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."

The Left's Most Compelling Argument

The American political left has a favorite political tactic. Let's take a look at their response to conservative positions on various recent hot button issues:

~Do you support the Arizona illegal immigration law and think the U.S. should enforce the border with Mexico? (RACIST) BIGOT!

~Do you believe that we should keep the traditional definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman? (HOMOPHOBIC) BIGOT!

~Do you support the Tea Party movement to control federal spending and limit taxes? (RACIST) BIGOT!

~Do you think it is inappropriate for an Islamic cleric sympathetic to terrorism to build an Islamic center just a few hundred feet from Ground Zero? (ISLAMOPHOBIC) BIGOT!

~Do you oppose President Obama's policies and believe they are harmful to our country? (RACIST) BIGOT!

~Do you think Obama's Justice Department should not have dropped charges against New Black Panther Party members intimidating voters outside a polling station in Philadelphia? (RACIST) BIGOT!

Folks, this is how many people on the left argue. They don't really engage the facts. They just impugn the motives of their political opponents. They don't explain why their opponents are wrong. They just claim their opponents are hate-filled bigots and call it a day. And remember, on virtually all of these issues, the majority of the American people fall into the category of "bigot."

In an earlier post, I commented on articles in the Washington Post by Colbert King and Eugene Robinson that made explicit comparisons between Tea Party activists protesting the Democratic health care bill and white supremacists protesting the desegregation of the schools in the Old South. They made all sorts of claims about racist behavior among Tea Partiers, none of which could be substantiated (and many of which were proven false). The same tactics have been used by many left-wing columnists, reporters, and politicians on all the issues listed above. What influential conservative has not been called a bigot or a racist? Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, Ron Paul, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc., etc. They 're all racists!

Since the issue most currently in the news is the Ground Zero mosque controversy, let's take a look at how leading mainstream journalists are covering this story.

1. Kirsten Powers, a Fox News political analyst and New York Post columnist, wrote an article on the Daily Beast blog entitled "The GOP's Long, Hot, Racist Summer." Hmmm...I wonder where this article is coming from. She starts out the article with these words: "Welcome to the summer of hate. These dog days have brought a veritable festival of racial demagoguery, from a phony 'New Black Panther' controversy to Arizona’s draconian illegal-immigrant crackdown to the most recent 'ground zero mosque' hysteria." (See all the ways conservatives are racist?) Powers completely distorts the New Black Panther controversy. She dismisses the voter intimidation as unimportant, lies about the New Black Panther Party's role in the incident, suggests that the Obama Justice Department carried out justice in the case when in fact they dropped the charges, and suggests that all high-profile Republicans are indifferent to white racism. With regard to the Arizona immigration law, she gives one over-the-top quote from Michael Savage (someone who would hardly identify himself as a Republican) about illegal immigration (no mention of race in the quote) to prove the racial motivations of supporters of the AZ law, and then lies about the law by claiming "brown skin" constitutes reasonable suspicion to check immigration status. With regard to the mosque, she makes no effort to seriously address any of the reasonable concerns about the imam involved or the location of the mosque (which I summarized in a recent post here). She simply says, "Let's be honest. The problem is they are Muslims." Case closed!

2. The cover story for Time magazine's most recent cover story is "Is America Xenophobic?" Anyone want to take a guess at the answer the magazine gives to that question? The article claims that Islamophobia is growing all across the country and that Republican leaders who oppose the mosque are fueling it. The author, Bobby Ghosh, admits that "there's no sign that violence against Muslims is on the rise," but cites "anecdotal evidence" for rising anti-Muslim sentiment. He also claims, in an interview with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, that Islamophobia was widespread after the 9/11 attacks. We know from the historical record that this is a lie, and that the response from the American public was surprisingly restrained and respectful, given the provocation. These days, radical Muslims like Imam Rauf seem to get better press -- and far more benefit of the doubt -- than the America public. Rauf can attack the U.S. and defend terrorists and still be considered a moderate, but Americans cannot be angry over a provocative Islamic center to be built right next to Ground Zero without being called intolerant haters.

