More on the Mosque and America's View of Islam

After I wrote my last post about the Left's strategy of impugning the motives of their opponents, I read this article by Dennis Prager. Prager makes exactly the same point I was making, only much more effectively and eloquently. If I had known about it before, I could have just linked to his article and saved myself the trouble....

Also, I found an excellent post on the blog Ace of Spades yesterday that I thought was well worth reading. Basically, the poster argues that Americans' attitudes toward Islam have shown a pattern that is exactly the opposite of what we would expect if we assume the American population is Islamophobic, as the media claims. Emotion-driven bigotry would result in negative views of Islam skyrocketing immediately after 9/11, then dying down, then skyrocketing again in response to the Ground Zero mosque. But that is not the trend that we see from Gallup's polling. On the contrary, the percentage of Americans who believe that Islam is very different from their own religion has gradually but steadily increased from around 20% in November 2001 to around 50% in 2007. This is not evidence of an irrational hatred. The poster's explanation for why Americans have soured on Islam is fantastic -- instead of quoting it here I will just direct you to read the entire post here. His conclusion: "The MSM [mainstream media] likes to portray this all as uninformed hate and fear of the other. But maybe Americans took a good long look at Islam and decided they didn’t like what they saw."

On another note, I lost a lot of respect for Ron Paul after reading his statement on the Ground Zero mosque. I have always been bothered by a seemingly anti-American streak in Paul, but his reaction on this issue is really disturbing to me. Paul claims "neo-conservatives" (by that he means the overwhelming majority of mainstream conservatives) "never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars." He adds, "According to those who are condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on 9/11 spoke for all Muslims. This is like blaming all Christians for the wars of aggression and occupation because some Christians supported the neo-conservatives’ aggressive wars." Nasty stuff. It is a lie to say that those who are condemning the mosque believe that the 9/11 bombers spoke for all Muslims. I haven't heard any conservative say that. And his characterization of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as "wars of aggression and occupation" is both false and anti-American. He concludes the article with this gem: "This is all about hate and Islamaphobia." (If he used spell check, he would learn how to spell "Islamophobia.") I am truly thankful that this man will never be president of our great country.

UPDATE: I ran across this great quote from Jim Geraghty of National Review Online that I wanted to share:

NPR's headline? "Rancor Over Mosque Could Fuel Islamic
Extremists." You know what else fuels Islamic extremists? Everything, it seems.
We've been told extremists are motivated by the secular nature of our society;
our notions of the rights of women; our belief in democracy and the idea that
laws are written by elected representatives with the consent of the governed,
not handed down on high from a religious authority; our foreign policy; our
libertine pop culture; our 1980s support and assistance in Afghanistan; our
late-80s abandonment of Afghanistan; our embrace of the Saudi rulers; our
disrespect for Saudi customs; the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia; the
departure of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia via Iraq; poverty; globalization;
anti-Semitism; conspiracy theories; envy; sexual frustration; and Faisal
Shahzad's inability to make his mortgage payments. Apparently al-Qaeda is
motivated by everything except the Koran's more incendiary passages.

Hey, you know what? Maybe they're just [bad word of your choice here]s.
Abu Zarqawi always seemed like a guy who was just into it for the killing;
having somebody tell him he was doing God's work was just a nice
bonus.

William Jacobson: "Tolerance should be a two-way street, except that
throughout much of the world, it is not. Read Christopher Hitchens's post, A
Test of Tolerance: 'Let us by all means make the 'Ground Zero' debate a test of
tolerance. But this will be a one-way street unless it is to be a test of Muslim
tolerance as well.' Which makes this NPR post, Rancor Over Mosque Could Fuel
Islamic Extremists, particularly inane. If history has proven anything, it is
that 'fuel' is the one thing for which 'Islamic Extremists' do not want. If not
this, something else. That doesn't mean we should engage in the same intolerance
as they do. But it also doesn't mean we should deny reality."