I don't care about any Mosque, one way or another but I do care about America

[Winterblues]

The America I grew up in taught me that our Constitution was so great it was worth Dieing for. I grew up with the old saying "I may not like what you say but I would Fight and Die for your right to say it" and the exact same thing holds true for Religion. I may not like what religion you choose but I will Fight and Die for your right to choose the one you like..This was the One area I thought the Tea Baggers and I would agree, but if nothing else they are predictably hypocritical.

[NightWatcher]

1. but this is about muslims....they're like brown and stuff...and like 9/11

you are of course 100% right.

[liberal N proud]

2. This is about having 9/11 front and center in an election year

Drive that good ol' 9/11 fear machine right on through November.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

6. exactly

[malaise]

15. But but but

9/11 happened under Bush and Cheney's watch. That should not help them.
If I were a Dem strategist I'd remind everyone that ReTHUGS did not keep us safe.
My bumper sticker would be 9/11 happened under Republicans -never again.

[liberal N proud]

27. There you go with facts

The rhetoric from the propaganda box in everyones living room tells the not so smart voter otherwise. And they believe them.

[NoNothing]

3. There is broad agreement

That Muslims have the right to build their mosque there. The debate is over whether it is considerate of them to do so.

[spanone]

5. perhaps the african americans should have been more considerate and sat in the back of the bus

what were they thinking?

[uppityperson]

34. Or done a survey of anyone who ever did or might ride on a bus, or their families and friends

not to offend anyone, after all.




:sarcasm: just in case

[el_bryanto]

7. Public Displays of Islam are naturally offensive to Americans

This is because practitioners of Islam are Muslims first and Americans a distant second.

The idea of an American Muslim praticing his religion as any other American is silly, apparently.

Or so the logic seems to go.

Bryant

[jberryhill]

9. It's okay as long as they don't act Muslim in public /nt

[NoNothing]

13. There may be some valid reasons for holding this opinion

An effective response will address those reasons head on and explain why they are outweighed by other factors.

An ineffective response will dismiss those reasons perfunctorily or pretend they do not exist.

[jberryhill]

18. Cite the valid reasons, then

I'm all ears.

I keep hearing about these "valid reasons" from people who do not personally agree with the anti-mosque contingent.

Can we capture one in the wild and bring it to DU for discussion?

[NoNothing]

23. Generally they center around the following:

- A belief that core Islamic values are incompatible with core American values
- A pattern of hostility from predominately Islamic cultures toward American culture
- Distrust about the sincerity of Islamic outreach efforts funded by Islamic national powers
- A belief that this particular Islamic project is trying to capitalize on the bad acts of other Muslims, creating a serious moral hazard
- A general contempt of all religion

Those are just a few off the top of my head.

Now, I can think of good rebuttals to all of these points. Debating them is not really interesting to me. My only point is that these are the kinds of premises that need to be countered, if anyone's mind is going to be changed. Red herrings about the First Amendment do not address any of these concerns.

[jberryhill]

28. They are already having that discussion themselves...

...and this is from National Review Online:

http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/243752/very-long-post-cordoba-house-josh-barro

or the Cato Institute

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-gop-and-the-ground-zero-mosque/


I also think there is some poll mis-reading going on. While some have cited "majority opposition" on the basis of questions like "should" a mosque be built there, it is also true that overwhelming majorities of respondents affirm the right to build one.

Now, on the "should" question, there are two types of answers conflated in that question. Do I think a mosque "should" be built anywhere? No. I am not a Muslim, so why would I think a mosque "should" be built anywhere.

The question I don't see being asked is "should we OPPOSE building a mosque there". That is a different question from "should they build a mosque there", which I believe would have a distinguishable result.

In other words, actively opposing this project causes more problems for Republicans than Democrats, since it runs right smack dab into their professed primacy of rights of religious freedom and private property. Once again, it is an occasion for rational conservatives to wonder why they always seem to end up in bed with that odd residue of 20% who will support any sort of lunacy in just about any poll on anything.

What we are seeing here is one of those brief passionate bursts, like Bush's 90% rating just after 9/11, which does not have legs. We are at a point of 58% opposition to the Afghanistan adventure now.

I guess my point is that I don't think this thing has legs, and it is something that a lot of folks are going to be waking up from like a bad hangover well before the election. Flogging this thing at fever pitch through November is going to bring out the same kind of crazy that drove people away from McCain/Palin, when their campaign events started to look more like lynch mobs.

