Merged Two Mosques to be built near Ground Zero

[A'isha]

I bow to your superior knowledge.

But to paraphrase, um, Feynman, I think: To say that an imam is the same as mullah is wrong; to say that an "inman" (whatever that is) is the same as a mullah is also wrong; but to say that both are equally wrong is more wrong than both of them together.

True.

 

[Elind]

Its lined up - watching the direct interview/ soledad first.

OF course my main man Zakaria is up there and gonna lay the smack down...

Been fun meeting you and I am sure we will again, in spite of some differences in perspective, and experiences.

However I think I've said my piece on this issue and I don't intend to repeat/rephrase forever, although not referencing you.

I'll finish with this link, after the reference to the CNN discussion mentioned last night. This person quoted claims to be a Muslim, but I have no doubt that won't prevent the word bigot being thrown around by the usual suspects.

Questions for Imam Rauf From an American Muslim

Of course it's from the WSJ, so those who shoot the messenger will dismiss it without reading.

 

[bit_pattern]

Questions for Imam Rauf From an American Muslim

Of course it's from the WSJ, so those who shoot the messenger will dismiss it without reading.

Well, some of us are probably just sceptical about the motives of a media organisations whose biggest investor is a Saudi prince indignantly questioning anybody else's financial dealings when it comes to receiving money from Islamists.

 

[A'isha]

Been fun meeting you and I am sure we will again, in spite of some differences in perspective, and experiences.

However I think I've said my piece on this issue and I don't intend to repeat/rephrase forever, although not referencing you.

I'll finish with this link, after the reference to the CNN discussion mentioned last night. This person quoted claims to be a Muslim, but I have no doubt that won't prevent the word bigot being thrown around by the usual suspects.

Questions for Imam Rauf From an American Muslim

Of course it's from the WSJ, so those who shoot the messenger will dismiss it without reading.

EDIT: Never mind, found a full version.

 

[A'isha]

Okay, having read it, I have to wonder what the hell this guy is talking about.

He says "What have you said and argued to Muslim-majority nations to address their need for reform? You have said that Islam does not need reform, despite the stoning of women in Muslim countries, death sentences for apostates, and oppression of reformist Muslims and non-Muslims."

This is false. Rauf said "On the issue of reformation, in terms of what is again intended by it, Islam does not need a reformation. It needs just a going back to its basic principles of application." In other words, Islam does not need "reform" in the sense of changing what it is, but that instead it needs to go back to its core values which have been ignored by too many Muslims and Muslim states around the world. And what does Rauf say those values and principles are? American values and principles.

What I now aim to demonstrate may surprise readers, namely that America is substantively an "Islamic" country, by which I mean a country whose systems remarkably embody the principles that Islamic law requires of a government. From a different perspective, it means that Muslims around the world believe in the principles that undergird American government and want those principles upheld in their own societies.


...

As we shall see, many Muslims regard the form of government that the American founders established a little over two centuries ago as the form of governance that best expresses Islam's original values and principles. [emphasis added]

...

What's right about America is its Declaration of Independence, for it embodies and restates the core values of the Abrahamic, and thus also the Islamic, ethic. Since human liberty is one of its aims, and reason the method by which we justify our political order, then the cardinal moral truths from the Declaration of Independence that flesh out the Abrahamic ethic are:

That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - that to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.

...

America's founders thus outlined the moral foundations of a free society - and in the process, an Abrahamic society. These beliefs are fundamental to all Americans and may be said to constitute the American "religion" or creed that all Americans subscribe to and believe in. They are also beliefs fundamental to all Muslims, who regard these beliefs as essential to Islam.

Rauf also expands on the nature of "reform" and Islam in his book, saying in the section titled "Two Approaches to Reform" that

When people seek reform or wish to correct the mistakes of the past, they do it in one of two ways. Either they work constructively, incorporating and learning from the past, or they work critically, seeking to start over by discarding learning from the past. The advantage of the first approach is that it focuses people on what needs to be done by educating and developing them. It is also the more permanent and lasting approach because people are taught how to think through new situations and come up with a right answer - and to recognize when there is, and can be, more than one right answer. The advantage of the second approach is that it is much simpler to teach and inculcate. Crimes are easier to identify, cheaper to punish, and they invoke more passion than does education. And people are driven by passion. Moreover, it is much easier to find teachers to teach the second, critical, approach than the first constructive approach. However, the second approach creates heresies out of any idea that differs from its own and finds it difficult to coexist with other approaches. Its life is also naturally short, since it is defined by what it stands against and therefore does not outlast its opponent.

