…without getting into the whole question of whether the term antisemitism should apply only to Jews and without the complicating factor that not all Muslims are Semitic. Why? Because if you replace the word Muslim with the word Jew in what this man says and alter the historical references appropriately, he would be speaking–intelligently, articulately, with good humor and a controlled potentially persuasive anger; which is what is most frightening to me–some of the most pernicious of classical antisemitic tropes. And so I wish I could use the term antisemitism, not to make this about the Jews, or even to conjure Jew-hatred, but because I wish I had a word, a single, powerful word that would capture the xenophobic, racist, essentializing, religious hatred of Muslims that this man is espousing. Muslim-bashing doesn’t do it for me because Muslim-bashing captures neither the tone nor the intelligence with which the man speaks.
My own understanding is that the building at ground zero that the Muslim organizations have proposed is going to be a community center that includes a space for prayer–which is very different from building a mosque. Now, whether or not it is appropriate to have any religion-specific building at ground zero, community center or otherwise, seems to me a legitimate question, but even if this man’s description of the proposed building as a mosque were accurate–and, come on, a 13-story mosque? That just doesn’t make sense–his argument is not about the building per se; his argument, which sounds an awful lot like the argument in books like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is about asserting that Muslims have an agenda of world-domination. Watching it sent chills down my spine, because I am very aware of the kind of violence and oppression that this kind of rhetoric can lead to, and I say that not as a cloaked reference to the Holocaust, or to any other instances of the oppression of the Jews specifically, but as a reference to the ways that all oppressors fashion an intellectual justification–and thereby create an intellectual history that cannot be erased–for the oppressions that they prosecute.
Cross posted on It’s All Connected.
I can’t speak to the video because I’m not going to watch someone spend eight minutes bashing anyone. (Unless it’s really funny.)
My own understanding is that the building at ground zero that the Muslim organizations have proposed is going to be a community center that includes a space for prayer–which is very different from building a mosque.
How? Sounds like a mosque to me. A mosque with extras, certainly. My understanding is that in Islam, much as in Christianity, a mosque is any building or area dedicated for worship. There’s a Catholic church in our local mall, it’s no less a church just because there’s a Cinnabon next door.
his argument, which sounds an awful lot like the argument in books like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is about asserting that Muslims have an agenda of world-domination.
Well, don’t they? Certainly not *every* Muslim – but then again, not *every* Christian is out there evangelizing and winning souls for Christ, but most of us would say that Christianity has an agenda of world conversion, as does Islam. The principal differences between the religions in this area is that Islam has not yet had a Reformation, separating church from state. There are Islamic states; by contrast, we don’t really have any Christian states anymore and haven’t for a long while.
So, religious states plus mandate for universal conversion – how does that not add up to a world domination agenda? Maybe not a very effective or necessarily aggressive agenda – Yemen is not out there conquering people.
But talk to a fervent Muslim, and he wants a Muslim world filled with Muslim states and Muslim believers. That’s on the agenda. There’s no point at which Muslims say “oh, the ummah is big enough, let’s stop converting and expanding so that we can preserve the diversity of religions and faiths that was so important to the prophet.”
Respecting the rights of Muslims to believe what they wish, and ensuring that my own secular state does not trample on their rights or oppress members of our country who follow that religion, does not require me to pretend that Islam as a whole wants the same kind of world as the Unitarians do.
The Vatican?
Utah?
Robert,
Quickly, because I may not have time to come back later. There is a difference between saying that Islam has as a value the idea that the world should be Muslim and saying Muslims have an agenda of world domination. You make that distinction in your comment when it comes to Christianity and Christians.
More when I have a chance.
This reflects a common confusion about the building that people like the man in the video encourage: it is not, in any meaningful sense at ground zero. It’s about two blocks away from the edge of ground zero, which is a considerable distance in Manhattan; I don’t know whether there are any other religious structures within that two block radius, but it’s certainly possible, and there are a number of privately owned restaurants, stores, and office buildings within the radius. This isn’t a religious building built on the site of a disaster as part of a memorial (or for any reason); it’s a religious building whose site happens to be near a disaster site.
Well, and talk to a lot of evangelical Christians and they want a Christian world filled with Christian states and Christian believers. They might not currently have hardline religious states to the extent that fundamentalist Muslims do, but a lot of them would like to. Comparing the beliefs of fundamentalist Muslims to Unitarians, but that’s just ridiculous; try comparing fundamentalist Muslims to fundamentalist Christians, and you’ll find that even if their recent behavior has some significant differences, their philosophies are very similar.
Also, on the topic of the title of the post, how do you feel about the word “Islamophobic” as a description of this kind of rhetoric? It obviously isn’t a perfect parallel, but that’s partly just because English is a messy language, and “xenophobic” and “homophobic” have set precedent for words ending in “-phobic” to mean “bigotry against” rather than “fear of.”