3. The ever-enlightening Maureen Dowd had to weigh in on the story too. Her main contribution in her most recent column, "Going Mad in Herds," is to claim that Obama is "a rational man running a most irrational nation" and to note that "the country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown." She adds, "The dispute over the Islamic center has tripped some deep national lunacy." Wow. Now, if you're opposed to the Ground Zero mosque, you're nuts. Most Americans do not agree with Maureen Dowd, therefore the whole nation is having a nervous breakdown. Can someone remind me again how this woman came to be an editorial page writer for one of the biggest newspapers in the land?

4. Taking the cake is another editorial from the New York Times, this one by Dick Cavett entitled "Real Americans, Please Stand Up." Yes, you read that right. If you oppose the Ground Zero mosque, you are not a "real" American. Cavett says that these prejudiced mosque opponents remind him of his 6th grade teacher who used to talk about the "dirty Japs." Cavett says, "How sad this whole mosque business is. It doesn’t take much, it seems, to lift the lid and let our home-grown racism and bigotry overflow." And this: "I like to think I’m not easily shocked, but here I am, seeing the emotions of the masses running like a freight train over the right to freedom of religion — never mind the right of eminent domain and private property." Just like all the other writers, Cavett never attempts to engage opponents of the mosque on any of the points they make about the mosque. He doesn't argue, he just asserts. His moral lectures to us about how we need to grow up and become real Americans is a disgrace. If he's so embarrassed by this backwards, racist, intolerant country, he should leave. Go somewhere real tolerance is practiced. Like any country in the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, etc.

In the meantime, I note that more statements by Imam Rauf have been coming out lately. The latest to surface was this gem: "We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US-led sanction against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children." As Jim Geraghty of National Review Online points out, "To suggest that the indirect effects of a U.S. sanctions regime is remotely morally comparable to al-Qaeda’s deliberate mass murder — much less to suggest that they are morally worse — is to eviscerate one’s claim to be moderate, pro-American, or sensible." I think that Imam Rauf would probably meet the criteria for being an editorial writer for many newspapers in this country.

Finally, Maureen Dowd Misses Bush!

Most of the time, liberals infuriate me. But every once in a great while, they do something that just cracks me up. This week, no fewer than three left-wing writers -- Maureen Dowd, Eugene Robinson, and Peter Beinart -- are begging George W. Bush to weigh in on the Ground Zero mosque controversy on Obama's behalf! (The Washington Examiner has the story here.) Dowd, who has spent the past 10 years of her life relentlessly ridiculing Bush's stupidity on a weekly basis in her New York Times column, now says that "W. needs to get his bullhorn back out." Robinson, who spends his weekly columns explaining how Republicans support slavery and segregation, says he "would love to hear from former President Bush on this issue." Beinart adds, "Words I never thought I'd write: I pine for George W. Bush." All three of the writers praised Bush's knowledge and sensitivity with regard to the War on Terror and Muslim issues.

Haven't we been hearing for years from these left-wing commentators that Bush was an idiot who couldn't put a coherent sentence together and had one of the worst presidencies in our history? Haven't they claimed for the past three years that Obama's eloquence and understanding of the world were unsurpassed? After doing everything possible to smear President Bush, suddenly they're worried about their beloved president's inability to argue effectively for their precious Ground Zero mosque and they want Bush to ride to the rescue! You just can't make this stuff up.

This is why it is so foolish for politicians to try to curry favor with the media. As long as you seem to be furthering their left-wing agenda, they will heap you with praise. And once they no longer have use for you, they will throw you under the bus. Remember, the press couldn't stop fawning over John McCain as a "principled maverick" back in 2000 when he was challenging Bush from the left. But just a few years later McCain was running against Obama, and they barely seemed capable of doing a positive story on him. Three weeks ago, Bush was the object of universal scorn. Now the left is begging for his eloquence and wisdom. But don't worry. In a few weeks, once the mosque story has blown over, they'll back to blaming him for the lousy economy, the Gulf oil spill, etc.

This is also why I've stopped worrying about what liberals think of me. I take plenty of heat from co-workers for defending Bush, Palin, the Tea Parties, the Arizona law, etc. It would be quite easy for me to try to distance myself from these hated individuals and groups ("I'm a Reagan conservative, not a Palin conservative!"), but I'm done bothering with it. The only conservatives liberals and the media will ever like are the ones that are no longer in power. (They say nice things about Reagan now, but he couldn't get good press to save in his life when he was president.) And the only way to get liberals to approve of your positions is to stop standing for anything.