He calls out the latter, bad type of "reform" as characterizing "reactionary responses to excesses that arguably threw the baby out with the bathwater", and explicitly notes Wahhabism as being the most influential of this latter type. In short, he doesn't think Islam needs the kind of "reform" typified by that extremist creed. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of the position Jasser ascribes to Rauf.

And the accusation that he supports an Islam that features "the stoning of women in Muslim countries, death sentences for apostates, and oppression of reformist Muslims and non-Muslims" is egregiously false. The "reformist" thing was dealt with above, but Rauf has said, very explicitly,

Gender equality is an intrinsic part of Islamic belief.

...

In surveying the women who have been prominent in the history of the Islamic world, it becomes increasingly clear that there is a strong prototype for Muslim women and that women's rights are alive in the very theology of Islam. But, as in most countries the world over, the reality for women does not match the ideals we all know are right and just. As American women are fighting for equal pay for equal work, for reproductive rights and affordable childcare, Muslim women are fighting for compulsory education (in Afghanistan), the right to drive (in Saudi Arabia), and the right to cover their hair (in France and in Turkey). As American women are knocking through glass ceilings to acquire the rights due to them in the Constitution, Muslim women are doing the same to gain full access to their rights as laid out in the Quran and sunnah.

Many of the limits placed on women in Muslim (and non-Muslim) societies are the result of custom, and these limits continue because people have a hard time changing their customs. In terms of realizing social rights, the Muslim world is following a similar trajectory as in the West, and changing a society's notions of what is acceptable in gender roles takes generational change. Just as in America roles have changed dramatically, especially in the last hundered years as America has implemented the Abrahamic ethic to a greater degree, it is reasonable to expect that Muslim societies implementing the justice called for in Islamic theology will undergo parallel transformations.

This is why granting political rights is the most effective way to redress legitimate women's grievances. For as a nation becomes increasingly democratized, the ballot box becomes the means by which each constituent group in society attains its objectives.

and

Muslims believe that America needs to reestablish its original understanding of the First Amendment, which balances the separation of church and state with religious freedom by allowing all religions equal standing[.]

...

Pluralism of religions and churches is the foundation of the establishment clause [in the First Amendment to the US Constitution]. This is similar to the Islamic injunction in the Quran: "Say: O disbelievers. To you your religion, and to me mine" (Quran 109:6). This verse and others together demonstrate that pluralism of religions is a fundamental human right under Islamic law.

The latter makes Jasser's claim that "You willfully ignore what American Muslims most need—an open call for reformation that unravels the bigoted and shoddy framework of political Islam and separates mosque and state" especially egregious, since that's exactly what Rauf does in his book.

He also claims "In your book, "What's Right With Islam," you cite the Brotherhood's radical longtime spiritual leader Imam Yusuf Qaradawi as a "moderate."" This is completely false. What Rauf actually says in his book is,

A fatwa was issued on September 27, 2001, by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi and four other signatories, pointing out that under Islamic law the events of September 11 were terrorist acts, whose perpetrators should be brought to justice, and therefore it was their duty to act accordingly (see the appendix [which is just a straight reproduction of said fatwa, with no preface or commentary at all added by Rauf]). I was called by the New York Times to comment on the fatwa, and I strongly recommended that it be printed, since the Times then was running a special section called "A Nation Challenged." The fatwa would have made valuable reading for the Times' Muslim and non-Muslim readers and would have helped amplify the Muslim moderate voice.