I worked for a summer in that neighborhood several years ago, before 9/11, and I don’t remember the layout exactly, but I’m nearly certain that Trinity Church is about two or three blocks from the WTC site.
Ted K:
Thanks for clarifying this. Also, regarding your question about Islamophobia: That term just didn’t come to mind when I was trying to think of what to use. It probably is the best one that we have.
Hussein Ibish (who is one of the most fantastic pro-Palestinian writers I’ve ever encountered) had an excellent post the other day demonstrating the parallels between some typical Islamophobic arguments and some classic anti-Semitic arguments. I highly recommend it.
(To be clear, I think it is important to keep anti-Semitism and Islamophobia separate, because I don’t think they typically manifest in the same ways and because the convergance often is used to try and diminish one of the group’s historical and contemperaneous experience with oppression. The strength of Ibish’s post isn’t that it says trite things like “both Jews and Muslims are accused of seeking global dominations”. The strength is that he astutely identifies the sort of faulty, unsympathetic, and often bad faith exogeses of Jewish and Muslim texts which are then pressed into service as warrants for bigoted views).
I actually met Hussein Ibish years ago — we were at UMASS Amherst at the same time. He was VERY impressive for an undergraduate.
I agree with your recommendation of that blog post, and would recommend Hussein’s blog generally.
No kidding? I first came across HI when he was interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg, and since then have been following his own blog. We’ve gchatted a few times too. He’s a very nice guy, and wicked smart. I, of course, second the recommendation of his blog generally (on top of that specific post).
There are at least 5 churches that close to the World Trade Center site- including one right across the street. (not houses of worship – christian churches)
As for whether or not the proposed building is a community center with a worship site or a “mosque with extras” as Robert put it, well that church in the mall may still be a church, but it doesn’t magically turn the whole building into a church. The building as a whole is still a mall.
There are at least 5 churches that close to the World Trade Center site- including one right across the street. (not houses of worship – christian churches)
Well, I suggest we tear down every one of those churches, whose members/adherents flew airplanes into the WTC because of their religious ideology.
I think we can be fairly confident that none of the people who might become members of this mosque once it’s built ever flew an airplane into any building.
For things like this, I’d say “cold, calculated racism” is the best description. As a Jew, people like this terrify me, because I know exactly what they’ll be saying when they decide that some group I’m a part of (be it as a Jew, a woman, a person who is LGBT, what have you) isn’t acceptable to them. I’m less scared of the Westboro Baptists than I am of people like this, because people like this are capable of hiding their hate under a facade of reasonableness.
So, religious states plus mandate for universal conversion – how does that not add up to a world domination agenda?
So we should be tearing down Catholic churches?
So we should be tearing down Catholic churches?
Every place that is sacred/monumental/memorial to you on account of it having been kamikazed into by Catholic suicide bombers, absolutely you can tear down some churches.
OK, no churches anywhere near the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Timothy McVeigh claimed to retain the core beliefs of Catholicism, and all Christians are the same. So we sure can’t have any churches around there. It would offend the families of those who died.
Now that Robert mentions it, I am bothered by the cross erected at Auschwitz. I feel that’s different because 1) the institutional complicity of the Church, which has no real equivalent in the Muslim world with respect to 9/11 because of the lack of hierarchical authority in Islam, 2) the Holocaust as the culmination of centuries of oppression and murder of Jews by the Church/Christians, which, again, has no real equivalence in the 9/11 attacks, 3) the cross was put up at Auschwitz in an attempt to claim the site on behalf of the Church, while this mosque basically just happens to be within a few blocks of Ground Zero. I certainly wouldn’t say there shouldn’t be churches in the village that exists next to Auschwitz.
Robert @16: religious state plus mandate for universal conversion absolutely describes the Catholic church. If you’re going to move the goalposts by adding in terrorists, then I guess we should be flattening some churches in Ireland.
If the mosque was being established by imams who were spiritual mentors for the 9/11 terrorists, then you’d absolutely have a point. “Well they’re all Muslims” is just fucking stupid.
I don’t understand what this “Catholic” church people are referring to is. Since the “no Mosque” people aren’t make no distinctions between different groups of Muslims, it seems fair to just treat all of Christianity as a single, Borg-like mass.
Also, we should tear down all Christian churches built anywhere in the US where Native Americans were killed, attacked or purged by Christians.
A quote from the Ibishblog entry that David linked to upthread. This is just a small piece, I recommend reading the whole post:
Thanks for that, Amp. I have bookmarked the blog post and will get to it when I can. It does make you wonder, though, when we will start hearing–and maybe this is in the Ibishblog post and you just didn’t quote it–am Islamophobic version of the blood libel (from which some of the tropes he refers to above come).
