Posted on 09/01/2010 9:56:49 AM PDT by La Lydia
Members of the Congressional Muslim Staff Association (CMSA) hosted a panel discussion on Capitol Hill Tuesday to discuss the perception of Islam among Americans in the wake of the current debate over the proposed Park51 Islamic center and mosque project to be located just two blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. The primary point of agreement among all three panel participants was that those who oppose Muslim initiatives — such as the so-called “Ground Zero” mosque — are Islamaphobic and ignorant. A recent CBS poll revealed that 71% of Americans believe it is inappropriate to build a mosque so close to the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Salam Al-Maryati, president of Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), Dr. Azizah Al-Hibri, chairwoman of KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, and Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), were the participants...
Moderator Suhail Khan, senior fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE), kicked off the panel by explaining the uproar the Park51 project has caused and how it has raised a lot of questions and pushed a number of conspiracy theories — theories that had once been relegated to Internet message boards — out into the open. “There are all kinds of accusations that are swirling around,” Khan said. “We thought here we’d assemble a panel of experts to really take on some of these myths.”
Despite an introduction that minimized the importance of the Park51 project to the conversation at hand, Salam Al-Maryati took to the podium to decry the way in which the American public has come to view the project. “The nomenclature of this particular story — it started out as the Ground Zero mosque controversy and I think by now, everybody acknowledges that the place is not at Ground Zero and it is not a mosque,” Al-Maryati said. “It is a few blocks away, where you can’t even see Ground Zero, and it is a community center that was actually intended to develop interfaith dialogue.”...
“Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights” Let me count the oxymorons involved in that phrase.......
Cap Hill panels also discuss such useless crap like steeroids in baseball, while rome burns.
Non-Muslims not welcome.
These propagandists can say whatever they want, but when the average American thiks of islam, what is the first thing that pops into their collective heads? 9/11.
For the umpteenth time, everything I needed to know about islam and muslims I learned on 9/11. And I think there are millions of Americans just like me.
Vonnegut’s “Mother Night” keeps popping up for me lately, with its moral of “Be careful of what you pretend to be, because in the end you are what you pretend to be.”
The same holds true for religions. They can show an endless number of benign Quran verses, but in the end Islam is the negative influence it is today. In contrast, I can show you a multitude of not-so-nice Bible verses, but in the end Christianity is the benign influence it is today.
Infidels that oppose dhimmitude are stupid bigots. Got it.
Those who think Islam can be reasoned with are the ones with the misunderstanding.
Zogby? Isn’t he still a pollster?
What’s there to discuss. Muslims commit 99.99% of world terrorism and believe in killing innocents. All other world religions have learned the value of harmony and peace. Islam is not another religion, It is a global terror cell!
This guy is the brother of the pollster.
The quran admonishes muslims to lie and lull the infidel to so-called tolerance until such time as islam can take that enemy of allah by the throat.
F___ islam, now and always.
Amen and Amen!
LLS
Why don’t they have a panel on Islam’s misunderstanding of America?
There is no misunderstanding. It is an evil and terrorist cult.
Where is that sign that says everything I know about Islam Iearned on 911?
I think it’s still appropriate .
I would suggest that, while making the attempt to understand Muslims is sensible, it is much more important, indeed imperative that Muslims understand Americans.
President Adams on Islam
“In the seventh century of the Christian era a wandering Arab, of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combing the powers of transcendent genius with the preternatural energy of a fanatic and the fraudulent spirit of an imposter, proclaimed himself as a messenger from heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting, from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God, he connected indissolubly with it the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war as part of his religion against all the rest of mankind. The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust; to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature. Between these two religions, thus contrasted in the characters, a war of more than twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extincture of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute are encouraged to furnish motives to human action, there never can be peace on earth and good will toward men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”
-Originally published in The American Annual Register for 1827—1829 (NY 1830)
“Capitol Hill panel discusses Americans’ misunderstanding of Islam”
The problem facing the panel is NOT that Americans “misunderstand” Islam.
Rather, it is that Americans seem to “understand” it all too well.
I agree that people are Islamophobic. It’s rational to have a fear of Islam after 9/11 and numerous other terror attacks done in the name of Islam.
A “phobia” is normally considered an irrational fear of something. In this case, a fear of Islam is rational. Except to the politically correct crowd.
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