toldailytopic: How do you feel about building a mosque at ground zero?

[zoo22]

When I sold my business, it was to a Muslim, whom I had to spend everyday with to train for over a month. I have Muslim neighbors (my son cuts their grass), and a former Muslim in our Bible study (whose family are all still practicing Islam). All of these people are very kind and pleasant to be with. Doesn't change a thing. The agenda of the Muslim world is as revealed to you in the video I posted, whether the naive Muslims in it admit to it or not.

Was it you that had pointed out to us that you'd had a black person use your bathroom?

 

[madman]

Was it you that had pointed out to us that you'd had a black person use your bathroom?

Islam is an ideology, not a race. You are a blind fool.

 

[kmoney]

Was it you that had pointed out to us that you'd had a black person use your bathroom?

I heard he also has a Muslim in his family tree. He hung him there last week. lain:

 

[Agape4Robin]

I think you have to ask yourself one question........ why there? IMHO it's not peaceful intentions. It's "in your face" like a victory marker. A devastating blow to the "great satan" was wrought there. And that makes it hallowed ground to them now. They are using our first amendment AGAINST us. If they want a mosque so badly...... build it elsewhere!

 

[CabinetMaker]

I am neither. You are simply ignorant of Islam, and choose to be tolerant (which is evil).No, you blindly think it was "extremists", because you follow the pied piper liberals of this world, like all the other sewer rats.

Based on comments like this, I must conclude that yo are a supporter of Fred Phelps and the Hillsboro Baptist Church. You couldn't possibly consider him an extremist, could you.

 

[Town Heretic]

I think you have to ask yourself one question........ why there?

Best informed guess? It's near the basement mosque they were forced to rent when their previous building was sold out from under them and they want their own place, one reasonably located in relation to the adherents, that they can't be displaced from in the future. It's not as sexy a story as the one you have in mind, but then the plain facts rarely are...

IMHO it's not peaceful intentions.

Why? And by that I mean do you have a single speech made by any leader in this mosque that celebrated the fall of the towers, or that called for violent acts against the government of the United States? Do you have any evidence that these are anything other than a peaceful group of American citizens who desire to build a place of worship? Because if you don't you're letting your bias overwhelm your good sense.

It's "in your face" like a victory marker.

That's the question. Is it? And why do you think so. If you're only thinking it because a handful of idiots who were Muslim (out of that 1.5 billion) did something horrible and worthy of condemnation, then I think you're going to have a problem with nearly any faith...except maybe the Amish or Buddhists.

A devastating blow to the "great satan" was wrought there.And that makes it hallowed ground to them now.

That's what a portion of fanatical Islam believes. But I've heard similar nonsense from radical Christianity. Some Christian preachers even suggested people died in Katrina because God was angry with the iniquity of New Orleans. Should we tear down churches in and around the 9th ward?

They are using our first amendment AGAINST us.

No. When any American exercises their God given rights in accord with Constitutional principles they celebrate, inadvertently or no, the very thing that makes our nation stronger than any feral, unreasoned hatred will ever be.

If they want a mosque so badly...... build it elsewhere!

Rather, tell them, build your mosque and help celebrate the abiding strength of a great people. A people ruled by principles and not by fear. Build it in a just and generous nation undeterred in its belief in the essential decency of a free people. Build it and be welcomed. This is America and there has never been our like before in the history of man.

 

[madman]

Based on comments like this, I must conclude that yo are a supporter of Fred Phelps and the Hillsboro Baptist Church. You couldn't possibly consider him an extremist, could you.

He is not a Christian, so he is in your camp, not mine.

If you think Islam and Christianity are parallel "religions", you are deceiving yourself. Did you watch the video? I doubt you did. You are ignorant of Islam and Christianity. You are just a noisy, smelly, fart in the wind, nothing more.

 

[bybee]

Amen

Amen

Best informed guess? It's near the basement mosque they were forced to rent when their previous building was sold out from under them and they want their own place, one reasonably located in relation to the adherents, that they can't be displaced from in the future. It's not as sexy a story as the one you have in mind, but then the plain facts rarely are...


Why? And by that I mean do you have a single speech made by any leader in this mosque that celebrated the fall of the towers, or that called for violent acts against the government of the United States? Do you have any evidence that these are anything other than a peaceful group of American citizens who desire to build a place of worship? Because if you don't you're letting your bias overwhelm your good sense.