I’d agree that both Christianity and Islam have, even in the mainstream, “an agenda of world conversion,” but not an agenda of world domination.
It’s true! Other than Vatican City, Costa Rica, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Cyprus, etc etc, it’s nearly impossible to think of a Christian state! Plus there are all the states which say they’re not Christian states, but nonetheless provide special status for Catholicism in their Constitutions, such as Andorra, Argentina, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Italy, Indonesia, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain.
Oh, and apparently certain American Christians — those who argue that the USA is and should be understood as a Christian nation — haven’t yet heard of this “reformation” you refer to.
It’s a matter of degree, from Vatican City (an absolute religious monarchy), to, at the other extreme, Denmark (which has an official religion — Lutheran — but is otherwise a liberal democracy). But it’s certainly not true that there’s a worldwide agreement among Christians that church and state should be separated.
By this standard, you could say Christianity has a world domination agenda. But that would be an asshole, bigoted thing to say (unless you’re saying it sarcastically), because it’s substantially untrue of Christians in general. Although there are prominent Christians who say things like “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity,” those people are not all Christians, nor even a majority of Christians.
A few points:
1) Muslims do not have a Borg mass-mind. “There’s no point at which Muslims say…” is a bigoted statement, because “Muslims” do not say things in a universal fashion, any more than Christians or Jews do.
2) There are huge masses of fervent (“Having or showing great emotion or zeal”) Muslims who do not want a world filled with Muslim states. The large, mainstream majority of America’s two million Muslims do not advocate making Islam the official US religion, for example. (There is an extremist minority who do advocate that — but there’s also an extremist minority of Christians who say similar things. Neither group represents their whole religion).
If you deny that these Muslims exist, you’re either ignorant or a liar. In any case, the view you expressed is bigoted.
Further reading:
Anas Altikriti: No, we don’t want to conquer the world
Do Muslims want to reimpose dhimmitude or live as equals?
From that last link (just a small bit from a larger argument):
Gee, you’re right, Rob: There are no fervent Muslims who favor equality. (Rolleyes).
nobody.really –
In an Islamic state – one where the majority religion is Islam and where the legal system is based on Sharia – Islam is the established religion. Muslims occupy a privileged position that is enshrined in law. Conversion from Islam to another faith is generally punishable by either death or at least loss of civic status. Converting people from Islam to another faith is often a capital crime as well. Building of churches, synagogues, etc. is either legally or practically forbidden. Etc., etc.
While the Vatican might be called a Christian state, it’s a little over 100 acres in Rome and isn’t particularly significant. And you’re doubly wrong about Utah -first, being part of the United States, the Mormon religion does not have the status of an established religion. Second, no actual Christian denomination considers the LDS Christian.
Amp, with regards to the parallel you draw between anti-semitic statements and statements such as the ones in this video; are people who publish statements like that about Jews able to cite Scripture that supports them and give examples of Jewish commentators and Rabbis who publicly state such views? The fact that different people make the same kinds of statements about different religions does not make the factual basis of the statements equivalent.
RonF:
The quick answer to your question is yes, if by yes you understand that these people take statements out of context, interpret them ahistorically and assume, and assert, that Jews also understand them ahistorically–essentially what the guy in the video does with the passage that he quotes from the Quran. Now, it is a fair question for someone who is not Muslim (or Jewish) and/or who is not well-versed in Islamic (or Jewish) law and tradition, exegesis, etc. to ask how Islamic (or Jewish) tradition understands such passages, but if one starts from the position that Muslims (or Jews) are, essentially liars, then one has already decided how one is going to understand the Muslim (or Jewish) response. I am not suggesting that this is your position, but it is clearly the position taken by the guy in the video, and it is, just as clearly the position taken by all the Christians who found evidence in Jewish scripture/tradition for, for example, the blood libel, for the Jews ostensible preoccupation with money and for a whole host of other antisemitic tropes.
Ron, I’ll once again quote from Ibish’s post:
So yes, antisemites certainly do quote from Jewish holy books, and from leaders including some rabbis, in support of their distorted and dishonest picture of Judaism.
Amp, that’s an impressively sized list of Muslims and Muslim organizations that favor religious equality and democracy. What is the level of influence in the Moslem world of those people? How much of what they propose is actually observed by those who are in power in Islamic countries (those where the majority of people are Moslem)? How much of what they propose is favored by the majority of Moslems?
Those people who propose that the U.S. be understood as being a Christian nation don’t mean it in the same way as those who define their countries as Islamic nations do. To say that most of the people who founded this country and wrote the Constitution were either Christian or strongly influenced by it is defensible. To say that our laws are derived from a Christian understanding of right and wrong and liberty and freedom and a particular relationship between church and state is also defensible. But very, very few people are saying that only Christians should have full civic rights or hold office or be free to practice their religion – all of which are pretty common with regards to Muslims in Islamic countries.
