The Ground Zero Sharia Recruitment Center - GZSRC - build it and they will come.
Hyperbole? Or litotes? Simple fact is, we don't know. We don't know as the question applies in the short term, and we don't know as the question applies in the long term. Perhaps, perhaps not.
Dome of the Rock, constructed c. 690 CE on the site of the Temple Mount: how's that one working out? Hope and change? Peace and understanding?
Btw, Neville Chamberlain did not simply say "peace in our time" after his and Hitler's Munich agreement was concluded. Chamberlain, in the run-up to Munich, publicly announced Adolf Hitler to be "a man of honor ... almost a decent, modest man". He did so no doubt because he believed it, or at least convinced himself he believed it, but also for purposes of public consumption, the that era of the late 1930's.
Again, concerning Neville Chamberlain, Chaim Weizmann and Carl Goerdeler, the latter a member of the German resistance movement, the following from Weizmann's memoirs:
[T]hrough secret channels I had received an extraordinary German document and was urged to bring it to the attention of the Prime Minister. It was written and forwarded by Herr Goerdeler at great risk [to his own life]. The document was a detailed expose of the events in Germany and ended with the urgent plea to Chamberlain not to be deceived and to make no further concessions when he met Hitler in Godesberg and Munich. [all to no avail — Chamberlain refused to consider the plea, though opposition leader Clement Attlee was in general agreement with Goerdeler’s plea]
That, if I recall correctly from the volume in question, was shortly before Munich.
Further, Goerdeler later made it known, to the same high officials in the British govt., that Kristallnacht resulted directly from Hitler’s personal order.
Likewise, prominent others rebuffed Carl Goerdeler’s and other German resistance leaders’ warnings. Sir Montagu Norman of the Bank of England chided Goerdeler for denouncing his own government. Sir Orme Sargent of the British F.O. insisted Goerdeler was overstating his case. Chamberlain stated that another conservative German resistance member, Ewald von Kleist, was a "blind, rabid enemy of Hitler." The Dutch government similarly referred to yet another resistance leader, Colonel Hans Oster, as a “miserable fellow” (likewise, for being willing to betray Hitler and the German government.) President Franklin Roosevelt, adopting similar views, also to rebuffed Goerdeler’s and others’ warnings.
Of course this latter comment is to reflect more upon Iran and aspects of Islam in general, as much as the proposed Ground Zero construction.
This is Imam Rauf's "I am a Jew" speech, delivered at a synagogue my friend's mother attends.
I have to say, he sounds more like a Sufi mystic genuinely interested in making peace and promoting inter-religious dialogue (and who believes that non-Muslims also go to heaven) than a Salafi devotee of terrorism, let alone a second-coming of Hitler that requires invocations of Neville Chamberlain (and a violation of Godwin's law).
People should really be ashamed about defaming this man's character; sure he's no president of the Zionist Organization of America, but should we really expect him to be? We asked for moderate Muslim voices (and not just ex-Muslim voices) to speak out against terrorism, and when they stand up, they get shot down and lumped together with terrorists. Are those really the kinds of incentives we want to be setting up?
Not that anyone here is likely to be ashamed, of course. (You probably think practicing Muslims cannot be taken at their words, their protestations to the contrary amounting to nothing more than ritualistic "taqiyya" Muslim lying or something). But, for the record, here's the speech, which includes a number of statements that would have gotten him kicked out of Saudi Arabia if they were more widely known.
(Emphasis added.)
Message delivered by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
Daniel Pearl Memorial
February 23, 2003
B’nai Jeshurun,
257 West 88th Street, NYC
Bismillah irrahman irrahim
In the Name of Allah, the Almighty and All-Merciful God.
I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to my dear brothers and beloved friends, the Rabbis of Bnai Jeshurun, and the Reverend K Karpen, for this event, for providing me with the opportunity to understand how beneath differences of faith and religious interpretation lie similarities of values and principles, eternal values that embody respect for the humanity of all.
People in general can be split into two classes:
The first are those who make great demands upon themselves. The second are those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live means to be every moment what they are without imposing upon themselves any effort towards perfection.
This is no new distinction. Nor do I need to remind in which category Daniel Pearl stood.
Indeed, for many centuries it has been entirely familiar in our spiritual practices as the distinction between the Greater path and the Lesser Path, a distinction known to all of us in the religious as well as in the humanitarian traditions.
