Posted on 08/19/2010 8:25:37 AM PDT by IbJensen
A thousand years ago, the Iberian Peninsula was under the thumb of the Muslim Caliphate of Cordoba, an offshoot of the Umayyad Caliphate. While responsible for cultural and economic developments, the Cordoba Caliphate was also particularly hard on what they called “infidels,” and everyone else called “Christians and Jews.”
The Caliphate’s method of dealing with Christians and Jews was to tax the living infidelity out of them. For those who couldn’t pay there were routinely fatal consequences. Religious sensitivity was decidedly NOT a part of the Cordoba Caliphate’s social programs.
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan visited Germany for the G-7 Summit. His itinerary included a stop at the German World War II cemetery at Bitburg. One problem: the Bitburg Cemetery contained the remains of several Waffen SS storm troopers.
Reagan’s purpose was to commemorate V-E Day and to honor the memories of all those who fought and lost their lives in the 20th Century’s greatest conflict. Polling indicated Americans would rather Reagan blew past Bitburg on Die Autobahn. And that polling was right, in a sense.
Though Reagan certainly didn’t support the Reich, visiting Bitburg was a bad call. With millions of opponents—and victims—of Hitler’s hardest corps still alive, the visit was… insensitive.
In 2009, a group of investors fronted by Imam Feisal Abdul-Rauf purchased the Burlington Coat Factory building just blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks. Abdul-Rauf, a sharia-observant imam who has repeatedly made statements that the United States is to blame for the 9/11 attacks (including my fave: “…Osama bin Laden is made in America…”) named his part of the investment group “The Cordoba Initiative.”
A shadily-funded group (developers have repeatedly double-talked on the source of their nearly $100 million budget) want to put a mosque named for a brutal caliphate within rpg-range of the site where other Muslims murdered 2,700 people—for not being Muslim enough. Not exactly the textbook definition of sensitivity.
Of all the hot-button issues the Democrat Party is pushing this year, support for the Ground Zero mosque is one of the biggest head-scratchers. Abdul-Rauf is an imam who has repeatedly endeavored to blame 9/11 on America; he’s part of a religious movement which believes women should be neither seen nor heard (no Hillary Clinton jokes, please) and wants a mosque on top of the spot where the landing gear from one of the planes used on 9/11 by the terrorists landed. But Americans lack sensitivity? Compared to Feisel Abdul-Rauf, I’m Alan Alda, and the GOP is a sensitivity-training seminar.
But, in the spirit of multi-partisan accord, I’ve decided I CAN live with a mosque whose imam preaches hate, intolerance and the kind of respect for women that makes Joseph Smith look like Jane Fonda—IF—we infidels get something in return. Cordoba House construction can start tomorrow; and I will wield a shovel while standing next to some cat named Akbar bin Laden (or whatever). But, construction on the new Basilica of the Blessed Crusaders has to start the same day in Riyadh. No? All right, but don’t say I didn’t offer.
Let’s take a clinical look at the chaos. According to CNN, 27 percent of Americans believe Obama was born somewhere other than these United States. Wingnuts routinely dismiss these 27 percent as crazier than Rosie O’Donnell in fat camp lockdown. Only 29 percent of Americans support the building of the Ground Zero mosque. Using liberal math… Obamacare had better cover psychiatric treatment.
The Constitution of the United States of America, written by what may well have been the greatest single gathering of intellect in human history, grants us religious freedom, from Muslim to Mormon. But I don’t see this as a matter of religious freedom. It IS a matter of sensitivity. I have sarcastically hypothesized the idea of a mosque-for-basilica tradeoff. But a church built in Riyadh under those circumstances might as well be named Our Lady of The Immaculate Thumb in Your Eye. It’s… insensitive.
Thousands met their end mere yards from the Cordoba House site. The perpetrators of that monstrosity (despite the statements by Imam Abdul-Rauf) were acting on behalf of their version of Islam. Supporters of the Ground Zero mosque are whining about religious sensitivity; although they’ll deny it to the folks who put up too gaudy a Nativity Scene at Christmas, or the 9-year-old who wants to bow his head in silent prayer before some National Education Association union wonk “teaches” him that 2+2=5.
Begging the question: You want sensitivity? How about showing a little?
Enough is enough if they think this would really happen then they are sniffing too many camel butts.The unions understand that they will never again put a shovel in the graves of so many Americans.
The Democrats are in the hip pocket of the Muslims, the union bosses are in the hip pocket of the Dems, the union members (SEIU, AFL-CIO, Teamsters, etc.) are going to do whatever the bosses say.
