JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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Why do Japanese change their attitude when they communicate with foreigners?
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Confrontation
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U.S. Navy investigating how parts fell off aircraft near Atsugi
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California court to decide if SeaWorld whales are illegal 'slaves'
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Kuroki reported pregnant 2 weeks after denying relationship with Akanishi
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SezWho2
No, there were plenty of good intentions as well.
But you are side-stepping the implicit question about the validity of your predications in regard to civilized societies. And you are completely avoiding the fact that the planned cultural center is not the project of outsiders who are historical or traditional enemies and who seek to desecrate the dead or insult their memories.
Posted in: 9/11 anniversary politicized by mosque, Quran controversies
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SezWho2
One might well ask whether a civilized society would visit destruction, displacement and death upon the citizens of two countries in order to avenge its wounded pride. There seems to be something rather vague about what civilized societies will or won't do.
However, Imam Rauf and American Muslims are not outsiders, nor are they desecrating the dead or insulting their memory. And they aren't historical or traditional enemies of the US, either. They are, however, people to whom 2/3 of the American population are quite willing to say, "We don't want your kind building here."
Posted in: 9/11 anniversary politicized by mosque, Quran controversies
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SezWho2
I think it was more like a "cuppa acid in the face". And I don't think we remember it once a year on 9/11. It's much more like we remember it every day and still can't imagine why anyone would do that to us. Must be the devil's religion at work, do ya think?
Posted in: Clinton, Gates denounce planned Quran burning
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SezWho2
I think it is America's war. Both candidates wanted the war in Afghanistan. They wanted it because Americans would not accept pulling stakes and coming home.
Posted in: Mullah Omar tells Afghans Taliban are winning
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SezWho2
Shall we assume that by "bleeding heart liberals" you are referring also to General Petraeus? If anyone is afraid of what radical Muslims might do, my money would be on the folks who have a prejudice against Muslims or against Islam.
I doubt that Jones is sending a message to radical Muslims. I think it much more likely that his audience is domestic. However, if his message is only to radical Muslims, he needs a different delivery system--one that doesn't deliver junk mail to the mailbox of every Muslim on the planet and instruct them that their religion is of the devil.
Posted in: Pressure builds on Florida pastor who wants to burn Quran on Sept 11
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SezWho2
I think that is what I said. If you are unclear about that, perhaps you should read my post again.
I'm not sure what you are talking about when you refer to people arguing against people who protested the building of the mosque on "legal grounds". There are no legal grounds for protest. I believe the gist of the protest was on grounds of "bad taste".
However, my point was that I'm quite happy to let Jones be as stupid as he wants to be in this matter. I don't believe that his stupidity will add appreciably to the danger to the troops. And I don't believe that Petraeus necessarily thinks so either. I do think, however, that Petraeus is part of a concerted government effort to distance the itself from this lunatic.
Posted in: Pressure builds on Florida pastor who wants to burn Quran on Sept 11
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SezWho2
Sarge, I think the reason that blvtzpk urgest the deletion of this expression is that it is prejudicial and false. There is no proclamation of victory, no death in the name of Islam, no mosque on Ground Zero, and, as a matter of fact, there is no mosque. There is a cultural center which will serve all faiths and in which there will be a mosque. However, a mosque is nothing but a place--not even a building--where a Muslim offers prayers toward Mecca. And those prayers are already offered there, I believe.
Posted in: Pressure builds on Florida pastor who wants to burn Quran on Sept 11
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SezWho2
You seem to be blaming liberals for making an issue of this. However, it strikes me that if one were to look for someone obnoxious enough, one might just find someone who is so perfervidly anti-Muslim that even mainstream America would wince.
Now who would want to prove that the good citizens of the US are not prejudiced against Muslims?
Not saying this is so. Just saying there's more than one possibility here.
Posted in: Pressure builds on Florida pastor who wants to burn Quran on Sept 11
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SezWho2
I think there's a difference between allegations of poor taste and poor taste. And there's a difference between poor taste and idiocy. And there's certainly a difference between building a cultural center and burning a Q'uran.
I don't for one minute believe that Islam is the devil's religion. But once we hold that it's OK for cartoonists to mock the prophet, I don't see that there is any substantial reason to wring our hands over an idiot burning a holy book. Let him burn it and let people see that in America he is free to do so and that our government does not approve.
Jones is not going to put the troops in any significant danger. The previous President already did that and the troops will remain endangered until such time that they either go home or that their battlegrounds become stable client states.
The rest of us might not want to vacation in Pakistan, though.
Posted in: Pressure builds on Florida pastor who wants to burn Quran on Sept 11
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SezWho2
SezWho2: By linking 9/11 to all Islam and by using this to discriminate against Muslims, you make a popular choice, but the wrong one, I think.
It certainly seems to me that you are linking 9/11 to Islam. And, while it is clear that you are calling for the planned construction to be aborted out of respect for the dead, it certainly seems to me that you are discriminating against one religion.
Additionally I would add that the proposed Islamic cultural center shows no such lack of respect. However, plenty of the living have made up that it does so.