In other words, Rauf doesn't call Qaradawi a moderate at all. He simply says he told the New York Times that they ought to run the text of Qaradawi's fatwa condemning the 9/11 attacks, since doing that would add force to ("amplify") the words of Muslim moderates who were also speaking out on the topic of the horrific and utterly wrong nature of those attacks. And that is the one and only time in the entire book that Qaradawi is mentioned at all.

Either Jasser has never read what Rauf actually wrote and said, or he has and is deliberately lying about it.

 

[Praktik]

Been fun meeting you and I am sure we will again, in spite of some differences in perspective, and experiences.

Yep! I was not able to post for a while when I got promoted but now that I'm settled I can squeak a few in these days.. Pleasure meeting you as well.

I guess my main takeaway from the panel was just the ways the same interview was seen so differently between the panelists. Take Zakaria - with whom I am in 100% alignment on this - and I'm thinking ya ok, thats what I saw.

Then the construction worker comes on and you begin to realize just how different minds will see completely different things from the exact same source! (I am speaking to the construction worker hearing veiled threats when others heard something completely reasonable, for example).

It kind of begets a little hopelessness - the same feeling I got sometimes in Truther debates, or even just mainstream differences on certain issues now and then.

When you realize that many attitudes are immune to change - you start to worry a bit.

I guess the flipside of these differing viewpoints is that among all of us - there's a great variety of outlooks on things, and while issues like this or 9.11 or Big Pharma will sometimes make this fact a depressing one - there's plenty of ways our varying outlooks add strength.

I just gotta remember that...

 

[Ladewig]

News sources are reporting that Donald Trump made an attempt to buy out the largest investor in the Cultural Center property offering him a 25% profit on the condition that any other center be at least five blocks further out than the current site. However, the investor's lawyer said Trump's offer is "just a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight."

 

[Travis]

So people ask about the community center/mosque, "why here?"

I ask, "why not there?"

So then people say, "not here, not now!"

I ask, "then where and when?" Obviously I never get an answer. And why should I? Nothing about this entire debate was ever bounded by or founded in logic. It was always about ephemeral emotions running rampant leading us to an exercise in organized irrationality.

How could the siting have been provocative when that wasn't the intent? Provocation requires an plan on the part of the instigator to provoke. That, it would seem, was the opposite of all that was intended for the site.

Ahh, but supposedly the opponents were mind readers and knew what was really going on. They knew that this was really a Mosque to celebrate Jihadic victory. They somehow knew this without a shred of evidence to substantiate it. They knew this would be a center for terrorist recruitment without any evidence to substantiate it. They claimed the money came from bad people but that was rightly pointed out to be irrelevant since there was no proof the money would be spent on anything untoward. They claimed the Imam was "pro-terrorism" but then failed to prove that when their tortured quote mining was exposed as the intellectual dishonesty it was.

So in the end it fell back to what we all knew this was about in the first place: Islam is supposedly an inherently violent religion that should be treated differently than all others. You know, differently than that religion that sacked Jerusalem and slaughtered every man, woman and child in it. That religion that expelled people from the state of Missouri on the basis of their beliefs in a living Prophet and Golden Plates. Different from the one that still incubates and lets loose abortion clinic bombers to this very day.

Ahh, "but those were the actions of the past and lone nutbags," they cry! And 9/11 was what? It is also in the past, though still within living memory. It was also carried out by a exclusionary group of radicals so ill-thought of by their own religion that they had to find sanctuary in the remote alpine wastelands of central Asia.

So why are we even bothering with the dickering over "where" and "when" a Mosque is appropriate? So long as the land is zoned properly and privately owned it is always appropriate regardless of time. That some people choose to be offended by it is never reason enough to put up obstacles to it. Some people may be "offended" by any number of things that they allow their extemporaneous frivolity of values to declare to be so. Are we always to be held hostage to them?

I would hope not. Not in a country that would like to at least pretend it still is "The Land Of The Free." Not in a time when we have hundreds of thousands of troops shedding their blood on foreign rocks and sand for those very values. Not when we have the opportunity to turn the pains of the past into a bridge for commonality and inclusion. The future is what we will make it and part of that will be forgoing nebulous calls for division and retribution stealthily couched in the shrill harping to heed the needs for "sensitivity" and "context."

