President Obama said on Saturday that in defending the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque near Ground Zero he “was not commenting” on “the wisdom” of that particular project, but rather trying to uphold the broader principle that government should treat “everyone equal, regardless” of religion.
Obama Says Mosque Upholds Principle of Equal Treatment
16 comments on “Obama Says Mosque Upholds Principle of Equal Treatment”
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(From my own blog on the same topic)
I believe in religious freedom in this country, and that includes for Muslims. I don’t think they should be told they can’t build there. I DO think that they should be told, very frankly if necessary, that building a mosque at ground zero is insensitive (I really hate that term but it works in this case) and will be seen as offensive by many if not most Americans, including me. There is a difference between “can” and “should.” It is not our place to dictate. On the other hand we are perfectly within our rights to make it clear to someone or a group when they are behaving rudely or doing something that is in very bad taste.
Such is the case here.
One key basis of planning, zoning, and permitting is to respect the sensitivities of an area. For that reason businesses are often denied on their applications to open in a residential area. XXX business are [i]always[/i] denied.
Building permits are frequently denied on the basis that either the design or the most probable use(s) are inappropriate for the area. Churches have also been denied permits for numerous areas for a range of reasons.
To frame this as “religious freedom” is either completely disingenuous or utterly clueless regarding the purpose and intent of the Cordoba project. If you doubt me, read up a bit on Cordoba and islam.
Ad Orientem is 100% spot on. Sadly, Muslims do not appear to be one bit concerned about the feelings of “infidels.”
Could the zoning commission require them to post a banner out front for, oh, say 100 years, that says in bold block print “We’re really, really sorry…”?
That might be a good start.
Forgotten in most of the media is a similar problem that developed at Auschwitz a few years ago. A group of Carmelite cloistered nuns wanted to place a monastery next to that horrible place to pray for those who died there. Jews expressed anguish that such a place where so many of their religion died would become some sort of a Catholic shrine. Pope John Paul II heard their anguished plea and, out of compassionate regard for the Jewish community asked the nuns not to locate there. They didn’t.
So, if Moslems really want to come across as caring and compassionate instead of cold and callous, then they should listen to the anguished pleas of New Yorkers and family survivors of those killed in the Towers and locate elsewhere .
Also, one cannot help but think of how Christians in virtually every Moslem country are treated. Every Moslem country seems to find a way to oppress Christians and treat them as 4th Class citizens. In some Moslem countries no churches can ever be built, in others Christians don’t dare or are not allowed to have religious processions, in others churches must be hidden from view–no steeples or bell towers, and above all no bells, in others churches are not allowed to expand.
And, for certain, if the mosque is built in this place, it will be taken across much of the Islamic world as a sign of their ultimate victory over the West and vindication for killing 2,500 Americans in the Towers.
Caught this comment on another blog:
“The POTUS continues to try to ignore the fact that Islam is more than a religion, it is an entire way of life. As such, it aims to supplant every other way of life on the planet, and there is more than enough evidence that its more extreme sects do *not* respect any other religion. The Ground Zero Islamic Center, including its mosque, will continue to be resisted, even if it is built, and those who resist it are by no means racist, they are merely exercising their right to self-defense. By endorsing the intrusion of an alien culture in one of our most important cities, the POTUS is demonstrating his dislike, if not hatred, of American culture. I guess he is only American by birth, not by choice.”
–attribution to screenname ‘pargryne’
Ad Orientem is correct when he says:
[blockquote]…we are perfectly within our rights to make it clear to someone or a group when they are behaving rudely or doing something that is in very bad taste.[/blockquote]
But he needs to recognize that this is about much more than just religion. Other people do not necessarily agree with our standards of behavior or taste…it’s about more than that, too.
[url=http://www.stnicholasnyc.com/?page_id=7]St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church[/url] stood in the shadow of the Trade Center Towers, an historic site as one of the first G.O. churches in the country (founded in 1916). The Church was completely destroyed (buried) by falling debris from the tower on 9.11.
The Greek Orthodox Church still owns the land on which the church stood. To this day, nine years later, they are denied the permits that would allow them to rebuild their church. Yet the mosque is given a green light and even has presidential support.
Is this equal treatment? I hardly think so.
