Aug 24 2010
Islam: The Religion Of Phobias
Christopher Hitchens has produced his usual clarity on a new perspective that is arising from the debate over the Ground Zero Mosque. Hitchens does try to chide those who cannot put their opposition to the mosque in clear words – using the straw man example of someone likeneing the mosque to a japanese cultural center in Pearl Harbor:
As for the second, there has long been a significant Japanese-American population in Hawaii, and I can’t see any reason why it should not place a cultural center anywhere on the islands that it chooses.
He is correct, that is a poor analogy. Our reader Trent_Telenko put it precisely right:
Trent_Telenko: A Japanese Shinto shrine dedicated to Emperor Hirohito and Japanese war dead rising 15 stories above the battleship Arizona monument at Pearl Harbor in 1952.
That is the precise analogy. Hitchens’ little straw man did not stand up very well.
But what he did get right is to note how you cannot throw all opposition of the mosque into the grouping of Islamophobics – precisely because of what Islam represents:
But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything “offensive” to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter …
As for the gorgeous mosaic of religious pluralism, it’s easy enough to find mosque Web sites and DVDs that peddle the most disgusting attacks on Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and other Muslims—to say nothing of insane diatribes about women and homosexuals. This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be “phobic.” A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.
…
At the United Nations, the voting bloc of the Organization of the Islamic Conference nations is already proposing a resolution that would circumscribe any criticism of religion in general and of Islam in particular.
The truth is, the ones holding irrational fears are the more strident followers of Islam (I refuse to paint the entire religion with a broad brush). Hitchens is right, we cannot allow one religion to twist and warp our collective views because some uber orthodox members of Islam are afraid of women and certain animals:
From my window, I can see the beautiful minaret of the Washington, D.C., mosque on Massachusetts Avenue. It is situated at the heart of the capital city’s diplomatic quarter, and it is where President Bush went immediately after 9/11 to make his gesture toward the “religion of peace.” A short while ago, the wife of a new ambassador told me that she had been taking her dog for a walk when a bearded man accosted her and brusquely warned her not to take the animal so close to the sacred precincts. Muslim cabdrivers in other American cities have already refused to take passengers with “unclean” canines.
Islam fears open debate, technical and social progress, woman as equals, the voices of the people supreme over the clerics, dogs etc. It is the religion of phobias. Which brings a whole new meaning to the phrase Islamophobia. It now seems more redundant than anything else.
I believe everyone should feel free to follow their own religious path in America, just don’t ever try to impose that path on all of us. That is the scope of our individual rights in our Constitution. We are all free to pursue Life, Liberty and Happiness in our own way. Americans do not fear diversity, equality, open debate – or dogs. We have no desire to impose phobias as new rules of law.
Addendum: One further note: If the liberal left wanted to look anymore incoherent than they do with their support for the GZM I cannot think of a way to make it happen. These deeply paranoid people, who fear the sign of a cross or christianity anywhere at any time, cannot be taken seriously when they cry for freedom of religion. They have spent decades acting like vampires, demanding all religious symbols and speech be stricken. Now they cry about freedom of religion? Pulleaase!
The Ground Zero Mosque is the left’s tar baby.
They can’t let go of it, and insist on keeping it in the public eye, because it’s one of their identity issues.
AJ,
The Left’s arguements for buiklding the Ground Zero Mosque don’t pass the laugh test.
Take for example their insistence on caling it a “Cultural Center” and not a “Mosque.”
The majority of the land at the Catholic Church I go to is a K-12 school, cultural/convention center, and religious retreat.
It is still a church.
President Ronald Reagan won a great many political battles from giving in on the little things, like names, and getting the big policy things he wanted.
The Left is doing the complete opposite.
There will be a Mosque on the site, the Left and their AP mouth pieces admit that. And both refuse to admit because it has a Mosque on the site, it is a Mosque.
And this in the face of the fact that the Cordoba Initiative plans to spend 100,000,000 dollars to finish the mega-mosque, which they will dedicate on September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack.
After the same NY City zoning officials that approved the Cordoba Mosque also killed the rebuilding of a Greek Orthodox Church on the Ground Zero site that was destroyed by the Islamist’s 9/11/2001 attack.
And in the face of all that they expect the 70% (now approaching 80%) of Americans against the Mosque to think that the Cordoba initiative isn’t a “Ground Zero Muslim Victory Mosque and Leftist Cultural Reparations Center?”
This won’t go away as a political issue until the congress passes a “Ground Zero Historic Battlefield act” that zones out all religious istitutions near ground zero that were not there on 9/11/2001.
