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Oceanside Pier, thirty seconds

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Second Thoughts

The liberal party line, which I tend to toe, is that the "good" muslims have every right to proceed with building their mosque a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. 

After all, according to the new narrative, "scores" of muslims were also killed in the attacks and several were first responders.

I do not know if the aforementioned is necessarily true but the law of averages would hold out that some muslims were killed along with everybody else, so I will mark that as a given.

The question is why build a mosque so close? Does it spit in the eye of the victims and their families? Are we trying to shoehorn this positive image of the faith, along with a worldwide tour by the Iman subsidized by the state department, down the throats of the american public?

Is this a clash between the gods of private property fighting the gods of religious freedom? An attempt to create a level playing field where none may exist and in the most insensitive location conceivable?  Can liberals drop their huge sense of intellectual superiority for a second and engage in a moment of honest self examination?

I have been pretty adamant about the right to build the mosque. But in retrospect, I also think that we dismiss the feelings of the dissenters at our peril. Why build the mosque there in the first place? Is this some islamic remediation plan?  Is our American notion of fair play and equanimity so great that we simply can't conceive that a lot of this faith's devotees are simply vicious killers with a mile wide victim's complex?

I am sick about people drawing a moral equivalence between christians and muslims. It is rare that we get christian or jewish violence in this country, Eric Rudolph and Oklahoma City being the very rare exception.

Look at the Phillipines, or Indonesia, or Iraq and the history of fraternal violence since time immemorial in the arab lands. The internecine conflicts that have ravaged the kurds, bahai, druze, jews and the rest of the smaller tribes that revolve around the sunni/shia axis. The honor killings, the genital mutilation, the subjugation of women.

We are not all wired the same way. In civilization, the land where we try to live, you don't murder innocent people. You don't take down their planes, you don't throw the elderly off of cruise ships, you don't blow up their temples in South America. Or Bali. Yet the Islamic world gets a free pass, under the largely unsupported bet that there is some sanity present there, somewhere. Doesn't there have to be?

I think that the liberal intelligentsia needs to listen long and hard to the pain of their countrymen. They do not feel like we were attacked by individuals, they have cut through the horseshit and know that we were attacked by religious ideologues who dream of a global caliphate. They have a visceral grasp of a truism that a liberal can not accept, because it doesn't fit into his or her notion that all of god's creatures are destined to walk in peace in the Garden of Eden.

Our foes are bright. They tend to come from our own universities and the higher economic classes. They are remarkably well versed in using our own advanced technology against us. They can use us, feed off of us and then attempt to kill us without a hint of guilt, remorse or shame. Witness the recent Times Square bombing attempt. And we march forward, like saps, offering up the opposite cheek for them. Because we are so innately fair, you know?

On an ideal academic level, I can give you fifty reasons why the mosque should be built. Yet I also can foresee the day when we look at our country cousins and say, you know, they were right.

20 comments:

Sanoguy said...

A couple of points....
1. The proposed building is not a mosque. It is a Community Center with a prayer room.
2. There are currently, as I understand it, 100 mosques in NY City currently. What's one more building occupied by those of the Muslim faith?
3. The constitution... freedom of religion.
4. Property rights... as long as the proposal meets zoning and other applicable rules... they should be allowed to build.
5. Should the Japanese or Americans of Japanese decent be allowed to own land / build in Hawaii?? (remember Pearl Harbor???)
6. All but one of the 9-11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden is Saudi. It is well known that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have been supported by wealthy Saudis for years. Why are we still tolerating the Saudis??? Could it be oil???

It seems like this attack on the "mosque" is driven by a desire to diminish the rights of a minority.

My own hope is that they, the Muslims who own the property in question, voluntarily move to another site. I want this problem to go away so that we can get back to the important stuff... like getting my kid a job!!!

joseph d. said...

Point1) irrelevant. Islam mixes various aspects that others do not.
2)!00 mosques. And not one has a problem. So we do have religious freddom. The problem is noy a mosque, it's the sensitivity of the surrounding are as to its location. And it's due to Islam's tradition of stablishing mosques in their AREA OF "CONQUEST"
3.They have a right, legal, but not every right should be ecercised. I have a right to fart, but ity's not wise to do it in public.
4.see above. They ARE allowed, there's no legal measure against them.
5.The Japanese didn't have the heritage of establishing centers in their areas of conquest, a prosetylizing religion,. And in the area of pearl Harbor, they'd probably be an uproar.
6.)Don't be simplistic, the Middle East is a complex, confusing area. The saudis have given Israel the green light to their airspace if they want to bomb Iran, go figure.
7.) see your own point 2.