But for us today, our quest must be for moral and social perfection. And it must be a natural outcome of our commitment to tread the Greater Path within the authentic practice of our collective human tradition, an impulse that propels us to build a heightened consciousness, first within ourselves and then among humanity.
With this brief message, we join together in being ushered into a state of collective worship: invoking You, our Lord, the One Almighty God, to be reminded of who we are-beings fashioned in your image, our great purpose to apply our best efforts in perfecting this image that You have breathed into us by throwing ourselves before you, loving you with all of our heart, mind and soul, submitting most humbly as a sign of our intelligence and of our inner depth.
Our prayers and meditation are the protocols we follow to obtain the required passes that admit us into Your Divine and Most hallowed and sanctified Presence. Help us O God, to enter into proximity with You, in a state of worshipful remembrance, of mindful humility before Your Almighty, Magnificent and Magnanimous Divine Presence, of Your most perfect Creative and Beatific light. Fill us with Your qualities so that we become perfected reflectors of Your Divine Attributes and Being.
All Glory and Might belongs to You, and all the beautiful and powerful attributes. May your Divine Names be hallowed and glorified, and fill us with radiance.
O Lord! Today we have come to pray for the soul of Daniel Pearl, who lost his life in the name of religious difference. We have also come to fulfill the spirit of the prayer his father Judea Pearl made---in an op-ed piece in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, (and I paraphrase)---for a “multi-faith statement against intolerance (of any against any) on the basis of religion, towards a unifying global spirit of the day that will serve as catalysts for building alliances against the rising tide of fanaticism, dehumanization and xenophobia.”
O Lord, we are people who are not usually in the same room with one another, and all too rarely with an opportunity to talk to each other.
We are people of faith and perhaps people without any professed religion: practicing and perhaps not. Today we are members of many faiths: Christian, Jew and Muslim. But we have come together to confirm the common ground of our faiths, on which we all stand united, to assert our common values, values that constrain us to act in the highest sense of what it means to be human.
We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.
If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one Mr. Pearl.
And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different. It expresses the same theological and ethical principles and values.
We are here especially to seek your forgiveness and of your family for what has been done in the name of Islam.
But as you have asked of us, we are here to go further, and to affirm the value of this service today both for the shaping of shared convictions and for the action that we can accomplish together. Further, we intend to deepen our belief that effective public engagement around difficult issues facing our faith communities can include, and in fact, requires, our collective religious voices. From our own experience, we affirm that multiple religious voices praying together can serve our deepest common good. Our conversations must continue where many end. Some of us may be suspicious of the religious voices and believe that these voices ought to be kept out of public discussion and policy. Others may fear that entering into constructive dialogue and common ground with the “other side” must be wrong, sinful or at best useless and naīve. We disagree.
We are here both as individuals and as representatives of our religious traditions. We must take advantage of this unusual breadth, a breadth not only of religion and geographical views of each other, but also of social vantage points. We have experienced the reality that there is a multiplicity of religious voices in the world, and have come to affirm, importantly, that common religious, moral and policy grounds can be found in an exchange among these voices.
Where once many of us may not have cared to speak, much less listened, to others, now we must. We shall find ourselves with good people, of deep faith, and we shall locate many important, shared values: justice, compassion, service, faithfulness, and love. Though many of us may have come skeptically, we have all come seeking to leave with hope and expectation of Your guidance, O Lord, and with a determination to encourage others to embark on this kind of fruitful exploration. For ourselves, and in different ways, we want to continue to convey the message---not only among us, but also in the communities and arenas of service to which we shall be returning, that we are all created imago Dei, in the image of God.
We pray that you admit the soul of Daniel Pearl into Your acceptance.
We intercede with You that You place us on the path of righteousness and direct us towards actions done in fulfillment of the commandment taught by Your Great Prophets and Messengers Moses, the Messiah Jesus son of Mary, and Muhammad, which is to love our fellow humans as we love ourselves. Help us O Lord, in courage and commitment, in reducing ethnic and religious hatred, strife and violence, to build the kingdom of heaven on earth.
O Allah! Among Your Divine Attributes and Glorious Names is as-Salam, which means Peace, and from which You have named the faith of Islam, and grounded Your holy city Jerusalem. We invoke Your Divine Name as-Salam, Peace, and by it call upon You, O Almighty Allah, to inspire all of us present with this simple but powerful insight: that in our mandate and efforts towards establishing a deeper global commitment to world peace lies one of the highest roads to achieving human self-perfection and intimacy with You. We pray to you God, and worship You in many names, and in our various languages, with one heart and with one overarching prayer: that You bless this gathering, bless our efforts, and bless us as peacemakers, whom You have asserted shall be called the children of God.