Ron wrote:
And, in a later comment:
According to Wikipedia, there are five states in which “Sharia law or the Quran” is used “as a form of legislation.” In contrast, there are seventeen majority-Muslim countries which are officially secular.
So — just as in Christianity — there are a spectrum of countries, and not all majority-Muslim countries are alike. However, secular states are far more common in majority-Muslim countries than Islamic states.
ETA: There are also 14 states in which Islam is the official state religion, but they are not “Islamic states” in the strong sense of having legal system based on Sharia, although some of do have Sharia family courts. I’d say these countries are on the spectrum between having strong Islamic states, and having official, total separation of religion and state.
I think that they ought to be able to build, and I think it makes no difference whether it’s a Mosque or a community center or whatnot.
Personally, I’m just tired of the ‘offense squad’ freaking out every five minutes and insisting that we all tailor our behavior so as not to offend them. Politically correct bullshit is what it is. I guess the difference is that, unlike Robert & Ron, I think that other people have rights even when their use of them upsets me.
—Myca
Have you seen the Constitution Party?
Amp, thanks for the citations. I’d note that while some Islamic countries may not cite the Quran in their constitutions, actual law and practice deprives non-Moslems of their rights in many of them that are officially secular.
Jake, that citation says that the Constitution Party think that the U.S. was founded by Christians using the Bible and Christian doctrine as their guide, but that all persons regardless of their religion should have freedom to practice their religions and should have full civil rights. I don’t see how that contadicts my point regarding the difference between majority Moslem countries and those where they are not in the majority.
Myca, your comment about me makes no sense. For one thing I haven’t said a word about the mosque or prayer center or whatever that is proposed for Ground Zero. For another, the citation of that thread doesn’t provide any demonstration or support for your rather absurd assertion that I don’t think other people have rights even if their use of them upsets me.
We’re in full agreement here, though, I must say. I expect I’ll have opportunity to cite this before too long.
The large, mainstream majority of America’s two million Muslims do not advocate making Islam the official US religion, for example. (There is an extremist minority who do advocate that
Yeah, as a matter of fact I’ve seen ads for a meeting of just such a group near where I live this coming weekend if I’m not mistaken. In fact, their objective is to overturn the American government and install an Islamic one. They claim to have had a few hundred last year and to expect a few thousand this year. I’ll be interested to see what the media coverage will be.
But perhaps now I will offer a comment on the “mosque at Ground Zero” issue. More than once around here I’ve been told that it doesn’t matter whether or not I intend to give offense when I say or do something, it’s the actual effect on the feelings of homosexuals/women/Hispanics/etc. that matters, especially when I’ve been told that they are offended – see the discussion of my use of the term “illegal aliens”. So by that logic should we not ask the survivors of the victims of 9/11 what their opinion is and act accordingly?
“Act accordingly” is rather vague, RonF. What did you have in mind? As far as I can tell, the consequences of your saying something offensive are other people telling you they are offended. Nobody is suggesting that families of 9/11 victims should be forbidden to express their opinions.
The irony, of course, is that it’s Muslims who are accused of wanting certain other faiths to stay in an inferior state of dhimmi existence. Seems like some people in America are just made that the Muslims are stealing their flava.
Ah, you’re entirely right. I’d thought that you posted in opposition to the mosque, but I see now that you hadn’t. Many apologies, I was mistaken.
—Myca
I see that my apology was premature.
Well, if someone makes it clear that your use of a term is offensive to them, and you continue to use it, it gets murky whether or not you ‘intend’ offense.
No. This isn’t logic.
Religious freedom and equality are constitutional rights. Whether you think that it’s a jackass move for a Muslim group to want to build a mosque within a few blocks of ground zero or not (and for the record, I don’t), that doesn’t change that
religious freedom and equality are constitutional rights.
I think it was a jackass move to wear American flag t-shirts to school ‘in protest’ of Cinco de Mayo … but even though it was offensive (and a calculated, deliberate offense, I’d wager), that doesn’t invalidate the first amendment.
And no, asking the offended group what to do about it doesn’t make sense either, whether they were latin@ students or 9/11 victims. Their offense doesn’t trump constitutional rights.
Now, you’re free to argue that people are jerks for doing offensive things, and sometimes you’ll be right, and sometimes you’ll be wrong. Sometimes the reason people take offense is that they’re bigoted asshats, and sometimes they take offense because the other person is deliberately pushing their buttons. Sometimes it’s both.
None of these cases somehow make it okay to discriminate against Muslims.
—Myca
Actually, I’m a little unclear on what Robert or Ron are advocating.
Are you (either of you) saying that the NYC government should step in and do what it can to legally prevent this from happening — through modifying zoning codes, for example?
