Posted on 08/28/2010 8:18:58 PM PDT by markomalley
"We are Americans, each with an equal right to worship and pray where we choose," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week. "There is nowhere in the five boroughs that is off limits to any religion."
Our founding documents guarantee that - and not just in the five boroughs.
But the unprecedented furor over plans for a mosque complex at ground zero tells us there is a coalescing sense that Islam is more than a "mere" religion as non-Muslims conceive of "religion." It is becoming clear to people, despite the gag of political correctness, that there's a reason "Islam" means "submission."
Islam not only seeks to order the spiritual realm inhabited by a Muslim and Allah, it lays out a doctrine to control every believer's behavior (down to the most intimate bodily functions) as well as the public life of the collective. Doctrinally, Islam is thus "doubly totalitarian," in the words of G.H. Bousquet, a leading scholar of Islamic law, in accordance with the body of law known as Shariah.
Under Shariah, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech are outlawed with extreme sanction (those who leave Islam fear death to this day), while non-Muslims and women exist as legal inferiors to the Muslim man. Meanwhile, jihad -- holy war to extend Islamic rule -- is a sacred command. And I have the books that prove it.
In other words, this isn't Islam because I say so, but because its sacred, authoritative, mainstream, non-hijacked, untwisted texts say so. It is the religious and political and legal ideology that inspired the al Qaeda killers on 9/11, and it is the religious and political and legal ideology that inspires the mosque complex at ground zero.
And I didn't come up with that, folks; I just happened to notice, and thought you should know.
The crucial fact is, whether we are brutalized by acts of jihad or confused by acts of dawa (proselytizing), their goal is identical: more Islamic law. And this end will always justify the means as seen, for example, back in 2005 when hundreds of acclaimed Islamic clerics and heads of state gathered in Amman, Jordan.
There, quite anti-climactically, they issued the "Amman Message" that declares that no Muslim who adheres to a recognized school of Islam may be labeled an apostate. Subtext: Not even Osama bin Laden could be, in effect, excommunicated or otherwise blackballed or removed from good standing by these Islamic authorities. One of the 552 signatories was Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
Bloomberg types are blind to these things, from the Shariah-spreading efforts of Rauf (noted here last week), to dictates of Shariah that subvert constitutional liberties. So, blindly, they sound platitudes in Islam's defense, plucking emotional chords that resonate with Americans about "liberty," "tolerance," and "religious freedom" on behalf of a belief system that, ultra-ironically, outlaws them all.
Bloomberg actually suggested that a failure to erect the mosque complex would "undermine our soldiers," "our foreign policy objectives" -- even "our national security."
"Just as we fought communism by showing the world the power of free markets and free elections," said Bloomberg, "so must we fight terrorism by showing the world the power of religious freedom and cultural tolerance. Freedom and tolerance will always defeat tyranny and terrorism - that is the great lesson of the 20th century, and we must not abandon it here in the 21st."
It almost sounds wonderful - until the froth dries and you remember that fighting tyranny is never as easy as show and tell. This is something that victims of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, for example, could explain to the mayor. Freedom and tolerance, regardless of how well they are exemplified, don't have a chance against tyranny and terrorism if they aren't vigilantly protected.
Indeed, tolerance is doomed if it is extended to the intolerant, something philosopher Karl Popper worked out in the last century.
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them. ... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
For the sake of the twin towers that's a duty.
Tolerable and intolerable refer ultimately to actions, and to those who control actions. By their fruits shall you know them, goes the Scripture. Whoever is given charge to defend our society, but know what is harmful to our society and what is not. No one is at liberty to do harm.
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“But the unprecedented furor over plans for a mosque complex at ground zero tells us there is a coalescing sense that Islam is more than a “mere” religion as non-Muslims conceive of “religion.””
All animals are equal. Some are more equal that others.
Animal Farm - Goerge Orwell
The flaw in his logic is a lack of understanding of the world. We in the country separate church and state. Islam does not. It is a church, state and government.
Its mosques are political embassies representing those countries governments trying to build in foreign countries.
It is a political statement, not religion when one is built.
