Clifford May comments about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, builder of the Ground Zero mosque, winning the Quote of the Week award hands down:
A thought experiment: I am grieved by Saudi policies — for example, Saudi religious discrimination, oppression of women, and persecution of homosexuals. If I were to express these grievances by blowing up a Saudi kindergarten, do you think Imam Feisal would say (1) the Saudi Royal family must share responsibility for the carnage, and (2) whether or not I had committed an act of terrorism is a “very complex question�
…because, as readers of this blog know well, this is what Rauf said about 9/11.
As this issue develops, I ask myself several questions:
- How is it possible that Rauf and friends are getting away with this?
- What is wrong with so many otherwise rational people, like Mayor Bloomberg, that they are helping them get away with it?
- Is there hope for the West in what really seems to be a clash of cultures?
This shouldn’t be a Right vs. Left issue, or a pro- vs. anti-Obama issue, although both sides are trying to make political capital of it. The issue is this: should we allow a beacon to worldwide radical Islamists be built overlooking what has become a holy place in America (and ‘holy’ not only for religious people)?
Actually, it has nothing to do with ‘religion’ as we understand it. The symbolism is about victory and defeat, superiority and inferiority, dominance and submission.
And symbols count. Why do you think Jerusalem is so important? New York City is America’s Jerusalem.
World Trade Center facade
Technorati Tags: Islam, Ground Zero mosque, Feisal Abdul Rauf, Clifford May
They are getting away with it because they are making use of , exploiting a fundamental value of American democratic society i.e. the value of freedom of worship, and tolerance for all religious views.
The manipulation of the democratic system the working against it is of course nothing new and not confined to Washington and New York. It is practiced daily in Jerusalem in the Knesset by Arab members of Parliament and their supporters on the Extreme Left.