Thread: The Proposed Mosque at Ground Zero

Originally Posted by Robinjazz

Many of the Liberals injecting their two cents' worth on this topic hate religion and don't even believe in God. They simply thrive on chaos. Down deep they don't give a crap about the Mosque one way or the other--their primary object is confusion and trouble.

Nonsense. I think a lot of the so-called liberals seem to be the ones who have this one right, by taking the position that our first amendment rights protect the people who want to build this mosque.

So what's up with the conservatives and originalists who are always talking about our rights and freedoms as protected by the constitution? They don't apply if someone holds an unpopular belief or differing opinion? Because that's exactly what The Bill of Rights was designed to do.

Nowhere in the constitution do we guarantee to protect people from getting their feelings hurt.

Originally Posted by Robinjazz

Many of the Liberals injecting their two cents' worth on this topic hate religion and don't even believe in God. They simply thrive on chaos. Down deep they don't give a crap about the Mosque one way or the other--their primary object is confusion and trouble.

No reasonable person with any sort of understanding of one's fellow Americans could legitimately come to this conclusion.

But lets break it down.

I would be interested in what you mean by "Liberals". I am guessing that you mean some amorphous socio-political group consisting of "Democrats who disagree with my socio-political beliefs and are socialists because Mark Levin told me so". Many Democrats are classical Liberals, in the sense that their belief in freedom and equality, the two joint founding principles of the United States, tends to focus slightly more on equality than liberty, and they are slightly more willing to use the tools of the state to prevent human suffering and seek to raise up the most unfortunate members of the citizenry. On a political scale including all ranges of political beliefs in the world at present, American conservatives and liberals are virtually side by side. Liberals are not socialists, as that term is properly understood and defined in terms of governmental form.

"Many liberals hate religion and don't believe in God".

This is true, in the sense that by sheer virtue of the number of American citizens, there are many who are classically liberal, and either dislike religion in general because they have personally been harmed by it or see it as a force for oppression and harm in the world and/or who don't believe in "God" because they are athiests or a member of a different sort of religion than Christianity/Judaism/Islam which has a different sort of understanding of the divine. But overall and looking at percentages, most liberals are Christians. There is a certain disdain for Christian fundamentalism, (which I have myself, given that evangelical fundamentalism is in my opinion "dumbed down" Christianity and that it has inappropriately asserted itself into the political arena with the goal of enshrining its religious tenets in law at the expense of the human rights and religious freedom of of others, moving outside of American political conservatism, free market liberalism, which is a part of the classical Enlightenment liberal tradition of this nation) but it is no more accurate to label this a hatred - or even dislike - of religion than it is to claim that people who don't eat at fast food restaurants hate or dislike food.

"They simply thrive on chaos."

Actually, insisting on the fair and evenhanded application of the rule of law, which is what these people are doing, can only be seen as an act designed to reduce chaos, to ensure orderliness and governmental fairness. Fighting for the American principle of freedom, as applied to religion, is not a desire for chaos.

"They don't care about the mosque one way or the other"

There is some truth to this. Liberals aren't fighting for the mosque out of actual care about islamic worship sites. They are fighting for their belief in the integrity of the United States and for the fair and universal application of its preinciples of freedom. Because freedom has to apply to everyone to actually be meaningful. Thus, it can be seen that they have a higher purpose than the promotion of a sect to which most of them do not belong and may even find abhorrent in respect to certain of its doctrines.

"Their primary object is confusion and trouble."

No, their primary object is the protection of a vulnerable minority from the prejudice and oppression of the majority. I find your demonization of people with different opinions than you, your ascribing to them the worst possible motive, and your exclusionary treatment of them as the "other", the "enemy" to be particularly pernicious, as well as dangerous in a representative democracy. Do you forget that among these people are your and my friends, family members, valuable members of our community? My mom is a liberal Democrat. She is a nice, deeply religious moral woman who has never harmed a soul in her life. My sister is a liberal Democrat. She is a successful entrepreneur who runs her own business and pays for her kids' way through college. My best friend from childhood is a liberal. He also runs his own business and serves the community by serving on business development boards and the local airport board. These people, and millions just like them, support religious liberty to the extent that they believe this mosque should be allowed. These are the ones who you are labelling troublemakers, chaos and confusion bringers, religion haters. Shame on you. Where the heck do you get your silly opinions about my friends, family and neighbors? How in the world could you possibly believe that these people, even if they have different opinions than you, are troublemakers and anarchists, that they are acting with anything but what they believe with good intentions to do what they believe is right?