This would pass the Federal Court “equal treatment of religion test” and just so happen to outlaw the Cordoba Initiative Ground Zero Muslim Victory Mosque and Leftist Cultural Reparations Center. (GZMVMLCRC)
And also forever reframe the Ground Zero attack into an act of “Muslim Supremacist Agression” in a way the Left can never touch.
Listen you Islamophobic, homophonic, colorophobic, fearophobic, bigoted Americans, we are going to build this “bridge” because we are in America and our beliefs are just like yours, (sharia laws are like your laws written in your constitution) and we like you and want you to see how honest and kind we really are, just like Americans. We think you are a little sentimental about “ground zero”, but we are a little sentimental about Cordoba and Spain and 1492 when we got run out of Spain by the crusaders. But we OWN the property and we are going to build that “BRIDGE” and cram it down your throats because we can. So America put that in your pipe and smoke it you crying babies.
Heck, this is going around. I’ve been reading that they haven’t been able to determine how Rauf and the mosque builders are being financed but dKOS, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert all seem to think that they identified the financial source…Fox NEWS!
Here is the link at dkos. I don’t believe it. IMHO, they are simply paranoid and insane over this. What do you think?
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/8/24/895758/-Awesome-Jon-Stewart-debate:-Is-Fox-News-evil-or-stupid
Trent, considering the judge overturning Obama’s EO on the ESCR, would this require a judge to put a stop to this mosque building?
No. Conservative judges will follow the law, Leftists their whims.
The Ground Zero Muslim Victory Mosque and Leftist Reparations Center is about Leftist identity, so it will be built…unless we declare Ground Zero a National Historic Battlefield.
That will take a Republican supermajority in the Congress with a Republican President.
Yeah, the Left was all for things like “P*ss Christ” and Virgin Mary statues made out of dung. Why doesn’t one of them make a “P*ss Mohammed” and then they can see what it’s all about? Or maybe they’re “Islamophobic” themselves, eh?
The more this issue lingers in the media, the more it drags down the commies in power now.
In the end, the Hamasque will move, I think, but not before giving the demsheviks le coup finale (at least for 2010)…
This issue makes me so angry I could spit. As AJ said, they have spent decades taking away our rights and now they have the gall to try to cram this offensive Victory Mosque down our throats. We’re bigots? I said a while back that we had to stand up and dish it back. Obama is that very Scary Competent guy that has accomplished too damn much. McCain should have fought him in his own neighborhood. He had Ayers, Farrakan and a church that was closer to Farrakan. I don’t care what he is, but I do care about the damage he is inflicting because we can’t go back.
Somebody better start watching the UN & Internationals. I don’t know how much damage Obama can do through them, but be prepared. My list of wars since 2003 was #1 MSM, #2 UN etc, #3 Terrorists, because you have to get through the first 2 to get to the others. I think whoever is running Obama intends to sit him in that chair next.
Hitchens did a good job with this piece. The man knows how to make a point.
I hear this Rauf character was flapping his gums about how we starved Iraqi babies when Saddam was in power and how we helped the Afghanis during the Soviet invasion, so needless to say we created 9/11. Religion is like a mental illness with some of these people, they are not capable of logical thought.
The problem is that Islam is a religion and Sharia, or the organization of a society. But with the Mosque you get both. If Muslims think this country with a written constitution, unlike any other country in the world that I can think of at the moment, is going to let Sharia have it’s say, the Muslims are delusional.
Find at FREEREPUBLIC
9/11 Mosque Imam Wrote Much of the Guts of Obama’s Historic Cairo Speech!
August 24, 2010 7:45:34 PM MDT · by geraldmcg · 7 replies
WebToday ^ | 8-24-10 | WebToday
WEBTODAY EXCLUSIVE (August 24, 2010)– QUESTION: Who really was speaking on that historic day of June 4th 2009 in Cairo, Egypt? President Obama or the Imam of the proposed Ground Zero Mosque, Feisal Abdul Rauf? ANSWER: Feisal Abdul Rauf! Link to audio of Rauf’s admission The Shoebat Foundation obtained this shocking audio recording of Rauf’s own voice boasting in Arabic that Obama’s historic Cairo speech was provided by the Imam and the Cordova Initiative in what the Imam called “The Blue Print†which he said was the solution to the Islamic-American divide. Rauf claimed Chapter 6 of the Imam’s work…
Also met in 2008 with Iran’s Larenjani……this is a bad guy, with no good intentions.
wws and others, I learned tonight from a tea party meeting that some new organization that spun off from ACORN in Houston had been registering 2000 voters per week.
Then I read this from Riehl website:
http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2010/08/an-acorn-grows-in-texas.html
But then when a tea party holds a meeting, they always have voter registration forms for people to fill out.