Union members are NOT concerned how their actions will hurt this nation, as it has been shown throughout recent history. I think that this mosque is a good 5 to 1 bet at being built before Obama leaves office.
Quarantine the anti-president Obama. Blockade the White Hut filled with his evil regime minions.
ALL of TV supports it - every network and every channel. Support TV and you are supporting your destruction. The only thing they understand is economic power of you cancelling cable and sat TV.
Democrats are lying, sniveling, cowardly, duplicitous ... well, you get the picture. Some democrat trying to foment division in America once said that there are two Americas. Ya know, the bastard was right, in fact there are at least two Americas, probably more than that. But one of the ‘americas’ is populated by liberal/progressive democrats who don’t like the America of the founders. To them I offer a rasberry and will gladly pay their flight to get the hell out of MY AMERICA before their disease of liberalism kills the ‘We The People’ Republic. I’m no longer sick of democrats, I hate them.
Let them build it on the condition they allow same-sex marriages in it!
Yousef is RIGHT! All aided by the pRes. Everything he does is for the destruction of America. Religiously and politically. Politically? Here is an excellent example of the Anti American president at work...
Most people do not recognize that what happens in a mosque is sedition. Pure and simple. Islam is not just a “religion”, it is a cult. Larger than that though, it is a political system, it is it’s own government, its judicial...is in its sharia, and its military (jihadis) all rolled into one with one intent ...and that is to rule wherever they take root. It is a invasive, systemic infection looking to take over the host once it has quantum.
This is not just a “religion”, but something that cloaks itself in those terms so it should not be given the same treatment contemplated under the first amendment. The Korans Sharia rules are to consume whatever government there is wherever it goes. It is political, and it’s goal is to supplant and replace.
The sooner America learns this , the better.
Obama? Obama and Company? Should be tried for treason in this issue for promoting the establishment of a foreign government on our soils. He is doing nothing to protect America as per his oath. Also, as a Muslim, he knows this, he know far better, he knows sharia, but is looking to deceive America.
For all interested...Wanna learn more?
http://thehayride.com/2010/08/louisiana-at-leading-edge-in-fight-against-shariah/#more-5392
and this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib9rofXQl6w&feature=player_embedded
Lets keep America, America!
Obama? Obama and Company? Should be tried for treason in this issue for promoting the establishment of a foreign government on our soils. As a Muslim, he knows this, he knows sharia, but is looking to deceive America.
we are now ruled by the Caliph of Washinton DC.
I dark day awaits us.
What a plethora of evil the two political parties dish up to us!
We have so many rinos that it should make us to puke!
Yet, it was nothing of the kind.
Maimonides was also a brilliant man, and a doctor and business man as well as a cleric and a scholar. Because of his brilliance, and his usefulness to the Caliphs, he was provided liberties and privileges that the vast majority of the average Christian or Jew rarely saw in Spain at that time. What he, and those like him were were examples of the exceptions, not the "rule".
Truth be told, all of Europe at that time, Christian or Muslim, had examples of privileged Jews who were favored by the court, for their abilities, and the best of them became famous. What also made them useful, in either Muslim or Christian Europe, was no matter how much those privileges fell to such useful people, the rulers had no concern about such people undermining their power or authority because their was absolutely no route to political power or office, for a Jew, in either Muslim or Christian Europe of the Middle Ages.
Not only could they not undermine your authority and set up as a power unto themselves, but their very existence was dependent upon the rulers forbearance, thus they could be - at any time - condemned and discarded.
“Not only could they not undermine your authority and set up as a power unto themselves, but their very existence was dependent upon the rulers forbearance, thus they could be - at any time - condemned and discarded.”
You said it with clarity and brevity better than I.
The real issue that others need to realize from your point is that “tolerance” of non-Muslims (Christians and Jews) within ANY Caliphate, was a privilege, not a right. It was given or denied at the whim of those in power, and usually denied more often than given, and never given without either payment (a tax that was not imposed on Muslims) or some form of indentured status as understood to accompany the privilege.
“Free so long as you please us” is not free. “Tolerated so long as we find you useful” is not tolerance.
There seems to have been a long illustrious history of ministers from a different culture being instrumental to the running of a government.
Reading “the Last Emperor of China” it seems that the one uncorrupted and competent civil servant the Emperor had was an Englishman.
The Byzantine Emperors hired Vikings to be their guard, the famed Vangarian guard, because they would not have passions inflamed by local conflicts.
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