That does not undermine the appropriate motive that the vast majority may have.
And what is that you moron? The majority view that is?
Al
knoxnews.com
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No Public Comments in Favor of Mosque
Some at the Thursday meeting wore religious or patriotic-themed clothing, and no one defended the plan in two hours of public comments, the Tennessean newspaper reported.
"They seem to be against everything that I believe in, and so I don't want them necessarily in my neighborhood spreading that type of comment," said one man at the meeting.
Tracey Steven, who also attended, said, "Our country was founded through the founding fathers -- through the true God, the Father and Jesus Christ."
abcnews.go.com
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THE ISLAMOPHOBIA MACHINE
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic relations, thinks the noise level of anti-Muslim statements has risen because the Tea Party movement has attracted Americans “more ready to speak out””than traditional political outlets. But at the core of the often ugly debate is what he calls “the Islamophobia machine - right-wing bloggers on the Internet, talk radio, and opinion columns in conservative newspapers.” Like President George W. Bush before him, President Barack Obama has had little success in convincing his fellow Americans that al Qaeda and the Taliban do not represent Islam. In Obama’s case there is an added complication: 57 percent of Republicans, according to a poll in spring, think he is a Muslim. (He is not.)
Nationally and across party lines, 24 percent believe their president is a Muslim, according to a TIME poll taken after Obama stepped into the New York Islamic center debate by saying that Muslims had the same right as anyone else to practice their religion, including in a place of worship in Lower Manhattan. A day later he watered down his remark. It had been about the right to build the center, not the wisdom of doing so, he explained.
No such vacillation from Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York and virtually the only leader who has spoken about the mosque without making politics look like a game reserved for panderers and demagogues. Newt Gingrich, a possible Republican presidential candidate for the 2012 elections likened backers of the New York mosque to Nazis and observed that “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the holocaust museum in Washington.”
Bloomberg, who is Jewish and not affiliated to any party, said this week that dropping plans to build the center or moving it elsewhere would undercut American values and principles and “feed the false impressions that some Americans have about Muslims. We would send a signal around the world that Muslim Americans may be equal in the eyes of the law, but separate in the eyes of their countrymen.
“And we would hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters, who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam. Islam did not attack the World Trade Center - al Qaeda did.”
It’s an admirably clear message. Whether it can get through to the people with the “All I need to know about Islam””signs is another question.
cnews.canoe.ca |
