Barack Obama, who had wisely stayed neutral on the proposed Ground Zero mosque up until today, broke his silence on the issue by broadly endorsing the proposal. Speaking about America’s “founding principles”, he reiterated the same irrelevant point that millions of others have already expressed, which is that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else.
“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community centre on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.”
Of course it matters not to President Obama that this has nothing whatsoever to do with religious freedom. The funding for the proposed mosque is nowhere near attainment, and there are no immediate plans for construction. What is at stake here is not religious freedom, but a battle of sensibilities. Islam has placed a toe in the waters of a wholly inappropriate and insensitive ocean of pain and suffering, and has come away from the experience with a better understanding of the inherent weaknesses of America.
Islam has a notorious history of testing the resolve of western liberties by making provocative and offensive moves to see how the enemy will react. Take the Muslim demonstrators who disrupted the returning British soldiers from Iraq, in Lutton, England, for instance. Holding placards that referred to British soldiers as murderers, alongside heavily ironic suggestions that “freedom of speech can go to hell”, the Islamists walked away from the confrontation the victors. They had managed to inflame the sensibilities of several people to such an extent that two British men wound up being charged by the police for assault. Not the Islamists, of course, but those who had challenged their provocation.
Of course, irony is never far from the actions of radical Islamists. Had the 9/11 hijackers been caught before their deed was carried out, you can sure they would have availed themselves of the best legal protections money can buy, mirandized to the teeth, and asked to have their confessions thrown out under allegations of torture. It’s how they play the game.
As Rex Murphy writes in his National Post opinion piece today, “Islam has a voracious appetite for tolerance when it is the suppliant; when it is, so to speak, a sojourner among the infidels.
“It is aggressively, even imaginatively, vigorous in availing of the democratic rights of societies to which some of its followers have migrated. It has acquired an admirable expertise in taking advantage of the institutions and practices of host societies, from politics and the media, to protests and the courts, which aid the full pursuit of those rights.”
Even as the White House sits down to an annual dinner to celebrate the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in order to show how pluralist and tolerant America remains in the face of overt hostility from the Muslim world, the enemies are constantly probing for cracks in the wall.
It matters less that Islam is able to build a monument to its greatness at the ruins of its greatest act of evil, than it does the fact that Americans will happily accept the philosophical preconditions that they have the right to do so. They evaluate not whether it is conscientious to do so, but concern themselves only with the relativist argument that Islam, barbaric though its adherents may behave everywhere else in the world, have the constitutional right to build a mosque anywhere they please.
As was overheard on a social networking website, this could be the first time in history that American socialists have supported the concept of property rights.
The argument that opposition to the ground zero mosque is a matter of “intolerance” runs in contradiction to the manner in which Americans have conducted themselves in the 9 years following the terrorist attacks. There were few, if any, reprisals on Arabs in America for the attacks on 9/11. If anything, Muslim advocacy and religious freedom has prospered in the years following the attacks, growing to a point where criticizing something as deliberately unsavory as building a 13-story mosque at Ground Zero would result in protestations of xenophobia.
Preposterous. As has been pointed out several times already in the media, the political ease with which the the mosque was granted tacit approval only goes to show that cultural intolerance has absolutely nothing to do with feeling uncomfortable with the prospect of a monument to Islam being built precisely in the location that adherents of the same religion murdered thousands of innocent people.
If anything, we have become apologists in the name of Islam, with “yesbuttery” preceding every qualifying defence of acts of terrorism committed by Islamist fanatics, from places as far away as Afghanistan, to right here in North America. Perhaps the great example of yesbuttery is in the defence of the 9/11 attacks, explaining that they only occurred because of the neo-imperialist hegemony of the American Military-Industrial Complex.
To have the sitting President of the United States utterly unable to distinguish the difference between religious freedom and a provocation of unprecedented magnitude, only goes to show how weak the country has become in confronting its own internal erosion of values.
Shameful. Shameful. I can only imagine how the families of 9/11 victims must be feeling.
One point I forgot to make is that the Islamists have a win-win situation.
If political interference is used to block the mosque, the Muslims can call Americans hypocrites and xenophobes and mock them for their unwillingness to support religious freedoms.
If the mosque does go ahead as planned, America will look weak and subservient to the religion that less than a decade ago was responsible for putting the word “terrorism” on the map.