Americans in the mushy middle don't go for anger and outrage for long stretches of time, and tend to recoil from it. Full throated, veins a-popping stuff is itself scarier to the larger electorate than whatever the demagogue du jour is actually shouting about.

[TheKentuckian]

29. Do you think these foaming at the mouth bigots are going to sit for a comparative religion course?

Do you really think they care about the answers? Will they accept the answers or will they like the birthers keep moving the goal posts and refuse to accept what sane people would say is stone cold proof?

When you start a debate based on false premises and emotional prejudice it is awfully hard to reel that sucker back into reality.

Calling the First Amendment a "red herring" is pretty damn dishonest and disgusting to me as it is the fundamental point of the discussion and certainly isn't something that is a distraction to lead people astray.

[NoNothing]

31. Do you really think a majority of Americans are "foaming at the mouth bigots?"

I don't. I think *most* of them have legitimate concerns along the lines that I already stated and feel that building this project in this location is more of a "fuck you" than an outreached hand. And attitudes like yours merely confirm this belief to be true.

The First Amendment is a red herring because, as I said, these same people also indicate they believe they have the *right* to build the project, they'd just rather they *voluntarily* decided not to. This division between "can" and "should" is pretty easily grasped, and beyond the question of "can" the First Amendment has absolutely nothing to say.

[TheKentuckian]

32. Just like they have "legitimate" concerns about gay folks getting married.

Like they had "legitimate" concerns about school integration.

Just like they had "legitimate" concerns about black people voting.

Just like they had "legitimate" concerns about inter-racial marriage.

Just like they had "legitimate" concerns about a Catholic President.

Just like they had "legitimate" concerns about women voting.

Just like they had "legitimate" concerns about about sharing water fountains and lunch counters with blacks.

Just like they had "legitimate" concerns about black folks running amok without the structure and guidance from white masters.

Just like they had "legitimate" concerns about slaves learning to read.

Just like they had "legitimate" concerns about savage natives who had to be eradicated or exiled.

Just like the "legitimate" concerns the President might be a foreign national or gawd forbid a Muslim.

Just like the "legitimate" concerns of leaving Africans "Gawdless Savages" and kindly picking them up and giving them productive work.


Your so called concerns are cover for bigotry. When was the last time you expected let's call it clarification from another religious group and was it not some old bigoted bullshit.
If you have an accusation for this group then make it rather than tip toeing around with "legitimate questions". What the hell gives you the right to feel entitled to answers and what would it take to satisfy them for the mouthbreathers to say "Ohh okay. Glad we hashed that out, carry on"?

I notice you slipped out of dealing with that aspect of the issue.

There is no red herring because there is no reason that they SHOULDN'T build. They don't have to justify a damn thing and only a bigot would set the bar in such a fashion without some kind of justification.

There is no fuck you more than it is a fuck you for the Baptist to build a church near my house unless you are saying that all Muslims are terrorists and are in some fashion complicit or supportive of the 9/11 attack.

You are putting the two together and then make it this groups job to separate themselves and that is bigoted.

And yeah, I think a health portion of Americans are foaming at the mouth bigots toward Arabic and Islamic people. I dealt with the crazies demanding I fire two of my very best people after 9/11. I heard the cries to NUKE EM. I see the hatemongering across the country toward these folks. I see that "muslim" being used as the new nigger and the new commie. I've seen Indian people dogged out because people thought they looked like "camel jockeys" and "sand niggers".

I've gotten the batshit emails. I've seen it all. You can drape that "legitimate" mantle over your shoulders all you like but Islamaphobia is a big fucking deal in this country.

It is being who they are that these folks see as a BIG FUCK YOU.

[NoNothing]

33. You are personalizing this

And making it about what YOU want.

The group building this project wants it to be an OUTREACH project. According to them, it's not simply a private matter, it's about healing. So accepting THEIR, not YOUR, stated goals, then they are failing to accomplish their goals because they are not engaging on the issues that Americans actually have. If they decide to go ahead anyways, to prove a point about civil rights or something, then fine, they should just ignore the naysayers and plow ahead. Obviously that's what YOU want them to do.

Instead, THEIR goals are being hijacked by some others - such as yourself - who DO want to make this about a FUCK YOU.

[TheKentuckian]

36. Their goals cannot be accomplished by rolling over and going away

The "concerns" enumerated cannot be answered in sound bites or 20 minutes with David Gregory. Some of them are incurable absent personal exposer. Some are pretty much a requirement to disprove a negative because they are built on BIGOTED emotional responses rather than anything related to evidence.