Or are you saying that they should have every legal right to build on that site if they want to, but you think they’re acting like jerks by doing so?
RonF,
From that link:
And then look – just like Islamic rule!
Do facts have any impact upon your beliefs or do you really just believe what you want to believe?
Actually, I’m a little unclear on what Robert or Ron are advocating…[state intervention] or [laissez faire]?
I am not a resident or citizen of New York and so it does not matter what I think. I should have, and do have, no input or control over the process.
As a question of general principle, I think the state has no role in deciding where a religious building can go. I think anyone wanting to build a religious structure at Ground Zero with the religious implications of this one is a jerk. I think people not wanting a mosque at Ground Zero are well within their rights to express their cultural opposition.
And I think people naming their Muslim cultural outreach center after the capital of the Islamic caliphate in Spain might have their own agenda.
Robert:
Well, Robert, I don’t know. Do all the Christians who name churches and schools, not to mention write books celebrating Catholic heroes, some of whom have become saints, have an agenda of celebrating the rabid antisemitism held and promulgated by many of the people such places, books, etc. are named for? Whatever else it may have been, and I am not being naive or denying negative aspects of its history, the Islamic caliphate in Spain also represented at times and in places one of the most tolerant, multicultural, artistically and intellectually fertile historical periods Europe has known.
It does seem to me that both you and RonF are predisposed not to trust Muslims, primarily–but perhaps not only–as a result of the September 11th attacks; and I think that predisposition not to trust, not to mention the selective nature of some of the points you and he have made against Muslims/Islamic nations/etc., makes it difficult to feel like you are arguing in good faith.
No, Myca, your apology is still in order. For the record, then.
To use your phrase, I think putting a mosque there is a jackass move. Not because I don’t trust the particular group of Moslems building it; I don’t know enough about them to have an opinion. My opinion is that if a prayer center is to be put at Ground Zero it shouldn’t be of any one faith. IIRC there were Christians, Jews, Moslems and likely Sikhs, Hindus and atheists who died then.
But I disagree with Robert in the role of the State in controlling where places dedicated to religion and worship can be placed. Moslems have a right to build a mosque just as Christians have a right to build a church, but that doesn’t mean that you have the right to build it anywhere you want to. Zoning commissions have legitimate power to restrict the building of churches, mosques, synagogues or other such things and can do so for various reasons. In my home town a group of Christians were denied the right to build a church on the main road through town because the village board simply decided that it was not an optimal use of the property. They were hoping to put some kind of commercial or retail establishment there. I was at the village board meeting where that hearing occurred and the decision delivered and explained (for a different matter entirely).
The commission had the right to grant this permit. They also had the right to turn it down, even if the reason was simply that they felt it would be too controversial. And the protesters have the right to protest the decision.
Now, if the Moslems were forbidden from building a mosque there but a group of Christians were permitted to build a church there, then that would not be right. I think that in such a case the Moslems would have a legitimate case to claim religious discrimination.
Do all the Christians who name churches and schools, not to mention write books celebrating Catholic heroes, some of whom have become saints, have an agenda of celebrating the rabid antisemitism held and promulgated by many of the people such places, books, etc. are named for?
Sometimes.
I do Muslims the courtesy of assuming they can be as scheming, tyrannical, wicked, and evil as a Christian.
It does seem to me that both you and RonF are predisposed not to trust Muslims, primarily–but perhaps not only–as a result of the September 11th attacks; and I think that predisposition not to trust, not to mention the selective nature of some of the points you and he have made against Muslims/Islamic nations/etc., makes it difficult to feel like you are arguing in good faith.
I don’t trust Muslim militants, the ones who say that they’re at war with me etc. And I don’t trust people like you who seem to always desire we conflate these types together with their peaceable-farmer neighbors. I can be personal friends with all 900 million reasonable Muslims; it only takes one of the (1,000? 1 million? 100 million?) unreasonable warrior types to ruin my whole day.
I don’t particularly want a clash of civilizations/clash of religions type conflict, but if we’re going to have one, I want my civilization and/or religion to win. If that discomfits or saddens the 900 million peaceable types, that’s too bad. If they kill or neutralize their fanatics, then I won’t need to, and the whole clash-of-civilizations thing can just go away.
If that’s what they want, of course.
My opinion is that if a prayer center is to be put at Ground Zero it shouldn’t be of any one faith.
Again, describing this as “a prayer center…at Ground Zero” is simply and completely false. I had occasion to be downtown the other day and I happened to walk right past St. Paul’s, which is not even one block away from Ground Zero, in fact adjoins it, much closer than this planned community center/mosque/whatever you want to call it will be.