I'm hoping that there's a chance the last posting will generate some reflection, and maybe even a small amount of shame for treating this man the way he's been treated.
But, honestly, I'm kind of expecting to hear things like "Aha! He says being a Christian has nothing to do with accepting Jesus! He's clearly lying!" or "See! He asks to pray that Daniel Pearl gets accepted by God! He clearly doesn't believe that infidels get accepted automatically!" Or perhaps, more simply, a string of nonspecific criticisms about my being naive.
In that infamous interview in which he clumsily avoided taking a stand on Hamas, he also said that “Targeting civilians is wrong. It is a sin in our religion,” and “I am a supporter of the state of Israel.”
It's worth reading the whole thing---it's a bio of Imam Rauf---unless the idea of being asked to read a NYTimes "propaganda article" seems too offensive to you.
But really, if this guy isn't moderate enough, then what prominent, practicing Muslim is?
"In that infamous interview in which he clumsily avoided taking a stand on Hamas, he also said that “Targeting civilians is wrong. It is a sin in our religion,” and “I am a supporter of the state of Israel.”"
Imam Rauf is on tour in the Middle East. Let us know when he tells his Muslim audience in the Middle East "I am a supporter of the state of Israel", saying it in Arabic.
Nappy accepts the thrust of what Whittle says, he's really stretching it when he attributes the release of the American hostages immediately upon Reagan's inauguration to the perception of Reagan's having mettle that Carter lacked. Carter approved Operation Desert Claw, a bold military attempt to rescue the US embassy hostages, a complex two-night mission. There was a sand storm and helicopters crashed because of poor visibility at the Desert One staging area, some of it due to sand and dust stirred up by the chopper's prop-wash. That was not Carter's fault, nor was the attempted rescue a demonstration of his fecklessness or weakness. Like the Mavi Marmara incident, the April, 1980 disaster was a failure of military planning and execution.
The operation cost the lives of eight American serviceman and an Iranian who was killed smuggling fuel when the commandos blew up his tank truck with a shoulder-fired missile.
Carter's administration negotiated the terms of release for the hostages and paid the gold ransom, but the release was delayed so that Carter, who had supported the Shah, would not get the credit or glory. That was spitefulness on the part of the Ayatollah and the student activists who had taken over the embassy. It does not reflect their perception of Reagan's strength vs. Carter's weakness.
Although it hasn't been proven that the money went to the Contras, the Iran-Contra scandal did reveal that the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran to try to obtain the release of Americans held hostage by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Reagan approved the initial indirect (through Israel) sale, with the weapons going to Iranian moderates. It later degenerated into direct trading of arms for hostages; when it came to light, Reagan denied knowledge but still, as president, said he accepted responsibility. His VP George H. W. Bush later pardoned the Iran-Contra operatives as president.
Whittle's spin on the release of the embassy hostages and his portrayal of Reagan as someone who stood up to the Ayatollah rewrites history.
Nappy's no fan of Carter and seriously regrets having voted for him—both times! (D'oh!) Nappy also regrets having drunk the MSM's Kool Aid about Reagan's being an amiable dunce with no ideas.
But that part of Wittle's piece is just not how it went down.
In his analysis of European attitudes after WWI, and of progressives in our day, Whittle seems to have taken much of his material from Thomas Sowell's, Intellectuals and Society, which I happen to be reading just now.
Here are two major points on which Whittle was wrong:
1. As for the Iranian's release of the hostages, the general consensus back then was that it had nothing to do with Reagan. The Iranians just wanted to harm and humiliate Carter as much as possible, so they released the hostages as soon as his term was finished. Kind of adding insult to injury.
2. Regarding the Iraq invasion as a strike against Islamic terror: Our invasion of Afghanistan was relevant with regard to 9/11. We had to be seen to be doing something. We couldn't get at bin Laden, but at least we could punish (though not permanently destroy) the government that harbored him. Our action sent a message, though we should not have stayed, given that we are now in a bog there.
But Iraq? A strike at Islamism? This is ridiculous. Saddam had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. There had been a couple of quick meetings between Al Qaeda reps and some officials from Saddam's regime, but they led to nothing.
