and Islam and Judaism do not. I think, however, this should be considered in its historical context - Judaism and Islam were introduced to peoples who weren't subject to pre-existing civil authority. They are very much religions of tribes who needed rules to govern themselves in the first place.

Personally, while I find sharia law to be almost uniformly repugnant (the exception that provides there will be no punishment for stealing food to feed yourself or your family in a time of famine does seem like a concession to mercy and compassion) it is an improvement on what existed prior to its introduction:

If, a man from another tribe kills someone from my tribe, we:

go to war with them.

If, a man from another tribe steals a camel, sheep, or horse from my tribe, we:

go to war with them.

If, a man from another tribe has sex with my daughter, we:

go to war with them.

In terms of your point regarding why we should be tolerant when many Muslims seem intolerant of other religions (or even other sects of Islam), the only good answer I can give is that North Americans have a long history of religious pluralism so we understand its value. In many Middle Eastern countries outside the Levant, the number of religious minorities is so small that people have little to no interaction with non-Muslims. They have a tradition of tolerating other religions, but not on having them on equal footing with Islam. I'm not saying this is an excuse for having a double standard for religious tolerance, but it does explain their cognitive dissonance.

When people ask me about religion in America, they often believe it is impossible or illegal for Muslims to proselytize in America. They also have the utterly contradictory view that a huge percentage of Americans are Muslim and that America will be a Muslim majority state very shortly. They're usually crestfallen when I tell them that Muslims can proselytize freely, but the growth in their faith comes generally from births and immigration, not conversion. I tell them that Muslims may make up 2% of the US population, roughly on par with Jews, and that I know plenty of people who have either converted away from Islam, or don't practice it in any meaningful sense, but only personally know one individual who converted to Islam. Plenty of Muslims I meet have no idea that there are twice as many Christians as Muslims in the world. Or that, given the populations of China, Japan, and India, that atheists and polytheists also dramatically outnumber Muslims. They often won't believe these things until I show them the U.N. Population Fund's statistics on them.

Of course, to them, Muslims being a tiny minority in America that is unlikely to ever even match the number of nonbelievers in the US, doesn't stop them from thinking their religion should be treated as at least equal to Christianity. Why? Because they're absolutely sure their faith is the correct one. When I ask them if they think Christians believe their own faith to be wrong, they generally don't have an answer.

They also often believe completely erroneous things like the notion that Mohammed's coming is foretold in the Bible. I assure people that I've read the Bible cover to cover in various versions, and I'm positive Mohammed's not in it. Their only answer is to claim that Christians must have written him out of the Bible. Following up on that point, many Muslims believe the Bible has so many translations because Christians are constantly editing and changing the word of God, and that's why Christianity is wrong. When I explain to them the Bible has been translated in order to take it out of dead languages (old Hebrew, ancient Greek, Aramaic) into languages that people actually speak, they seem to understand, but they're suspicious of why Christians don't just learn the dead languages so they can understand the true word of God. 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.

I am trying to dispel misunderstandings about western religions over here, really, I am. But trust me, it's hard when you're doing it in your second and third languages, and in countries where it is a serious offense to say anything that in any way, shape or form, 'disrespects' Islam. You really don't want to make even the smallest error in word choice.

I know that many Muslims I interact with personally find me baffling. My family is from a majority Muslim country, but is not Muslim. They just cannot wrap their minds around the fact that I've been exposed to Islam, I've read the Quran several times and I still choose not to be a Muslim. To most people this is just an oddity, and they're all very happy to help me convert, once I see the error in my ways. But trust me, Pam, the sorts of Muslims who hate you, hate me, too.

But when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson claimed that liberals, feminists, and the ACLU (along with gays, lesbians, and pagans) helped cause 9/11 to happen, I realized there are some Christians out there who hate me, too.

Rac

In an interesting coincidence of timing, there's this story in today's New York Times:
Across Nation, Mosque Projects Meet Opposition

It's good to see that in most of these cases, the calls to stop the building of mosques have been answered by inter-faith groups supporting the rights of their fellow Americans to worship freely.

Rac

I really was shocked when i first heard about this. I don't understand how it could be allowed to get this far. If Rudy Guiliani were the major
i bet it would have been stopped long ago. It is obvious it is meant as a slap in our faces. Our enemies will indeed be laughing at us if it does get built and dedicated on the tenth anniversary
of 9-11. Doesn't the date it is to be dedicated
confirm that? I really don't understand why people think it is a religious freedom issue. There are hundreds of mosques in the New York area. Anyway, most Americans agree with me.
Rassmusen polls shows 61 percent of New Yorkers
oppose.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/61-new-
yorkers-oppose-ground-zero-mosque
54 % nationally oppose vs 20 %
http://therightfieldline.blogspot.com/2010/07/rasmussen-54-oppose-stealth-jihads.html

Swinging by really quickly to post a link -- Rac, that was a very thought-provoking reply and I don't want to answer it too quickly. Actually, I'm not sure I need to add anything.

But, for the sake of understanding different perspectives...

From the Washington Post: A Muslim Victim of 9/11: \'Build Your Mosque Somewhere Else\'

Read the whole thing, it's thoughtful and touching. Her mother was on one of the planes that hit the towers.

PJ

It is a touching piece, Pam. And of all the arguments against the community center and mosque, the point that Ground Zero is the final resting place of thousands of bodies that were not and could not be recovered is the most salient one. But I'm reminded that Ground Zero is not going to remain a graveyard forever. They're going to put a giant, gleaming glass and steel skyscraper on it. People will go to work there again. They will buy coffee at a Starbucks that I'm certain will be in the building's ground floor, along with a Cosi sandwich shop. Across the street there is, and always will be, the Century 21 Discount Department Store. A block away is a University of Phoenix office building. American Express sits opposite Ground Zero, close to the waterfront. All sorts of buildings that are profane in the oldest sense of the word (i.e., not sacred), mark the grounds in visual range of Ground Zero. The mosque and community center will be several blocks away, in the middle of a block and will therefore have no line of site to Ground Zero. You won't be standing on consecrated ground with a giant minaret staring you in the face.

Okay, Rac, now I have some time... first off, I agree with you about standards in the Koran (and the Torah, for that matter) being improvements on previous conditions. An eye for an eye sounds bad to us moderns, but it's better than killing a whole family over it.

I want to make the point that I *do* believe we should be tolerant of all faiths. I'm not really suggesting that Islam be treated here like Christianity is in Saudi Arabia. You're right, we're better than that. It's just that knowing about their total lack of tolerance makes their demands for our tolerance seem extremely irritating. But I support everyone's right to be irritating; I may need it myself one day.

I appreciate the insights into Middle Eastern culture - very interesting contradictions. They seem to have a very blinkered view of us. I expect their governments foster that.

I hadn't heard the notion that Muhammad was in the Bible. I can see that they'd like to believe that. They also, I'm told, are taught that Jesus didn't actually die on the cross, just, you know, swooned. Anyway, yeah, be careful how you argue with people, but I appreciate that you're trying.

Hopefully not many, but yeah. That was a really really stupid thing for them to say; the Old Testament has God smiting the unbelievers, but these days he's got other methods of dealing with them -- non-violent methods. Our pastor has preached a few sermons refuting the notion that, say, Hurricane Katrina was divine justice, not that I think that view was prevalent in the church. But apparently he'd gotten some emails... anyway, Christians are *commanded* to love everybody (hate the sin, love the sinner, etc) but human beings just keep failing that test.

That's a fair point, although I don't know what they're ever going to build on that site since it's been nine years and nothing's been done. Hopefully a memorial will be built. Still, Starbucks wasn't even remotely complicit in the act of war that killed all those people. So that's not the same thing.

The reason I came here today is to share this opinion piece I read in the Ottowa Citizen . Written by two Muslims who say, among other things:

It's not the existence of a mosque that bothers me, it's the spitefulness that seems to be a large factor of the whole thing that I object to. If the organizers truly want to improve community relations, they should show more compassion and respect for the community. There's a very large wound there, still, and these guys are gleefully adding salt.

PJ

If you talk to law enforcement officials, they will tell you that one of the best places to convert non-believers to Islam is the American prison system.

Most of the men in prison (I'm referring to the long-term guests of the state here) are cut off from positive influences both inside and outside the walls of the prison. It's no wonder that chaplains of all faiths are able to report significant numbers of converts.

And I hasten to add that the majority of the Muslim chaplains in American prisons have no desire to lead their converts to blow themselves up in police stations or supermarkets when they get out. Most Muslim chaplains are much more concerned with helping their converts become peaceful and productive members of the community when their sentences are up.

The problem is that there are a small minority of Muslim chaplains who either point their converts toward radical Islam or direct them to radical Imams when the prisoners are released. I don't know of any Christian or Jewish chaplains who have ever done this. (See this example or this one or this one .)

To those who would take the position that any faith which brings peace to prison yards and hope for a better life to the prisoners inside is a good thing, I must provisionally agree. Prisons are too violent a place for most men and women who have any desire to build a better life (hence the original name 'penitentiary,' meaning 'a place to repent'). But if even one percent of these Muslim prison missionaries are making converts with the aim of using these people to incite more violence, it's too many.

And let's make certain we get the full context of the late Jerry Falwell's comments here. Dr. Falwell told CNN
What Falwell said, however, actually dovetails quite nicely with what Dinesh D'Souza wrote in his book "The Enemy At Home." In it, D'Souza asserts that what most Arabs (Muslims and non-Muslims alike) hate about America is the rampant consumerism and what they view as our immoral lifestyles, combined with our apparent insistence in forcibly exporting that lifestyle all over the world. And he makes a pretty convincing argument.

Terry, he explicitly "pointed a finger" (his words, not mine) in my face and the faces of people like me and said "you helped this happen." He declared that the blood of 2500 of my fellow New Yorkers, and another 500 of my countrymen is partly on my hands because I have the audacity to be a feminist and a liberal. He only took it back when the rest of civilized society screamed bloody murder. I'm not going to apologize for my beliefs and I don't believe Mr. Falwell was sincere when he recanted. The words first spoken, I believe, indicate the level of contempt he had for people like me.

