Posted on 08/20/2004 6:06:55 AM PDT by Rebelbase
What if I were to invite you to visit the “holy city” of San Diego, named after a saint? So was St. Augustine, Florida. Providence, Rhode Island references God’s grace. There is hardly a major city where one cannot find an impressive cathedral or other religious structure. From one end of America to another, you can find “holy cities”, but while they honor religious figures or ideals, they do not claim to be “sacred” ground.
So what makes Iraq’s Najaf a “holy city” other than the fact that there is a big mosque there? What, for that matter, makes every grain of sand in Saudi Arabia “sacred”? Or makes Mecca and Medina more sacred than cities that preceded both by well over two thousand years, Jerusalem and Vatican City in the midst of Rome? Other than pure arrogance, what gives Islam the right to claim Jerusalem as an Islamic holy city when Muhammad never physically stepped foot there, nor anywhere else outside of Arabia?
Returning to Najaf, the home base of Muqtada al-Sadr, the renegade Shi’ite mullah, just how holy is a mosque when it serves as a place to store weapons and plan military operations against an interim government? So I suggest that the time to give him five minutes to get out of town or watch his mosque turned into a parking lot has arrived.
This is likely to make a lot of Arabs angry at the Big Bad United States of America, but frankly these people don’t need any excuse to dislike us. I get a lot of email from people in the Middle East who don’t like what I have to say about Islam. One universal theme runs through virtually all these communications and it is that the United States and Israel are responsible for the “oppression” in their nations, not the monarchs and despots that run those nations.
It is the U.S., they contend, that supports these dictators and, therefore, is to be blamed for their actions. As for Israel, it is responsible for everything that is wrong with their lives. By contrast, militant and even peaceful Muslims are never to blame for anything.
In the past, I have tried to reply reasonably that the United States has not only suffered attacks on its homeland, but also a long succession of attacks going back to the seizing of its diplomats in Iran in 1979, the bombing of Marines in Lebanon, the attack of the USS Cole, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All by Muslims. It was Muslims who blew up trains in Spain, a nightclub in Bali, synagogues in Turkey and Argentina, foreign compounds in Riyadh, and let’s not forget those US embassies in two African nations.
For good measure, I tried to point out that our military has gone in harm’s way to defend and protect Muslims in Kuwait, in Somalia, in Bosnia, and against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Now it is engaged in the liberation of 25 million Muslims in Iraq, setting them on the path of democracy and freedom.
None of this, I assure you, has the least affect on the thinking of my correspondents, nor, I suspect, on any of the other millions of totally ungrateful slaves of the despotic governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Libya, the Sudan, and other nations where Islam plays a significant role in governance or whose militants are engaged in insurrections to become the government. In Islam, there is no separation of church and state.
Islam so suffuses the lives of Muslims throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, they are utterly blind and indifferent to the fact that it has consigned them to backwardness, poverty, and the mercy of whoever is in charge. There is little hope for the individual Middle Eastern Muslim, even if he is an educated member of the middle class. That is why most of the 9-11 hijackers came from this segment of Saudi Arabian society. That is why Osama bin Laden, who came from a Saudi family of great wealth, uses Islam to advance his self-glorification and evil agenda. And right now, the Saudis have launched a public relations campaign to tell us what good friends of ours they are. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
So here come the Americans with our military power and these morons sit in front of their television sets listening to and watching al Jezeera tell them over and over again that their sacred lands or holy cities are being destroyed by us simply because we want their oil. Yes, we want their oil. We are paying $44 a barrel for it right now! Has the money gained from its purchase in the past done anything to benefit the individual Muslim? Has it built a decent infrastructure or educational system in any of these places?
I suggest we Americans get over the notion that we are “creating” Islamic enemies. Just as the nation of Israel was born surrounded with Islamic enemies and has battled them for over a half century, the only thing the United States can do is kill our enemies and liberate the rest who must be dragged into the 21st century and connected to the rest of the world before they destroy us in the name of Allah
For discussion sake, what would happen if the Kabala at Mecca was destroyed?
The need to add Constitution Day's Holy BBQ City of Wilson to their list.
Still nothing...
Love it. Dead-on.
Every time I see the video from that s**thole and see these vermin dancing around and thumping their little Arab chests, I just think "Don't you DARE talk to me about 'holiness' as you wave that damned gun and booby trap your own "holy" shrines, you miserable piece of walking excrement!"
It's in my sent file so it must be floating around in the cyber ether somewhere.
Knowing nothing about it, I couldn't say. If there was one for Scientology, then I'd know they had passed the limits.
I think we need the Holy MOAB of Najaf to make a few holy relics of Mookie.
..."...Islam so suffuses the lives of Muslims throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, they are utterly blind and indifferent to the fact that it has consigned them to backwardness, poverty, and the mercy of whoever is in charge."...
That is why it is so revealing that Muslims sit silently by while strongmen like Sadr and Zarqawi bring back dictatorial rule. I would expect a country sick of a tyrant like Saddam would recognize a "New Tyrant" IMMEDIATELY and do something to prevent another Saddam.
Instead, many Iraqis have chosen to sit back and watch the fight, as if they had no stake in the outcome and were watching a soccer match.
Their future is at stake, and they treat the entire scenario as "Inshallah" (It is god's will).
For expressing the above, I have been banned from posting to some Iraq blogs.
the holy city of scientology is Hollywood.
Hmmm, assuming we destroyed it in this hypothetical, I could see the muslim world uniting into a frenzy against us, turning the entire US into another Israel, our gas being cut off, and chaos ensues.
You think they would still have to face east 3 times a day?
Well here in Tennessee they think barbecue is pork. Having grown up in Louisiana, I know that real barbecue is beef.
Worse in a most irreverant ritual they put cole slaw on barbecue sandwiches defiling both in the process.
Keep talking like that and we'll have to launch a jihad on you. Everyone knows that the Barbecue God smiles on all his children, and while beef and pork are his favored ones the blessings of a good barbecue sauce can be bestowed on lamb and chicken as well.
I agree media hype and political correctness is behind this.
But, there's another reason. Christian holy cities -- like Jerusalem, Rome, Salt Lake City and Moscow -- have a lot more going for them than merely being religious centers. Thus you can't call Rome "holy" because many parts of it are not.
Muslim holy cities are basically a mosque and a place of pilgrimage. Nothing else.
Well I live in the Holy City of Cumming. I'm just going to shrine it off right now. And I am the Cleric. Stay out, infidels!
Only Muslims should be addressing the city as "holy". The media continually calling it that are recognizing the holiness of the city when most of them believe themselves as a god.
I will recognize that city as holy only when Christ Himself walks its streets blessing it. Until then, its a rathole crawling with terrorists.
Unlike Westerners, Arabs do NOT consider mere buildings to be "holy;" in fact, there's a large article in the Wall Street Journal of a couple days ago about the difficulties experienced by those trying to preserve the Arab "heritage" by preserving historic buildings.
Muslims consider it idolatry to attach any particular siginficance to a mere building, so this "respect" for Muslim "shrines" is purely a creation of we ignorant Westerners.
Them's fightin' words, blasphemer.
Prepare for the Imam of the Most Holy Pork Shrine of Wilbur's to issue a fatwa on you!
Porku Akbar!! Aiiaiiaiiaii!!
Imagine if a gang of crazies armed to the teeth took over a church or a synagogue over here and threatened to blow it up. The "holiness" of that building wouldn't keep anyone from storming it. And the western world would not see it as an attack on the whole faith either.
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