And that was predictable. Although Saddam played at being a pious Muslim toward the end of his rule, he was at the far end of the Arab ideological spectrum from the Islamists. He had always been secular, a Third World "socialist," a friend of the USSR, and a Ba'athist.(Ba'athism combines aspects of fascism, Stalinism, and Arab nationalism.) In other words, much of what Saddam stood for was anathema to fundamentalist Muslims.
Baghdad was not the heart of Islamic terror. It was waaaaaay wide of the mark. So, on this point, Whittle was mistaken as well. I don't know why Bush went into Iraq. Was it oil? Some misconceived idea of grand strategy? I don't know, but it has to rank as one of our stupidest mistakes in history. One for which we'll be paying for a long time.
Indeed. There can be no question of Saddam's collusion with Al Qaeda and other anti-western terrorists or his supporting them, which went as far as sending money to families of homicide bombers during Arafat's Oslo Terror War.
Nor can there be any doubt that of the symbolic value of striking at the heart of the Islamic world and deposing its barbaric, despotic tyrant. (It didn't take long for Libya to start singing a different tune.) Whether it was a mistake to go after Iraq is something we can debate. Israel said all along that Iran was the greater threat and would have preferred the US take on the Persians, rather than the Arabs. There is plenty of reason to believe that Saddam smuggled his WMDs to Syria before Shock and Awe. (See George Sada's book Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied & Survived Saddam Hussein.) In any case, the threat from the Iraqi WMD program went way beyond not finding the weapons themselves. There's no question of the intellectual resources and industrial capacity to produce them nor of the the regime's will and often stated desire.
The failure in Iraq was not in how quickly Saddam and his regime were deposed (think of the statue of Saddam being toppled) but in being totally unprepared for the aftermath. The US really blew it there. The ill-conceived de-Ba'athification program which pissed off lots of armed and militarily-trained men by giving them pink slips was just one of several colossal blunders.
"Most of the mosques and Islamic centers in our country are controlled, to a greater or lesser degree, by the Muslim Brotherhood and its satellites. The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) was established in the early Seventies to buy up property for the establishment of American mosques and “Islamic centers,” the latter being what the Brotherhood calls “the axis” of the Islamist movement in America. [. . .]"
Did you read that Times bio on Imam Rauf? He told a crowd in Cairo, Egypt, that they should be more conciliatory and understanding of the US and Israel. Folks, this is one of the good guys here. It takes cajones to say what he does in the places he says it.
Not to mention that clerics associated with the anti-Ahmadinejad Green Movement in Iran have voiced their support for the center in NYC as well.
Yes, the bad guys may be Muslims, but so are the good guys, and don't we want to show them that we don't despise them too?
Of course it's impossible to prove that no future leader of the NYC center will be a bad guy, so that's kind of an unfair request. But this center will have Rabbis and Pastors on its board, so the odds are probably against it turning into a radical madrassa some day.
And besides, the two mosques in the neighborhood are already beyond capacity. What would you have neighborhood Muslims do, move away?
Lester, the two existing mosques are grandfathered in.
Those two mosques were established before 9/11 and will not be seen as triumphal mosques, built on the ruins of the hated Infidel.
These existing mosques in the Ground Zero area could very well celebrate the 9/11 attack within the confines of the mosque, which if it were ever found out, would further tarnish "Moderate Islam" and create a backlash.
There are mosques in the West, in Infidel lands, that have already openly celebrated the 9/11 attack.
No one is talking about "despising" anyone any more than anyone is talking about a legal initiative to be exercised against the Ground Zero mosque - no one is, people are seeking to redress the Ground Zero mosque initiative based upon moral suasion, political suasion, etc.
It's a bit like the left never using the term "anti-illegal immigation," instead repeatedly (and repeatedly and repeatedly) using the term "anti-immigration" when opposing those who are concerned about illegal immigration.
The Ground Zero Sharia Recruitment Center - GZSRC - build it and they will come.
Hyperbole? Or litotes? Simple fact is, we don't know. We don't know as the question applies in the short term, and we don't know as the question applies in the long term. Perhaps, perhaps not.
Dome of the Rock, constructed c. 690 CE on the site of the Temple Mount: how's that one working out? Hope and change? Peace and understanding?
