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The ‘Mosque’ Affair: An American Comedy
New York City Mayor Bloomberg supporting the mosque project
- So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York? -
By Frank Rich in the NYT - Excerpt:
THE “ground zero mosque,” as you may well know by now, is not at ground zero. It’s not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room. It’s not going to determine President Obama’s political future or the elections of 2010 or 2012. Still, the battle that has broken out over this project in Lower Manhattan — on the “hallowed ground” of a shuttered Burlington Coat Factory store one block from the New York Dolls Gentlemen’s Club — will prove eventful all the same. And the consequences will be far more profound than any midterm election results or any of the grand debates now raging 24/7 over the parameters of tolerance, religious freedom, and the real estate gospel of location, location, location.
Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the “ground zero mosque” just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.
So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?
You’d think that American hawks invested in the Afghanistan “surge” would not act against their own professed interests. But they couldn’t stop themselves from placing cynical domestic politics over country. The ginned-up rage over the “ground zero mosque” was not motivated by a serious desire to protect America from the real threat of terrorists lurking at home and abroad — a threat this furor has in all likelihood exacerbated — but by the potential short-term rewards of winning votes by pandering to fear during an election season.
We owe thanks to Justin Elliott of Salon for the single most revealing account of this controversy’s evolution. He reports that there was zero reaction to the “ground zero mosque” from the front-line right or anyone else except marginal bloggers when The Times first reported on the Park51 plans in a lengthy front-page article on Dec. 9, 2009. The sole exception came some two weeks later at Fox News, where Laura Ingraham, filling in on “The O’Reilly Factor,” interviewed Daisy Khan, the wife of the project’s organizer, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Ingraham gave the plans her blessing. “I can’t find many people who really have a problem with it,” she said. “I like what you’re trying to do.”
As well Ingraham might. Rauf is no terrorist. He has been repeatedly sent on speaking tours by the Bush and Obama State Departments alike to promote tolerance in Arab and Muslim nations. As Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic reported last week, Rauf gave a moving eulogy at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan, at the Manhattan synagogue B’nai Jeshurun. Pearl’s father was in attendance. The Park51 board is chock-full of Christians and Jews. Perhaps the most threatening thing about this fledgling multi-use community center, an unabashed imitator of the venerable (and Jewish) 92nd Street Y uptown, is its potential to spawn yet another coveted, impossible-to-get-into Manhattan private preschool.
In the five months after The Times’s initial account there were no newspaper articles on the project at all. It was only in May of this year that the Rupert Murdoch axis of demagoguery revved up, jettisoning Ingraham’s benign take for a New York Post jihad. The paper’s inspiration was a rabidly anti-Islam blogger best known for claiming that Obama was Malcolm X’s illegitimate son. Soon the rest of the Murdoch empire and its political allies piled on, promoting the incendiary libel that the “radical Islamists” behind the “ground zero mosque” were tantamount either to neo-Nazis in Skokie (according to a Wall Street Journal columnist) or actual Nazis (per Newt Gingrich).
See the rest at Frank Rich in the NYT.
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=45935
Posted by Yanira Farray on Aug 22 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Corruption, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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MAL => “How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?”
TD => The same way Democrats win the hearts and minds of middle America by VT calling Sarah Palin a ‘whore’ in an article this weekend.
T.D.
Tom,
I don’t see the parallel.
Do you really believe that Sarah Palin represents middle America in the same manner thatthe Muslim religion is connected to all of those who practice the faith?
Sarah Palin for the GOP nomination in 2012 nomination, please!
I remember the neonazis in Skokie. They were led by Frank Collins-real name Frank Cohen and his dad survived the camps in Germany. This whole thing is a set up to stir up more trouble.
actually, they’re about to do another ‘false flag’ and need to ramp up the demonization of MUZLIM IS-LAMA FASCISTS (tongue in cheek) so they can hang the next mass murder of ‘Merkan’s on MUZLIMZ!!
that’s what this mosque shit is all about. and it’s also an Obomao diversionary tactic to deflect everyone’s eyes from the BP screwjob in the KILLING OF THE GULF OF MEXICO and the TANKING US ECONOMY on his sorry puppetdom watch.
as for PalinDrone, I hope they run her if there IS an amerka in 2012, or an eleckshun, in 2012, and it’s looking dicey for both right now..
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I came in because of the title, and just as I suspected, the writer is a man. Great going! In a patriarchal societie, like islam, you’re a shoe-in. No wonder you’re defending it! If islam wins, here in the West, you’ll be the guest in islamic homes, and the women will be in the kitchen, or standing behind your chair serving you tea.
What you even any notion of what women suffer under islam?
And since when does islam offer anything to people who are NOT islamic? A cultural centre? Hell, even Sunnis don’t offer anything to Shiites, and vice versa.
This is Taquiyya! They’re experts at that. Telling the Westerners one thing- and all the while, intending to do something different.
The mosque is like the camel getting it’s nose in the tent, first, and later, crowding out the owner of the tent, with it’s whole body.
You’re also projecting your idea of what religion is, onto islam. You think therre’s separation of religion and State. It’s a big mistake to think that.
Unlike religion in the West, islam is a package deal, wherein, RELIGION AND POLITICS sre wrapped up together. It’s called Shariah. And it intends to impose it’s will on non-islamics. And the way, they’re going about it is, through our own laws. Using gullible people!
NO MOSQUE!
A Latina Amazon
Bonnie…. such a strange name for a Muslim lady… I presume you are Muslim, and speak for most if not all Muslim women, inasmuch as you write with such definite knowledge and authority of how it is like to be one.