Hell, one of your "concerns" is fucking distrust of religion, for crying out loud. What on earth are they going to do about something like that?

The best way to foster understanding of "other" is to spend time together, to share burdens, to participate in common joys and sadness.

No group yet has "explained" their way out of such a trap.

This tact is some bogus passive-aggressive bullying, "Do what we say or you don't mean what you say and deserve our attacks".

You don't put people in no win scenarios like that and it is dishonest to pretend the "concerns" are rational.

You have placed a burden of proof that cannot logically be met and that is against everything we are supposed to be about on innocent Americans.

Americans ought to take such desecration of out values personally because if we don't there will be another black mark in our history and it will be fodder for global extremism by proving that our words are empty and our principles a thing of ease and convenience.

You think this foolish display sells to 1.5 billion muslims or is it more likely that some will see hate and intolerance that tells them our pitch of inclusion is bullshit?

[NoNothing]

37. So you think you can win trust

By telling people you do not care about their concerns and refusing to bother to address them?

Well, good luck with that.

I think we're talking past each other, ultimately. You are concerned with moral approbation and blameworthiness. I am more concerned with real-world impacts. In my view, it ultimately doesn't matter WHY people distrust Muslims - if Muslims want to be trusted, they have to do certain things to build that trust and this isn't one of them. That may be wrong, it may be unfair, but it is what it is, and castigating people for it is unlikely to effect the desired change.

[LanternWaste]

40. It's not a zero-sum game.

You appear to imply that it's either A) Build the Community Center and reduce both trust and empathy or B) not build the Community Center and increase both trust and empathy.

And the crappy thing is, a whole of people are led to believe there are only two viable scenarios-- and they're leading others to believe that same flawed, narrow-minded premise.

[TheKentuckian]

43. Nope it won't nor can your "concerns" in many cases be addressed at all and certainly with

any guarantee of positive results. That is what happens when you have "concerns" that are beyond human ability to to reach a standard of proof.


The solution is coexistence and if the group is oppressed for the oppressor to face the full brunt of the law.

Eventually most will move on and become as good or as poor a neighbors as everyone else.

You can't claim to be concerned with real life real life impacts when you have a fantasy both as the problem and the solution. They have no way to prove by presenting a case that their values are compatible with America (You also don't even want to go there, you imply being at war with a billion and a half people is not only on the table but imminent if they can't to who the hell ever's satisfaction that all of these people fit into our world), that this group must answer for some Muslim cultures that are not friendly to America (for many reasons) while ignoring that we are allies with many of these and even prop up some, that they must magically prove they aren't capitalizing on the acts of criminals (impossible burden of proof), money from other Muslims worries(?), and again the distrust of all religion which again has an infinite burden of proof dumped into these folks lap that has been an issue for at least all of recorded history.

That's not reality. That's a farce. No group can realistically cross your bar, you for the most part are literally asking for the impossible and calling it real life.

You want rational, hard data responses for absurd emotional based questions. You want magical healing of issues thousands of years old. You want evidence of that can only be demonstrated.

This isn't in the realm of provable fact but you are attempting to blur those lines by accepting baseless accusations and hyperbole as legitimate and then expecting these folks to overcome such objections or fold their tent else they deserve this reaction in some way.

The standard is impossible.

[jberryhill]

8. However, the "inconsiderate" perception

...can only arise by identifying American Muslims with the foreign terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.

It is only "inconsiderate" in view of a false equation of all Muslims with terrorists.

That type of thinking is not worthy of respect or consideration.

Thinking it to be "inconsiderate" is to yield to exactly the type of hatred which the 9/11 terrorists sought to inspire.

[NoNothing]

11. That's as may be

But the correct rebuttal, then, will be different than if you are having an argument about Constitutional rights. See? If you want to win a debate, you have to attack your opponents' *actual* premises.

[jberryhill]

14. They have to work through it on their own, unfortunately

The best rebuttals are things like that video of the African American man being scorned and bullied among the anti-mosque demonstrators.

There will always be hardcore haters. But given the opportunity to reflect on which camp they want to be on, those with a vague and unexamined "it's insensitive" feeling about the thing will, IMHO, realize that they don't want to be those people.

Change can only come from within.

[NoNothing]

25. Exactly

Most people only care about this issue because other people are talking about it. As soon as it is out of the news, 99% will go back to not caring in the slightest.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

12. thats utter horseshit. the building of mosques are being protested all over

its hardly restricted to this

[NoNothing]

16. For other reasons

Some good, some not so good. But so what? Muslims have no constitutional right to make people like them or accept whatever they do without comment. Christians, or Mormons, or Scientologists have to put up with a lot of crap too, I don't hear anybody crying for them, and rightly so.

