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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Aug 14, 2010 - 02:43pm PT
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Only problem with that reasoning, LEB, is that you are not using your brain, but your emotional reaction that was created by the extremists:
Who is controlling your brain?
You want to take an action that furthers your enemies goals, because they have set you up to do so. They WANT YOU to discard your concepts of freedom of religion, because they advocate that you don't really believe it, you actually are opposed to religions not your own.
Will you take actions to prove them right? Or will you stand fast in the freedoms espoused by our country?
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Aug 14, 2010 - 06:03pm PT
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Oh sweet, we're getting a 70' minaret installed in Santa Clara now! I bet you guys are jealous.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Aug 14, 2010 - 10:26pm PT
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LEB, I don't understand your response to me.
You make an argument that differentiates between what is legal, and what is smart.
If you read my posts, you will find nothing that addresses the legal issue, as I think there is none. You think there is none....so no issue.
In fact, I am arguing that building the mosque is the smart thing to do.
The message is uniquely American, tolerant, and accepting of religions other than protestant christianity.
What message do you want to send, if you were in a position to make the decision?
There were innocent muslims killed in 911 along with everyone else. They don't get to pray?
And the mosque is NOT "on ground zero", and you shouldn't keep repeating that falsehood.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Aug 14, 2010 - 10:34pm PT
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So the same republicans who continually hammer points about Constitution, freedom and rights are trying to deny them.
Same sh#t from them...just a different group of people this time.
What a bunch of losers.
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noshoesnoshirt
climber
Arkansas, I suppose
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Aug 14, 2010 - 11:35pm PT
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I agree with all those who believe it's a bad move. I call upon all of you to decry the Christian edifices erected within the same distance of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Some disturbed and radicalised Christian fundamentalist killed hundreds of innocent Americans and we should decry not only the actions of this individual but the motives of his entire religion.
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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Aug 15, 2010 - 10:35am PT
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And..."McVeigh invited California conductor/composer David Woodard to perform a pre-requiem (a Mass for those who are about to die), on the eve of his execution. He had also requested a Catholic chaplain."
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Aug 15, 2010 - 10:40am PT
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What a short memory you have, LEB.
Making a huge protest over something, means that you have access to the media to do so. I can just imagine how you, and the republican rabid dogs would have responded to giving the national microphone over to Islamic leaders right after 911. "How dare they!"
But she who forgets the past, is doomed to repeat it.
When 911 happened, I immediately feared what the reaction to muslims in general was going to be. Why? I remembered the japanese-americans, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, the last major foreign attack on US soil.
"Japanese-American internment was the forced relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese residing along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor"
"President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones," from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and most of Oregon and Washington, except for those in internment camps.[7] In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion orders,[8] while noting that the provisions that singled out people of Japanese ancestry were a separate issue outside the scope of the proceedings.[9] The United States Census Bureau assisted the internment efforts by providing confidential neighborhood information on Japanese Americans."
"On January 2, the Joint Immigration Committee of the California Legislature sent a manifesto to California newspapers which attacked "the ethnic Japanese," whom it alleged were "totally unassimilable"
"The manifesto was backed by the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West and the California Department of the American Legion, which in January demanded that all Japanese with dual citizenship be placed in concentration camps"
"By February, Earl Warren, the Attorney General of California, had begun his efforts to persuade the federal government to remove all people of Japanese heritage from the West Coast."
"Other California newspapers also embraced this view. According to a Los Angeles Times editorial,
"A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched... So, a Japanese American born of Japanese parents, nurtured upon Japanese traditions, living in a transplanted Japanese atmosphere... notwithstanding his nominal brand of accidental citizenship almost inevitably and with the rarest exceptions grows up to be a Japanese, and not an American... Thus, while it might cause injustice to a few to treat them all as potential enemies, I cannot escape the conclusion... that such treatment... should be accorded to each and all of them while we are at war with their race."
So, if I were a muslim immediately post 911, I'd have kept my head down, and waited to see what happened. But they have not neccessarily done that:
"Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Now nine influential American Muslim scholars have come together in a YouTube video to repudiate the militants’ message. The nine represent a diversity of theological schools within Islam, and several of them have large followings among American Muslim youths."
