Ground Zero mosque wins approval !!

[Kyusuibu Honbu]

Rather than all this discussion couldn't they have just got on with the Freedom Tower project.

 

[Vinod2070]

....

But that analogy does not fit the case of the 9/11 attacks and the proposed mosque, since 'Islam' and 'Muslims' did not as a community commit or endorse the 9/11 attacks.

Keep trying.

OK, that is fair.

But weren't there a very large number of people who were overtly or covertly happy with the 9/11 attacks. Either because they thought that the "arrogant" USA has been brought to the heels or because of the American support to the survival of Israel in a perennially hostile neighborhood?

Weren't there a very large number of Muslims (many of them in Western countries) who either openly supported this act or tried to pass it off as a Zionist conspiracy while treating those 19 terrorists as heroes?

I have personally seen Pakistanis who are living in USA who abuse USA at every turn and openly praise people like the Abu Nidal who killed his fellow soldiers.

You may say they are all individuals but together they do paint a picture that tars even the others.

I read some excerpts of the book "The reluctant fundamentalist" by the Pakistani writer. IIRC, he also mentioned the same thing, that many Muslims secretly enjoyed those attacks while paying lip service to condemning the "terror attacks".

 

[Tang0]

12 August, 2010
Mosque mania
By Stephan Salisbury

A year after the 9/11 attacks, a special immigration program was instituted that required men from two dozen predominantly Muslim nations (and North Korea) to register with immigration authorities. Nearly 84,000 did so, with about 3,000 abruptly detained and over 13,000 promptly subjected to deportation proceedings. Muslims began to "disappear" from the streets of America. Lawyers wearing yellow shirts with "Human Rights Monitor" written on the back sought to keep track of individuals heading into registration centers in New York and Los Angeles - and never leaving again.[/SIZE]

The only way to never leave a building again is to die there...Hyperbole much? What was happening was a justified application of currently existing immigration laws to try to close loopholes that allowed for people to overstay their student/work visas. Pre 9/11, that was a very easy thing to do, which is why most of the 9/11 hijackers were in the US on expired student or tourists visas.
Then he goes on to talk about legislation that has not been passed, or even sponsored by a big player in US politics. (He says the president supports it, but gives no reasoning or evidence of this...) And he quotes Sarah Palin, a disgraced governor of ALASKA, a state with fewer than 700,000 citizens, the vast majority of whom think she is a moron. That is why she resigned....
Sarah Palin to Resign as Alaska Governor, Citing Probes and Family Needs - washingtonpost.com

What about all the Tea Partiers? An anit-tax, anti-government, party formed of old white people(No offence to the creaky white folks on the forum), created mostly out of a response to increased government spending and a Black President? That composes less than 1% of the US population? Are you seriously suggesting that these people are in any way a unified Anti-Muslim front? They are the Anti-Everything fringe. A reactionary response to changing social fabric.

So, no, I still don't buy the Anti-Muslim structural bias.
The US of 2010 is a heterogeneous, open, and relatively accepting constitutional republic with a sagging, but still very much powerful and stable economy. It is not the Wiemar republic....Or any government in the middle east or south Asia, or hell, even France.

 

[Tang0]

Maybe, just maybe, those south Asian and middle easterners who were deported for immigration violations would agree with me, otherwise, why would they be so desperate as to commit a crime to try to stay in the US? I see no Muslims fleeing the country in mass....

 

[Tang0]

To quote from an inflammatory article...
In a Virtual Internment Camp: Muslim Americans since 9/11

Shortly after September 11, the Attorney General announced that he would use every law on the books to target and detain 'terrorists.' He said, 'Let the terrorists among us be warned: If you overstay your visa ' even by one day ' we will arrest you. If you violate a local law, you will be put in jail and kept in custody as long as possible.' The Attorney General used 'terrorist' and 'suspected terrorists' alternatively, essentially for the Muslim community. He further declared, 'In the war on terror, this Department of Justice will arrest and detain any suspected terrorist who has violated the law. Our single objective is to prevent terrorist attacks by taking suspected terrorists off the street. If suspects are found not to have links to terrorism or not to have violated the law, they are released. But terrorists who are in violation of the law will be convicted, in some cases deported, and in all cases prevented from doing further harm to Americans.'

While theoretically this position is all well and good, the question was and is how to transform such a policy into action. While the Attorney General may or may not be referring specifically to Muslims, those charged with law enforcement in the field ' police officers, FBI agents, immigration officers, border guards ' have no guidelines or even a general clue about how to administer the 'find the terrorists' directive. This has led to widespread and indiscriminate targeting and racial profiling of Muslim people.