That's the question. Is it? And why do you think so. If you're only thinking it because a handful of idiots who were Muslim (out of that 1.5 billion) did something horrible and worthy of condemnation, then I think you're going to have a problem with nearly any faith...except maybe the Amish or Buddhists.


That's what a portion of fanatical Islam believes. But I've heard similar nonsense from radical Christianity. Some Christian preachers even suggested people died in Katrina because God was angry with the iniquity of New Orleans. Should we tear down churches in and around the 9th ward?


No. When any American exercises their God given rights in accord with Constitutional principles they celebrate, inadvertently or no, the very thing that makes our nation stronger than any feral, unreasoned hatred will ever be.


Rather, tell them, build your mosque and help celebrate the abiding strength of a great people. A people ruled by principles and not by fear. Build it in a just and generous nation undeterred in its belief in the essential decency of a free people. Build it and be welcomed. This is America and there has never been our like before in the history of man.

Well said my friend. Your words give me pause. Insteadof asking or suggesting that the would be Mosque builders, out of consideration of neighbors, build the Mosque elsewhere, I am going to celebrate what it is to be an American! I am going to say, as long as you obey the law of the land, Welcome! We are good people and we plan to be good neighbors!
It doesn't matter what their motivation might be. But it does matter what my motivation is.
To all of you who have not let passion inflame your decisions, I thank you. (Especially Barbarian and you TH) You've helped me calm down and remember that I am so blessed to be an American. That means believing and living according to our great principles!
Blessings, bybee

 

[chrysostom]

now you should be able to see
that
they didn't have to build the mosque there
and
all they had to do was talk about it

 

[CabinetMaker]

He is not a Christian, so he is in your camp, not mine.

If you think Islam and Christianity are parallel "religions", you are deceiving yourself. Did you watch the video? I doubt you did. You are ignorant of Islam and Christianity. You are just a noisy, smelly, fart in the wind, nothing more.

Come come now madman. Fred claims he is a good Christian. How can you proclaim that he is not a Christian? He has taken a very vocal stance on issues that I have reason to suspect you would agree with such as his condemnation of gays.

I do not think that Islam and Christianity are parallel religions and I never said I did.

As to the state of My Christianity, well, we have all seen your fruits my friend. If we are to know Christians by their love then you have far more in common with Fred than with Jesus.

 

[Skavau]

No it doesn't and hasn't. There is such a notion as informed consent, and such a fallacy as a slippery slope argument.

But nevermind my intent, nothing you say about criminalising communists, liberals, homosexual acts and those who support them is even remotely supported in the US Constitution. Such talk of thought-crime and state intruding into people's private lives has been the doctrine of almost all fascist and totalitarian states that have ever existed. With this in mind, the Mullahs of Saudi Arabia are for more your traditional ally. They're highly conservative and share the same contempt of homosexuality, liberalism and communism.

I want to see you address this, madman.

 

[CabinetMaker]

It looks like madman has left the building and will not be responding to anybodies posts for awhile.

 

[kmoney]

now you should be able to see
that
they didn't have to build the mosque there
and
all they had to do was talk about it

You keep saying things to this effect but I haven't seen you explain them. What do you think they have accomplished by getting people to talk about it?

 

[kmoney]

Best informed guess? It's near the basement mosque they were forced to rent when their previous building was sold out from under them and they want their own place, one reasonably located in relation to the adherents, that they can't be displaced from in the future. It's not as sexy a story as the one you have in mind, but then the plain facts rarely are...


Why? And by that I mean do you have a single speech made by any leader in this mosque that celebrated the fall of the towers, or that called for violent acts against the government of the United States? Do you have any evidence that these are anything other than a peaceful group of American citizens who desire to build a place of worship? Because if you don't you're letting your bias overwhelm your good sense.


That's the question. Is it? And why do you think so. If you're only thinking it because a handful of idiots who were Muslim (out of that 1.5 billion) did something horrible and worthy of condemnation, then I think you're going to have a problem with nearly any faith...except maybe the Amish or Buddhists.


That's what a portion of fanatical Islam believes. But I've heard similar nonsense from radical Christianity. Some Christian preachers even suggested people died in Katrina because God was angry with the iniquity of New Orleans. Should we tear down churches in and around the 9th ward?


No. When any American exercises their God given rights in accord with Constitutional principles they celebrate, inadvertently or no, the very thing that makes our nation stronger than any feral, unreasoned hatred will ever be.