Maybe you should turn off the talk radio, get out of your ideological bubble, and go forth and meet some of the good people you casually libel and label the enemy. They are your fellow Americans and they are sincere and good people.

Bandying absolutes back and forth isn't the way to go, but I can see why people have concerns about the approach of both conservatives and liberals in certain scenarios. It is my opinion that the largely liberal/secular western world has no clue how to handle militant Islam without making unfavourable concessions or abandoning certain key principles to which it adheres. I think the objections concerning the Mosque at Ground Zero are grounded in reality and are worth taking seriously. The thing that really needs to be discussed is whether it is sensible to build the Mosque there. The issue of who has what right is really of negligible concern to me. Obviously they have the right to purchase land and carry out their religious project.

I agree that assimilation of muslims is something that traditionally homogenous European nations have struggled with, Mermaid. Actually, though, the last decade's events notwithstanding, there has been a much smoother assimilation of muslims into the United States, including the adoption of American concepts of law and governance while maintaining religious beliefs and practices, in the "give and take" way in which our nation has assimilated immigrants of differing cultures for as long as it has been in existence.There are fewer cultural impediments to assimilation here, and I expect that we will not make the governmental mistakes that some of our fellow Western democracies have made.

Originally Posted by alanmt

Maybe you should turn off the talk radio, get out of your ideological bubble, and go forth and meet some of the good people you casually libel and label the enemy. They are your fellow Americans and they are sincere and good people.

Sure. But a lot of "liberals" are condescending, elitist assholes too. There are jerks on either end of the spectrum.

I do hate to sound inelegant, but **** them. They should build their mosque somewhere outside of an American shrine. I respect all religions, all credos, but there is definitely a limit to my largesse. People need to have some respect.

Sorry, but I fail to see why naming it "Cordoba House" is any sort of attack on America. I'm well aware of Spanish history involving the Muslim occupation of Spain. But what does the conflict between Christianity and Islam have to do with America? Not every American is Christian. If you want to frame this argument in terms of Islam vs. "the West", I'll still think it's silly, but at least it makes some sense.

During the Crusades, western Christians raped and pillaged Constantinople, but I have yet to see anyone complain about Christian insensitivity in building churches in that city.

Disclosure: I don't know anyone killed or present on 9/11, and I am not a Christian.

Constantinople was still a Christian city during the Crusade, but not the same kind of Christian as the Western Christians so they were fair game to be raped and their property pillaged. If you are different from me I have the right to kill you and take whatever was yours. Have I got that right?

When Constantinople fell in 1453 the Church of Holy Wisdom was converted to a mosque and remains so today.

alanmt - Beautifully put. Or as my cricketer friends at Flowers' Bank would say, 'well played, well played'.

Who is the old man with the tie?

The first Amendment to the US Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Congress is not going to make a law establishing a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. It would never pass the Supreme Court, or the White House. This is all just political posturing. The President is exactly correct to not take sides on whether or not it is right to build there, but to say they have a right to build there.

If Congress wants to prohibit the building of anything on that site, it could claim eminent domain, and declare the area a national park site. That is unlikely to occur in a two block radius in lower Manhattan, but that would be a legal way to stop the construction.

Originally Posted by alanmt

No reasonable person with any sort of understanding of one's fellow Americans could legitimately come to this conclusion.

But lets break it down.

I would be interested in what you mean by "Liberals". I am guessing that you mean some amorphous socio-political group consisting of "Democrats who disagree with my socio-political beliefs and are socialists because Mark Levin told me so". Many Democrats are classical Liberals, in the sense that their belief in freedom and equality, the two joint founding principles of the United States, tends to focus slightly more on equality than liberty, and they are slightly more willing to use the tools of the state to prevent human suffering and seek to raise up the most unfortunate members of the citizenry. On a political scale including all ranges of political beliefs in the world at present, American conservatives and liberals are virtually side by side. Liberals are not socialists, as that term is properly understood and defined in terms of governmental form.