Btw, Neville Chamberlain did not simply say "peace in our time" after his and Hitler's Munich agreement was concluded. Chamberlain, in the run-up to Munich, publicly announced Adolf Hitler to be "a man of honor ... almost a decent, modest man". He did so no doubt because he believed it, or at least convinced himself he believed it, but also for purposes of public consumption, the that era of the late 1930's.
Again, concerning Neville Chamberlain, Chaim Weizmann and Carl Goerdeler, the latter a member of the German resistance movement, the following from Weizmann's memoirs:
That, if I recall correctly from the volume in question, was shortly before Munich.
Further, Goerdeler later made it known, to the same high officials in the British govt., that Kristallnacht resulted directly from Hitler’s personal order.
Likewise, prominent others rebuffed Carl Goerdeler’s and other German resistance leaders’ warnings. Sir Montagu Norman of the Bank of England chided Goerdeler for denouncing his own government. Sir Orme Sargent of the British F.O. insisted Goerdeler was overstating his case. Chamberlain stated that another conservative German resistance member, Ewald von Kleist, was a "blind, rabid enemy of Hitler." The Dutch government similarly referred to yet another resistance leader, Colonel Hans Oster, as a “miserable fellow” (likewise, for being willing to betray Hitler and the German government.) President Franklin Roosevelt, adopting similar views, also to rebuffed Goerdeler’s and others’ warnings.
Of course this latter comment is to reflect more upon Iran and aspects of Islam in general, as much as the proposed Ground Zero construction.
The Muslims' only loyalty is to the Ummah - the global 'brotherhood' of believers in Islam. Muslim theology describes the West as Dar al-Harb - the domain of war, consequently they regard their host countries as ripe for plunder, predation, extortion, parasitism and eventual subversion and takeover.
Islam can add nothing to Western societies apart from trouble.
Muslims in America will have to choose between loyalty to their country and loyalty to Islam. The two are irreconcilable - Islam is implacable and allows of no compromise on this matter.
This is Imam Rauf's "I am a Jew" speech, delivered at a synagogue my friend's mother attends.
I have to say, he sounds more like a Sufi mystic genuinely interested in making peace and promoting inter-religious dialogue (and who believes that non-Muslims also go to heaven) than a Salafi devotee of terrorism, let alone a second-coming of Hitler that requires invocations of Neville Chamberlain (and a violation of Godwin's law).
People should really be ashamed about defaming this man's character; sure he's no president of the Zionist Organization of America, but should we really expect him to be? We asked for moderate Muslim voices (and not just ex-Muslim voices) to speak out against terrorism, and when they stand up, they get shot down and lumped together with terrorists. Are those really the kinds of incentives we want to be setting up?
Not that anyone here is likely to be ashamed, of course. (You probably think practicing Muslims cannot be taken at their words, their protestations to the contrary amounting to nothing more than ritualistic "taqiyya" Muslim lying or something). But, for the record, here's the speech, which includes a number of statements that would have gotten him kicked out of Saudi Arabia if they were more widely known.
(Emphasis added.)
Message delivered by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
Daniel Pearl Memorial
February 23, 2003
B’nai Jeshurun,
257 West 88th Street, NYC
Bismillah irrahman irrahim
In the Name of Allah, the Almighty and All-Merciful God.
I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to my dear brothers and beloved friends, the Rabbis of Bnai Jeshurun, and the Reverend K Karpen, for this event, for providing me with the opportunity to understand how beneath differences of faith and religious interpretation lie similarities of values and principles, eternal values that embody respect for the humanity of all.
People in general can be split into two classes:
The first are those who make great demands upon themselves. The second are those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live means to be every moment what they are without imposing upon themselves any effort towards perfection.
This is no new distinction. Nor do I need to remind in which category Daniel Pearl stood.
Indeed, for many centuries it has been entirely familiar in our spiritual practices as the distinction between the Greater path and the Lesser Path, a distinction known to all of us in the religious as well as in the humanitarian traditions.
But for us today, our quest must be for moral and social perfection. And it must be a natural outcome of our commitment to tread the Greater Path within the authentic practice of our collective human tradition, an impulse that propels us to build a heightened consciousness, first within ourselves and then among humanity.
With this brief message, we join together in being ushered into a state of collective worship: invoking You, our Lord, the One Almighty God, to be reminded of who we are-beings fashioned in your image, our great purpose to apply our best efforts in perfecting this image that You have breathed into us by throwing ourselves before you, loving you with all of our heart, mind and soul, submitting most humbly as a sign of our intelligence and of our inner depth.