Taking a brief look at Google Maps now, it appears that there’s a Greek Orthodox church less than one block South of Ground Zero, St. Peter’s less than one block north, a Methodist church about a block northwest, and Trinity Church is about one block south (block definitions can get a bit complicated in lower Manhattan, and I’m not sure exactly where the planned site of the community center is, but I suspect that it’s further than Trinity, and it’s certainly further than St. Paul’s and, assuming Google Maps is correct, the other churches I mention).
I mean, if this were a new church, or a synagogue, or whatever, not only would no one have a problem with its proximity to Ground Zero, I’m doubt anyone would even notice its proximity to Ground Zero (I mean, sure they’d notice, in the same way they’d notice it’s near a restaurant they like, but they probably wouldn’t ascribe any particular significance to it).
And I don’t trust people like you who seem to always desire we conflate [Muslim militants] together with their peaceable-farmer neighbors.
This sentence makes no sense to me. It appears to me that people like you and RonF, who have a problem with this community center, are the ones conflating militants with their “peaceable-farmer neighbors” (given that this is NYC we’re talking about, I doubt there will be many farmers visiting the community center). On the other hand, I’d say the reason most of us have no objection to the community center is because we’re not conflating the two groups, and because there is absolutely no reason to believe the community center is being built by or at the behest of militant groups.
Nope, no paranoid suspicion of Muslims as a group here, folks!
Nope, no paranoid suspicion of Muslims as a group here, folks!
I am suspicious of pretty much every human group out there. I fret over Christian dominionists and nuclear ecofeminists and Muslim terrorists and abortion clinic bombers and desperate Jews, Hindus, Catholics and FSMers who do crazy-ass shit.
People are fucking nuts. If you don’t have some paranoid suspicion in your worldview, you haven’t been paying attention.
Jake, I read through the statements in your first two blocks. The rest I didn’t see; were they on the home page or further into the site? I missed them somehow.
Anyway; that second block directly contradicts your “just like in an Islamic state” assertion. In an Islamic state non-Islamic faiths are restricted. In most of them one or more of the following apply
Their adherents are not permitted to worship freely
They are not permitted to proseltyze
They are not permitted to import or print and distribute their scripture
They are not permitted to build places of worship
They are not permitted to wear or openly display symbols of their religion on their persons or their buildings.
They are not permitted to hold office or be members of the government.
They must pay a special tax.
Assaults against them are often not prosecuted.
A Moslem converting to their faith may be punished by loss of civic status, fines or even execution.
Etc., etc.
Try bringing a Bible into Saudi Arabia. Try putting a cross on your front door there. If you are female, try driving, or walking around without being accompanied by your husband, uncle, son, father or brother.
I don’t necessarily approve of all of what the writer of your citations proposes. But that’s not the issue. The issue is whether what he proposes is a Christian version of what is imposed in many Islamic states. It is not. He says – accurately – that “For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been and are afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.” That is simply not true in a great many Islamic states.
To say that the writers of the Constitution based their work on their understanding of the philosophies and principles embodied in the Christian faith is simply true. That is different from enshrining in law that all laws must conform to the Bible, the equivalent of which is what we see in the basic laws of a number of Islamic countries.
Well, then, where is this thing being built? I confess that I didn’t look and from the tone of the news reports simply assumed that it was being built on the actual site. If this thing is being built a couple of blocks away or something then that’s a different story.
Richard, I don’t distrust Moslems. I trust the ones that say they want to live at peace with us to mean what they say and I trust the ones that say they’d like to kill me and push all the Jews into the sea to mean what they say. I haven’t observed that the ones in the latter group are particularly shy about it. If a peaceable group wants to build a mosque 2 or 3 blocks away from Ground Zero I don’t give a rip. If a militant group wants to build a mosque right on the ground blasted by the attack I think it would be absurd to approve – although well within their rights to buy the land and within the commission’s rights to approve it should they choose.
According to their website, it looks like it’s going to be on Park Place between West Broadway and Church. http://www.cordobainitiative.org/?q=content/cordoba-house-new-york-city That site used to be a Burlington Coat Factory, and that block is mostly office buildings with stores on the street level. The website also says that it’s based on the model of the 92nd Street Y — classes and sports and art exhibits and lectures and a cafe and things like that.
Well, then, where is this thing being built?
It’s about two blocks away, as you can see on the map Ruchama posted (and thanks for the map, Ruchama, hadn’t seen it’s exact location before). Given that, it is further from Ground Zero than all the churches I mentioned in my post above with the possible exception of Trinity, which is probably about equally distant depending on how you define the borders of Ground Zero.
I have a nit to pick, Ron. The Muslims being discussed here – the New Yorkers who want to build this building — are not a separate group from “us.” They are us. They’re Americans, they’re westerners. Unless by “us” you intended “Christians,” they’re “us.”