So why there? Because this is America.

So why now? Because this is America!

 

[amb]

All the muslims I went to school with and worked with say different.

They're doing just fine here.

Is that so. Tell them their prophet was a pedophile, then watch their reaction.
Tell them it was islam, not the zionists who were responsible for the 9/11 outrage and again watch their reaction.

 

[amb]

News sources are reporting that Donald Trump made an attempt to buy out the largest investor in the Cultural Center property offering him a 25% profit on the condition that any other center be at least five blocks further out than the current site. However, the investor's lawyer said Trump's offer is "just a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight."

Of course the lawyer would say that. The investors are determined to build their structure on that site no matter what, even if it is confrontational. This is where Harris is correct. If these people wished to appear sincere in their actions, seeing that more than 70% of Americans don't want the thing built there, they would go elsewhere. They won't because they say stuff the protesters, we will build it where we want. Wouldn't they look better if they did the decent thing and scrapped this controversial structure seeing that most people do not want it?

 

[JihadJane]

... Not in a country that would like to at least pretend it still is "The Land Of The Free." Not in a time when we have hundreds of thousands of troops shedding their blood on foreign rocks and sand for those very values.

Dream on...

 

[amb]

I have to agree with JJ there. What the **** are Americans doing in Iraq and Afghanistan ?

Edited by LashL: 

Edited to properly mask profanity. Please see Rule 10 re the auto-censor.

The original idea was to get Osama bin Laden. We can't get him because the Pakistan government does not want the Americans to get their hands on him, a fellow muslim.
I still believe Bush and co, including Blair and our own PM Howard should have been charged with treason. Actually lying to the populace to invade a sovereign country under false pretenses.

 

[Chaos]

Thank you for revealing your ignorance. The other word for a mullah is "imam", as has been pointed out repeatedly.

Also thank you for revealing yourself as a liar. If you have "read extensively about islam", as you claim, you would know that the right word is "imam".

Now answer my other questions.

Any chance of you answering my other questions, amb? Or of admitting you´ve been lying about having "read extensively about islam"?

 

[jj-158]

Thank you for revealing your ignorance. The other word for a mullah is "imam", as has been pointed out repeatedly.

Also thank you for revealing yourself as a liar. If you have "read extensively about islam", as you claim, you would know that the right word is "imam".

Now answer my other questions.

It could also be that amb is somewhat dyslexic.

 

[Travis]

I have to agree with JJ there. What the f... k are Americans doing in Iraq and Afghanistan ?

The original idea was to get Osama bin Laden. We can't get him because the Pakistan government does not want the Americans to get their hands on him, a fellow muslim.
I still believe Bush and co, including Blair and our own PM Howard should have been charged with treason. Actually lying to the populace to invade a sovereign country under false pretenses.

It would be a bad idea to try people for treason over fictitious ideas.

 

[JihadJane]

It would be a bad idea to try people for treason over fictitious ideas.

Or nutty dreams.

 

[amb]

Any chance of you answering my other questions, amb? Or of admitting you´ve been lying about having "read extensively about islam"?

Hows this for starters..........The Trouble With Islam by muslim author Irshad Manji.

Infidel by muslim author Hirsi Ali.

They Must Be Stopped by muslim author Brigitte Gabriel.

Cruel And Usual Punishment by muslim author Nonie Darwish.

Why Israel Can't Wait by Jerome R. Corsi. About the thinking behind a pre-emptive strike at Iran's nuclear facility before they develop a nuclear bomb.

These are just books I have on hand. I have read and discarded many more.

What was you question?

 

[amb]

It could also be that amb is somewhat dyslexic.

Short term memory loss perhaps is more like it.

 

[amb]

It would be a bad idea to try people for treason over fictitious ideas.

Fictitious ideas nothing. They knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
It's either that, or they were much more stupid than one can imagine.

 

[Elind]

Well, some of us are probably just sceptical about the motives of a media organisations whose biggest investor is a Saudi prince indignantly questioning anybody else's financial dealings when it comes to receiving money from Islamists.

Oh crap, sucked in again.

As I predicted, attack the media, not the message.