8) Same here!
5.)

Anonymous said...

How far away is OK? One-quarter mile? One-half mile? One mile? Two miles? What is the magic distance?

Out of respect for those killed in the Kansas City Bombing, since Tim McVeigh was a Christian, have any churches been built near the site of the Muhra Building? If so, how come?

Are any German beer halls located near Veteran's hospitals?

Anonymous said...

Rob, don't do it. Don't listen to Sean, Rush or Fox. And for Allah's sake, stop looking at those sappy 19th. C and earlier paintings. Go back to Ab-Ex and California Figurative, that's where the $$$$$ is.

Doubtless Frazer

WildBill said...

One in three Americans said in a 2008 First Amendment Center poll that the constitutional right to freedom of religion was never meant to apply to groups most folks think are extreme or fringe.

This whole mosque thing started about a year ago without any problems until an Islamophobic blogger (Geller?) started getting crazy about it. It all seems like ratings games and political posturing to me and has little to do with reality. (Like many of our news stories)

See the following for another perspective or two.

Fareed Zakaria GPS: Al Qaeda vs. Islam

John Stewart The Daily Show

Anonymous said...

I caught a little of the blog today and I’m also struggling with the mosque issue in NY. It is interesting that the attack on the twin towers wiped out a Greek Christian church (I believe I have this right) and that there was an initial effort to rebuild the church with money (20 million) promised to them, However, of late it appears that the Port Commission et al have been stone walling the negotiations to have it rebuilt. If this is all true it pisses me off that we are considering letting the raghead’s build their mosque but not the rebuilding of the one church that was destroyed in the attack on 9/11.
Maybe there is something to be said for being old so that I won’t live long enough to see this country going to hell from lack of leadership and a general public that appears incapable of thinking for themselves. I caught a bit of Rush today on the radio and the things he spouts is unbelievable to anyone with half a brain. And yet, there are way too many people who believe that he is espousing real news and the facts. Excuse me while I puke.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

"Well, the Scary Black People Strategy didn't work out too well, so it's back to the scary Muslims again.
9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11.. come on, everybody sing!.. 9-11, 9-11, 9-11......."

Anonymous said...

great fucking blog, we are so busy kissing everybody's ass so they aren't mad at us it makes us look like pussies, no church, no fucking mosque. how about a plane ride theme park. anyway you have come a long way grasshopper. glad and honored to be your zionist friend, all my goyisms aside

Anonymous said...

Our genitals were mutilated too, the Christians are still paying for the violence they perpetrated during the Crusades and forever after. Genital mutilation? In the name of the tribe (clean-cut Americans) they took at least an inch of foreskin off of me, think of the pride I could hang with if they hadn't done that bit of violence on my birthday. Now I hide my pathetic naked little turtle head in shame. D

Anonymous said...

Okay...I was just reading the blog, and I have an opinion or at least some questions that need to be asked. These are not necessarily directed at you, but at the issue itself.

Why do most people go around saying that they 'respect' other religions?

Are all Muslims bad/terrorists?

If 'a few blocks' isn't satisfactory, what should we make the distance/radius from ground zero to the nearest mosque be?

Of all the stupid things our government/politicians do, and all the things they 'mess with' (changing them for the worse).... religious freedom is probably one that should be left alone. By our government and by us.

Wanda

Blue Heron said...

Great questions, Wanda. Wish I knew the answer. I accept and understand the concept of religious freedom, what I don't understand is the motivation for placing it at that location. It was not a coincidence. The fox is in the chicken house, and the new brand they are selling is moderate islam. Of course, we had some of that moderation on Long Island last year, remember the peaceful muslim who beheaded his wife? All this stuff is beyond my pay grade, unfortunately.

Anonymous said...

