blackaeronaut Wrote:Down, Foxboy. I know that the vitriol tends to flow around here, but let's not get carried away.Ignoring the many quibbles I could have about describing the United States or Europe (or Canada or Australia or New Zealand or Japan or anywhere else in the first world) as "freedom-loving" in anything but a very relative sense...
Ayieke, Islam may not be an ideology, but it sure as hell lends itself pretty well to ideologues that got a chip on their shoulder about freedom-loving countries that allow their women-folk to do as they please.
...so what? Of course it does. And so does Christianity to many groups in the US. And so does French culture to French bigots, and so did Communism to bigots of that inclination, and so to and so forth for every single sort of belief system or shared identity that has ever existed in human history.
There is nothing unique to Islam in this case, other than the fact that there are quite a lot of Islamic people living in certain regions that for various well-documented historical reasons are currently hostile to many of the richest countries. This has nothing at all to do with them being Islamic except in the most broad of senses. You don't hear about Hindu ideologues as much not because Hinduism is traditionally friendlier to women (it isn't), or because Hindus have more reason to like the "West" (they don't), but because of the fact they're not in the same geopolitical position and therefore for many reasons there is less reason for there to be a clash and less attention paid to what hostility there is.
The fact many Muslims and entire Muslim-majority countries (such as Turkey) are neutral or pro-West in this matter indicates pretty strongly there's nothing special that indicates a fundamental clash of values between Muslims and the West, as if it wasn't enough evidence that there are millions of Muslims who are in the West.
What is actually a clash here is between generally poor (occasional rich idealists like Bin Laden nonwithstanding, who is basically the equivalent of the last century's aristocratic Communists), uneducated populaces who have been in the very recent past exploited considerably and (broadly speaking) their former and current exploiters, but unlike most such populations (like, say, most of Africa and much of Asia), they are in a position of considerable importance due to the Middle East's oil reserves and strategic location. That's simplifying things (it also ties into the Cold War, how the Ottoman Empire broke up and a bunch of other factors), but the main point remains that it has nothing to do with them being Islamic, other than the fact that there is a certain community of feeling between Islamic populations and a shared general respect for certain holy places. This factor is relevant but shouldn't be overstated either; Persians are not Turks or Arabs or Pashtuns regardless of their religion, Sunnis are not Shiites (nor are they the only branches of Islam, nor are they monolithic, especially Sunnis), and every Middle Eastern country has numerous times chosen its own interests over those of any concept of pan-Islamism.
Quote:And while we are not fighting a war against Islam per se, we are fighting a war against ideologues that use Islam as their primary crutch. Which makes this a war just chock full of dirty underhanded nastiness that divides our country even further. Which is what a certain rich diseased cave-dwelling troll wants, I'm sure.I honestly find it baffling that anybody could call that "hallowed ground" and really mean it. The WTC attacks were a great tragedy and certainly affected the geopolitical arena, but in terms of actual destruction and lives lost, they were frankly unimportant and no amount of myth-making will change that fact. The United States has lost far more people in the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they aren't "hallowed ground". Yes, the country was attacked. It has been attacked before that and will be attacked again. If that's "hallowed ground" and worthy of some sort of special treatment, what do the Iraqis get? They sure lost a hell of a lot more in every conceivable measure.
Permitting a mosque, especially one with such a tactlessly chosen name, to even exist as a rented space in a building within sight of Ground Zero (which, I may add, is hallowed ground no matter how thin you slice it) is simply going to add more fuel to Osama bin Laden's fire. But then, so will disallowing its existence. It matters not, I guess, as he'll always find some way of twisting things around.
But at the very least, choose a different name for the mosque!
But aside from what I consider a bafflingly pseudo-religious regard for the effects of a (tragic, unfortunate, and unjustified, yes, but still minor in terms of lives and money lost) terrorist attack, you're still completely missing the point.
Why does a mosque being near it matter?
Most of the hijackers were Saudi, as is that fellow in the cave who planned the attacks. Is building any business owned by Saudis somewhere near the WTC offensive? I'm sure some would say yes, but I think anyone honest would admit that this would cause no widespread outcry at all, and people outraged by this have mentioned the nationality of those behind the initiative as an afterthought if at all. Is a travel centre opening two blocks away (in downtown of one of the largest cities in the world, let us remember) somehow outrageous and disturbing this "hallowed ground"? No, nobody would care. Why do you, or anyone else, care if there is a mosque there? Sure, the hijackers were Islamic. They were also Saudi Arabian, Caucausian, male, religious (so would building a church be offensive?), legal immigrants, and many other things that nobody seems to care about whether other representatives exist somewhere in the area. So I'll ask again: Why does a mosque matter, and a travel centre not?