Skokie, a near north suburb of Chicago, is home to a number of
Holocaust survivors, although their numbers are naturally
diminishing. Quite a number of years ago, a company applied to
have a crematorium built in Skokie. I seem to recall that the
company’s permit request was withdrawn after an unholy uproar
was created by Holocaust survivors. Yes, sensitivity is an issue,
and it should not be discounted by our social and political “betters”.
As for the Obama administration’s concerns for rights of Muslims,
I should point out that his Attorney General, Mr. Eric Holder, has
already announced he intends to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
and other Islamic militants in NYC. This is being done to show the
fairness and openness of the American judicial system. However,
look up the definition of “show trial”, and you’ll see that this is
exactly what’s being done. There is a hard political edge to the
Obama administration which is utterly insensitive to the American
people. BTW, I think the Democratic party will be barbarously
mauled in the November elections, but the fact that the
Republicans will be the chief beneficiaries of this mauling doesn’t
really inspire any hope. Just business as usual in DC.
Where would the funding for this mosque come from ? Perhaps
from Saudi Arabia, which, bastion of Islamic belief that it is, does
not permit the building of Christian churches. We should not
allow illiberal belief systems to send their colonizers into the
midst of a society which they intend to subvert, if possible, and
destroy, if necessary.
The one bright spot in the November elections is the idea that the Republicans who win will now be called to be held accountable to opponents of non-Constitutional government, including the “Tea Party Patriots”. Perhaps it will not be ‘business as usual’ and ‘not a dimes worth of difference’ this time around.
well, I can dream, can’t I?
So how would the Muslims take it if the destroyed Greek Orthodox church near the twin towers was rebuilt as Church of the Christian Martyrs and Crusaders? I mean if we really are supposed to have freedom of religion, why not put POTUS to the test and see if he really means equal treatment for all. I’m seriously beginning to think that the Crusades were not all bad.
Re # 10
Daniel,
Well, since the Crusaders sacked Constantinople, plundered much of the wealth of the Orthodox Church and hasted the collapse of the Roman Empire, I rather doubt we will see any Greek Churches named in their honor.
ICXC NIKA
John
In the interest of inclusion, how about a Christian Cathedral in Mecca?
Anybody out ther have any idea of what the Cordoba Initiative, the proponents of the mosque, is all about? They are named after the city in Spain which before El Cid was the largest Muslim city in Europe. Cordoba was re-Christianized in the 1100’s. (the reconquista). The founder of the Cordoba project was a proponent of Dawa–a call to Christians convert to Islam, followed by Jihad (ie death) against those who refuse. The current head of the movement is a former member of the Islamic Jihad Brotherhood. His father, the founder, was funded by the Mylasian government . Iman Rauf has personally called for forced conversion and institution of Shaira law in the USA. All of the finances of Rauf are cash–no paper trail. These poeple also build mosques on the sites of military victories. So who exactly is intolerant here? The constitution is not a suicide pact. Rauf is simply an evil man hiding behind the 1st amendment, and if he prevails, there will be no first amendment. Capt. Deacon Warren is correct. Where is the cathedral in Mecca?
There is an interesting take on this issue–from the August 9 “Ottawa Citizen” newspaper–written by a Muslim: [url=http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Mischief+Manhattan/3370303/story.html#ixzz0wcZNOGAS]”Mischief in Manhattan”[/url]
The Crusaders completely screwed up their mission to deliver Eastern Christians from the Moslem yoke. Some recent independent historians have gone into why the Crusaders behaved so badly toward the Byzantine Christians after they arrived in the East. Well, apparently there was a lot of back-stabbing going on against the Crusaders by Byzantine opportunists that enflamed relations between the Crusaders and the Byzantines. Unfortunately wars are horribly messy–even between peoples who should be working closely together.
However, even though things worked out badly, many modern historians claim that the motives behind what the Crusaders attempted would classify it in modern terms as a “War of Liberation” because it was Christians attempting to deliver brother Christians from oppression and save the rest from further Moslem conquest. One historian wrote that we should remember that the reputation of the Crusades has been filtered to us modern Americans through the prism of the Protestant Reformation wherein anything with Catholic Church involvement before Martin Luther had to be seen as bad.
I’ll repeat my comment on a more recent T19 post on this issue:
A mosque can be built at Ground Zero when the death penalty for conversion away from Islam is written out of the Quran and Christians can evangelize freely in Muslim countries.