Posted on 09/05/2010 8:50:57 AM PDT by opentalk
The controversy over the 'Ground Zero mosque' has portrayed the United States as a land of bigots. Toby Harnden wonders why the US President has helped fuel this myth.
It took a Manhattan taxi driver called Ahmed Sharif to speak out for America, which is being vilified as bigoted and Islamophobic because of the controversy generated by opposition to the so-called "Ground Zero mosque".
The United States was his dream country, he enthused, and he loved New York City. "I feel like I belong here. This is the city actually [for] all colours, races, religion, everyone. We live here side by side peacefully."
...In fact, most evidence points to the US being one of the most tolerant countries in the world. A poll from you won't see cited much because it doesn't fit the prevailing narrative was recently conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute.
It found that 76 per cent of Americans would support Muslims in their community building an Islamic centre or mosque provided they followed the same rules and regulations required of other religious groups. But the 9/11 site is seen as different. After the 9/11 attacks there was no anti-Muslim backlash in the US.
Obama's ill-judged intervention, and the shrill outrage of his allies in the intelligentsia, has damaged America's standing in the world by fuelling anti-American stereotypes.
Aides to General David Petraeus, commanding troops in Afghanistan, say he is livid about the portrayal of the US as a hotbed of anti-Muslim bigotry and fears it may undermine the war effort, which is based on partnership with an Islamic regime.
Many Americans are incensed by the way that legitimate protest and questioning of Obama's policies routinely branded as racist or ignorant. They are tired of being told what to think and when to think it.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Not to worry about what this guys thinks. He will be removed from office soon. American can no longer put up with what is going on.
I am, and will remain, anti-islam. I have seen what it has done to other countries and what it is doing to my country. That being said, America is way more tolerant of islam than islamist countries are of Christians. They will never assimilate into America because they don’t want to and they don’t have to. We will continue bending over backwards for their murderous cult.
The author needs to be educated on the difference in tolerance and reacting to being slapped in the face on multiple occasions. Even Jesus only instructed us to turn our cheeks once. Not many people deny the muslims their right to build a mosque, but most Americans think it is the wrong place. And there are far too many coincidences about the property value, taxes, the developer, the imam and Mayor Bloomberg’s investment in Dubai to just ignore it.
Re the Ground Zero Mosque - background link with ongoing update:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2408932/posts
Should we have been more tolerant of Japanese Zero fighter planes after Pearl Harbor? Should we have been more tolerant of the Japanese Navy?
Obama aside (if only!), Muslims are the best and most consistent liars on the planet.
You cannot ever trust a Muslim, ever.
America would do well to remember that.
So what? Compared to whom? I am tired of all the cowards that won't address this crap head on. Instead they run around in circles trying to appeal to those that wish to destroy us to not call us names.
interesting, from the article at your link
..The origins of such monies are unexplained; neither are the countries or entity advancing such huge donations. Most US mosques, including many in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are funded directly or indirectly by Saudi Arabia the country to which 15 of the 19 hijackers who bombed the World TradeCenter belonged. The UAE, Qatar and Iran are other major sponsors across the USA.
What Obama said regarding the mosque was relatively mild, delivered in an abstract, professorial way without passion, as if it had been written for him - compared with the vicious, hateful diatribes coming from the editorial page of the NYTimes, columnists like Frank Rich and Nicholas Kristof, and Mayor Bloomberg.
Agree, Bloomberg's behavior is very odd. He also called a recent terrorist attempt in NY, probably someone who was mad about Obamacare --from the article.
To want to debate such matters, however, is judged as beyond the pale. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York tried to shut down discussion by saying that opponents of Rauf's initiative "ought to be ashamed of themselves".
Washington, DC, looks more and more like Madrid in 1936.
Where’s our Franco?