I actually found D'Souza's argument to just be a baseless screed against the horrible dangers of people who dare to disagree with him. I've actually managed to forget most of the details of D'Souza's book, so thankfully the Washington Post's review was there to refresh my recollection. As the Post pointed out, there are horrible inaccuracies in his book - there are American troops in Mecca, Mr. D'Souza? Qaddafi stopped sponsoring terrorism in 1986, two years before the Lockerbie bombing? And D'Souza ignores every scrap of evidence that flatly contradicts his theory to make up an explanation out of whole cloth that not only explains the motivations of terrorists, but also conveniently blames it all on D'Souza's political enemies at home. Those awful, scary, evil, liberals.

The simple fact is that Northern Europe is way more liberal and secular than we are. So why didn't al Qaeda attack Sweden? Because Sweden doesn't have a blue water navy that covers the world, or bases on every continent. Sweden isn't seen as the principal power behind every government in the Arab world that al Qaeda hates. Sweden didn't have tens of thousands of troops based in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East's most sinister conspiracy theorists didn't spread the filthy lie that Israel is nothing more than a colonial outpost of Sweden, designed to take over and subjugate the Arab world.

We are hated because we are powerful. We are hated because our presence is felt all over the world. We are hated because if your government is incompetent and exploits its people and squanders its resources, it's much easier to blame some looming foreign hegemon with corrupt and sinister designs than to admit that people who don't demand better from their government often get pretty lousy leadership.

Don't get me wrong, they hate capitalism and consumerism, and liberalism and tolerance and feminism. But if the reason they attacked us was any of these, why didn't they bomb the French Riviera for its topless beaches? Or Rwanda, for having the audacity not just to let women vote, but for having a majority female parliament?

They don't even really care about the oppression of other Muslims. If they did, why wouldn't they attack China for its massive human rights violations against the Uighurs? Or France (yet again) for not just colonizing and exploiting the Muslim world, but for engaging in race and religion baiting vis a vis its own Arab/Muslim population?

It all comes down to power, not US domestic politics. The former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit said it a lot better than I could: "Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but have everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Muslim world."

Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda tried to directly take on the governments in the Arab world that they hate. They failed. In the age of modern weaponry, after all, psycho fringe groups generally have a hard time overthrowing well armed, entrenched establishments. The fanatics then decided the best way to get these governments to collapse was to force the US to abandon its support for them. Without the US military there to protect the status quo, they wagered, eventually these unpopular governments could be toppled. This isn't mere speculation. Bin Laden himself, in his rambling, poorly written declarations, has laid out his "case" against the "near enemy" (i.e., the Arab governments) and the "far enemy" (i.e., America).

Bin Laden and his thugs thought that by attacking the US on its own soil, it would cause the "paper tiger" to retreat. They used the fiasco in Mogadishu, the USS Cole attack, and the attacks on our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya as exhibits A, B, C, and D in their case that if you hit the US forcefully, it would always retreat. They apparently didn't account for the fact that the US might react differently to being attacked at home.

Sorry if this comes across as overly touchy. I just get a little bent out of shape when people like D'Souza try to blame anyone but the totalitarian psychopaths who want to enforce their 7th century form of warlord driven barbarism on the rest of the world for the events of 9/11.

Rac

Here's another point on which you and I totally agree. When I hear the Saudis talk about "hurt feelings" over contentious religious issues and how other people aren't respectful enough of Islam, it makes my eyes roll so far back I'm afraid my retinas will detach. Your tolerance for cognitive dissonance has to be pretty high when dealing with them. Maybe it makes me a bad person, but I spend a lot of the time thinking to myself, "my God, I'm glad we're not like you."

And yes, there is a verse in the Quran in which God tells Jesus, (paraphrased) "you will be crucified, but you won't die, I'll just make everyone think you died."

I do appreciate that many (if not all) Christians heed the fact that we're supposed to love one another. Sometimes when it feels like I'm fighting an uphill battle over here, I try to remember my favorite verse from the New Testament: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."

Is the mosque and community center near Ground Zero meant to be mischief making? I don't know. I don't know what's going on in the thoughts of its supporters. I don't know if they're sincere in saying that they need more space and there is a demand and need in the community (like I said before, there is a substantial Muslim community in the neighborhood and they have been holding prayers in that building for some time). But I do know that I believe government has no business trying to stop the project. Maybe a dialogue should have been opened up in terms of finding a place that would serve the Muslim community's needs, meet the physical requirements such a space would require, and would still serve the purpose of an inter-faith dialogue without setting off the really contentious debate that we got. Truthfully, though, finding good real estate in Manhattan (especially an entire 13 story building) is extraordinarily difficult. There might not have been another suitable space in the neighborhood.

Finally, a recent Duke Study has shown that American mosques actually serve to de-radicalize Muslims in the US. The outreach and community building initiatives undertaken by many American imams has served to combat the sense of alienation that often leads youth to become violent extremists. All the protests I'm seeing against mosques across the country are really disheartening. If we put Muslim communities on the defensive and treat them like they're not welcome in America, it'll serve to undermine any efforts by moderate imams to combat radicalization.

Rac

I forgot to mention that Sunday on the morning
news shows they interviewed a New York City
construction worker who openly states he would
refuse to work on the project. He is also encouraging other construction workers to pledge
not to work on it also. He said he has gotten
a lot of positive agreement from fellow workers.
Also i forgot to mention that the Iman who is
trying to do this has made very anti American incendiary statements including one in September 2001 not long after 9-11. I've listened to them.
He is not some innocent peace loving Iman .

That's understandable. I don't know what's really going on inside your head any more than you know what's going on inside mine. But to make this reasonable statement and then refuse to accept Dr. Falwell's apology strikes me as a little bit uneven.

One thing I haven't seen discussed in this thread is Iman Faisal Abdul Rauf and his refusal to declare that no funds from any terrorist groups will be used to pay for the construction and/or operation of this mosque. He has also refused more than once to label Hamas as a terrorist organization.

These positions might be political in nature, i.e., he doesn't want to offend anyone in his community. But it puts up another little red flag in the line of sight and gives many people pause.

It should also be noted that this proposed mosque is not a brand-new congregation, but a larger facility for an existing group. Either there are more Muslims coming to that part of New York to live and worship or there are more converts to Islam from the surrounding neighborhoods.

The answer is that neither Sweden nor France nor Rwanda are forcibly exporting their culture to the Middle East. There aren't many French-made TV programs or movies sent to that part of the world every year, but there are scads of US video products inundating the Arab world on a daily basis. You can legitimately argue that the people there don't have to watch or listen to that media, but I know who Paris Hilton and the Kardashian sisters are even though I make no attempt to follow their adventures. I can't imagine what a straight-laced Arab man would think of his teen-aged daughter trying to act like Lady Gaga. I absolutely do NOT condone honor killings or any punishment short of death but in the spirit of honor killing (imprisonment at home or town jail, public whippings, and the like), but I do understand such a man's frustration.

In one way, it doesn't even matter if it was meant to be mischief-making. Mischief has clearly been made -- tons of public opposition -- regardless of whether that was the initial purpose. Their actions now (plowing ahead with it despite loud protests) do *not* display any desire to build bridges. Quite the opposite, really.

It's not about making it illegal. Just because something is legal doesn't make it a good idea. There are tons of things I could do that would be legal, but still be really, really stupid.

PJ

I have stayed out of this discussion for a whole number of reasons, among them that I think that Ground Zero is an extremely American site, so what should happen there should be a discussion for Americans among themselves. I still think so, but a few things have been said here that I must protest against.

Terry, I understand and share your concern about Muslim proselytizing in prisons. That really happens in many Western countries. I really think that in many cases inmates are being told, either by imams or by fellow inmates, that they have been unfairly treated by a godless western society, and the right way for them to regain their human dignity is to fight against the western society in the name of Islam. So far there have been extremely few cases anywhere in the west where former prisoners have actually carried out terror attacks against their own country in the name of Islam - I'm not sure there has been a single such attack that can be directly linked to proselytizing in prisons - but I think that this is a real concern anyway, since many frustrated prisoners may be happy to find a "legitimate" reason to get back at society. I don't know how that can be addressed, but I agree that the problem should be taken seriously. (Although I don't see how proselytizing in prisons has anything to do with whether or not there should be a mosque at Ground Zero.)

But I react very strongly when people try to blame 9/11 in itself on America's supposedly too liberal and feminist culture. To me, that suggestion is a very severe attack on the democratic, liberal, secular society that I want to live in. Why do I want to live in the west and not in a Muslim country? It is because here in the west I am allowed to be an individual and make my own choices. I am allowed to search for my own answers. I have the right to be treated as a human being even though I am a woman. I am nobody's property but a subject of my own.

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. I feel that the goals of people like Falwell are sometimes too similar to those of conservative Muslims. It has to do with establishing a society where mighty men explain and enforce the will of God on not-so-mighty men and women on the Earth. Part of explaining the will of God is almost always to make sure that woman must be subordinate to man.

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:

Are you serious about this, Terry? 9/11 happened because of Paris Hilton, the Kardashian sisters and Lady Gaga?

You talked about straight-laced Arab men and the frustration they have to suffer when their daughters try to imitate Lady Gaga. Are you seriously suggesting that the most effective way for America to protect itself from further attacks is to make sure that America has no more Paris Hiltons, Kardashian sisters or Lady Gagas?

You talked about the straight-laced Arab man, whose frustrations you sympathized with. Well, yesterday there was a documentary on Swedish TV where you could see such a straight-laced frustrated Arab man. The documentary was about two young gay Swedish people of Arab descent who had received death threats from their own families because of their sexual orientation. I am going to post a Youtube video which is entirely in Swedish with clips from this documentary, so that you can, at least, look at the young gay man and the young gay woman and see an interview with the woman's stepfather. The stepfather left Sweden after twenty-five years in our country, because he felt that his daughter had shamed him so badly that he couldn't live here anymore.

In the end of the video, the stepfather is heard saying this:

"To me, she is not a human being. She is worse than an animal. I say, animals don't do what Cherin does. She is not a human being and she is not an animal. She is worse."

Worse than animals

But the stepfather didn't threaten to gather his own army or to found his own Al Qaeda force to attack Sweden in retaliation for humiliating him by protecting his shameless stepdaughter. So, Terry, did bin Laden's men attack America in retaliation for being humiliated by Paris Hilton? Or did Jerry Falwell and Dinesh D'Souza just put forth this theory in the hopes that they could do what straight-laced Arab men can do, namely punish unruly women who aren't sufficiently subordinate to them?