OK. I am willing to be the contractor for this Mosque and I can assure you it will take longer to build, have design and construction problems, water problems and electrical problems and it will have huge over costs and probably a union issue or two and maybe a strike – all causing delay after delay…. sad really, I’m not a very good contractor. But when I turn it over I can say with confidence that it won’t last very long before I am back at fixing things and renovations… this is a gold mine of Saudi money that any good American construction worker can milk for decades…
The battle was won, build a mosque, jihad has conquered.
Yes, there is something to be said for trying to be tolerant of others and their beliefs, however, there is such thing as being too tolerant, (indulgent even), espcially when that tolerance is being constantly tested and taken advantage of. Not all such intolerance is a bad thing. “Look, we destroyed your buildings and killed your people, now we put up our building in it’s place”. It is something that a predator with animal cunning would understand. What will be the next “test”? Obama’s Chamberlain moment could not only prove to be his presidency’s death knell, but also the definitive moment that America communicated to the Islamic world it’s increasing lack of resolve to stop tolerating their constant brazen and overt provocations. The sad thing is, America didn’t go into the last election blind; they had to or ought to have known what they were getting.
OT, I saw an interview with Josh Koscheck badmouthing Georges St. Pierre, ridiculing his Frenchness and such. It amuses me to no end how Koscheck thinks this will throw an intense St. Pierre off his game rather than making St. Pierre more motivated than ever. Now that St. Pierre is so much better than the last time he destroyed Koscheck I look forward with great pleasure to Koscheck’s next beating by St. Pierre. More so that Kosckeck and his wrestling pedigree with be utterly outclassed.
This is the best argument I’ve seen contra the Ground Zero Mosque. I have a relative in Manhattan, and, let me tell you, NYers are still frightened of further terrorism.
And, speaking as an American, thank you for the courage necessary to stand up as a Canadian, and speak the truth, when the US is involved.
Unfortunately, many Canadians demonstrate a reflexive hatred toward the US, which is not reciprocated by Americans.
“There were few, if any, reprisals on Arabs in America for the attacks on 9/11.”
That’s just a show of civility rather than tolerance. Our society has evolved to consider such acts shameful and inappropriate. There’s no merit to showing civility when you’re supposed to be civilised anyway.
“It matters less that Islam is able to build a monument to its greatness at the ruins of its greatest act of evil”
Two wrong assumptions. Mosque = monument and 9/11 = Islam. The second one is just obviously wrong. Is the whole body of Christianity responsible for the Spanish Inquisition, or the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda?
“utterly unable to distinguish the difference between religious freedom and a provocation of unprecedented magnitude”
When Danish papers publish cartoons that offend those who profess the Muslim faith, it’s press freedom. When people want to exercise their right over private property in a free country, it’s a provocation of unprecedented magnitude. Our freedoms are afforded to all, independently of their agenda, and their limitation or withdrawal is subject solely to the letter of the law, which is equal for us all.
If there is any spine left in the people of New York (and America) then this mosque will suffer a terrible fire and burn to the groud right after completion but before opening.
(A terrible “accident” of course).
Two wrong assumptions. Mosque = monument and 9/11 = Islam. The second one is just obviously wrong. Is the whole body of Christianity responsible for the Spanish Inquisition, or the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda?
Well, of course not. And Christianity is hardly perfect or innocent in it’s time, especially considering abuse scandals. But modern Christians today are hardly building churches on the sites of their greatest atrocities knowing how provocative it is, are they? So what is the motivation other than to merely build another mosque considering that? Some people are not that naive or enabling, but that hardly means they are intolerant.
Unfettered tolerance can be just as dangerous as intolerance. Building this mosque where they want to when they can easily build one in a less controversial location and American allowing it to do so is not tolerance, it is indulgence, and the most dangerous kind and will lead to complacency; more dangerous still.
OT again Adrian, but something that should interest you greatly –
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario/ontario-to-allow-mixed-martial-arts/article1673130/
In addition, Governor Paterson has offered, quite generously, to find a new location for this mosque on state land (something that doesn’t HAVE to be done) if they would move it away from such a contentious and controversial location. So why the Muslim’s continued obstinance that they go ahead with their plans for the Gound Zero location? Doesn’t some small part of you even think to ask, “why”?