Bravo, well said! I agree with you 100%. I’m proud to say I’m anti-Islam too. If Muslims want to renounce their false God and their demon prophet and come to know the love and salvation of Jesus Christ or Buddha or Vishnu or even be atheists fine with me. But until that time I’ll never tolerate Islam.
I suggest the KKK build a community center in Memphis - at the site of the MLK assassination. That should keep these people busy for a while.
Correction: “That should keep these MEDIA people busy for a while.”
I don’t trust Obama, never did, I don’t trust Muslims, I am a Islamaphobe, so be it,
Better safe then sorry, if push came to shove and they were ordered by Allah to take a side in this issue , most would prefer Islam over freedom.
This is not about religious freedom, there are already mosques in downtown Manhattan. This is about sensitivity to the surviving victims of 9/11 and who decides how this sacred spot will be commemorated. Will it be Americans and the families of the 9/11 victims, or by foreign born nationals, defenders of Hamas, who are using Saudi money to build this unwanted, uninvited and ostentatious “shrine”. It is more than a little presumptuous of these Muslims to demand that we accept their shrine for American victims when the terrorists who did this acted in the name of the very same Islam; why is it so difficult to ask for a little sensitivity from our Muslim brothers to stop accusing our victims of bigotry and intolerance and perhaps show some toleration of their own.
I find it repulsive to be lectured about toleration from Islamist propagandists. When one million Christians in Saudi Arabia cannot publicly practice their religion under pain of flogging and jail, I am dumbfounded by the hypocrisy. When they stone women for adultery, mutilate females, engage in honor killings, stab film makers to death, throw homosexuals off buildings, treat women like animals, refuse to educate girls and sell non Muslim black Africans into slavery - I am confused, where is the “brotherhood”, where is the gentleness of Islam these proponents tell us about? Where are their cultural center shrines for those victims? Can they sanitize their own house before they demand to clean ours?
They see the speck in our eye but fail to see the beam in their own.
Go to Saudi Arabia and with this Hamas money begin to build churches for the foreign born Christians who are working there - do that and we will start to believe you are serious about “brotherhood”.
I am also tired of the excuse of “don’t lump all Muslims together” which is very convenient when it is used to excuse the wanton murder of Christians, Jews and Hindus in a number of countries. By the time they are finished excluding all the “bad” Muslims, there may be none left to wallow in moderation. The fact remains, the so-called unicorn-like ‘moderate’ Muslim is afraid to speak out against these heinous crimes perpetuated in the name of Islam, and that collective cowardice forfeits the high moral ground in calling the living victims of 9/11 intolerant bigots. They have yet to earn the right to say anything about our alleged intolerance when Muslims have practiced bigoted murder in every country they reside, and the ‘moderates’ remain silent.
It is so much easier for their purposes to attack the “intolerant and bigoted” West than it is to look inward at their own hideous practices and attempt to change that ocean of toxic waste.
From within their mosques they have planned the violent overthrown of their host nations. From Finsbury in England, to Hamburg, Germany to the Al Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn to the mosque in Jersey City where the first World Trade Center bombing was planned - unfortunately they will continue to be places where violent overthrow is conceived and carried out. We have had the Lackawanna Six, the Fort Dix murder attempt, the Ft. Hood Shootings, the Christmas Day jetliner bombing that almost was, the Times Square bombing that almost was, the Detroit Sleeper Cell with the planned attack on Disney Land, and the bombings in the London Underground and the rail bombings in Spain, the hotel murders in Mumbai and many more. Islam does not seem to be listening to its ‘moderates’ at all and we must therefore live with a violent and arrogant Islam in our midst, while we are lectured by their so-called moderates who don’t have the guts to shout their murderous radicals down. Most likely because the moderates are so greatly outnumbered.
Islam can only cure itself, and the radicals are in complete control, so with the combination of the paucity of moderates, their general cowardice and their utter futility in making change, the West has to fight this unholy scourge alone.
Didnt Obama write in one of his books something about if the political winds shift he will stand with Muslims.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.