Ann

Terry, he gave a milquetoast apology saying "I would never blame anyone except the terrorists..." Guess what, Mr. Falwell, you did. You said "you helped this happen." Then he concluded: "...if I left that impression, I apologize." What sort of impression was he trying to leave when he said "you helped this happen?" Had he made a more forceful apology or actually retracted his words, maybe I would have believed him.

And since I happen to live in the Muslim world, I can tell you France exports tons of its culture here. And Arab pop music videos are just as racy and ridiculous as the ones exported from America. I've lived with Muslim families, I've broken bread with many more. I've seen how they interact with their children. And when they tell me what makes them mad about America it's always - 'why did you sanction Iraq and let hundreds of thousands of children die from hunger and disease?' or 'why do you support Israel when it abuses the rights of the Palestinians?' or 'why do your predator drones kill so many women and children at weddings and in their homes in Afghanistan?' It's not - why do you send us Lady GaGa? Sure, the extremists are always ranting about moral decay and decadence, but the average Arab or Muslim I've interacted with doesn't give a damn about High School Musical or Brittany Spears. But despite the fact that every military intervention undertaken by NATO has been done to save Muslims, many honestly believe the US and the West are militantly hostile to the Muslim world.

Rac

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:
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:
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:
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.
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.

Terry said: Indeed you did. You mentioned four females as examples of a pernicious American culture that makes America hated abroad, but you didn't mention a single male person. I can only conclude, Terry, that just like so many conservative Muslims, you too think that the "shamelessness of women" poses a great threat to society. It is not too farfetched to conclude that you would like to rein in and control women, perhaps in a way reminiscent of how the Arab-Muslim culture reins in and controls the overwhelming majority of its women. (I note that you felt sympathy, or at least understanding, for the frustration of the Arab man who might contemplate honor-killing his daughter for imitating Lady Gaga.)

Of course I can't know that you want to control women in the same way that women are controlled in Muslim countries, but your reasoning at least supports the possibility that this is what you would like to do.

It is not for me to say what sort of government America should have. However...

As you know, Terry, I have read the Bible quite carefully, particularly the passages that have to do with the treatment and general standing of women. I think that there is very little in the Bible that is not compatible with the often very harsh treatment of women in the Muslim world.



Could the Bible be used to make Christian women veil themselves? No, not if we are talking about face-covering veils like this one, but other kinds of veils, certainly. There are definitely biblical passages that require women to dress modestly, and in Corinthians 11, Paul demands that women cover their heads, at least when they pray:

It should be noted that the Koran does not explicitly demand that women must cover their heads. So the Bible is no better than the Koran in this matter.

So what about polygamy?



Would the Bible allow a man to have four wives, in the same way that Muslim men are allowed to have four wives? Certainly! The New Testament doesn't explicitly allow it, but nowhere does it forbid it, either.

What about woman's obedience to her husband?



Could the Bible be used to require women to obey their husbands? Oh, yes! Paul goes on about woman's duty to obey her husband over and over in his letters!

But surely honor killings could never be justified by the Bible?



Actually, it is at least possible that the Bible could be used to legitimize honor killings. In Genesis 38, Judah orders his widowed daughter-in-law Tamar to be executed, because she has become pregnant without his permission. The fact that he spares her life has little do with the fact that he finds proof that he himself is in fact the father of her child(ren), and it is more a consequence of an obscure Israeli law that gave a widow like Tamar the right to ask for a child by one of her husband's relatives under certain circumstances.

Even more interesting is a passage in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 22:13-21, which actually requires that a new bride who does not bleed on her wedding night sheet must be stoned to death by the men in her town. Didn't Jesus repeal that law when he saved the woman accused of adultery? Not necessarily. First, Jesus didn't say that the stoning of women would be forbidden from now on. And second, some scholars question whether that passage about Jesus and the widow is authentic at all, or if it is a made-up addition to the Gospels.

Could a girl be sure that she would be allowed to choose her own husband in a society ruled by the Bible?

An arranged marriage

The Bible makes it very clear that arranged marriages were the custom in those days, and nowhere does it say that such an arrangement is forbidden. The Bible also doesn't contain a single story of a young girl who defies her father by refusing to marry the suitor he has chosen for her. So if we are to live like they do in the Bible, arranged marriages would be a natural thing.

In a society ruled by the Bible, Terry, women would not necessarily have any more rights than they have in a typical Muslim society.

Ann

Oh, Pam, I'm trying to remember what exactly you and I disagree about.

The above is also, I believe, the mathematical contra-positive of something I tend to say a lot - Stupid isn't illegal.

Rac

Ann wrote:
You may have read the Bible, Ann, but you don't understand it. How do I know? Because you read my words and you didn't understand them.

You are putting words in my mouth - again. You have accused me of attitudes I do not possess. You have all but made up out of whole cloth an accusation that I'd like to "rein in and control" women in today's society. I assure you that I do not control my wife or my daughters.

If that accusation were true, why do I hang around a message board where the majority of the regular participants are female? I can guarantee you that I don't control a single one of the ladies on this board. And I am insulted by your insinuation that I "felt understanding" for the Arab man who might be tempted to honor-kill his daughter. My understanding is for his frustration for his daughter acting like Gaga, NOT for his desire to kill her.

Whatever else you might say in this thread, I would very much appreciate a direct apology from you on this subject.

Does the Bible require that a woman obey her husband? Yes. Does the Bible require that a man love his wife in a sacrificial manner, putting her needs and desires before his own? Yes, and the paired requirements are in the same passage in Ephesians chapter 5. You are, once again, cherry-picking Bible verses to support your position and dismissing those which do not. This is not an intellectually honest way to discuss an issue.

Does the New Testament forbid polygamy? No. However, Jesus said on several occasions that the one-man-one-woman marriage for life was God's plan. And Paul forbid the brand-new churches in Asia from calling pastors (bishops in some translations) or deacons who had more than one wife. Clearly the ideal is one husband and one wife.

This one, though, makes my teeth grind.
If that isn't twisting the narrative to fit your preconceived ideas, I don't know what is.

Tamar was not spared due to some obscure Israeli law. At that time, there was no law given to Israel. Tamar and Judah were operating under a much older set of tribal (NOT national) laws, ones which were designed to protect a childless widow from being alone and destitute in her old age. At that time, children were expected to provide for their aged mothers after their fathers were either dead or unable to provide. As a childless widow, Tamar would have been destined for a life of uncertainty at best and grinding poverty at worst. Judah had denied her the comfort of a child to take care of her in her old age, so she resorted to subterfuge to obtain a child from Judah himself.

And this one:
Gah.

The Bible is not a book designed to change cultures or societies. It is a book intended to show that man is incomplete without the Lord, and that the Lord has taken the necessary steps to bring both parties back together. Even today, many societies which are not Muslim arrange marriages between young men and women. You speak as if choosing one's mate is the natural way and the best way to do it. It ain't necessarily so.

One more:
Really? Mary, the mother of Jesus, is given a position of honor in Christianity. She is a major player in the story of Jesus, while her husband Joseph barely pokes his head above the ground and is never quoted. The first witnesses to the resurrection were women, not matter which Gospel account you read. Women are prominently mentioned throughout the New Testament as people who were just as important as any man (such as Aquila and his wife Priscilla, Lydia the seller of purple in Phillipi, Apphia the wife of Philemon). Your assertion that Christianity does not treat women well does not hold up to close examination.

The Bible tells us that we are supposed to tell the truth to everyone all the time. The Bible tells us that we are supposed to deal honestly and equitably with all people. The Bible tells us we are supposed to live peaceful lives. The Bible tells us that we are supposed to remain faithful to and love our spouses. The Bible tells us that we are supposed to love and provide for our children. And if everyone in the US lived like this, we'd have a lot less to talk about on the evening news.

Oh yes, she was, Terry. The Bible makes it very clear.

Fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother. That is pretty clear. If that was just some obscure tribal law that God didn't like, the Bible should have commented on the undesirability of this law.

Onan refuses to do his duty, however:

Onan didn't do his duty, so God killed him.

But now that Judah had lost two sons who had tried to produce offspring with Tamar, he was afraid of letting her have offspring with his youngest son, even though she had that right according to the law.

Judah denies Tamar the right to have offspring by forcing her to live as a widow in his house.

Tamar covers her face and pretends to be a prostitute as she is waiting for Judah.

And Judah doesn't hesitate to ask for the service of a prostitute. So now Tamar might get pregnant. But she needs to get proof that it was Judah who slept with her.

Now Tamar has the proof that she needs. And she did indeed get pregnant.

Judah didn't hesitate to go to a prostitute himself. But if his daughter-in-law Tamar has prostituted herself, Judah can put her to death.

But Tamar has proof that she is pregnant by Judah.

So Judah doesn't kill her. And why not? Because he would go to a prostitiute himself, so he is no better than her? No, it is because he knows that the law of the land demanded that he give Tamar to his son Shelah. He refused to do it, so he broke the law, and Tamar got the offspring she was entitled to from Judah himself.

But under other circumstances the man who would go to a prostitute would certainly honor-kill his daughter-in-law if she prostituted herself.

I certainly stand by what I said in my previous post:
In my opinion, the fact that Christianity reveres one woman, Mary, most certainly doesn't guarantee that it will revere other women or even treat them well. It is not like other women will be the mother of Christ. Anyway, Terry, if we speak about the Bible only, Mary doesn't have a prominent position there at all, and Jesus himself never speaks of his mother as if she was something special. Luke 11:27-28 is typical:

And in Mark 3:31-34 Jesus comes close to denying that Mary is his mother:

And in John 2, Jesus speaks almost disrespectfully to Mary, as he calls her "woman" instead of "mother":

There are other passages in the Gospels where Mary is treated with more respect. But it is still true that she is not a central character in the Gospels, and she is not held up as an example for others to follow. Interestingly, Paul never mentions her once.

Terry, you also said:

You are right that an important distinction between the Bible and the Koran is that the Bible mentions several good and brave women who do what is right. In other words, there are several heroines in the Bible, and there are none in the Koran - none, interestingly, except Mary, the mother of Jesus. On the other hand, there are also many bad women in the Bible who do what is wrong, and some of them are horribly punished because of it. There are no stories in the Koran about bad women who get horribly punished.