Our prayers and meditation are the protocols we follow to obtain the required passes that admit us into Your Divine and Most hallowed and sanctified Presence. Help us O God, to enter into proximity with You, in a state of worshipful remembrance, of mindful humility before Your Almighty, Magnificent and Magnanimous Divine Presence, of Your most perfect Creative and Beatific light. Fill us with Your qualities so that we become perfected reflectors of Your Divine Attributes and Being.
All Glory and Might belongs to You, and all the beautiful and powerful attributes. May your Divine Names be hallowed and glorified, and fill us with radiance.
O Lord! Today we have come to pray for the soul of Daniel Pearl, who lost his life in the name of religious difference. We have also come to fulfill the spirit of the prayer his father Judea Pearl made---in an op-ed piece in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, (and I paraphrase)---for a “multi-faith statement against intolerance (of any against any) on the basis of religion, towards a unifying global spirit of the day that will serve as catalysts for building alliances against the rising tide of fanaticism, dehumanization and xenophobia.”
O Lord, we are people who are not usually in the same room with one another, and all too rarely with an opportunity to talk to each other.
We are people of faith and perhaps people without any professed religion: practicing and perhaps not. Today we are members of many faiths: Christian, Jew and Muslim. But we have come together to confirm the common ground of our faiths, on which we all stand united, to assert our common values, values that constrain us to act in the highest sense of what it means to be human.
We are here to assert the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind and soul Shma` Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ahad; hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one, Mr. Pearl.
If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one Mr. Pearl.
And I am here to inform you, with the full authority of the Quranic texts and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, that to say La ilaha illallah Muhammadun rasulullah is no different. It expresses the same theological and ethical principles and values.
We are here especially to seek your forgiveness and of your family for what has been done in the name of Islam.
But as you have asked of us, we are here to go further, and to affirm the value of this service today both for the shaping of shared convictions and for the action that we can accomplish together. Further, we intend to deepen our belief that effective public engagement around difficult issues facing our faith communities can include, and in fact, requires, our collective religious voices. From our own experience, we affirm that multiple religious voices praying together can serve our deepest common good. Our conversations must continue where many end. Some of us may be suspicious of the religious voices and believe that these voices ought to be kept out of public discussion and policy. Others may fear that entering into constructive dialogue and common ground with the “other side” must be wrong, sinful or at best useless and naīve. We disagree.
We are here both as individuals and as representatives of our religious traditions. We must take advantage of this unusual breadth, a breadth not only of religion and geographical views of each other, but also of social vantage points. We have experienced the reality that there is a multiplicity of religious voices in the world, and have come to affirm, importantly, that common religious, moral and policy grounds can be found in an exchange among these voices.
Where once many of us may not have cared to speak, much less listened, to others, now we must. We shall find ourselves with good people, of deep faith, and we shall locate many important, shared values: justice, compassion, service, faithfulness, and love. Though many of us may have come skeptically, we have all come seeking to leave with hope and expectation of Your guidance, O Lord, and with a determination to encourage others to embark on this kind of fruitful exploration. For ourselves, and in different ways, we want to continue to convey the message---not only among us, but also in the communities and arenas of service to which we shall be returning, that we are all created imago Dei, in the image of God.
We pray that you admit the soul of Daniel Pearl into Your acceptance.
We intercede with You that You place us on the path of righteousness and direct us towards actions done in fulfillment of the commandment taught by Your Great Prophets and Messengers Moses, the Messiah Jesus son of Mary, and Muhammad, which is to love our fellow humans as we love ourselves. Help us O Lord, in courage and commitment, in reducing ethnic and religious hatred, strife and violence, to build the kingdom of heaven on earth.
O Allah! Among Your Divine Attributes and Glorious Names is as-Salam, which means Peace, and from which You have named the faith of Islam, and grounded Your holy city Jerusalem. We invoke Your Divine Name as-Salam, Peace, and by it call upon You, O Almighty Allah, to inspire all of us present with this simple but powerful insight: that in our mandate and efforts towards establishing a deeper global commitment to world peace lies one of the highest roads to achieving human self-perfection and intimacy with You. We pray to you God, and worship You in many names, and in our various languages, with one heart and with one overarching prayer: that You bless this gathering, bless our efforts, and bless us as peacemakers, whom You have asserted shall be called the children of God.
Amen.
