It's been a while since I've done a rant and rave post, and I figure this is as good a topic as any. By now I'm sure everyone has heard about the controversy surrounding a Muslim group's decision to build a mosque and community center near Ground Zero, a.k.a where the Twin Towers were hit and destroyed on September 11, 2001. Now I can understand why people would be emotional over the building's location, but this is getting ridiculous.
Of course you have the typical knee-jerk reactions from the usual suspects such as Sarah Palin, who tweeted nonsense that building the mosque would "stab Americans in the heart" and asking peaceful Muslims to "please refudiate." Refudiate Sarah? Really? Are we making up words now? Then she had the nerve to compare herself to Shakespeare. I'm sorry but if this woman gets elected president or vice president in 2012, the only silver lining will be to watch Tina Fey making fun of her every moronic move on SNL for the next four years. But I digress.
Back to the mosque. People are talking like it's just the first step of a full-on Taliban takeover led by Osama Bin Ladin and the ghost of Saddam Hussein! First of all, the people who attacked us on 9-11 do not represent all Muslims. They were radical extremists. If some whack-job fundamentalist Christian blew up an abortion clinic tomorrow I'm sure no one would freak out if a church was built down the street. Because most Americans know that behavior does not represent all Christians. But when it comes to Isalm(or any other non-Christian religion) people suddenly get stupid.
Second of all, Muslims building a mosque near Ground Zero is not the same as the Japanese building Buddhist or Shinto shrines at the site of Pearl Harbor(yes people are really saying this-check the comments at MSNBC.com.) The attack on Pearl Harbor had nothing to do with a religion or radical extremists. It was a military action, pure and simple. Should we get rid of every Italian, Japanese or German restaurant as well? Besides, if we follow this line of thinking, every Native American should protest the building of every Christian church they see, since the followers of that religion were responsible for taking their land and pretty much destroying their entire way of life, all in the name of Manifest Destiny. Oh how quickly we forget.
Another idiot statement made by the opposition is that the mosque symbolizes Islamic extremists' "victory" over America, and that by placing it near Ground Zero we'd be allowing the terrorists to win, when in reality the exact opposite is true. Labeling all Muslims as extremists, saying no mosque should built near Ground or anywhere else in America and any other sorts of bigoted statements only makes the terrorists' viewpoint-that Americans think we're superior to everyone else, that we're intolerant of other religions, that we want to impose our way of life on everyone else--true. Not allowing the mosque to be built would send the message that America is anti-Muslim, and would contradict the values of freedom of religion and democracy. Now I'm babbling but you get the point: building a mosque near Ground Zero is not anti-American. Denying people the right to practice their religion based on the actions of a few radicals is.
Of course you have the typical knee-jerk reactions from the usual suspects such as Sarah Palin, who tweeted nonsense that building the mosque would "stab Americans in the heart" and asking peaceful Muslims to "please refudiate." Refudiate Sarah? Really? Are we making up words now? Then she had the nerve to compare herself to Shakespeare. I'm sorry but if this woman gets elected president or vice president in 2012, the only silver lining will be to watch Tina Fey making fun of her every moronic move on SNL for the next four years. But I digress.
Back to the mosque. People are talking like it's just the first step of a full-on Taliban takeover led by Osama Bin Ladin and the ghost of Saddam Hussein! First of all, the people who attacked us on 9-11 do not represent all Muslims. They were radical extremists. If some whack-job fundamentalist Christian blew up an abortion clinic tomorrow I'm sure no one would freak out if a church was built down the street. Because most Americans know that behavior does not represent all Christians. But when it comes to Isalm(or any other non-Christian religion) people suddenly get stupid.
Second of all, Muslims building a mosque near Ground Zero is not the same as the Japanese building Buddhist or Shinto shrines at the site of Pearl Harbor(yes people are really saying this-check the comments at MSNBC.com.) The attack on Pearl Harbor had nothing to do with a religion or radical extremists. It was a military action, pure and simple. Should we get rid of every Italian, Japanese or German restaurant as well? Besides, if we follow this line of thinking, every Native American should protest the building of every Christian church they see, since the followers of that religion were responsible for taking their land and pretty much destroying their entire way of life, all in the name of Manifest Destiny. Oh how quickly we forget.
Another idiot statement made by the opposition is that the mosque symbolizes Islamic extremists' "victory" over America, and that by placing it near Ground Zero we'd be allowing the terrorists to win, when in reality the exact opposite is true. Labeling all Muslims as extremists, saying no mosque should built near Ground or anywhere else in America and any other sorts of bigoted statements only makes the terrorists' viewpoint-that Americans think we're superior to everyone else, that we're intolerant of other religions, that we want to impose our way of life on everyone else--true. Not allowing the mosque to be built would send the message that America is anti-Muslim, and would contradict the values of freedom of religion and democracy. Now I'm babbling but you get the point: building a mosque near Ground Zero is not anti-American. Denying people the right to practice their religion based on the actions of a few radicals is.
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