You are quite right that the New Testament mentions Priscilla the wife of Aquila, Lydia the seller of purple in Phillipi and Apphia the wife of Philemon. I agree that it is a very good thing that the Bible mentions these good and active women, but it does not mean that the Bible puts women on a par with men and gives them the right to do the same thing as men. For a long time there was a bitter fight here in Sweden over whether women could be ordained as clergy. Today it is seen as a natural thing that women can be ministers and even bishops, but it was not so thirty years ago. Those who opposed female ministers argued that Jesus only chose male disciples, so only males are allowed to "represent" him. And recently, fascinatingly enough, the Pope condemned active pedophilia among priests by saying, in effect, that a priest who molests a child is as sinful as a woman who tries to be a priest.

So indeed, Terry, I stick by my assertion that a society ruled by the Bible might indeed oppress women as much as women are oppressed in most Muslim societies.

Ann

Point taken, Terry. I'm glad you cleared it up. And I apologize for thinking that you expressed any sympathy for such a father's desire to kill his daughter.

Ann

Ann

If a writer came onto these boards and wrote stories portraying Lois as mean, stupid, selfish, evil, or cruel, you would be the first one to protest and say that just because someone writes that, it doesn't make it true.

However, you are willing to judge God, the bible and Christianity by what others say. Sometimes well-meaning Christians have got it wrong. It happens. Sometimes, people calling themselves Christians have acted completely contrary to what the Bible teaches. This even happened in the Bible - people made mistakes, defied God, refused to do what they knew was right. This doesn't mean God approved of what they did.

Your comment about the pope - I didn't hear that, but if it's true - again you're judging God and Christianity by what someone else says about it.

For his time and in his culture, Jesus was radically respectful of women. Many women followed him. He didn't make them 'disciples' but can you imagine the furore if he'd chosen 12 women to be his closest companions?

He called his mother 'woman' which in our time and our culture sounds disrespectful - but are you sure it had the same connotations then? I've read that 'woman' was actually a term of respect.

In John 8, a woman was brought to Jesus accused of having been caught in adultery (I too have always wondered where the man was.) What did Jesus do? Did he pick up the first stone and throw it at her? No - he turned it back on her accusers and then told her that he didn't condemn her.

He made a stand *against* the sexism in the society that condemned the woman for her actions, but not the man.

Polygamy - The bible is clear that God's ideal for marriage is one man-one woman for life. However, God has allowed other situations. As I understand it, he allowed men to have multiple wives when the number of women far exceeded the number of men, due to men being killed in war.

Had it been the other way around, I'm sure people would have accused the bible of being sexist because of the stories where women risked their lives in trying to protect the men who stayed at home, and then expected the women lucky enough to survive the war to come home and take on the responsibility of feeding and caring for multiple men.

It's all in how you look at it.

Corrina.

Okay, I’ve done a little research on the “Christianity vs. Islam re: wife beating” question. I’m a little offended that this even needs to be addressed, but since apparently it does…

Let’s compare and contrast, shall we? Since I realize that human beings are imperfect, I'll stick with examing original texts, not the various ways they've been used or abused.

I found a fascinating site called Answering Islam . Their methodology:
The whole article is way too long to quote but I recommend clicking the link if you’re interested or want to argue.

First, we have a modern translation (2004) of Sura 4:34

So there it is, in black and white: “then hit them.” It’s not the first resort listed, but it’s definitely on the list of the righteous way to proceed. There are, of course, other translations, and I encourage you to click the link and check them out.

Also, the article’s author points out:
Secondary to the Koran is the Hadith, a collection of testimony *about* Mohammed from those who were there at the time. Kind of like the Gospels.

So, beat them but not with severity. Because, after all, "they are prisoners with you having no control of their own persons."

There are also stories of wives in the original group coming to Aisha (Mohammed’s wife) with “green skin” (sounds like a bruise to me) and complaining about their husbands. Mohammed dismissed those complaints with “they are not the best of you”. Aisha also wrote that Mohammed struck her on occasion.
Well, I’m sure she had it coming. </sarcasm>
Again, I encourage you to check out the link , or just Google “sura beat wife” like I did.
In contrast, from the Bible (New Testament):
I don’t know about you, but to me “understanding” and “showing honor” does not imply any hitting or beating, with or without severity. But we can get more detailed than that.
I quoted the whole thing for context, but let me pull out a few phrases: “Husbands, love your wives”, “husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” “Let each one of you love his wife as himself.” The example given is Christ and the church, with the wife being analogous to the church. What did Christ do for the church? “…gave himself up for her”. Husbands are explicitly told to follow Christ’s example. “In the same way husbands should love their wives.”

Of course, women are given a few instructions in here, too. “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” and “let the wife see that she respects her husband.” And I know a lot of women have a lot of trouble with those instructions, given our cultural history (yes, Ann, sometimes you do have a point!) *but* my point is, those are instructions to the *wives* -- not the husbands. It does not say “husbands, make sure your wives submit to you.” The wife is to see to it, herself, and there’s no mention of force.

I ran across a few other passages in First Peter and in Ephesians talking about other authority situations, too. Elders are told to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” Fathers aren’t to “exasperate” their children. I’m sensing a theme here.


NOWHERE in the New Testament is there anything even approaching “…then hit her.” Please stop implying that there is.

PJ

Thank you for your thoughtful and respectful reply, Corrina.

First of all, I didn't mean to launch a wholesale attack on Christianity. I most definitely didn't mean to launch a wholesale attack on Jesus, the way he is presented in the Gospels. And I most absolutely, definitely didn't mean to launch a wholesale attack on all Christians. I really hope you can believe that, Corrina.

When I carefully read the Bible to find out about its attitude to women, I was amazed at Jesus' respectfulness to the women he interacted with. I wholeheartedly agree with you here:

Absolutely! I want to point out that I didn't mean to criticize Jesus when I mentioned that he spoke of his mother in a certain way. I wanted to say, rather, that the Bible doesn't generally treat Mary as a character worthy of reverence. There is precious little of any Biblical reverence for her outside of the first chapter of Luke.

As a matter of fact, I think you can see signs in the Bible that Mary was the subject of some contempt in the town where she lived, probably because she had given birth to Jesus before she was married. Christians believe that Mary was a virgin when she had Jesus, but her virginity wouldn't have been obvious to her local contemporaries. Personally I believe that Jesus' absolutely remarkable respect for women had its roots in his sympathy for and loyalty to his mother, despite the contempt that some people probably showed her.

So again, please believe me when I say that I'm not criticizing Jesus.

Also, when it comes to Christian people, I am good friends with a woman who is a missionary, and whose courage and good will I am absolutely amazed at. She is the kind of missionary who is very light on preaching and very "heavy" on general care, medical help, schooling, food support, what have you. I'm sure you know Matthew 25:34-36:

Well, that summarizes my friend, let me tell you. That's what she is like. And she doesn't stay at home, as I said, but she goes abroad and goes to dangerous and difficult places, and she suffers all kinds of hardship and dangers for the sake of others, and she doesn't seem to think that this makes her very special at all. She is full of fun and jokes, but she never boasts about herself. She is really and truly Christian, the kind of person who goes to church every Sunday and so on, but she doesn't make a big deal about it.

So, Corrina, how could I ever say that Christian people are bad, or that you become a bad person by being Christian?

However, I will say that the Bible contains many frightening and, in my opinion, downright evil passages. I'm not backing down from that.

Also, I will say that Christianity has traditionally often treated women quite badly. I will say that many conservative Christians have not been listening to Jesus very much, but instead they have regarded Jesus as the "sacrifical lamb" of Christianity, the man who laid down his life so that we can live. But these conservative Christians have often not regarded Jesus as a teacher whom we should listen to so we can know how we should live. Instead, these conservative Christians have regarded Paul as their foremost authority and teacher, and Paul's overall message was that people should know their place and obey those who hold authority over them. Therefore, Paul repeated over and over that women should obey their husbands. Jesus never said that. And yet, this call for wifely subordination is very important to many conservative Christians.

Also, Jesus most certainly never said that it was important to punish or even kill women for their sexual transgressions. If you read the Gospels carefully, you will find that Jesus always defends and forgives exactly these "fallen" women. And yet conservative Christian societies have so often punished women very harshly for sexual transgressions. For example, women have often been punished and even put to death for becoming pregnant out of wedlock, whereas men have rarely been punished for extramarital affairs. This flies in the face of what Jesus said about men's and women's sexuality.

(When I say "conservative Christian societies", I speak primarily about Europe a hundred years ago and more.)

I think it would be very dangerous, not least to women, to make the Bible the law of a society. There are very many horrible and frightening passages about women in the Bible.

One message that is repeated again and again in the Bible is that the sexuality of women is horribly dangerous and can wreak havoc. No, Jesus most certainly never said so, but many other voices in the Bible say it. This is an excerpt from Numbers 25:

As you can see, we are told that Midianite or Moabite women seduce Israeli men and make them engage in pagan worship and immoral sexuality. God unleashes his fury on Israel in retaliation, and 24,000 Israelis are killed. This is the kind of story that teaches us that unchecked female sexuality brings disaster and multiple deaths.

When Terry said that 9/11 happened because of the sort of American culture that is represented by Paris Hilton, the Kardashian sisters and Lady Gaga, I felt that this was the same thing as saying that the immorality of female American cultural icons made Muslim people so enraged that they needed to attack America presumably to destroy its immorality. And I thought that the scenario that Terry painted was frighteningly similar to the story told in Numbers 25: Immoral women flash their sexuality, causing righteous wrath, and thousands of people are killed as a result.

But I don't believe for a moment that this was the true cause of 9/11. I followed a lot of international reports in the aftermath of 9/11, and nowhere was it suggested that this horrible attack was an attempt by the Muslim world to wipe out the sexual immorality of American women. A number of other reasons were put forth, but never this one. I absolutely don't believe in it, but still worse, I consider the whole idea an insidious attack on the freedom of women. The very suggestion that the immorality of western women caused 9/11 calls for a clampdown on the freedom of western women, or at least that is how I see it.