I'm hoping that there's a chance the last posting will generate some reflection, and maybe even a small amount of shame for treating this man the way he's been treated.
But, honestly, I'm kind of expecting to hear things like "Aha! He says being a Christian has nothing to do with accepting Jesus! He's clearly lying!" or "See! He asks to pray that Daniel Pearl gets accepted by God! He clearly doesn't believe that infidels get accepted automatically!" Or perhaps, more simply, a string of nonspecific criticisms about my being naive.
Prove me wrong, fellas, please.
Just one more thing to add:
In that infamous interview in which he clumsily avoided taking a stand on Hamas, he also said that “Targeting civilians is wrong. It is a sin in our religion,” and “I am a supporter of the state of Israel.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/nyregion/22imam.html?pagewanted=all
It's worth reading the whole thing---it's a bio of Imam Rauf---unless the idea of being asked to read a NYTimes "propaganda article" seems too offensive to you.
But really, if this guy isn't moderate enough, then what prominent, practicing Muslim is?
futile...
"In that infamous interview in which he clumsily avoided taking a stand on Hamas, he also said that “Targeting civilians is wrong. It is a sin in our religion,” and “I am a supporter of the state of Israel.”"
Imam Rauf is on tour in the Middle East. Let us know when he tells his Muslim audience in the Middle East "I am a supporter of the state of Israel", saying it in Arabic.
Let's see how well that goes over in the Ummah.
Nappy accepts the thrust of what Whittle says, he's really stretching it when he attributes the release of the American hostages immediately upon Reagan's inauguration to the perception of Reagan's having mettle that Carter lacked. Carter approved Operation Desert Claw, a bold military attempt to rescue the US embassy hostages, a complex two-night mission. There was a sand storm and helicopters crashed because of poor visibility at the Desert One staging area, some of it due to sand and dust stirred up by the chopper's prop-wash. That was not Carter's fault, nor was the attempted rescue a demonstration of his fecklessness or weakness. Like the Mavi Marmara incident, the April, 1980 disaster was a failure of military planning and execution.
The operation cost the lives of eight American serviceman and an Iranian who was killed smuggling fuel when the commandos blew up his tank truck with a shoulder-fired missile.
Carter's administration negotiated the terms of release for the hostages and paid the gold ransom, but the release was delayed so that Carter, who had supported the Shah, would not get the credit or glory. That was spitefulness on the part of the Ayatollah and the student activists who had taken over the embassy. It does not reflect their perception of Reagan's strength vs. Carter's weakness.
Although it hasn't been proven that the money went to the Contras, the Iran-Contra scandal did reveal that the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran to try to obtain the release of Americans held hostage by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Reagan approved the initial indirect (through Israel) sale, with the weapons going to Iranian moderates. It later degenerated into direct trading of arms for hostages; when it came to light, Reagan denied knowledge but still, as president, said he accepted responsibility. His VP George H. W. Bush later pardoned the Iran-Contra operatives as president.
Whittle's spin on the release of the embassy hostages and his portrayal of Reagan as someone who stood up to the Ayatollah rewrites history.
Nappy's no fan of Carter and seriously regrets having voted for him—both times! (D'oh!) Nappy also regrets having drunk the MSM's Kool Aid about Reagan's being an amiable dunce with no ideas.
But that part of Wittle's piece is just not how it went down.
In his analysis of European attitudes after WWI, and of progressives in our day, Whittle seems to have taken much of his material from Thomas Sowell's, Intellectuals and Society, which I happen to be reading just now.
Here are two major points on which Whittle was wrong:
1. As for the Iranian's release of the hostages, the general consensus back then was that it had nothing to do with Reagan. The Iranians just wanted to harm and humiliate Carter as much as possible, so they released the hostages as soon as his term was finished. Kind of adding insult to injury.
2. Regarding the Iraq invasion as a strike against Islamic terror: Our invasion of Afghanistan was relevant with regard to 9/11. We had to be seen to be doing something. We couldn't get at bin Laden, but at least we could punish (though not permanently destroy) the government that harbored him. Our action sent a message, though we should not have stayed, given that we are now in a bog there.
But Iraq? A strike at Islamism? This is ridiculous. Saddam had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. There had been a couple of quick meetings between Al Qaeda reps and some officials from Saddam's regime, but they led to nothing.