Posted in: New York Imam: Mosque fight about Muslim role in America
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SezWho2
I really cannot understand your meaning here. Are you asking what event I think we should link with Mormons? If so, will I have to link events to all major religions? Or are you asking if we should link 9/11 to Mormons? If so, that really makes no sense.
What I would say is this, if you feel compelled to link 9/11 to something, try to link it to the people who committed the crime. By linking them to Islam, you are choosing to view them as representative of all Islam first and as terrorists only secondarily. I think I would say that they did not represent all Islam and that in their actions they may well have been political first and extreme Muslims secondarily.
It's not a case of it being just the way it is. It's a case of choosing a viewpoint of the way it is. By linking 9/11 to all Islam and by using this to discriminate against Muslims, you make a popular choice, but the wrong one, I think.
Posted in: New York Imam: Mosque fight about Muslim role in America
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SezWho2
That's not the way it is. That's the way we make it. We could choose to link 9/11 with Muslim extremists. We could choose to link 9/11 with political fanatics. But we choose to link it with Islam and Muslims.
That the terrorist were Muslims is not in dispute. What does seem to be in dispute is why they did what they did. But even if they did this in the name of Islam we could still choose to recognize that they are not representative of mainstream Islam. However, we refuse to make that choice.
It sounds as though your neighbors refused to make up a story that the offending sailor perpetrated the rape in the name of the US Navy. They chose well. The neighbors of the proposed cultural center more support the construction than oppose it. I think they have chosen well, too. Why doubt their judgment?
We can respect people's losses without submitting to their wishes. To say otherwise gives grief a veto of indeterminate extent. And I would also say this: there is absolutely no reason for Americans to respect the wishes of the grieving when those wishes discriminate on the basis or race, religion, creed or national origin.
Posted in: New York Imam: Mosque fight about Muslim role in America
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SezWho2
One of the problems is with the word "appeasement". To understand what I mean, try referring to the internment camps for Japanese Americans as "concentration camps" and see what happens. "Appeasement" is an emotionally loaded word and "pacification" is not much better. Hitler was "appeased". Native Americans were "pacified". Muslims in general require neither appeasement nor pacification.
Another problem is with the concept of appeasement as divorced from its radio talk show meaning. I'm not supporting the construction of the cultural center as an effort to reduce Muslim extremism. If I were, I think that might be referred to as appeasement. I support the construction because I believe there are no good reasons to disallow it and that there are good reasons for it, including the demonstration that we are a nation that is tolerant of all faiths. A national movement to "Stop the Mosque" is exactly the wrong thing to do to demonstrate this.
For the sake of argument let us say that this is true. Are you of the opinion that the whole discussion regarding Muslims in America does not constitute another exception? If you are, I just have to disagree. Over 40% of Americans admit to having anti-Muslim prejudices. My guess is that the true percentage doesn't stop with those who admit. Yes, they could just "move on down the road", but why should they have to? I really don't believe that Christians would have to, nor Jews. Do you?
That would be a lot more convincing if you were to mention the ideas that you think I am supporting with that statement. Be that as it may, I think there has been a significant Muslim population in the US for 300 years or more. However, we called them "slaves" and didn't allow them a lot of personal freedoms. Also, I think it was the second US President who referred to the prophet Muhammad as a great truth-seeker or some such thing. So I don't think that Muslims were unknown to us--ghettoed, perhaps, shunned, maybe, unwelcome down on the farm, probably, but not unknown.
On the scale of worries I have about violence in America, the possibility of Muslim violence in America comes far down on the list of road rage, workers going postal, drive-bys and so on. Yes, some Muslim extremists could make a bomb, but I don't think it's likely to happen at the proposed Islamic cultural center. And, for that matter, anyone like the Weathermen, the Unabomber or Timothy McVeigh can make a bomb.
Posted in: New York Imam: Mosque fight about Muslim role in America
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SezWho2
What I think is telling is that you use the term "appeasement", more telling when you use the phrase "appeasement of Islam". Islam is neither monolithic nor is it the enemy. My reading of your post that you would give reason why it is the enemy and why, despite the fact that America has lived with Muslims for over 300 years, we must now brand American Muslims as part of "them", too.
I agree with you that America enjoys more religious freedom than Islamic countries, but to this day some in America are Orwellianly more free than others. "Gentlemen's Agreement", the best picture of 1947, documents the systematic denial of the privileges of American society to Jews. 50 years ago fears about Catholicism nearly undid Kennedy. Two years ago the best Republican candidate was (shhhh!) thrown under the bus because he was a Mormon. People out to smear the current President describe him as a Muslim.
Apparently, in the case of the planned Islamic cultural center, "basic freedoms and right" do not trump all else--at least not in the eyes of those who protest its construction. American Muslims, however, have lived quite peacefully with these basic freedoms and rights for years. Why, on account of the actions of extremists and theories about religious intolerance elsewhere, should we deny those basic freedoms and rights now? Are you seriously worried that America might become an Islamic state?
Americans are uncomfortable about a lot of things. But if basic freedoms and rights trump all else, Americans have to find a way to live with their discomforts. We all do.