But let me say, finally, that I have no criticisms against Jesus. I also believe that most Christian people are good people, not at all motivated by the more scary parts of the Bible, most of which they probably don't even know about.

I was trying to say basically two things, namely these:

1) It is ridiculous as well as truly scary and ominous to suggest that 9/11 happened because of the immorality of American women.

2) A society built entirely on the Bible, so that the Bible becomes its law, has every chance of deteriorating into a society which is as harsh and horrible as countries like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran and others.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't many good things in the Bible, and it doesn't mean that most Christian people aren't good people.

Ann

Hi Pam,

Let me begin by saying that as someone who is neither an orthodox (nor, for that matter, Orthodox) Christian or a Muslim, I find much more to recommend itself in the New Testament than the Quran. I think my religious opinions would fall fairly close to Thomas Jefferson's - I think Jesus was an extraordinary teacher of morality and there is little better one can do than to follow his example in the Gospels. But I have also found much to be of value in the traditions from Buddhism through Zoroastrianism.

I'm currently on my fourth read through of the Quran, so I know it fairly well. As literature, at least in English translation, I find it boring, repetitive, and at times confounding. The part I personally find most confounding is the repeated assertions that if someone has erred, God will continue to make him err, by "putting a seal on his heart" or by not guiding the nonbelievers. Similarly, the Quran states that "God gives to whom he will," and "God guides whom he will," quite a bit. I've always found that manifestly unfair. I don't claim to know or understand the mind of God, but I cannot imagine how a creator at all concerned with his creation would intentionally confound, confuse, or otherwise obstruct part of it.

Islam, in my opinion, also places too much on God's will - if you die in a car accident, it's God's will, not the result of drunk or careless driving, or unsafe road conditions, etc. To me, this serves to undermine the idea that human beings are responsible for their actions. However, while the Bible isn't nearly as heavy on suggesting that God's intervention can be seen in all events and that everything is foreordained, I know plenty of Christians who believe "everything happens for a reason," or "everything is part of God's plan." Personally, I don't think the Holocaust was part of God's plan. I'd like to think that a benevolent deity wouldn't come up with a plan involving the starving, torturing, and gassing of 12 million people to death. I do believe the Holocaust happened for a reason and that reason was that the Nazi Party was formed, led, and supported by some really screwed up, awful human beings. To believe anything else, in my opinion, diminishes the capacity of those horrible, wretched individuals who actively *chose* to do evil.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, explaining the "beating" verse in the Quran. This one is actually one of the most difficult verses to interpret for one simple reason. Arabic is a remarkably difficult and confusing language. Without getting too deep into the unbelievably complex grammar of the language, suffice it to say that all related words in Arabic will share a root made out of three consonants. That means the words for "writer," "to write," and "book," all have the same root. The words for "teacher," "to teach," "to learn," and "school" all have the same root as well. Because doubled consonants and vowels aren't written in Arabic, different but related words can be written the same way. As a result, what looks like one word may be any number of things, depending on context.

Students of the language like to joke that every word in Arabic means itself, its opposite, and camel. That is largely true. For example, the root "H" "r" "m" occurs in the words Haram and Harram, which alternately mean 'prohibited as evil' and 'sacred.' In Arabic, they are spelled the same way. It is very confusing, but generally the context tells you the right meaning.

The word translated as "to beat" in that verse is the verb formed from the root "D" "r" "b" This verb, depending on its usage can mean: to hit, to defeat, to ignore, to insult, to leave alone, or to avoid (and a bunch of other things that couldn't possibly apply in that context, such as give a military salute, travel, loiter, or impose a tax). It is a very bizarre word, even for Arabic. I personally have no idea what it means in the quoted context, but it could well mean either "beat your wife," or "leave her alone."

In terms of who is the one demanding submission from women to men, I personally don't think it makes that much of a difference. Whether St. Paul is telling a woman, "submit to and obey your husband," (oh, and don't talk in church, or hold a position of authority over men) or whether God is telling men that they have a right to demand submission from their wives, in both cases, the religions are saying women should submit to men. Personally, I don't buy it and am very happy to have a marriage of equals. I don't tell my husband what to do. I don't expect him to obey me, and he treats me with the same respect. We make big decisions together and that doesn't mean that when we agree, we say we came to a joint conclusion and when we disagree, one of us gets to put his or her foot down.

On an entertaining side note, has anyone noticed the marble frieze that Lex Luthor has in his office? It's a winged guardian angel and the symbol of Zoroastrianism, the world's first monotheistic religion. As Zoroastrianism is all about mindfulness and striving toward having good thoughts, good speech, and good actions, I'm going to assume Lex wasn't actually a Zoroastrian and just had the piece of art because it was worth a lot of money.

Rac

Hi Rac

Your previous post wasn't addressed to me so I hope it's OK that I respond.

Firstly, the submission in marriage.

1) It's submission, not obedience. Children are told to obey their parents, wives are told to submit to their husbands.

2) In Ephesians 5:22 it says

'Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.'

What very few opponents of this see is the verse just before it (and remember when it was written there were no chapter and verse breaks.)

Ephesians 5:21

'submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ.'

This comes on the end of a long sentence which was addressed to everyone - not just women.

Submitting to one another - there is nothing in here to suggest that the women should be the ones to submit to the men.

However, there is one relationship that is too important to leave to the hope that someone will submit - the marriage relationship. Therefore, it goes on to address wives specifically in relationship to her own husband.

My take is that Ephesians 5:21 is be tried first - and in 25 years of my marriage the overwhelming majority of conflict/potential conflict has been worked out with compromise - AKA submitting to one another.

There have also been times when my husband has chosen to give in/submit to my wishes.

BUT - should a situation reach a point where there can be no compromise and should my husband (who has been directed to love me as Christ loved the church - ie is willing to die for me) genuinely believe that a certain way is best for me, him, our marriage, our children, and our family, it is my God-given responsibility to submit.

It does not involve being a doormat, it does not involve my opinions being brushed off as unimportant, it does not in any way suggest superiority/inferiority.

I know the idea of submission rankles with many women, but as Terry said, when the husband does his part in totally and sacrificially loving his wife, there really aren't too many problems.


This is a popular view, but, I believe logically flawed.

Jesus made extraordinary, mind-blowing, earth-shaking claims about himself. Here's just one of many ...

John 14:6

'Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."'

What an incredible statement.

There are only three possibilities.

1) It's not true - Jesus is not the way, the truth and the life and he's not the only way to the Father - and Jesus knew it wasn't true.

That makes him a liar and a deceiver - certainly not 'an extraordinary teacher of morality'.

2) It's not true - but Jesus thought it was true. That makes him delusional - with severe delusions of grandeur.

Again - he can't be 'an extraordinary teacher' if he's so severely misinformed about who he is.

3) It's true. Jesus is all the things he claimed to be, including being the only way to the Father.

And if it's true, his claims warrant so much more than thinking of him as nothing more than a teacher of morality.

Corrina.

Thanks for your reply, Corrina.

I'm glad that has worked in your marriage and you've been married a lot longer than I have. But I know that wouldn't work for us. Neither Mr. Rac nor I believe that his possession of a Y chromosome somehow makes him know what is best for us. I defer to him in his areas of expertise. He defers to me in mine. It would be foolish of me to tell him how to network the computers in the house, given that he's a network engineer. It would be foolish of him to tell me how to draft a power of attorney we leave to each of our parents when we go overseas. And when neither of us is an expert or when we have equally strong feelings about something, well, then that's when we have to work it out.

Regarding your question, there aren't three possibilities, Corrina, there are four. The fourth possibility is that the author of John wrote the statement based on his beliefs and attributed them to Jesus. Since not one of the Gospel's was written during the lifetime of Christ, I don't believe there is any way to assume that they are literally true. The argument posited by CS Lewis assumes the Bible is literally true. If you believe that, then CS Lewis's puzzle makes sense to you, if you don't it is a silly and absurd question.

I try to read the Bible in its historical and cultural context. Scholars of religious history are pretty much unanimous in agreeing that major concepts of the Judeo-Christian tradition including strict monotheism (as opposed to believing our one god is way more powerful than your many lesser gods), the concepts of heaven, hell, the day of judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and the coming of a savior born of a virgin entered the tradition through its interactions with the dominant religion in that area of the world at the time - Zoroastrianism. When Cyrus defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Jews to return to Israel and to settle freely in the Persian empire, there was a remarkable amount of exchange between Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Many central tenants of the Persian faith found their way into Judaism. I try to read the Bible with the understanding that by the time the events of the New Testament are happening, these concepts are already well understood by the people of that time and place. To me, that means the writers of the Gospels aren't coming at the task tabula rasa.

Now this is probably pure heresy to some people, which I understand. But it is truly how I view religion - as an attempt by human beings to understand the will of God, to determine their place in the universe and the purpose of their lives. Other people view it differently. And that's the great thing about religious freedom - no one can try to force you to believe something you don't.

Rac

Let me begin my acknowledging and accepting Ann's apology. Thank you, Ann, for your apology.

Now for the new stuff.

Ann wrote:
I would write "You've got to be kidding" except I know you're not kidding.

You are way off the reservation on this one, Ann. The deaths of the 24,000 Hebrew men was because they had deliberately disobeyed the Mosaic Law by marrying pagan women. And it was not the sexuality of the women which was an issue, it was the worship of false gods which was the problem.

You also wrote, to introduce this section of your post:
I am one of the first ones to agree that women have power over men, and that part of that power involves sex. But the implicit corollary of your statement is that women aren't supposed to be sexual creatures, and that somehow sex is presented in the Bible as a bad thing.

That couldn't be farther from the truth. The first thing God told Adam and Eve in Eden was to be fruitful and multiply. Humans can't do that without having sex.

In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom is personified several times as a female character, one whose value exceeds that of any precious metal or any gemstone. And she's quite beautiful, or in today's parlance, smokin' hot.

The entire Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs, as some translations title it) is about sex. It isn't a sex manual like the Kama Sutra, of course, but it does make plain that sex between a husband and wife is a really, really good thing.

With apologies to the Catholic readers on the boards, we can also see that Joseph was told by the angel Gabriel that he was not to have sex with his pregnant wife until after she delivered her first child. If sex were anything close to being a bad thing, Mary the mother of Jesus would not have engaged in such a behavior.