And that was predictable. Although Saddam played at being a pious Muslim toward the end of his rule, he was at the far end of the Arab ideological spectrum from the Islamists. He had always been secular, a Third World "socialist," a friend of the USSR, and a Ba'athist.(Ba'athism combines aspects of fascism, Stalinism, and Arab nationalism.) In other words, much of what Saddam stood for was anathema to fundamentalist Muslims.
Baghdad was not the heart of Islamic terror. It was waaaaaay wide of the mark. So, on this point, Whittle was mistaken as well. I don't know why Bush went into Iraq. Was it oil? Some misconceived idea of grand strategy? I don't know, but it has to rank as one of our stupidest mistakes in history. One for which we'll be paying for a long time.
Joanne,
There had been a couple of quick meetings between Al Qaeda reps and some officials from Saddam's regime, but they led to nothing.
I'm always reminded of Cox & Forkum's cartoon
When Worlds Collude
Read their commentary below the toon.
Indeed. There can be no question of Saddam's collusion with Al Qaeda and other anti-western terrorists or his supporting them, which went as far as sending money to families of homicide bombers during Arafat's Oslo Terror War.
Nor can there be any doubt that of the symbolic value of striking at the heart of the Islamic world and deposing its barbaric, despotic tyrant. (It didn't take long for Libya to start singing a different tune.) Whether it was a mistake to go after Iraq is something we can debate. Israel said all along that Iran was the greater threat and would have preferred the US take on the Persians, rather than the Arabs. There is plenty of reason to believe that Saddam smuggled his WMDs to Syria before Shock and Awe. (See George Sada's book Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied & Survived Saddam Hussein.) In any case, the threat from the Iraqi WMD program went way beyond not finding the weapons themselves. There's no question of the intellectual resources and industrial capacity to produce them nor of the the regime's will and often stated desire.
The failure in Iraq was not in how quickly Saddam and his regime were deposed (think of the statue of Saddam being toppled) but in being totally unprepared for the aftermath. The US really blew it there. The ill-conceived de-Ba'athification program which pissed off lots of armed and militarily-trained men by giving them pink slips was just one of several colossal blunders.
"... let alone a second-coming of Hitler that requires invocations of Neville Chamberlain (and a violation of Godwin's law)"
No one referred to a "second coming," what someone did refer to was a cautionary sensibility, framed within Neville Chamberlain, among others still.
And you never did answer that question, concerning the Dome of the Rock, established 692 CE.
Nor did you reflect upon the question or issue of one Imam now, different Imams in the near and more distant future.
Before doling out shame so liberally, try applying some better considerations.
Video: Three Things About Islam: here
And: Which Islam Will Prevail in America?, brief excerpt:
Both, solid summaries and reviews.
h/t Maverick Philosopher
Did you read that Times bio on Imam Rauf? He told a crowd in Cairo, Egypt, that they should be more conciliatory and understanding of the US and Israel. Folks, this is one of the good guys here. It takes cajones to say what he does in the places he says it.
Not to mention that clerics associated with the anti-Ahmadinejad Green Movement in Iran have voiced their support for the center in NYC as well.
Yes, the bad guys may be Muslims, but so are the good guys, and don't we want to show them that we don't despise them too?
Of course it's impossible to prove that no future leader of the NYC center will be a bad guy, so that's kind of an unfair request. But this center will have Rabbis and Pastors on its board, so the odds are probably against it turning into a radical madrassa some day.
And besides, the two mosques in the neighborhood are already beyond capacity. What would you have neighborhood Muslims do, move away?
Lester, the two existing mosques are grandfathered in.
Those two mosques were established before 9/11 and will not be seen as triumphal mosques, built on the ruins of the hated Infidel.
These existing mosques in the Ground Zero area could very well celebrate the 9/11 attack within the confines of the mosque, which if it were ever found out, would further tarnish "Moderate Islam" and create a backlash.
There are mosques in the West, in Infidel lands, that have already openly celebrated the 9/11 attack.
No one is talking about "despising" anyone any more than anyone is talking about a legal initiative to be exercised against the Ground Zero mosque - no one is, people are seeking to redress the Ground Zero mosque initiative based upon moral suasion, political suasion, etc.
It's a bit like the left never using the term "anti-illegal immigation," instead repeatedly (and repeatedly and repeatedly) using the term "anti-immigration" when opposing those who are concerned about illegal immigration.
Rauf wants Shariah Law for the United States of America, and his Islamic Center will be a base for that political agenda.