According to that poll cited earlier, almost 70% of the American people refuse to accept this mosque in it’s current location. France may be irretrievably lost, and the UK well on it’s way. However, it is at least comforting to see that almost 3/4 of Americans will not accept this level of dhimmitude. Nor should they.
In North America “tolerance” is simply cowardice that hasn’t come out of the closet.
Yes, imagine how the families of 9/11 victims must be feeling. Imagine the families of Muslims who worked in those towers. Imagine the families of innocent Muslims who were killed on that horrible day.
Yes, we all know that Muslims were likewise vicitmized by this as the rest. Nicola stated “victims”, not “non-Muslim” victims”. Stop fishing, please.
David,
The political left in Canada are blinded by their hatred for Americans that they cannot even see the geopolitical importance of defeating the Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan.
Yet it flies in the face of the imagined criticisms of the left, who say that opponents to the Ground Zero mosque are nothing but Tea Party racists and xenophobes.
The truth is that if Americans committed an atrocity of that magnitude in a Muslim country, the streets would run red with western blood by nightfall.
Forgive me, but this is a common rhetorical device of the left. Trying to compare applies and granite doesn’t work.
Islamic terrorism and violence is a pandemic at present, and easily outscores all other religions in terrorism by a 94:1 ratio. It’s on Wikipedia under “List of terrorist incidents for 2010.”
Nor is Islamic Fascism limited to just one country, like the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. It is, in fact, a global problem that has spread to countries like France and Great Britain.
Correct. Because the cartoons weren’t meant solely as a means of provocation, but as a political statement about the inherent violence and terrorism associative with Islam today.
The latter is merely a crass attempt to see how far they can push the emotions of Americans.
You’ll never defeat Islamic Fascism with that attitude.
St-Pierre will likely embarrass Koschek, but not before he makes several crass anti-Canadian rants and jokes on TUF reality show.
Our tolerance of Wahhabi Islam will eventually be the west’s undoing, there are almost 80 versions of Islam but Wahhabi Islam and Salafist Islam are not religions they are political ideologies tarted up as relgions to control the people using Sharia Law. I curse the day we let the Wahhabist and Salafists into the West, their idea of tolerance is COMPLETE submission to their Supremacists’ demands.
Of course I ask myself “why” and find an answer in the fact they’re being provocative, as well as the developer wanting the money desperately otherwise his properties keep being money sinks.
I am not using a common rhetorical device of the left but applying the apparently same reasoning that blames 9/11 on muslims as a whole.
If one blames an act of atrocious extremism on the entire body of a religious confession, then the Inquisition and the LRA are to be blamed upon Christianity, as much as 9/11 is to be upon the entire body of Muslim faithful.
I think the mosque is a bad idea. I also think that lowering ourselves to their level of discussion is an even worse idea. America should enforce its laws without inhibitions but should never let its institutions succumb to emotion.
What is this thing we call Islamofascism? Is it jihadism? Is it the incitement of hatred toward the infidel? Is it the imposition of sharia law? Or is it a catch-all term we let loose when we can’t pinpoint our disagreement onto a precise breach of the law of the land?
There are laws against incitement of hatred. The Constitution and Common Law protect us from sharia. There are laws against armed jihadism, the Army protects us abroad, the border services agencies protect us from jihadist infiltration.
Why on Earth should we create a liberty-killing precedent for dealing with a threat we can’t define beyond the existing body of law? There’s a law against every threatening manifestation of radical Islamism. The proposed mosque and cultural center breach none so far.
Again. Let’s be contemporaneous about this.
Yes, the Inquisition was certainly a form of aggressive religious expansion and colonialism. That ended a long time ago.
The LRA were a local and isolated problem.
Islamic Fascism is, as I said before, much more of a pandemic.
Political Islam is aggressive, expansionist, totalitarian, intolerant, regressive, violent, misogynist, and dogmatic. So it’s bit of everything you mention.
When Islam is separated from affairs of the state, and clearly segregated from personal liberties, then it can be as benign a faith as any other.
Unfortunately it doesn’t and it isn’t.
As I say, that isn’t the point. They don’t give a shit about a place to pray. They don’t even have the funding yet. They’re seeing how far they can push the infidels.
They won’t let a non-Muslim within a mile of Mecca, under punishment of death. Do you really think that this is about freedom and tolerance?
I completely reject the notion that the one poster had that stated Islam does not build mosques as monuments.