Successfully defending our constitutional liberties against those hiding behind them, in order to destroy them, is our biggest challenge. Ending any and all immigration from Muslim based countries is a good first step.
Bloomberg is going to make money; therefore; it is unimportant to him he pimps himself out.
Islam is a stealth dictatorship masquerading as a religion - it is an established system of power and laws cloaked in the velvet glove, or hiding out in the wooden horse if you like, of a tolerant and obedient religion - and those laws are draconian and antithetical to what most people in this country believe - those who won’t recognize the dictatatoship as well as the religion are fools indeed.......
Every chance you get, you must point out every person like Bloomberg who says what he says. Point out that Islam outlaws all the things that allow Bloomberg and others to tolerate it. Point out they are ENABLERS of people that want to destroy the rights and freedoms that allow us to tolerate other religions. You don’t tolerate a religion that is clearly for the destruction of all others, as well as our Constitutional Republic form of government (ie sharia). This is a religion that permits and (requires) lying in order to further the religion’s takeover of the world. How do you trust any of them? THey are allowed to lie to kaffir (unbelievers) because we are less than cattle to them.
bmp for later......
>Ending any and all immigration from Muslim based countries is a good first step.<
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That may not be a viable solution — they’re breeding like lemmings.
All peoples (the left, the right, liberals, conservities) know these things are true!
I guess its like: “You can fool some of the people some of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time; but (I pray & hope) all our people cannot be fooled all of the time!
On 9/11 when it became clear that the attack had come from Islam, I was posting here that I was afraid we had been attacked in what amounts to a blind spot in our body politic, a totalitarian system that masquerades as a religion. We STILL refuse to come to grips with that fact.
That answers a question for me. Rauf and many of the people in the push to Islamicize the world are Sufis, and Sufism used to be regarded as an heretical form of Islam by Sunni or Shiite Muslims; Black Muslims were also regarded as heretical. However, the Muslims have obviously overcome this through the "Amman Message," which means, as Diana West points out, that Islam has not moderated but even the most extreme elements are considered fully legitimate. If anything, Islam has become dangerously united and consolidated and is even more thirsty for domination now.
This is very true. We had a brief experience of this with the rise of Mormonism, which was also basically a totalitarian movement that rejected the US Constitution, and wished to be the controlling political system in the areas in which it existed. The movement was violent and expansionist but presented itself as a peaceful religion based on its founder's dreams (very similar to Islam, in other words). It took the force of the US Army and the threat of war to make Mormonism give up its claims to present a rival system and to settle down and accept a position as a religion, just one among many, all living peacefully under the Constitution.
Islam arose at a time when civil governments had broken down. The Roman Empire had fallen, Constantinople was weak and wracked by divisions, the Eastern and Western powers and drifted apart, and none of the individual kingdoms of the ME (Baghdad, Persia, etc.) had the military ability to protect themselves or their neighbors from this savage band of caravan-robbing nomadic Arabs whose leader had suddenly dreamed that he was Master of the Universe. Furthermore, Mohammed was a cruel and deceitful guerrilla leader and the old ways of doing war meant nothing to him.
However, making Islam a "religion" was one of the smartest things he ever did, because it confused his opponents. The ME at the time was full of different religions, ranging from several varieties of Christianity and Judaism to Zoroastrianism and to other, less-sophisticated pagan religions, and in many ways, their initial response to Mohammed's "religion" was similar to ours, confused and weak.
Successfully defending our constitutional liberties against those hiding behind them, in order to destroy them, is our biggest challenge. Ending any and all immigration from Muslim based countries is a good first step.Absolutely.
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What a dumb comment on Bloomberg's part. We fought communism with Armies, Navies, Overt & Covert Wars, Huge Expenditures of Troops in Europe, Korea, and Japan AND we used free markets and free elections.
If we had use ONLY free markets and free elections, we'd all be mindlessly praising Lenin and bowing toward Moscow.
A similar approach would be using free markets, free thought, and REALISTIC recognition that the Constitution is not a suicide pact that allows a theocracy to subvert our freedom by manipulating the first amendment.
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