"Many liberals hate religion and don't believe in God".

This is true, in the sense that by sheer virtue of the number of American citizens, there are many who are classically liberal, and either dislike religion in general because they have personally been harmed by it or see it as a force for oppression and harm in the world and/or who don't believe in "God" because they are athiests or a member of a different sort of religion than Christianity/Judaism/Islam which has a different sort of understanding of the divine. But overall and looking at percentages, most liberals are Christians. There is a certain disdain for Christian fundamentalism, (which I have myself, given that evangelical fundamentalism is in my opinion "dumbed down" Christianity and that it has inappropriately asserted itself into the political arena with the goal of enshrining its religious tenets in law at the expense of the human rights and religious freedom of of others, moving outside of American political conservatism, free market liberalism, which is a part of the classical Enlightenment liberal tradition of this nation) but it is no more accurate to label this a hatred - or even dislike - of religion than it is to claim that people who don't eat at fast food restaurants hate or dislike food.

"They simply thrive on chaos."

Actually, insisting on the fair and evenhanded application of the rule of law, which is what these people are doing, can only be seen as an act designed to reduce chaos, to ensure orderliness and governmental fairness. Fighting for the American principle of freedom, as applied to religion, is not a desire for chaos.

"They don't care about the mosque one way or the other"

There is some truth to this. Liberals aren't fighting for the mosque out of actual care about islamic worship sites. They are fighting for their belief in the integrity of the United States and for the fair and universal application of its preinciples of freedom. Because freedom has to apply to everyone to actually be meaningful. Thus, it can be seen that they have a higher purpose than the promotion of a sect to which most of them do not belong and may even find abhorrent in respect to certain of its doctrines.

"Their primary object is confusion and trouble."

No, their primary object is the protection of a vulnerable minority from the prejudice and oppression of the majority. I find your demonization of people with different opinions than you, your ascribing to them the worst possible motive, and your exclusionary treatment of them as the "other", the "enemy" to be particularly pernicious, as well as dangerous in a representative democracy. Do you forget that among these people are your and my friends, family members, valuable members of our community? My mom is a liberal Democrat. She is a nice, deeply religious moral woman who has never harmed a soul in her life. My sister is a liberal Democrat. She is a successful entrepreneur who runs her own business and pays for her kids' way through college. My best friend from childhood is a liberal. He also runs his own business and serves the community by serving on business development boards and the local airport board. These people, and millions just like them, support religious liberty to the extent that they believe this mosque should be allowed. These are the ones who you are labelling troublemakers, chaos and confusion bringers, religion haters. Shame on you. Where the heck do you get your silly opinions about my friends, family and neighbors? How in the world could you possibly believe that these people, even if they have different opinions than you, are troublemakers and anarchists, that they are acting with anything but what they believe with good intentions to do what they believe is right?

Maybe you should turn off the talk radio, get out of your ideological bubble, and go forth and meet some of the good people you casually libel and label the enemy. They are your fellow Americans and they are sincere and good people.

Rock on.

Originally Posted by alanmt

I agree that assimilation of muslims is something that traditionally homogenous European nations have struggled with, Mermaid. Actually, though, the last decade's events notwithstanding, there has been a much smoother assimilation of muslims into the United States, including the adoption of American concepts of law and governance while maintaining religious beliefs and practices, in the "give and take" way in which our nation has assimilated immigrants of differing cultures for as long as it has been in existence.There are fewer cultural impediments to assimilation here, and I expect that we will not make the governmental mistakes that some of our fellow Western democracies have made.

Right on.

Originally Posted by Ilasir Maroa

Sorry, but I fail to see why naming it "Cordoba House" is any sort of attack on America. I'm well aware of Spanish history involving the Muslim occupation of Spain. But what does the conflict between Christianity and Islam have to do with America? Not every American is Christian. If you want to frame this argument in terms of Islam vs. "the West", I'll still think it's silly, but at least it makes some sense.