Rather, tell them, build your mosque and help celebrate the abiding strength of a great people. A people ruled by principles and not by fear. Build it in a just and generous nation undeterred in its belief in the essential decency of a free people. Build it and be welcomed. This is America and there has never been our like before in the history of man.

:thumb: Wonderfully said.

And in some ways this can be seen as a victory for us. A blow against the terrorists who would love to see us fight over an issue like this. Fighting over this; pitting us against Islam, only serves their purposes.

Of course, it depends on how it is done. A great step would be to do what you suggested. Rauf should have a ceremony honoring the victims of 9/11 and unequivocally renounce the attacks. We aren't at war with Islam.

 

[MrRadish]

It looks like madman has left the building and will not be responding to anybodies posts for awhile.

Not with that particular name, in any case.

 

[Nathon Detroit]

:thumb: Wonderfully said.

And in some ways this can be seen as a victory for us. A blow against the terrorists who would love to see us fight over an issue like this. Fighting over this; pitting us against Islam, only serves their purposes.

Then even by your own standard this WILL be serving their purposes because it WILL pit most Americans against Islam.

Uh... yeah... we are not going to fight over this. :doh: Look around you kmoney? This is one of the most divisive things to come around in a long time.

If I were a Muslim I would oppose such a location for a Mosque simply out of respect for the victims, the desire to make peace, and knowing that this is a very sensitive issue for most Americans.

It's a horrible idea.

 

[Granite]

Then even by your own standard this WILL be serving their purposes because it WILL pit most Americans against Islam.

Uh... yeah... we are not going to fight over this. :doh: Look around you kmoney? This is one of the most divisive things to come around in a long time.

If I were a Muslim I would oppose such a location for a Mosque simply out of respect for the victims, the desire to make peace, and knowing that this is a very sensitive issue for most Americans.

It's a horrible idea.

If the idea was to show Islam's tolerance and quest for peace with other faiths and cultures, this backfired miserably. While building this center may well be their right it's certainly imprudent, tactless, tasteless, and completely tone deaf.

I for one am all for a pluralistic society that treats religions with equal respect but with that respect comes an expectation for treating that equity with its own kind of reverence. In this instance, Islam failed horribly.

 

[Nathon Detroit]

If the idea was to show Islam's tolerance and quest for peace with other faiths and cultures, this backfired miserably. While building this center may well be their right it's certainly imprudent, tactless, tasteless, and completely tone deaf.

Very well said. :up:

 

[kmoney]

Then even by your own standard this WILL be serving their purposes because it WILL pit most Americans against Islam.

Uh... yeah... we are not going to fight over this. :doh: Look around you kmoney? This is one of the most divisive things to come around in a long time.

If I were a Muslim I would oppose such a location for a Mosque simply out of respect for the victims, the desire to make peace, and knowing that this is a very sensitive issue for most Americans.

It's a horrible idea.

I know we are fighting over it. I'm not blind. But I think fighting over it and eventually building the mosque is better than fighting over it and not building the mosque.

I've said a couple times that if Rauf didn't see this controversy coming then he is naive, at best, and it might have been better to avoid all this controversy by him choosing another location, but we're here now and I think the best step is a step forward to building the mosque.

 

[kmoney]

Sufi Islam, to which Rauf belongs

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S eloquent endorsement on Friday of a planned Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center, followed by his apparent retreat the next day, was just one of many paradoxes at the heart of the increasingly impassioned controversy.

We have seen the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to ending “unjust and unfair discrimination,” seek to discriminate against American Muslims. We have seen Newt Gingrich depict the organization behind the center — the Cordoba Initiative, which is dedicated to “improving Muslim-West relations” and interfaith dialogue — as a “deliberately insulting” and triumphalist force attempting to built a monument to Muslim victory near the site of the twin towers.

Most laughably, we have seen politicians like Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for New York governor, question whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the principal figure behind the project, might have links to “radical organizations.”

The problem with such claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan. They show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion.

Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.

Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.

Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.

For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.

The great Sufi saints like the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi held that all existence and all religions were one, all manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple, but the striving to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart: that we all can find paradise within us, if we know where to look. In some ways Sufism, with its emphasis on love rather than judgment, represents the New Testament of Islam.

While the West remains blind to the divisions and distinctions within Islam, the challenge posed by the Sufi vision of the faith is not lost on the extremists. This was shown most violently on July 2, when the Pakistani Taliban organized a double-suicide bombing of the Data Darbar, the largest Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. The attack took place on a Thursday night, when the shrine was at its busiest; 42 people were killed and 175 were injured.

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