Hebrews 13:4 (KJV) says that "Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled." This verse is among a series of short, general admonitions to good behavior, and I take it to mean that whatever a husband and wife want to do with each other if more than okay with God.

My point is that your point is invalid. God doesn't get mad at wives who enjoy sex with their husbands. He never has. He never will. The problem is that quite often, all we men can see in a woman is the sex part, and we forget that she's got a brain and the will to use it. When we guys (I'm speaking of men in general now, not specifically and certainly not autobiographically) see a beautiful woman, we sometimes stop thinking about right and wrong and just react to the moment. That's what those Hebrew men did with the Moabite women. They looked, they saw, their tongues fell out of their mouths and they decided not to think past the fulfillment of their sexual desires.

Shall we talk about American men who make us look like idiots? Let's see, there's John Edwards, former candidate for the Presidency who fathered a child by one of his staffers and denied it for years. There's Albert Haynesworth, pro football player who accepted $21 million to remain with his team and then skipped a number of required practices and has made himself a problem with the other players. There's Donald Trump, the very image of conspicuous and rampant and out-of-control capitalism. There's actor-director-producer Quentin Tarantino, whose violent and bloody movies shock even the jaded public in the US.

I think I've made my point that I don't blame women for 9/11. In fact, I don't blame the men I just mentioned either. As I recall, it was the fault of about two or three dozen evil men who ended up killing about three thousand innocent people on one day and disrupting our nation for years.

Let me make one more point. I never said that Dr. Falwell or Mr. D'Souza or I wanted the US to live under Biblical law. I said that if the US were to live under Biblical principles, things would be better overall in our country. I do not advocate a return to the Mosaic law, and I am not acquainted with anyone who does (except Pat Robertson, and even I find it hard to take him seriously at times). Law and principles are not the same thing. Law is enforced on a society. Principles are adhered to voluntarily by society. I would prefer the latter.

You can insist on your conclusion all you wish, Ann, but you are refuting a point I have never made.

I whole-heartedly agree Corrina! Sounds like my (or is it mine?) and my husband's marriage is very similar to yours - though we've only been married 4 years!

I want to comment on everything I've read but wouldn't even know where to begin. But since I started this thread ( ) I suppose I should make a few comments.

(1) Regarding the mosque: my 'slap in the face' comment was much more eloquently explained by Pam. I agree with everything she said. As far as the law goes, they should be able to build the mosque there but I can't help thinking there are ulterior motives, etc etc etc. Rac, I have really enjoyed your posts - thanks for giving a different perspective!

(2) Regarding woman's rights - Ann, I know you are a strong advocate for woman's rights and I think there are most definitely women who are mistreated and it's good for them to have someone out there who will speak up for them. However, I do sometimes think that your strong passion for this can 'skew', if you will, your interpretation of things (such as comments by other Folcs, bible verses, etc). I agree whole-heartedly with everything Terry said but I most certainly am not a womanizer/woman hater/chauvinist pig, etc. as you had implied about Terry (though I do see you apologized).

(3) Regarding Christianity, I think it was best explained here by Terry

When you read the bible, it really is best looked at as a whole. There are many horrible things you can read in the Bible, I agree - people sacrificing their children, woman being raped and mistreated, sons attempting to murder their fathers, betrayal etc. This in no way means God condones any of this but it is there to show us the fallen nature of man and how we need a savior.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Thanks everyone for posting!

It isn't your face being slapped. 69% of NY residents support it. When NYers can get all up in Oklahoma's business about what goes near the Murrah building, then we'll care what the rest of you have to say.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/nyregion/13bloomberg.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

don't you feel manipulated? I mean there waz skeeery moozlims in that spot for years before FOX news decided to exploit bigotry and create an issue out of nothing.

But all we need to know is on the face of the person who had the big sign saying "This is NOT your country" . There may be legitimate emotional opposition, not legal, but emotional....but it is turning into an excuse for islamophobes to spew their ugly. NY doesn't have the patience for them.

Joy, I agree that NYers were effected by 9/11 differently than many other Americans because this atrocity happened in your city but since when did 9/11 become 'NY's business' and not America's. 9/11 was not an attack on NY, it was an attack on the United States - that includes all of us, including the people who died in the other flights.

Maybe I misread your post but when you say "when NYers get all up in Oklahoma's business" you make it sound like you don't think any other Americans other than NYers should have a say about this Mosque. I heartily DISAGREE.

Joy, your statement that sixty-nine percent of New Yorkers support the mosque isn't supported by the article you referenced.

Here's what the second paragraph says.
And I haven't read anything in this thread about "skeeery moozlims." I honestly don't know where you got that. If some protester or commentator used that term, you should take it up with that person.

Accusing one's opponent of racism or Islamophobia usually means you've run out of real arguments. I must remind you that no Islamic person was involved in the Murrah building bombing in 1995, and in fact there is no longer a Murrah building. There is a memorial on that site with the names of all 168 victims written down, and the time of the attack (9:03) is inscribed over the entrance. To my knowledge, no one has ever suggested that a memorial to McVeigh or his associates be built in downtown Oklahoma City.

I will also remind you that Timothy McVeigh was tried by in Federal court and put to death by Federal authority. The state of Oklahoma had little to do with it, beyond providing testimony and evidence to the prosecution.

I think that a multi-cultural center where Muslims and Christians and Jews and atheists and pagans and all others could go and learn about each other would be a good thing. The concern which I have expressed is that this may not be such a place, and that the Imam heading up the project may be allowing terrorists access to the people he is shepherding and providing part of the funding. Blaming Fox News for stirring up racists and Islamophobes doesn't help the discussion, nor does telling us that it isn't our business because we're not New Yorkers.

Thanks for your reply, Ann.

I didn't think you were attacking anything, but I did think that some of your examples only showed one side. I tried to show the other side.

Regarding Mary - I agree, the bible doesn't particularly highlight her part in the life of Jesus. And, there's every chance she was shunned. She went with Joseph to his home town (so it's not unreasonable to think he would have some relatives there) and had to have her baby in a stable.

Terry has responded to much of the rest of your post and I addressed wifely submission in a post to Rac.

Thanks for your input,

Corrina.

In my previous post I said that the death of 24,000 Israelis was an example of how the Bible often describes unchecked female sexuality as something that brings disaster and death. Terry replied:

Terry also said:

I agree, but the Bible tells us over and over how women use their sexuality to tempt men to disobey God and also often to worship false gods. So their sexuality is the means that these women use to make the men sin and disobey God.

This pattern is firmly established already in Genesis, in the story about Adam and Eve. God creates Adam for no special reason, except for the obvious reason that God wants Adam to exist. We can say that Adam is created both for his own sake and for God's sake.

Now that God had created Adam, he planted a lovely garden in Eden and put Adam in that garden. There were two very special trees in that garden, too: the tree of life, which would have given Adam eternal life if he had eaten of its fruit, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God said to Adam:

We must conclude that God had indeed intended for Adam to eat of the tree of life and become immortal. So God planted the tree of life in the garden of Eden to give Adam eternal life. But God also planted the tree of knowledge of good and evil to test Adam's loyalty and obedience. If Adam ate of that tree, he would die.

But as soon as God has put Adam in the garden with the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he discovers that Adam is alone. After many failed attempts to give Adam the "helper" that he needs God finally creates woman. Please note that woman is created for Adam's sake, while Adam was created for his own sake or for God's sake. God creates woman not because he loves woman but because he loves Adam. Almost certainly God wants Adam to love him back. The tree of knowledge of good and evil exists in the garden as a test of Adam's loyalty to God.

Ah, but the naked woman that God has given to him is so lovely.

There is a serpent in the garden of Eden, and the serpent tempts woman to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil:

The serpent says to woman that if she eats of the forbidden fruit she will be like God. The woman wants to be like God. So she picks some fruits and eats them. And then this happens:

She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Adam was with her. He must have heard what the serpent said to his wife. He must have seen her pick the fruit and eat it. He must know what is going on. And when his wife offers him some fruit, Adam must make a choice:

Should he do what his wife wanted and eat the fruit?

Should he do what God wanted and refuse to eat the fruit?

Adam ate the fruit. He knew what he was doing. He chose to do what his wife wanted rather than what God wanted. He chose woman over God.

And why? Why did Adam choose woman over God? Well, we know why:

Adam chose woman over God because he preferred the sex she gave him over anything that God had given him.

The way I see it, Genesis can be said to describe God and woman as two rivals fighting for the love and loyalty of man. In Genesis, man - Adam - chooses woman over God. So what happens when he makes such a choice?

Death happens. That's what. But first Adam and woman are punished while they are still alive. God rules that woman will have to endure pain during childbirth:

And interestingly, God also decides that from now on, man shall rule over woman.

As for Adam, God says to him:
God punishes Adam by sentencing him to painful toil for the rest of his life to produce the food that he must eat.

I find it very interesting how God describes Adam's sin. God doesn't just say, "Because you ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' I will punish you." No, God says "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' I will punish you." Adam's sin began when he listened to his wife.

If woman and God are two rivals for the loyalty of Adam, then Adam's real crime was not so much that he ate the forbidden fruit, but rather that he obeyed God's rival instead of God. By commanding woman to submit to her husband, God forbids her to try to influence Adam any more, and he forbids Adam to listen to his wife. The foremost problem is not so much the details of Adam's transgressions as much as it is his willingness to do woman's bidding instead of God's.

So Adam, man, chose woman over God. This is the major catastrophe in the Old Testament. Because what does this catastrophe lead to?

As I said, it leads to death. First of all, it leads to Adam's death. God says:

God says this to Adam, not to woman. It is not as if woman won't die, too. Rather it is that her death is not important, because she was never created either for her own sake or for God's sake anyway. Creation was always about Adam, and woman was created for Adam's sake, in the same way that everything else was created for Adam's sake. The catastrophe is that Adam will die even though he was the purpose of creation, and after he is dead woman will serve no purpose. So woman will surely die, but the significance of her death is small compared with the significance of the death of Adam. It is Adam's life and death that matters, and when God drove Adam and his wife out of the Garden of Eden, it is really only Adam's expulsion that is of any significance:

God drove both Adam and his wife out of the Garden of Eden, but woman's expulsion isn't even mentioned.