During the Crusades, western Christians raped and pillaged Constantinople, but I have yet to see anyone complain about Christian insensitivity in building churches in that city.

Disclosure: I don't know anyone killed or present on 9/11, and I am not a Christian.

I agree. In my opinion, the outcry over this issue is ridiculous; people inventing their own threats to bark at, hearing their own barks and becoming alarmed because they forget why they were barking to begin with. Even more ridiculous are the attempts at drawing a connection between today and the supposedly barbaric Muslim civilization which existed in Spain (and it very much was a civilization, not an assorted collection of madmen, pedophiles, rascals and depraved camel thieves/f******s as certain people would have other people believe). Regardless, Spain has less to do with the proposed Mosque than even the terr'ist Chimera's constantly being conjured up over this issue.

It's not on the actual site, a Gentleman's Club is in the same area, it's hardly hallowed ground. So I don't care.

As a Christian "liberal", I must say that the only thing which troubles me concerning this issue is the fact so many people have drawn swords and taken opposition against one another. Please don't misunderstand me, I have my private opinions on this subject but my thoughts are not worth the arguing and dissension among my family and friends. Seriously, my brothers are angry with me because I am not as vocal as they believe I should be. I suppose, from their point of view, a bitter attitude and arguing is going to correct the problem.
I find it funny, many of the people who are so angry haven't even taken the time to educate themselves on the complexity of the situation. Instead, they hear some guy on a certain news channel spout off his own neurotic propaganda while they happily swallow it. I am sick of all the chatter. Bottom line, we have many people who practice their own religion in this country, if we allow them to become active citizens then we must allow them the right to build their churches, and temples, and yes, even mosques. We might not be pleased with the circumstances surrounding it, I do feel that it is in poor taste to build there; however, it is what it is.
It's easy to hate and become angry over something we have little control over but I refuse to allow this to consume me. I do have control over my own self and my actions reflect the person I want others to see. I look at it like this, their freedom allows me my freedom and I do still enjoy my freedoms.

I guess the majority of people are against the mosque. I'm all for it, but i don't think it will get built.

I come from India, so i don't have the same strong american spirit as others do. Having a large part of my family belonging to the muslim faith also conributes. i believe america will learn the hard way.

what do i mean by the hard way? Well it's this. There are almost 1.5 billion muslims. They are not going to go away anytime soon. They are not going to convert anytime soon. One who knows the muslim faith will realize that thier dogmas do not preach death to those unlike them, rather it preaches brotherly love to other "people of the book" referencing to jews and christians. There are many moderate muslims in the world. No matter what anyone says, the real reason for this controversy is because people are linking Islam to terrorists. The more we supress thier rights, and the more we shun them, the more soldiers will die, the more innocents will die, and the more young men and women will come to terrorists looking to join the jihad.
Also, it is shown that muslims that go to mosques are less likely to follow radicalism. The one's who turn to terrrorism are those who forsake the truth of thier religion to listen to the invigorating lies of radicals. It becomes easier for them when they can paint someone as the enemy. It is the same for us. We are painitng muslims as the enemy and are therefore not allowing the building of a mosque.

and on a side note, Cordoba was chosen as the name because cordoba was a muslim intellectual center at one point. It is not to commemerate the death of christians, but rather Islamic intellectualism.

Originally Posted by Fox80

I do hate to sound inelegant, but **** them. They should build their mosque somewhere outside of an American shrine. I respect all religions, all credos, but there is definitely a limit to my largesse. People need to have some respect.

its not much worse than christians building churches over dead muslims during the crusades. Christians have killed many more people than muslims in history. Muslims tried to defend themselves when the pope decided that muslims should not be allowed in the Holy Land. He then proceeded to kill them, and try to build churhces. It should be noted that christians were alwys welcome to make pilgrimages to the Holy land since the beginning of the muslim occupation there.

Also, remember muslims are fihgiting in our wars, and have died in 9/11 as well. Do they not deserve a palce of worship to pray for the souls of thier deceased?