My wife who has been a Muslim all of her life is surprised at most of what you say but, being Muslim is is hesitant to respond and correct you out of reluctance to embarrass or offend you but I, being a Muslim male, can do so, without such concerns, inasmuch as you already know that I do not regard you as anyone more important that I would my sheep or my cow, if I had a cheep or a cow (which I definitely do not). I should order my wife to respond to you herself, which she would, inasmuch as, as you say, I am her lord and master, and she dare not disobey me on pain of fear of my anger and disapproval, but she has her work to do, mis vestidos to launder, clean, press, mis comidas to prepare, and, of course she must be in mi cama whenever I call, so I have taken it upon myself, solely out of love and consideration for her, whom I adore and protect just as well as I would my cow or my sheep (had I one) so that she can get on with her other duties and be troubled not by fear of offending you, although I doubt that anyone, female or otherwise, with your obvious intellectual capacity could be offended or would recognize offense, if it were ever directed in your way.
Thank you for your valuable contribution to my knowledge of how it is to be a Muslim, I had no idea our lives were so constrained.
Maybe I should convert and become a Christian, and my wife could become una mujer libra, a si como Usted?
Aiman bin Abdullah
its a comedy for sure!
this is hillarious….. this gimmick mosque causing so much stir in media….. who really cares? there are billions of christians and muslims that are peaceful and do not care one bit about this little mosque.As a muslim i am personally against it but again who cares! some powerful people are again laughing all the way to the bank as the backers slowly emerge…. political playoffs before the elections ?
constitutional rights or sympathy for tragedy? does it matter? as long as u pick a side someone is happy… creating divide amongst the people and once again reminding us of 911 in the face of islam. I know many muslims who agree its a bad idea! this ‘imam’ was suckered in by his globalist backers in my opinion.
Islam in America is nothing more than psychological warfare. A very small group of powerful elitists are force feeding this crap down the throats of Americans. The ‘islamist’ ‘terrorist’ boogeymen, irans nuclear ambitions, two ugly wars, obama is a muslim and gc mosque….shariah law will come and get you BOO !
you cant get away from it. I’m freekin muslim and i get paranoid when i get on a plane and see other muslims….thinkin what if thats a shoebomber! so I know for this psychological warfare is working on most of us.
And lastly i think Newt Gingrich is right to extent…. Christian Americans have been hijacked in this country…. the Christian faith and values that were the foundation of this country are under siege. His only mistake is blaming it on muslims as they have nothing to do with this battle for your mind…… the people who have stolen our homes and jobs have one last thing to steal and that is your Christian faith! dont give in….
Fred,
The USA was not founded on Christian faith and values. It was founded on principles developed during the Age of Enlightenment which rose to counter established religion, the Christ one.
The body of our Constitution has no mention of any god, or god junior or holy ghosts. The words Christian, trinity or Bible are not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.
The Constitution gives us freedom of and from religion, Christianity gives us book burning (Acts 19:19), coming to a neighborhood near you perhaps. Other fruits of Christianity are patriachy, slavery, misogyny, hell, superstition and intolerance. Ye shall know them by their fruit.
Amen,
Infidel
This country was a refuge for religious freedom. It’s why the Puritans, Catholics and Quakers came here. It’s why the Jews came here. It’s why there are Hindus, Buddhists, B’hias, Muslims, Baptists, Wiccans, etc. are here. If this country had been built on “Christian values” whose values would it be built on because they all have different ones. That’s why there is separation of church and state. So I won’t be forced to go to a Catholic church or forced to be an atheist (like Russia did when it was the Soviet Union). Freedom to practice YOUR CHOSEN religion is the most important thing there is. I don’t like the way Muslims treat women. I don’t like Sharia law, but I’m not a Muslim. The only thing I ask is that I don’t become a subject of anyone else’s religious law. I want you to respect my religion the same way I respect yours.
of course…. freedom of religion (or freedom to not have religion) and the freedom for me to be able to post this comment without worry of the government jailing me is what has made this country the best on earth. Our freedoms have slowly been reduced and I feel that has hurt this country the most even more so than the 2 wars we are in.
Even those freedoms we still believe we have like that of the press or even freedom for music artists for example has been supressed by the few powerful who decide what music we listen to and what we read by controlling the flow of information to the masses and ‘approving’ talent puppet music (although I am very hopeful as i hear about things like major record labels losing major ground while independent labels are doing fine this year) .
Anyhow back to the topic let me clarify maybe i was unclear….. i think it would be hard to refute that christianity has in its core molded this 250 yr old country to some extent to the extent most americans still identify themselves as christians.
With that said who has has slowly been getting shafted in this country? ….. the majority … god fearing, hard working christians.
middle class, freedoms, education depleting, jobs , homes gone, trillion dollar bailouts who do i make the check to?
and who gets the blame….. hmmmm the ‘recession’ or hmmmmm no its those damn mexicans, no its muslim shariaw law, if not that its gotta be the environment? probably should not think about it and turn on the tube and let the virtual fecal matter that is hollywood have its way with yer brain.
while this country ands its majority of christians are slowly joining the third world…. whose reaping all the benefits?
More power to the Muslims who are standing up to the lying Medias who got us involved with these illegal wars and are now pushing us to Hate one another while they loot us. Those that are falling for the Zionists tricks better wake up soon or else.
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[...] The 'Mosque' Affair: An American Comedy : Veterans Today [...]
neo-jews have destroyed the U.S. just like they did europe prior to WWII and israel is the worst investment in U.S. history..
AIPAC/Moussaud/israel=9/11