Robert--I must be very cynical. I think the whole bruhaha about the mosque was a scheme by a buyer of a depressed property to make a buck. If he or they had just applied for a permit to build a 13 story building--no noise would have been made. Later the building could be converted to whatever use they wished to make of it--including a chapel in a portion of the building.
But before this thing is done with some crazy billionaire will offer to buy the land a a price higher than the present owners paid for it--to "save" the World Trade Center monument. And it will be sold and the Arab businessman will have made his profit.
Never underestimate a dealer in oriental rugs. UNCLE NORM

grumpy said...

if they built some tennis courts there i would be down with it.

Anonymous said...

Why not build a mosque at ground zero? It's been nearly 10 years and nobody cares enough to [finish] construction of a monument to the 911 victims. So let the muslims build a community center to celebrate the day they kicked ass on America.
This country is pathetic. We kiss ass to any country or group of people that we can make some bucks off. Then we write our silly comments and hide our true racist feelings.......

Blue Heron said...

"So let the muslims build a community center to celebrate the day they kicked ass on America."

Very funny comment, anonymous one - thanks for the contribution.

Anonymous said...

Exactly - here's my biggest freakin' problem with all those who want it - AS IF we need to prove to anyone that we are a tolerant society!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We don't need to prove it to anyone.
Where's the synagogues in Saudi Arabia, the women's studies department in Iran, etc

Great post!

windowdancer said...

I just read this and thought it might apply.

A German who lived through World War II was asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. "Very few people were true Nazis," he said, "but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come.
We are told again and again that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this may be true, it is entirely irrelevant.
The fact is that the fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam, rule Islam at this moment in history.
It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who slaughter Jews and Christians or tribal groups throughout Africa. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour- kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.
The hard fact is that the peaceful majority, the "silent majority," is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Communists were responsible for the murder of 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.
China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists killed a staggering 70 million people.
The average Japanese prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia murdering 12 million Chinese civilians.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our posers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like the Germans, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Okay, so maybe it didn't apply...

Anonymous said...

Fokking brilliant, informative, sensitive, holy, crazee blog you write. All over the place. I enjoyed this one immensely.

One caviat: "We are not all wired the same way. In civilization, the land where we try to live, you don't murder innocent people. You don't take down their planes, you don't throw the elderly off of cruise ships, you don't blow up their temples in South America. Or Bali. Yet the Islamic world gets a free pass, under the largely unsupported bet that there is some sanity present there, somewhere. Doesn't there have to be?

No, in this civilization we only commit violence against women non-stop, rapes and murders every six seconds, our mothers sometimes smother their children and then push them off bridges in cars, our schoolkids brutalize anyone different cuz they can and after all, it's not a hate crime, only bullying, boys will be boys, and besides they need some sort of early on training if they are to become the savage, stupid eighteen year old menchiks who will become patriotic fodder for our coming campaigns. We ravage the earth in every way possible, all of the animals, the sky, the waters. By comparison, we are a pacific people. Except when some city's team, baseball, basketball, football, wins a major series. Then we celebrate appropriately by seeing a few more people killed, businesses vandalized, cars set on fire, and general mayhem for the evening. But that's justifiable celebrating. And then of course, we do sell more arms to more people on the planet and then fight them with the arms we happen to have left. And most of all we make technical progress, continual, mind-boggling scientific advances-o yes, some of the meds turn out to be poison later on, but that's the breaks if you want to come up with mega-cures, so what if some people get the permanent shakes, or cancers. You can't stop trying to market new drugs. We have to cure everything, even it we only focus on the throbbing part in lieu of lookiing at the entire system which causes the throb. Build the cars, the skyscrapers, the hugest ships and planes. Dump the waste in process of all sorts into the ocean, and pile it up in third world countries. So what if the mercury in ocean mammals and large fish is eighty times the acceptable amounts, the swordfish TASTES great, and unlike the Japanese, Americans don't EAT dolphins, we merely deprive them of their natural habitat in order to educate the young of our own species. Who cares if "wild" animal life is disappearing with astonishing speed? And then there's the domesticated animal holocaust upon which all our gluttonous noshing is predicated. No big whoop, just what we do, and merely at the cost of an ineffable, invisible price, our souls.....Ah, Western civilization in ALL its various forms and aspects. Were paradise enow....

windowdancer said...

I beg your pardon, Anonymous... I have eaten dolphin (it tastes like a cross between Baby Seal and Bald Eagle) and I am a proud, flag waving, pistol packing American.

Other then that, what's your point?