As for immediate reaction by us muslim groups:
http://groups.colgate.edu/aarislam/response.htm#Statements from Leading American Muslim Organizations:
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Aug 15, 2010 - 11:01am PT
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Some disturbed and radicalised Christian fundamentalist killed hundreds of innocent Americans and we should decry not only the actions of this individual but the motives of his entire religion.
Uh, Hitler and Mussolini claimed to be of the Christian faith too. They didn't perpetrate their brands of evil in the name of religion though. Neither did McVeigh. Timmy-boy was a militant anti-Federalist.
Hitler was a sadistic racist and Mussolini literally invented fascism. Nothing to do with religion.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Aug 15, 2010 - 11:12am PT
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I think Karl is a crazy Hindu, but I get your point.
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LED
Social climber
the great beyond
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Aug 15, 2010 - 11:41am PT
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michae1
Gym climber
san jose
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Aug 15, 2010 - 01:43pm PT
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(So if a community thinks it is generally in bad taste to allow a jewish synagogue in their town, it should be prohibited?
Freedom of religion is subject to a good tastes requirement? So I can start banning catholic churches???)
building the mosque is not the problem it is the proximity to the site of ground zero it is not appropriate just as building nazi party meeting hall next to a synagogue would be in bad taste
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Aug 15, 2010 - 02:01pm PT
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LEB wrote:
"Also, it might be helpful if you could refrain from exaggerated emotionalism such as calling me "rabid." It is really hard for me to afford you any sort of credibility at all nor pay attention to any of your points when you demonstrate such a lack of control over your own emotions. If you wish for me and others to take you seriously, you need to speak with some measure of temperance."
LEB, I clearly will have trouble communicating with you, if you don't have basic command of english. When I wrote about how "you AND rabid repubs would act", that was clearly EXLUDING YOU from the rabid republicans, although I think you'd have reacted in the same way on the subject of my point.
I don't see you responding to my refutation of american muslim repudiation of 911, which they did. Bush acknowledged that, why can't you?
And if you don't think that things that happened 50+ years ago don't weigh on the minds of affected groups, or similar groups, then you don't know any jews. Ask them if the holocaust could happen again, since it was so long ago...........
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Aug 15, 2010 - 04:04pm PT
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I saw an interview with the people behind the Islamic center which already exists in that location and just want to rebuild/expand. They didn't seem to be radicals and wanted to distance themselves from 9-11, terrorism and all that.
Seems like having such an venue close to ground zero would be a further positive step, not a negative one. Empowering moderate Muslims (like fatty sez)
Much prejudice and pent up stuff involved here. Making us at war with Islam is something that those who want war on both sides are placing in our respective minds. Let's not empower those people .
For me, I am not a Hindu nor a Christian nor a Buddhist (or I am all) One God means there's truth in all of it, and I have studied all of it. (Arrogantly, I'll claim to know more about Christianity than 95% of professed Christians and I love the forgiveness, non-judgmental and kind teachings of Christ, but don't believe God tortures those who don't "believe" in the easter bunny with billions of years of torture)
PEace
Karl
Edit: How would folks feel about protests against folks wanting to build a church near an Indian Reservation? Wasn't spreading Christainity one of the prime excuse for "Taming, converting and relocating" the American Indians? By the Spanish in California and later by the rest of us?
Peace
Karl
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Greg Barnes
climber
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Aug 15, 2010 - 04:38pm PT
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Over 200 posts on a non-issue. Have any of you anti-mosque people ever frigging read the Bill of Rights? I'll give you a hint: it's part of the Constitution of a country called the USA.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Anyone against the mosque is against the USA. Racists, bigots, right-wing radio listeners, "reasonable upstanding citizens", whatever you want to label yourselves, who cares.
If we let them influence us to IGNORE the first amendment, the terrorists have won.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Aug 15, 2010 - 07:36pm PT
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I wish the haters would STFU. What they do does so much more harm than good.
The moral authority of the USA has been compromised enough already.
Trying to ban this mosque harks back to the knee jerk reactions that led to concentration camps being built here in Utah for native Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.
Principles are only principles if you keep to them when it is not convenient.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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Aug 15, 2010 - 08:20pm PT
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/nyregion/28nyc.html?_r=1
Near Ground Zero, the Sacred and the Profane
By CLYDE HABERMAN
Published: May 27, 2010
Since long before the Islamist terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, a storefront mosque has been sitting on West Broadway in TriBeCa, a dozen blocks from the World Trade Center. No one seems to have ever minded its being there.