All right, RonF. It seems as if, just like your inability to see racism, you have an inability to see the similarity between those who propose that the U.S. be understood as being a Christian nation and those who are proponents of Islamic nations. Fine. You believe that your religion and its adherents are better people. Good for you.
I also just want to highlight that once again, Ron F seems unwilling to use a term self-preferred by the people he is describing.
Whereas for most English speakers, the two words are synonymous in meaning, the Arabic roots of the two words are very different. A Muslim in Arabic means “one who gives himself to God,” and is by definition, someone who adheres to Islam. By contrast, a Moslem in Arabic means “one who is evil and unjust” when the word is pronounced, as it is in English, Mozlem with a z.
Okay…
Elusis, my error was not one of commission but of ignorance. I was unaware of the distinction. Thanks for the information. I shall use “Muslim” from now on.
Corrected as per (and thanks) Robert. Lord, I am distracted today.
Amp, it appeared to me that Richard was accusing me of not trusting Muslims. I presumed that meant Muslims in general, not the specific group proposing to put up this building. Re-reading his comment, however, I see that he himself (unlike the citation preceding the paragraph that he addressed me in) was talking about that specific group, not Muslims in general. So my usage was in error because I read Richard’s comment too hastily. As I state in @49, if a peaceable group of Muslims has purchased land a couple of blocks away from the location, as stated in @51, I have no objection. In fact, it’s fairly said that it’s really none of my business. And I have no evidence at hand that these folks are anything but peacable and sincere. I also don’t think that someone is a second-class American citizen because they are Muslim, as you may have been led to think by my comment.
Hm. Jake, that’s not what I’ve been led to believe by people who have entered Saudi Arabia. OTOH, that’s obviously anecdotal. OTOOH, official policy and actual practice sometimes vary. In any case, the rest of my comment stands. You don’t see practices like that proposed to be implemented in the U.S. by any but a quite small minority of people. When in general people describe the U.S. as a “Christian nation”, they mean something quite different than what distinguishes a great many Islamic nations.
Ron, you’ve got the usage backward. Muslim is the current term, Moslem the one that some find objectionable.
The great thing about Jake’s link is the non-conversion clause. We should pass a law in the US that bans possession of the Quran for anything other than personal, non-evangelizing use. That would be OK, I guess, with Jake – you’re allowed to have one for yourself!
Ted, Trinity’s the closest, eh? I’ve seen a lot of pictures of Trinity linked to 9/11. It’s an Episcopal church. The emergency workers spent quite a bit of time in it during their response to 9/11 getting both physical and spiritual rest. The ECUSA web site had a couple of stories on it. There was one story from one of the priests there who was sweeping and cleaning away the dust from the towers who came to the realization that among the mineral contents was likely some material derived from those who had perished in the fire and collapse.
Heh – missed that one, Robert!
O.K., Jake – try bringing a couple of dozen Bibles into Saudi Arabia at once. See what happens. What do you think the odds are you clear Customs? Now have 1000 Quran’s (Korans, Qu’ran’s, ???) shipped to you here in the U.S. and see if anyone does anything about it.
harlemjd, nm, if you’re willing to say, do you identify as female, male, or neither? I’m trying to figure out how many of our comments are left by men, and I know most of the other handles.
(TedK, I’m assuming your handle intends me to read maleness, and Ruchama, I seem to vaguely recall you saying something about identifying as female on another thread, but if I’m wrong, I hope you’ll let me know.)
I don’t think Jake ever said anything about the Saudi law being “OK.” He pointed out a factual error.
(TedK, I’m assuming your handle intends me to read maleness, and Ruchama, I seem to vaguely recall you saying something about identifying as female on another thread, but if I’m wrong, I hope you’ll let me know.)
Yep, I identify as female.
Ted, Trinity’s the closest, eh? I’ve seen a lot of pictures of Trinity linked to 9/11. It’s an Episcopal church.
It’s been there since the 1700s, or maybe the 1600s. I vaguely recall some sort of “George Washington worshiped here” sign, and Alexander Hamilton is buried there.
Ron,
First, thanks for the clarification above about Muslims and trust. Also, you wrote, in response to Jake:
I’d like to suggest first that this is disingenuous to the extent that it elides instances where the United States has indeed banned books because they were, for example, found to be obscene–Howl, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Naked Lunch, Ulysses. Granted, the bannings were all eventually overturned–which, i.e., the fact that we have a mechanism for such a thing to happen, is an aspect of law and government here in the States that is worth valuing very, very highly. My point is simply that just because the US does not see it as problematic that someone might want to import 1000 Qurans, does not mean that there have not been/are not realms of culture that the US government will deem it necessary to regulate “for the good of the community” in ways that are similar to what you assume would happen to the person trying to bring 1000 Bibles into Saudi Arabia.