Posted in: New York Imam: Mosque fight about Muslim role in America
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SezWho2
sailwind, I think by now almost everyone has been asked to attend to Bolourchi's words. I think too often people seize upon the fact that she is a Muslim, although self-described as a secular one, and forget to listen to what she is saying:
I just don't get that most of the protesters would be troubled by a Christian cultural center that contained a place of worship nor that they would be averse to a nationalistic monument or symbol. I have absolutely no problem with what Bolourchi is saying. I'm all in favor of erecting a simple memorial to those who died there, but that is not really the plan for that space, is it?
Posted in: New York Imam: Mosque fight about Muslim role in America
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SezWho2
I think this question was already answered in my previous post. It is in America's interest to promote moderate Islam. It cannot do that if it is seen as being prejudiced.
So what?
No. Your sarcasm notwithstanding, Mormons did not attack the Towers. Large numbers of Americans are totally at sea concerning what Islam is. If a cultural center constructed by another religion would be unobjectionable, then objections to an Islamic culture center indicate this is about religious tolerance. I didn't say anything about Freedom of Religion.
How generous of "America" to say that the cultural center can be built somewhere else! Not! People can build wherever it is permitted. In Manhattan it is permitted. More residents of Manhattan favor the construction than oppose it, although this may change if the rabble-rousers are successful.
Imam Rauf does not insist that the cultural center be built there. You have rather turned this thing on its head. It is the 70% who are insisting that it not be built there. Rauf has been silent about whether it would be better to choose another site. Some people connected with the project have indicated an openness to considering an alternative site.
And as for the site being the only place where Islam can honor the "19 martyrs", that is simply a false and inflammatory statement. There are no plans to use the cultural center to honor the 19 men who flew planes into the Towers. And as for its being the only place where Islam can do it, that is absolutely wrong. Today those miscreants are being honored in centers of extremism in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and even in the US. They can be honored anywhere.
It really does not matter that 70% of Americans think that this is in bad taste. 30% support the culture center project (more in Manhattan). Those who support wish to see American Muslims make a strong statement in favor of moderate Islam. It seems to me that most who oppose cite bad taste and back up this sentiment with lies and half-truths.
Posted in: New York Imam: Mosque fight about Muslim role in America
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SezWho2
SuperLib, yes, your question is a good one. However, the timing of these charges is coincidental to say the least. With the evidence in front of you, which do you think to be more likely?
The major embarrassment to the military and the administration which vetted its mission is of rather recent vintage. While I suppose that it may be true that Assange's recent publicity has vested him with a new-found power, I think it is more likely true that a rapist could have been a rapist at any time.
Apparently the prosecutor believes that she has a case, so he might well be a rapist. I don't have a dog in this race. However, with the public information available to date it smells to me more like a honeytrap or the subornation of perjury than it does rape.
Posted in: Rape probe against WikiLeaks founder reopened
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SezWho2
Honeytrap?
Posted in: Rape probe against WikiLeaks founder reopened
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SezWho2
Molenir, an important part of any claim is "source". If you want to judge what Rauf is talking about, go back to the source. Then tell me who is making stuff up.
As for America's loss, America loses in several ways. First it will have validated a widespread view in much of the Muslim world that America is prejudiced against Muslims. Far more worrisome than the remote possibility that extremist views will be preached here is the almost dead certainty that they will be preached abroad and find willing listeners among the disadvantaged.
Second, it will have deluded itself into believing that its mistaken views of Islam are perfectly justified. The "bad taste" argument is predicated on the perception that all Muslims should be penitent on account of extremists who acted in the name of a religion which, alone among other major religions, has an intrinsic capacity for evil which must be held in check. This is not true. However, relocating the proposed center will relieve Americans of the responsibility of actually finding out what Islam is about and who Muslims are.
Third, rather than everyone winning, the obvious discrimination--for you can bet there would be no hue and cry were it a Christian or Jewish center--will serve to radicalize Muslims here. Not putting up barriers to its construction shows tolerance. Erecting barriers will corroborate the perception of discrimination and successfully preventing construction will tend to give cause for grievance.
Finally, most of the non-Muslim supporters will not "win". Of course the Muslims can build another mosque somewhere. And they will. I doubt that most Americans know what a mosque is, however. Writing in the Washington Post, Edward E. Curtis IV points out that
Under this definition, if prayers are now performed in the direction of Mecca at the current structure, there is already a mosque there. So, what people are saying to Muslims is, "Don't be visible!" Success in stopping the construction will certainly not be a win for the 30% of Americans who support the right of Muslims to be visible, even in the relatively small way that the planned construction will bring.
I don't think that many of these 30% can be considered to be a "Muslim extremist, who thinks Islam should naturally be spread throughout the world, by the sword if necessary".
Posted in: New York Imam: Mosque fight about Muslim role in America
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SezWho2
manfromamerica: Don't kid yourself. America can be very bad. Those who choose to come also choose to ignore this. In bashing Imam Rauf, America truly shows its ugly side.
Posted in: New York Imam: Mosque fight about Muslim role in America