That is precisely what they are; the minaret is specifically designed to tower over all other religious buildings as a display of Islamic Triumphalism.
Many of the biggest mosques in the world are built on the sites of their enemy’s churches.
Adrian, I like how you explain your points!
If we are to be contemporaneous, let’s try. Would we blame Iranian stonings on our Iranian neighbours or colleagues, for their being Iranian? Would we blame Fred Phelps on Americans? Would we blame an episode of trade union thuggery on the entire body of trade union members?
Islamic fascism, as you describe it, is indeed a danger to those societies that are not equipped to defend themselves from it. But we should not abandon our superior weaponry, that is the promise of freedom, in favour of the inferior firepower of parochialism and emotionalism.
You’re right: they wouldn’t allow us into Saudi Arabia, let alone within earshot of Mecca. Repaying the entire Muslim world in kind would be childish. We are so offended by the limitations imposed upon us in many Muslim countries, yet some of us openly advocate the same treatment against a fellow human being.
Only by holding strongly onto our constitutional heritage can we keep the wider Muslim community in our countries outside the grip of totalitarianism. It wasn’t McCarthy that defeated communism!
“When Islam is separated from affairs of the state, and clearly segregated from personal liberties, then it can be as benign a faith as any other.”
Naturally. But in the context of American and Canadian law whether it is or isn’t separated is irrelevant. The law of the land trumps religious dogma where they are in conflict.
Is there an Islamic party with an anti-liberty theocratic agenda? Are there Islamist judges on the Supreme Court? If not, there is no present threat to the constitutional order of things.
You are right to note that Islamic extremists are present on every continent and they are quite adamant to push their agenda. It doesn’t necessarily mean we must push the legislative and judiciary panic button.
Well, no, but stonings are a part of sharia law and it is a problem throughout the Muslim world.
The Islamic terrorism carried out on 9/11 was directly caused by literal interpretation of the Qu’ran, rather than a guide. If Christians literally interpreted the old testament, we would be stoning women as well.
I don’t know. I don’t quite buy the argument. First of all, the comparison would like the terrorist one. Any instances in which we openly advocated limitations on freedom in comparison to Muslim countries would be a very different ratio indeed. In fact, I’m certain that the Ground Zero mosque is the first time we’ve considered such impositions on liberty, aside from the requests they not dress their women in masks.
But secondly, it is a mistake to think this is an imposition on their freedom. It isn’t. That’s playing into their game. This is a “test” in which there can be no victory. If we impose limitations out of sensitivity reasons, it makes us look hypocritical. If we don’t impose limitations, it makes us look subservient to Islam.
Perhaps not, but that’s where Mark Steyn’s theories come into play. Who are the new faces of America and Canada? Who is immigrating to Canada? What will the successive generations look like, and how will they think?
I’ve noticed more and more women on the streets of Vancouver in niqabs. A sign of things to come, or merely another pavilion at folkfest?
Adrian,
You used to have a picture on your site that was titled “their way / our way” and a picture of a soldier standing in harms way in front of a woman and her child and facing a masked Hamas-style terrorist crouching behind a woman and her child taking aim at the soldier.
You should put it back up.
I was reminded of it when I read an opinion piece in the post recently that pointed out that demanding the right not to be offended is the Islamist way. It’s the Islamists who take offense at things and demand that other people restrict their freedom so that the Islamist is not offended. It’s the Islamists who insist that individual rights and freedoms should be restricted so that their group is not offended.
It’s NOT our way.
Westerners are (or should be) supremely confident that someone else’s offensive behaviour cannot harm them because our way is simply better and ultimately more successful.
I am sorry to say, restricting where a religious center is built IS a Constitutional freedom of religion issue, which no auto-naysaying (as your post begins) will disguise. Yes, it may seem (and perhaps now be) hurtful, even to many, especially after all the carefully cultivated outrage has been so wildly broadcast, but the location of any kind of church/mosque/temple/synagogue/pagan-dancing-circle is the free right of the believers to select (no one asked anyone on my block if we wanted a church at each end, as we do have), and the government cannot Constitutionally interfere in their freedom to choose and then worship. Nor may we citizens.
(By the way, the author has provided NO evidence that the location is somehow dipping a metaphorical toe into any kind of waters, rather than merely the otherwise reported convenient location for downtown NYC Muslims to gather on Fridays.)
Re the last sentence: as are many Christian churches and cathedrals.