The answer is, to some people, those hijackers apparently represented Islam. And therefore the WTC attacks happened because of Islam and are therefore linked with Islam in the same way certain other unmentionable tragedies are linked with the German National Socialist party.
But this is wrong. The hijackers did not represent Islam, and more importantly, they didn't do what they did because of Islam. Thinking they did is to fall into the trap of thinking "Islamic" means more than "Christian" does. It doesn't. First off, there is no central Islamic authority, and hasn't been one since 1919 (and even he only represented Sunnis, and how much he represented anything varied depended on who you were asking). Second off, the Saudi gentleman in the cave does not have any authority to determine what is correct for Islam, as previously mentioned. Third off, there is no doctrinal justification in Islam for being religiously upset because the Saudi government let the United States government maintain military bases in the country. Oh, yes, no doubt you could find some line in the Qu'ran to justify that position, but since you can also find lines in the Qu'ran that insist you treat Jews well, that making war is wrong, that women should be treated with respect, and that committing suicide is sinful, it becomes clear that any side will cherry-pick whatever they want out of a historical text to support whatever they actually wanted to support anyway. Which, amazingly enough, is also true for the Bible (quoted in support of peace and war, slavery and emancipation, and many other things). And every other religious and political and sociological text ever written (think Marx would even have recognised the Soviet Union as an outgrowth of his ideas of liberating the masses from exploitation by an all-powerful ruling class?). Islam is an excuse for people to get what they want (in this case, a conservative, "moral", powerful pan-Arabic state not beholden to "Western" powers), and if it were not convenient, they would find another excuse.
Equally devout Christians both accept the modern science of biology or espouse creationism - it's certainly true that you don't get many secular or atheist creationists, but that's for fairly obvious reasons. Moreover, in the United States, many of those Creationists are actually Catholic, despite the fact that the supreme head of the Catholic Church has made an official (and thus, by religious doctrine, infallible and divinely guided) proclamation of evolution's truth. Is this because there's something intrinsically broken and anti-science about Christianity? Of course it isn't. They believe that because of their actual political/philosophical leanings (and some considerable amounts of propaganda), which are completely independent of their religion - otherwise there could not possibly be a Catholic creationist, as by their own beliefs they are literally opposing the word of God in saying God created the world in a biblically literal fashion. The struggle between those who accept the overwhelming weight of modern science and those that espouse a mystical solution is not an argument between atheism/secularism and religion, but rather an argument between two groups of people, one of which uses religion as an excuse to believe what they would believe no matter what their religion actually said (actually, both of whom do, but that's another argument).
So it is for Islam. So many tribal, poor, uneducated people treat women and minorities poorly and hate the rich people who recently (sometimes very recently) exploited and conquered their lands? Well, you might call me a bit jaded, but I just have to conclude that they'd be largely similar no matter what religion they were, and the fact that the ones we hear about a lot are Islamic have to do more with the intersection of "largely Muslim populated areas" and "oil wealth and strategic importance" than anything intrinsically to do with Islam itself. The hijackers did not attack because they were Muslim - they attacked because they were hostile to the United States and its allies in the Saudi government on the grounds of reactionary moralism, and while Islam was a good justification for this, it wouldn't have (and demonstrably didn't) made one bit of difference what was written in the Qu'ran. Islam is not a country, a creed, or even a coherent belief system (this is not an insult; it is simply true to say that of every religion with more than a handful of followers) - it has no real relevance to what happened to the WTC, and to think that a mosque is somehow offensive or representative of the ideology behind those attacks is to play right into the hands of that oft-mentioned Saudi gentleman. If you went back in time and magically switched the entire Middle East to Zoroastrianism but somehow kept historical events the same, conservative moralists in Saudi Arabia would still hate the Saudi government and the US and seek to attack them (violently or not depending on their other inclinations). Same if they were Buddhist. Or even Christian, and if you think Christians would treat other Christians less shabbily than Christians and Muslims have treated each other, you haven't studied history much. His real ideology is not "Islam", because Islam isn't an ideology. That's why it shouldn't matter whether a mosque is somewhere within two blocks of the WTC attacks, no matter how "hallowed" you believe they are. Islam is simply irrelevant (except in the very broadest terms) to the struggle going on between America and her allies (including her Islamic allies) and al-Qaeda and its allies - losing sight of that not only hands the man in a cave an unearned victory, and helps alienate your geopolitical allies by treating them like enemies, it's simply wrong.