The fact that Adam was banished from the Garden of Eden meant that all his descendants for ever and ever were banished from the Garden of Eden, too. And because Adam was prevented from eating from the tree of life because he had chosen woman over God, every man (and every woman) who has ever lived has had to die as a result of Adam's disobedience of God because of woman.

As a fundamentalist Christian Norwegian man who used to beat his wife to discipline her out of love put it, "You women, you are the Fall."

To summarize, God creates Adam for his own sake and woman for Adam's sake, but Adam chooses woman over God, and every human being who has ever lived has to die as a result.

Ann

There are in fact very strong similarities between the story of Adam and woman in the Garden of Eden and the story of the Hebrew men and the Moabite women in Shittim. In both cases the male persons were very much more valuable to God than the women. In both cases the males were "chosen": Adam was the reason for all of Creation, and the Hebrew men at Shittim bore the mark on their bodies of Abraham's covenant with God, which included all males that belonged to Abraham or were the descendants of Abraham. And in both cases the women involved were much less important in the eyes of the Lord than the men involved.

In both cases the women "worshipped pagan gods", since it is not too farfetched to regard the serpent in the Garden of Eden as an evil demigod. And the Moabite women were obviusly pagan.

In both cases the not-so-chosen women had sexual relationships with the chosen men.

In both cases the not-so-chosen women offered the chosen men forbidden food. Woman in the Garden of Eden offered Adam the forbidden fruit, and the Moabite women in Shittim offered the Hebrew men forbidden food from their pagan rituals. And in both cases the men accepted the forbidden food from the women. The Bible says:

So in both cases men who ought to have been loyal to God chose women over God and ate the food that was forbidden by God when it was given to them by these women. In both cases the women's sexuality is a very obvious reason for why the men chose women over God. And in both cases God retaliates by making very many people die. Adam's transgression in the Garden of Eden led to everybody's death, and the transgression of the Hebrew men at Shittim led to the death of 24,000 people.

The Bible tells several other stories in a similar vein, i.e, stories where men are tempted by women they are sexually attracted to into doing wrong, and where catastrophe and death ensue. The two most well-known stories are the ones about Samson and Delilah and Salome, Herod and John the Baptist. Queen Jezebel is seen as a very evil and pagan influence on her husband, King Ahab, and she is seen as an important reason for the decline and fall of the nation of Israel. There are many other little snippets in the Bible warning men of the dangerous sexual power of evil women, such as this passage from Proverbs:

Ann

You know has an atheist I don't want to see any secular politics influenced by any kind of what to me is a history fantasy book at best nor its translations and reinterpretations.

Just look at your clashing over passages and what they mean. I have seen this discussion before and that discussion had the added bonus of one participant going off a far older version (Hebrew I believe, for the Older Testament obviously) complete with treatise on the nuances of certain words in certain phrases during certain times when this particular part was certainly written which totally completely changed the meaning of the whole passage and all those English translations are just utterly wrong and if you aren't basing your argument on that really, really old version you can just stop arguing now, because you are wrong anyway and the Rabbi you talked to who used the same version but interpreted it differently is wrong, too.

A wars over oil and other resources is at least rationally approachable when there isn't an "But my supernatural entity (which is the only one holding all truth) said so, some thousand years ago when the world looked completely different". Same for discrimination of any kind.

Because of my scathing attack on Genesis, I want to repeat that I don't mean to launch a wholesale attack on the Bible, and certainly not on the New Testament. In the NT there is nothing to suggest that the sexuality of women is a horrible threat to humanity, and apart from the story of Salome, Herod and John the Baptist and some obscure warnings in Revelation, there is nothing here to suggest that women cause the downfall of men. There is absolutely nothing to be found to that effect in the Gospels, and even Paul makes no suggestions to that effect.

And the Old Testament certainly isn't all bad from a feminist's point of view. The Song of Solomon celebrates both women and the beauty of loving sex. And there are many brave and good women in the Old Testament, such as Deborah and Ruth, who is my favorite. And like Terry said, Proverbs celebrates Wisdom, which is seen as a female concept. Also, there are many passages that don't celebrate women but also don't attack them, and which are beautiful and inspiring.

Obviously I also know that there is another Biblical version of the creation of man and woman, where man and woman are created equal.

I want to repeat that the reason for my outburst was that I thought that Terry was saying that 9/11 happened because of the immoral behaviour of female American cultural icons. Terry has clarified his post by saying said that American females are no more immoral than American males, and I have no more comments regarding Terry's posts. I still want to say that I find it very dangerous to blame a country's culture for a devastating attack on it when there is extremely little evidence to support such a view. And I think it is still more dangerous to blame "female immorality" for things like 9/11 or earthquakes and floods. Such a view has very little chance to prevent catastrophes like 9/11 or earthquakes or floods, but it has good chances of increasing the oppression of women.

Ann

I haven't been reading this thread, but this comment somewhat jumped out at me.

It seems to imply, Terry, that the intent of those who want to build the 'several blocks away from Ground Zero mosque' is to create a memorial to the 9/11 hijackers. I'm not aware that any such intent has been expressed.

And isn't this rather the wrong analogy? Wouldn't a more appropriate one be, let's assume that Terry McVeigh was a religious man - say, for the sake of this analogy, a Methodist. (I have no idea what religion he was a devotee of, if any)

And let's say that, some years after his atrocity, someone wanted to build a Methodist cultural centre several blocks away from the site of the bombing. I ask you, in all honesty, do you think there would be a similar campaign to stop it being built? Do you think anyone would even notice the plan? Or care?

Somehow...I really doubt it.

LabRat

Sometimes we just have to agree to disagree.

I would have to say I disagree with your interpretation of the Bible Ann, lol, but you knew that.

Chaos, I disagree with you that the Bible is just a 'history fantasy book at best' - I believe it is the infallable word of God and is not to be taken lightly and SHOULD influence everything in our lives and that includes politics.

Sometimes we can debate until the cows come home but if these fundamental beliefs are in place, there is never going to be an agreement on certain issues. But I am glad that we can discuss our differences here intelligently and politely. These boards really do have some of the most diplomatic people I've seen - just visit any other political board and you'll see bashing on both sides.

Terry, this suggests that all Mosques are dedicated to the glory of terrorism. I don't believe that this is true. Not all Muslims support terrorism. And I think an analogy that might drive this point home is this:

There are rampant Islamophobes like Bryan Fischer opposing this mosque and community center because they claim all mosques are potential terror training and recruitment centers. Because the other opponents of the mosque have not been vocal enough in denouncing Mr. Fischer and his ilk for their bigotry, I'm going to say that all opponents are Islamophobes until they denounce him and get him to stop giving their cause a bad name.

Is this fair? Of course not. I know plenty of people who don't like the mosque for reasons other than just a knee jerk hatred of Islam. To hold them responsible for Mr. Fischer's despicable statements is unfair. I would posit it is also unfair to hold all Muslims responsible for 9/11 or radical Islamism.

No, it doesn't. The claim that this particular mosque is dedicated to the glory of terrorism does not in any way imply the same of all mosques. I'm surprised by this argument, especially in light of the fact that the opponents of the mosque have repeatedly suggested as an acceptable compromise the building of a mosque in any other available location.

It is an easily verifiable fact that whenever a new territory was conquered in the name of Islam, a mosque was erected as a symbolic message to the world that said territory was now under the dominion of Allah. The mosque was always built up high, usually on the site of a church or other site of significance to the conquered peoples, to emphasise their submission (a type of "psychological warfare", as it were.)

1. The original namesake of this mosque ("Cordoba") was just such a mosque - erected on the site of a church, it is (if my memory serves me) the largest mosque in the world, and was built to celebrate the Islamic conquest of Spain.

2. The proponents of the mosque in NY refuse to accept any alternate location, insisting on a mosque overlooking Ground Zero. (This alone speaks volumes. Opponents have been accused of "Islamophobia" and hatred, yet they willingly accept a new mosque anywhere in NYC except here. Proponents of the mosque insist their motives are innocent, yet flat out refuse to consider any other location. Why? What is so significant about this particular site? Why is no other site acceptable?)

3. The date of dedication is set to be the 10-year anniversary of 9/11.

4. Although the supposed purpose of the mosque is to "promote dialog", the very Imam who makes this claim is on record as saying there can be NO dialog between Islam and any other religion. He has expressed his lament over the fall of the Ottoman Empire, as well as his belief that Islam will one day rule the nations and Shaira law will be the law of the land, even in countries which are now democracies (including the USA).

5. Moderate Muslims have spoken AGAINST the mosque, claiming that they (and the rest of the Islamic world) are well aware of the symbolic significance of a mosque overlooking the site of the jihadist attack on America. (And to these peace-loving Muslims, I say "Thank you!" It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to the militant side of Islam.)

Given the above, (as well as concerns over the funding of the mosque), I would say that there is a very real probability that this mosque is intended as a symbol of victory for the Islamic jihadists. In my opinion, I would be a fool (and the very epitome of a dhimmi), if I were to meekly acceed.

Interestingly enough, Christians did exactly the same thing in Pagan Europe. Most old churches in the UK, and I assume the rest of Europe, are on or next to Pagan sacred sites.

- Alisha (who is staying out of this because she doesn't feel that she knows enough to have an informed opinion, but has been following this discussion with interest)

Alisha,

Indeed they did. In fact it is such a well known tactic of conquering nations that it amazes me that so many refuse to admit even the possibility that this might be the motive behind the location of the mosque.

Maybe a good soluion would be to build a church between the mosque and ground zero. It could be high enough that those on the top floor will be looking down on the mosque. Those who insist there can be no symbolic significance to the mosque will find no reason to oppose a church. Those who find deeper meaning in these things can interpret it how they please.

An interesting idea, but I would imagine that other faiths would feel discriminated against and they'd end up needing to appease each one by building their own religious buildings nearby. Besides which, as far as I'm aware the world trade centre was not a religious centre to begin with. While some may see the mosque as a symbol of the terrorists' 'victory', it cannot be a symbol of Islam's victory over Christianity or any other religion, and therefore building another religious building in between should not make any difference.