Now, assuming he can raise the money and clear some remaining bureaucratic hurdles, the spiritual guide of that mosque intends to build a multistory Islamic community center, including a space for prayer, on Park Place, two blocks from what is routinely called ground zero.
Cries of protest have been loud and insistent from certain quarters. They include people who lost relatives on Sept. 11 and who describe the trade center site with words like “hallowed” and “sacred.” To put an Islamic center so close, they say, would amount to a defilement.
At least now, in terms of geography, we know where outrage begins. That point is somewhere between 12 blocks and 2. The exact spot remains a mystery, though. Would it be O.K. if the Islamic center, called Cordoba House, were to be put four blocks from ground zero? Or is that still too close? How about eight blocks away?
The intention here is not to be flippant. But the question of what constitutes proper respect for the dead of 9/11 has never been simple. For some, it seems to turn solely on religion, and that puts everyone on slippery constitutional terrain.
No one is known to have protested the fact that three blocks from ground zero, on Murray Street off West Broadway, there is a strip joint. It prefers to call itself a gentlemen’s club. A man stood on the street corner the other day handing out free passes to willing gentlemen.
On Church Street, around the corner from where Cordoba House would rise, there is a store that sells pornographic videos and an assortment of sex toys. A few doors east of the planned Islamic center, there is an Off-Track Betting office. Spilling onto the sidewalk in front of it the other day were men who would have been described in my old Bronx neighborhood as degenerate gamblers.
A strip joint, a porno store and a government-run bookie operation. No one has organized demonstrations to denounce those activities as defiling the memory of the men and women who died a few hundred yards away.
But an Islamic center strikes a nerve for some. At a bruising hearing that Manhattan Community Board 1 held Tuesday night before giving Cordoba House its blessing, one protester held a sign that said, “Where is sensitivity to 9/11 families?”
A corollary to that question, however, might be: Which families? They are hardly a monolith.
Some 9/11 relatives see anything Islamic near ground zero as a slap in the face. Others couldn’t care less. Still others share the opinion of Donna Marsh O’Connor, who is on the steering committee of a group called September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. She said it was “the American way” to have a cultural center that its founder, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, asserts is dedicated to interfaith tolerance.
New York officialdom, while sensitive to the displeased families, has long made it clear that it is not about to hand them veto power over how the city builds and rebuilds. Officials from the mayor on down have endorsed Cordoba House, in large measure because of Imam Feisal, a Sufi who has cultivated relations with other religions and who has spoken out against the violence of Islamist fanatics. He has given no one a reason to doubt his sincerity.
OUTRAGE over the project seems at times to increase in direct proportion to distance from the site. A columnist for the tabloid Washington Examiner recently called it “the second attack on the World Trade Center.” Columnists and editorialists for New York’s tabloids who are rarely given to kumbaya moments have described such denunciations as “hysteria.”
One 9/11 relative observed ruefully this week that the Islamic center would attract noisy protests to a scarred area of the city that should be, he said, a zone of tranquillity. If that proves to be the case, it is up to the demonstrators to decide how loud they want to be in the shadow of the trade center.
But they have a right to protest. It is guaranteed in the First Amendment, the same one that ensures freedom of religion, with no asterisk that says “*except for Islam.” It is the same amendment that allows a strip joint and a porno shop to exist a couple of blocks from hallowed ground.
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PAUL SOUZA
Trad climber
Clovis, CA
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Aug 15, 2010 - 09:03pm PT
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Despite how much in "bad taste" this may be to some......that is the price we pay for our freedoms guaranteed to us by the Constitution.
What's amusing to me is that the same people that want to talk about freedom, are the same people who want to take freedoms away from others.
You can't please everyone.
Islam didn't slay 3,000 Americans. Terrorists did. Big difference. We all still retain the ability to choose our actions, despite what our book of choice says.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Aug 15, 2010 - 09:45pm PT
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I wish to point out that "degenerate gamblers" and "patrons of pornography" are minding their own business, living their lives as they see fit. They are not bombing and killing anyone else in the name of a "jihad" or holy war versus the west. Give me a drunken gambler or male who likes to see pictures/movies of naked women (i.e. normal men) any day over a terrorist murderer.
Neither are moderate muslims Lois. There's plenty of sex slavery and con artists in the world you could sorta link to porn and gambling if you care to link Islam to terrorism.
Peace
karl
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