Obama's Muslim Problem

Jennifer Rubin of Contentions, one of my favorite bloggers, had a couple of excellent posts yesterday regarding what the controversy over the Ground Zero mosque has to say about Obama's worldview. Check them out here and here.

Insult in the Name of Tolerance

I'm sure most of my readers are aware of the proposal to build a grand mosque just a few hundred feet away from Ground Zero in New York City. Although this story has been around for awhile, it is back in the news this week with the decision of a New York City panel to allow the building to go forward. Here are the reasons I virulently oppose the building of this mosque.

1. Supporters of the mosque claim this is an issue of religious liberty. Not true. There are over 100 mosques already in New York City, and no one is complaining about another one being built. All we ask is that the mosque not be built on this particular site. Five blocks over is fine. There is already a mosque six blocks away from Ground Zero that has been there since 1970, and no one is complaining about that.

2. Supporters of the mosque claim that their proposal is not illegal. I agree. As long as zoning laws are complied with, technically there is the legal right to build a mosque at Ground Zero. But that doesn't mean the decision is a good idea, or that the public doesn't have a right to loudly express their disapproval in order to try to convince the people behind this mosque to change their mind.

3. The Muslim group that proposed this mosque, the Cordoba Initiative, claims that their purpose is to promote tolerance and understanding. If that is the case, then why do they insist on this location, which is like pouring salt in an open wound for many of the families of the 9/11 victims? This proposed building is not promoting peace and harmony; it is provoking controversy and insult. At this location, just 9 short years ago, the worst attack ever on American soil occurred, resulting in the death of 3,000 Americans. This site is sacred ground for Americans. It should be used for a memorial of the attack and a celebration of our history, not to build a monument to the very religion which inspired the attacks in the first place. Remember, many families of the 9/11 victims have spoken out against this. Over 60% of liberal New York residents, including over half of left-wing New York City residents, oppose it. Shouldn't their feelings, and the feelings of Americans at large, be taken into account? If the Cordoba Initiative were really serious about building bridges between the Muslim world and the West, they would show respect for the wishes of a majority of the residents of New York City and move their project to a different location.

4. In addition to the Cordoba Initiative's indifference to the feelings of Americans on this project (including many of the 9/11 families), there are other strong indications that the real inspiration behind this mosque is far from an intention to promote harmony and understanding. This mosque is the brainchild of an imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf. Shortly after 9/11, Rauf said that he believed that the U.S. was an accessory to the 9/11 murders and that Osama bin Laden was a product of America. He has refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization, even though that organization routinely target innocent civilians, including women and children, in their attacks. He has not even been full-throated in condemning Islamic terrorism, saying calling the issue of terrorism a "very complex question." He has called for the U.S. to become more compliant with sharia law. (Sharia law governs some of the most oppressive regimes in the world and calls for the execution of homosexuals and adulterers and the elimination of many of the most basic rights of women.) He has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which published his book overseas through two satellite organizations. (The Muslim Brotherhood has provided a great deal of the funding for terrorism in many parts of the world.)

5. Given the radical statements and connections of the leading Islamic cleric behind this project, it would be nice to at least be able to confirm that this mosque will not be funded by Islamic terrorist organizations. Unfortunately, we can't even do that. The mosque is expected to cost $100 million, and Rauf has said that part of that money will come from foreign sources, but he has refused to disclose the names of any specific donors or sources of funds. This is a huge red flag, because given Rauf's connections there is a good chance that some of the money for this mosque may end up actually coming from the very same radical terrorist groups that supported the 9/11 attacks! It is a Muslim tradition to build grand mosques and religious centers on the sites of their greatest military victories. Perhaps this is the real intention of the unknown overseas organizations who are contributing money to this project -- and of the radical cleric who has masterminded it. I'm sure jihadists all around the world will be celebrating if this project succeeds.

To summarize: A radical Islamic cleric who has sympathies with and ties to overseas terrorist groups wants to build a huge mosque right on the site where radical Islamic terrorism killed 3,000 Americans less than a decade ago -- funded with millions of dollars from undisclosed foreign sources. This is an outrage, but it can be stopped if patriotic New Yorkers, as well as all Americans, make their voices heard so loudly that even the tone-deaf mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, can't ignore it. I signed the petition here, which is sponsored by Act for America, a group which exists to monitor and fight back against radical Islam.