People are always protesting the building of Walmarts too. Are we going to compare Walmart to Rosa Parks now?

I am more than a little concerned that righteous stringency about equality under the law and upholding civil rights is crossing a line into religious advocacy. It's one thing to tell Americans that at the end of the day they have to live with Muslims doing what Muslims do. It's quite another thing to tell them to shut up and be cool about it.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

17. LOL. yes. clearly the protest on which walmart is based, is exactly the same as

that which is going on for the cordoba house

[jberryhill]

19. A rising tide of hate against Arkansas retailers, no doubt

Because, you know, Arkansas retailers have been discriminated against in so many areas of American life.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

21. LOL. exactly. huge marginalized group.

:)

:hi:

[NoNothing]

20. I think it's not so dissimilar as you might imagine

In most cases the objections are partially specific to the immediate local impacts, but also to a large degree centered around objections to the core values and global actions of the larger organizations.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

22. There are many flaws in this argument. There is no central Muslim organization.

There is no immediate local impact that is real (job loss etc). Some people's feelings will be hurts is not the same issue.

There are many ways to justify bigotry and using seemingly rational arguments is one way. And this is exactly what is going on here. Pretending that this argument is not inherently bigoted, doesnt change the facts that it is.

[NoNothing]

24. Well that is convenient, isn't it?

Logic, shmogic, you say, it's all bigots, all they way down. Therefore, any need to rationally counter any of these "seemingly rational" arguments is not only unnecessary - it *promotes* bigotry! No thinking is required then, just faith. Faith in our righteousness. Surely, faith always trumps reason!

[La Lioness Priyanka]

26. making badly formed arguments based on peoples emotions isnt rational.

i call it bigoted because there is no constitutional reason, no economic reason etc

[Karenina]

41. And exactly what is it that American Muslims do that differs in any way, shape

or form from ANY OTHER AMERICAN COMMUNITY? Just wondering. :shrug:

And in a sane world would there be any need to tell anyone to shut up and be cool about it?

[spanone]

4. this is not the america we grew up in. not close.

[jberryhill]

10. In the long run, this type of thinking will win out....

While one can point to any number of poll results on this non-issue, Americans have proven time and time again that they can be whipped into a temporary frenzy, but do eventually come to their senses on this sort of thing in the long run.

That's why playing to the immediate passion of the crowd is a loser. These anti-mosque folks will descend into the same sort of ugliness which caused McCain/Palin to lose support in droves by the time the election rolled around in November.

When the "sensitivity" mask falls off of the ugly face of hatred, I believe most Americans will realize that is NOT the person they see in the mirror every morning.

Our job is simply to hold up that mirror.

[seabeyond]

30. a poster said something about defending sharia. it isnt about defending any religion

i hold to no religion. it is the right for people to practice their religion. it is that simple. on this level

and the other levels they argue can easily be countered.

there is not a leg to stand on opposing the center.

[natrlron]

35. Teabaggers are just for themselves

The Tea Party folks have no vision, no policy ... just attitude ... and it's all about themselves. Whether they want or don't want something, that's all that's important. They are a perversion of everything that's good about America.

[Uncle Joe]

38. This is what happens when nationalism becomes religion and flags become idols.

This is why small children aren't taught to pledge allegiance; to the Constitution of the United States, but rather to a highly subjective ambiguous symbol of colored cloth; which can mean different things to different people.

Some people may argue the Constitution is subjective but at least it offers remedies and rules for the government and people to follow, not so much with the flag; the world becomes black and white, depending on the viewer and exclusion is the mantra.

Kicked, but too late to recommend.

Thanks for the thread, Winterblues.

[bullwinkle428]

39. This totally exposes the TB's "IT'S ALL ABOUT TEH CONSTITUSHUN!!1!"

argument for the steaming pile of horseshit that it is!

[stuntcat]

42. Allowing it (especially after the racist rights' behavior) would be a great gesture

I didn't care much, the Earth-killing stuff made me a militant atheist :) but then I listened to Interfaith Voices on NPR this weekend and what the host Maureen Fiedler said at the end was so beautiful. She made me wish everyone could chill out and learn to accept it. I'd recommend listening online, it was touching enough it made an atheist cry :p I wrote her a letter about it and she wrote me back! (yay) saying she'd gotten a lot of letters like mine about what she'd said.