The Ground Zero Mosque

I haven't said anything about this issue, because it's complicated, and I don't usually have time to sit down and sort this out until the weekend.  Which it is.

I find that the Gormogons have summed up where I stand nicely, and there's not much to add.  The meat paragraph is probably this:

We have not discussed much about the mosque here at the Big G, largely because there isn’t much more to say about it. Even if we assume or pretend that the people behind this idea are really, truly genuine in their pronouncements about tolerance and understanding and so forth—and thus far, this does not seem to be the case—there is no long-term goal here. Say they build the mosque in 2011, and that it winds up not being a cruel mockery of a monumental tragedy, but an honest-to-goodness effort to show that some Muslims treat Ground Zero as hallowed land—so what? Does this tune still sound on key in 2013? 2018?

There are many problems with this project.  First, I must agree that the first amendment protects the right of the principals to build that mosque.  I also agree with people that say while they have the right, they shouldn't.  There are many mosques in NYC already, this one is just a particularly awful place to put one.  Why there, if the goal is truly an outreach for tolerance and understanding?

There's a problem with that whole tolerance and understanding mission.  According to people fluent in both languages, the message being spread in Muslim countries is not the message being spread in the US.

Moreover, when Rauf speaks in Arabic, he contradicts what he says to his English-speaking audience. On March 24, 2010, Rauf is quoted in an article in Arabic for the website Rights4All, a leading educational institution of the Arabic-speaking world, entitled "The Most Prominent Imam in New York: 'I Do Not Believe in Religious Dialogue.'" He goes on to say that "Religious dialogue as customarily understood is a set of events with discussions in large hotels that result in nothing."

Thanks to American Thinker.

The whole concept of tolerance and Islam is laughable anyway.  This is a society that murders daughters and wives for "honor".  This is a society that murders gays.  This is a society that straps bombs onto their children, for God's sake, and sends them to blow up other children.  This is a society that cuts the nose and ears off a woman for trying to leave an abusive household.  This is a society that still endorses slavery ("Slavery is part of Islam.  Slavery is part of Jihad and Jihad will remain as long as there is Islam").  The freakin' Taliban tried to kill off birds to keep them from singing, because it was too pleasant.  When they start showing some tolerance, maybe I'll come to a different conclusion.