It could combine a church and a synagogue. Or, better still, various churches, of all denominations, and one or more synagogues (Reformed, Orthodox. etc.). That would make fund raising easier. Collections could be taken in places of worship across America. Yes, I do like this idea. If the true motive of the mosque is to promote interfaith dialog, what a great idea to build a center for other faiths, so they will have someone to dialog with!

But this mosque isn't 'overlooking' anything and frankly, 15 stories is a small building in Lower Manhattan. The mosque has no direct line of sight to Ground Zero and the Freedom Tower will, of course, tower over it.

Every objection I have heard here is casting the construction of this community center -- it is not a mosque-- in terms of the clash of civilizations. The objectors are all casting this as some sort of proxy in the larger "Christianity is better than Islam" battle. Read the responses above.
It doesn't matter whether you think Christianity is better than Islam. That is your right to do so. The point is that the objections are all coming from this proxy battle in your heads and therefore the objections are emotional and not rational. You are equating all Muslims with terrorists. A religion with one Billion (with a B) followers is not a monolith. You don't have to like Islam. You just have to like the Constitution of the United States.

Terry, I stand by the number I used before--69% of Manhattanites support this project. When you add in the population of the other boroughs, then that number goes down to 49%...so it is a bare majority of the greater NY population who object. They are perfectly within their rights to protest the mosque, but they are not doing so. The rest of the country seems to be doing that, and forgetting The First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. I guess that is true except when any Muslim wants to build a community center near the site of a terror attack that he or she had nothing to do with.
And I guess Gov't should keep out of religion, except when protestors are pushing for government control of private property to stop construction of a religious center. It's the government's role to enforce freedom of religion as articulated by the Constitution, and that is lost when emotion and proxy-battle-mentality takes over.

I also stand by what I said earlier. The ariwaves are filled with irrational Islamophobia. The objectors on this site have expressed their emotional misgivingsin a polite way, which is fair. The rest of the country has not. The campaign against this mosque is one of the ugliest and most odious controversies in some time. It's based purely on appeals to base fear and bigotry. There are no reasonable arguments against it, and the precedent that would be set if its construction were prevented -- equating Islam with Terrorism, implying 9/11 guilt for Muslims generally, imposing serious restrictions on core religious liberty -- are quite serious.

I've also been reading this thread with interest.

Joy, I didn't get that from reading the posts. What I read seemed to represent quite a diversity of opinion, with some posts recognising the range of ideas under the umbrella of Islam, and others also acknowledging the constitutional right of this particular group to build its centre and yet bothered by the lack of sensitivity of the action. It's clearly a really complex issue for many, as I gather the American President has indicated over this weekend with his two statements which boil down to: "Yes, but on the other hand"

Personally, I like Vicki's idea of a multi-faith community centre - it seems such an optimistic idea.

c.

Lastly, to Lynn, stepnachia and others who feel that this is a "slap in the face//callous disregard for the feelings of the friends and families of those who died at ground zero//etc."
You need to understand that New Yorkers and 9/11 families are not a monolith in their opinions on this either.

Please do not presume to speak for me.

My friends died on that day, my family members were permanently injured..and I do NOT think it's insensitive to have the community center built there. I don't think that Muslims are trying to rub salt in the wounds of the families, the victims and America. I don't think that all Muslims were behind 9/11. I do believe, from what my Muslim friends, neighbors and co-workers have told me, that being Muslim in a suspicious America continues to be a difficult and scary existence and that any community center where Islam can dialogue with others is a good thing.
As much as 9/11 was an attack on the whole country, I absolutely think people outside of New York City should stay out of this and let us New Yorkers decide what we want. We have had enough of the rest of the country disapproving of us except when they want to use 9/11 as a rallying point. As a New Yorker and an American, I refuse to let the hijackers turn my country into a confused asylum willing to surrender what once was considered valuable.

CNN showed poll results on this question yesterday while I was at the gym, so I didn't hear any of the commentary associated with it. But the numbers they showed on the screen were as follows:

• 29% approve
• 68% oppose
• +- 3% error margin
• Poll taken August 6-10

I'm curious to know where your numbers are coming from, Joy, because you are the only source I've heard from with those results.

My understanding was that the above numbers were from New Yorkers who were polled during the dates listed, but I did not see the sample size or how the poll was conducted (phone, TV ad call-in, street pollsters, door-to-door, etc.), so I can't say that they're golden. We all know that polls can be skewed by the the way a poll is conducted, who is polled, what time of day the questions are asked, or how the polling questions are phrased. But it's interesting to me to see such a wide variance between one set of numbers and another.

And I do not presume to speak for you, Joy. I'm not telling you what to do or where to do it. Let me reiterate my earlier point: I'm in favor of a community center where Muslims and Jews and Christians and others can meet, greet, smile, and learn about each other. I'm just not confident that this will be such a place. If I'm wrong in that (and I hope that I am), then that's a good thing.

But if I'm not wrong -

http://dnainfo.com/20100701/manhattan/manhattanites-support-mosque-near-ground-zero-poll-finds

I found this in the first ten seconds of surveying NY papers. This or some variant has been published every day for weeks in every NY paper

One more and I'm done with this thread.

Ann wrote:
I never said that. However, I do understand that my statements might easily be misconstrued by honest and sincere people.

So let me clarify my statements. I do not back down from the inference that there are extremely negative things about my culture, including (but not limited to) immorality, dishonesty, abuse of authority, and a callous disregard for the lives and property of others. I also hold to the statement what these negative values are not limited to either gender.

But I do NOT believe that Osama Bin Laden sent the team to the US to hijack the airliners because he'd seen one too many episodes of "Peyton Place" or any of its ilk on Middle Eastern TV. Bin Laden's motivations are complex and varied, and the sooner he and his Al Queda buddies are brought to justice, the better.

But I DO believe that the in-your-face presentation of many of our cultural values does offend many moderate and conservative Muslims who have absolutely no desire to blow up American skyscrapers. I know from my reading of the Unicorn killer case (see Ira Einhorn) that many Americans were angry at France's refusal to extradite him in the 1990's without a guarantee that he would not be subject to the death penalty, which Pennsylvania allowed at the time of the murder. France has no right to tell the US what to do with our convicted murderers.

Yet many Middle Easterners believe that we, the US, are trying to do the very same thing with our cultural exports. We have political commentators from all over the spectrum taking positions and not allowing questions, much less debate. We have people in our State Department (not all of them, of course, and apparently not the ones who live in the host countries) telling Muslims how they should live their lives. We show them TV shows and movies of people who change lovers as often as they change their underwear (sometimes more often). We show them people portrayed as heroes who are drunks and/or drug addicts. To many of these Hollywood heroes, betrayal in one form or another is the highest form of art. And we hold up men and women whose claim to fame and power and validity is that they can run faster or jump higher or hit a ball better than anyone else in the world.

If this is all we are - and to many, that's all they see - we're shallow and vapid compared to them. And in some ways and from some points of view, they'd be justified in conquering us.

This is why I support it.

Joy's link reports:
This article does not support your numbers, Joy. Even in Manhattan, fewer than half support it. Granted, that doesn't mean that more than half oppose it, but that's still not a 69% approval rate. You can't add the approval percentage to the undecided one to find the group which doesn't oppose the mosque and call that a majority approval rating.

Who was it who said "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics" ?
Always take individual polls with a grain of salt, I figure. I know this is a bit of an off-topic comment, but I'm always slightly wary of polls - so much depends on what questions were asked, and how they were phrased. (plus the phase of the moon, and countless other variables)

c.

Excuse me? Given that Terry said, “there are many Muslims in the US who heartily disapprove of the events of 9/11”, Pam said, “there are many, many Muslims [who do not adhere to the more radical elements of the Koran]”, and I specifically thanked the “moderate”, “peace-loving Muslims” who have spoken out against the mosque, I am at a loss where you found anyone on these boards “equating all Muslims with terrorists”. I submit that it is *you* who is carrying on an emotional and completely irrational proxy battle in your head against imaginary Islamophobes.
I find it interesting that the posts in this thread with the most emotion-charged (and, I would add, sarcastic and insulting) language, are not those made by the opponents of the mosque, but rather by you.

By the way, and since I so seldom agree with anything you say, I feel it is all the more necessary for me to acknowledge when, in fact, I do agree. And I agree with you completely regarding the Constitution and property rights. In fact, it is for this very reason that I suggested the building of an additional interfaith community center – namely, that I do not see any legal, constitutional way to prohibit the building of this mosque. It would have been nice if, as a gesture of good-will, they had agreed to move to an alternate location. But, alas, they did not, and given that it is, as you say, on private property, there’s not a whole lot I, or anyone else, can do about that.

Unless, of course, it were proven that the mosque's founders, funders, etc. had direct ties to terrorist organizations. I'm not altogether sure, but it seems to me that, if that were the case (and I am not alleging that it is the case, I am only posting a hypothetical), then perhaps that might open up legal means for stopping construction. (?) Short of that, it seems fairly clear-cut to me that they have the constitutional right to build.

Vicky, you've proven my point: by your definition all moderate or peace loving Muslims have to speak out against the project or you won't consider them moderate or peace loving. They oughta understand how much their presence provokes/offends/rubs salt into your feelings and have the decency to take themselves far away. Oops they can't do that, because communities from Staten Island to Tennessee to California are now roiled with anti-mosque fervor.

Joy, Joy, Joy,

<shakes head>

Where *do* you get this stuff?

I've read through this entire thread now, and have been a little frustrated by how many people insist on calling the proposed community center a mosque. It is NOT a mosque!

In fact, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this video, which I found posted by someone else on Facebook weeks ago:

Keith Olbermann Special Comment: THERE IS NO "GROUND ZERO MOSQUE"

Truthfully, I'd never even heard of Keith Olbermann before I saw the video myself, but his comments are well-researched, and make a lot of sense to me.

The Park51 Community Center organizers have an official website: http://www.park51.org/facilities.htm

Here is what they say:


Park51 will grow into a world-class community center, planned to include the following facilities:

•outstanding recreation spaces and fitness facilities (swimming pool, gym, basketball court)
•[...]
•a mosque, intended to be run separately from Park51 but open to and accessible to all members, visitors and our New York community
•[...]


The reason opponents say they are opposed to "the mosque" and not "the community center" is because they are not opposed to the swimming pool, or the gym, or the basketball court. They are opposed to the mosque.