Which brings me to the other point I want to make and, here, for the sake of argument, I want to assume that someone trying to bring 1000 Bibles into Saudi Arabia, or into, say, Afghanistan under the Taliban, would most probably see those Bibles confiscated and find her or himself under a great deal of suspicion. Christian churches of various stripes–depending on the time period in question, for example, it might be the Catholic Church or any of the various Protestant churches in the States–actively send people out into the world to proselytize; more, they have stated quite explicitly–again, it will be different “theys” and different statements depending on the period in history–that they want to convert the Jews or the Muslims; that, in other words, they want to see Judaism and Islam disappear from the world. If someone is coming into my community with the purpose, essentially, of destroying the core values of my community–as anyone who goes to a Muslim country for the purpose of converting Muslims to Christianity is doing–I might indeed pass laws that make it difficult for them to do so.
My point, however, is not that I therefore think it would be a good thing for Muslim countries to behave as they do in my for-the-sake-of-argument example. Rather, my point is that context matters.
Also, I am well aware that Islam also has within it a value which states that the world ought to be Muslim, as well as–I am pretty sure this is true–that believers should try to bring non-believers into Islam. As far as I know, however, there is no central, institutional, governing Islamic organization actively sending Muslim missionaries out into the world with the express purpose of infiltrating other countries, cultures, etc. in order to convert the people who live there. That institutional aspect is crucial, since the Church’s (all the Churches’) institutional support–from training to financing–of proselytizing is
tantamount to[ETA: often] experienced as a declaration of cultural war on those who are not Christian.Ron, all your examples here are from places like Saudi Arabia — countries “in which ‘Sharia law or the Quran’ is used ‘as a form of legislation.’ There are five such countries in the world today. There are also seventeen majority-Muslim countries which are officially secular, and fourteen which are recognize Islam as an official religion but which don’t have laws akin to Saudi Arabia.
Five out of thirty-six. No reasonable person can claim that Saudi Arabia’s laws are typical of either Islamic nations, or of muslim-majority nations. But I’m not at all sure from what you’ve written here that you get or understand that distinction.
But thanks for clarifying what you meant by “us” — I appreciate it.
No reasonable person can claim that Saudi Arabia’s laws are typical of either Islamic nations
Depends on what defines “typical”.
The group of Islamic nations that have major on-going engagement with the West is: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran. Of those three, only one is secular in the sense you describe, and that only because we’re there with our whole army.
Saudi Arabia and Iran aren’t the only Islamic countries in the world, but they’re surely extremely well-represented in the memesphere. It may not be fair to characterize the specific legal regimes of those two countries as typifying the entire religion’s POV, but it’s not really unreasonable, either – a bit like saying that the Anglosphere nations surely do have a thing about bat-and-ball sports. “But the majority of US counties don’t even have a professional baseball team!!” is a true, yet somehow unresponsive, counterargument.
Mandolin, I identify as female.
Robert, I’m not sure how you define having major on-going engagement with the west, but the fact that according to you only three “Islamic nations” out of three dozen Islamic-majority countries have it makes them atypical to start with, so I don’t think you have much of an argument going there.
Can you define “major on-going engagement with the West?”
Robert:
Back off, Robert. Seriously. Cut that shit out. This is moderation.
—Myca
War, trade, or cultural opposition.
Then why are you omitting countries like Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait and a whole host of others? We do significant trade with quite a few Islamic nations, don’t we?
Nothing that’s important to us. Egyptian cotton is nice, but we don’t need it.
Versus, you know, oil.
Can you then specify the limits on trade that will meet your definition? The way you’re going about it now makes it look like you’ll just keep changing what you say until it matches only the countries that you want it to match.
I made a general point. If you want to niggle it to death, feel free.
Robert, if you claimed that those three countries are the three muslim countries that get the most media attention in the US, I’d buy it. You might be wrong, but it is at least a credible claim.
Your claim as it stands is rubbish. While I’d agree that trade with Egypt or Morocco is very small relative to trade with Saudi Arabia, trade with Nigeria (in, you know, oil) and Algeria (oil) and the UAE (oil) is larger than trade with Iraq. Trade with Indonesia in non-oil goods is pretty substantial. Egypt is a client state with a $10 billion a year subsidy, so clearly someone thinks it isn’t negligible for some reason (Israel). Turkey is a flipping NATO member state and is negotiating an EU application. Just because they don’t make it onto the news every night can’t reasonably be described as not having “major on-going engagement with the West.”
This isn’t niggling. You tried to make a ridiculously generalization and it didn’t fly. Consider it dead.
A little late to the party, but my understanding is the proposed location of Cordoba House is farther than both St. Paul’s on Broadway and Vesey and a Roman Catholic church dedicated to St. Peter on Church and Barclay (the site is on Park Place, a block past Barclay).