Harry Reid: Gee, Maybe They Should Build That Mosque Somewhere Else

If President Obama has shown such "courage" and "leadership" on the mosque issue -- as Christiana Amanapour's handpicked sedition monkeys all agree -- then what does this make Harry Reid, who's actually running for election in November?

Is this an example of "courage" and "leadership" as well? Are all Democrats courageous leaders even when they disagree?

Reid spokesman: "First Amendment protects freedom of religion. Sen Reid respects that but thinks .. mosque should be built someplace else"

Meanwhile, Ross Douthat writes about the mosque, but he of course has to accuse its opponents of xenophobia... even as he agrees with him.

Oh well, he does get to the right conclusion after calling himself a xenophobe for concluding it.

This is typical of how these debates usually play out. The first America tends to make the finer-sounding speeches, and the second America often strikes cruder, more xenophobic notes. The first America welcomed the poor, the tired, the huddled masses; the second America demanded that they change their names and drop their native languages, and often threw up hurdles to stop them coming altogether. The first America celebrated religious liberty; the second America persecuted Mormons and discriminated against Catholics.

But both understandings of this country have real wisdom to offer, and both have been necessary to the American experiment’s success...

So it is today with Islam. The first America is correct to insist on Muslims’ absolute right to build and worship where they wish. But the second America is right to press for something more from Muslim Americans — particularly from figures like Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the mosque — than simple protestations of good faith.

Too often, American Muslim institutions have turned out to be entangled with ideas and groups that most Americans rightly consider beyond the pale. Too often, American Muslim leaders strike ambiguous notes when asked to disassociate themselves completely from illiberal causes.

By global standards, Rauf may be the model of a “moderate Muslim.” But global standards and American standards are different. For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, they’ll need leaders who don’t describe America as “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 (as Rauf did shortly after the 2001 attacks), or duck questions about whether groups like Hamas count as terrorist organizations (as Rauf did in a radio interview in June). And they’ll need leaders whose antennas are sensitive enough to recognize that the quest for inter-religious dialogue is ill served by throwing up a high-profile mosque two blocks from the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam.

They’ll need leaders, in other words, who understand that while the ideals of the first America protect the e pluribus, it’s the demands the second America makes of new arrivals that help create the unum.

One point I'd like to make: The Muslims building this vow that they are not deliberately giving any offense, and yet, when it's pointed out that great offense is in fact being taken, they essentially say "FYNQ." That does seem then to be deliberately attempting to give offense and be provocative and trimphalist.

Another point: The elites -- elites? Let's call them what they are; the revolutionary vanguard -- the revolutionary vanguard is fond of questioning the motives of the great number of Americans who are opposed to the Victory mosque, and assigning them them worst possible motives.

And yet where are their suspicions about the motives of the mosque's builders? Their motives they take at face value, claiming they know as a fact that these are "moderates" interested in "bridge building" despite the fact they do so in a supremely insulting and haughty manner.

No questions about their motives? Only one side's motives deserve the scrutiny of the press? Only one side's motives may be attributed to malice or other base desires, such as payback and taunting?

All of us opposed are bigots and Muslim-hating? All of us? Including a majority of Democrats?

A proposed mosque to be built two blocks from the World Trade Center has little support nationwide, a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll suggests.

According to the new survey out Wednesday, nearly 70 percent of all Americans oppose the controversial plan to build the mosque just blocks away from the solemn site in lower Manhattan while just 29 percent favor the construction.

Broken down by party affiliation, 54 percent of Democrats oppose the plans while 82 percent of Republicans disapprove. Meanwhile, 70 percent of independents said they are against the proposal.

The poll also showed opposition did not vary widely by age.

Are all of us bigots? Or do most of us simply question the supposed "bridge building" motive of building a mosque which has the actual effect of burning bridges? Maybe some of us are wise enough to reason backwards from effect to intent: If this has the effect of rubbing salt in the wounds of America, maybe that was the intent all along.

But no; the Hamas-supporting, America-blaming, Osama-excusing Imam Rauf says a few pretty words about "moderation" and we troglodytic thugs are just too stupid to assume that of course he must be telling the truth.

Why would we think he could possibly lie? He's not Christian, after all, nor white.

Thanks to tips from DrewM. and Slublog.

All of the President's Straw Men: At Neo-Neocon.

posted by Ace at 03:20 PM

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