Which, suggests no structural bias, rather, "Hey here is a bunch of money, go find terrorists.. What do terrorist looks like? I don't know, but all of the 9/11 hijackers were brown guys from the middle east, so start there...." So that is what they did. When the money goes away and the US finds something else to worry about, so will much of the excess "Harassment" .

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

OK, that is fair.

But weren't there a very large number of people who were overtly or covertly happy with the 9/11 attacks. Either because they thought that the "arrogant" USA has been brought to the heels or because of the American support to the survival of Israel in a perennially hostile neighborhood?

Can you quantify this 'very large number of people overtly or covertly happy with the 9/11 attacks'? On the 'covert' front I suspect it is merely your personal opinion, since covet would imply 'secretly happy' and there is no way for someone to judge what someone is thinking ....

On the 'overt front' I won't argue that various Muslims communities around the world inevitably included people who experienced some degree of schadenfreude at the suffering of one they blamed for the suffering of many Muslims, but in terms of the American Muslim community, which is the subject of discussion here, I believe you are making broad generalizations and projecting onto them opinions that you believe they hold, perhaps based on interactions with a handful of people on fora and elsewhere.

It would be similar to my argument that Indians rejoice in the terrorism and misery inflicted upon Pakistan, shown by the fact that there are tens of thousands of comments (in mainstream Indian news sites) on articles detailing terrorist attacks and disasters in Pakistan, that show Indians in a very poor light. These aren't 'right wing Hindu' sites either, but your largest 'Times of India, Hindustan Times etc.' news organizations.

Weren't there a very large number of Muslims (many of them in Western countries) who either openly supported this act or tried to pass it off as a Zionist conspiracy while treating those 19 terrorists as heroes?

I have personally seen Pakistanis who are living in USA who abuse USA at every turn and openly praise people like the Abu Nidal who killed his fellow soldiers.

You may say they are all individuals but together they do paint a picture that tars even the others.

I read some excerpts of the book "The reluctant fundamentalist" by the Pakistani writer. IIRC, he also mentioned the same thing, that many Muslims secretly enjoyed those attacks while paying lip service to condemning the "terror attacks".

I don't know what you mean by 'large number' unless you quantify it and prove it by some credible means - Pew/Gallup polls on attitudes or sentiments of American Muslims perhaps? To me it appears like you projecting your personal biases and opinions onto American Muslims.

As for 'Zionist conspiracy', a lot of Muslims may indeed believe that, but also inherent in that position is the fact that the act of terrorism was a despicable and condemnable one, otherwise why would they consider Mossad and Zionists responsible?

 

[gambit]

If such a center is being proposed by Serbs, who participated in the genocide of Bosnians as a community, for all intents and purposes, led by the Serbian government, then it could be considered inflammatory. It would be up to the Bosnian community to decide how to proceed, and whether they truly thought the Serbs regretted their actions and meant to use such a center as a means of 'reconciliation and apology'.

But that analogy does not fit the case of the 9/11 attacks and the proposed mosque, since 'Islam' and 'Muslims' did not as a community commit or endorse the 9/11 attacks.

Keep trying.

Of course not. But I never said anything about the 'who' in that analogy. I only asked that if the local muslims feels strongly enough about any 'cultural center' proposed by any non-muslim group, and object, would their objections be as critically denounced here ? The question is how much respect should be given to local sensitivity, a moral issue, and whether that respect should VOLUNTARILY override legalism.

 

[Ras]

O Reilly made an interesting observation on his show couple of days back..even if all the legal issues are cleared,the builders will be hard pressed to find a single New York union crew willing to work on the site.

 

[True_Pakistan_Zindabad]

O Reilly made an interesting observation on his show couple of days back..even if all the legal issues are cleared,the builders will be hard pressed to find a single New York union crew willing to work on the site.

I wonder how he came to this conclusion.

 

[Ras]

I wonder how he came to this conclusion.

Union members are blue collared folk who hold pretty conservative views. They only vote democrats because the GoP hates them.In social issues they are much closer to the GoP than the Democrats.

 

[gambit]

O Reilly made an interesting observation on his show couple of days back..even if all the legal issues are cleared,the builders will be hard pressed to find a single New York union crew willing to work on the site.

I would not be surprised if many here demands that the US or NYC government force those who refused to work anyway.

 

[NWO]

I would not be surprised if many here demands that the US or NYC government force those who refused to work anyway.

I don't the government will do that. And I have yet to meet anyone here who is making that demand.

As for no companies will do it, you forget that companies care only about money. You forget that companies and banks did business with Hitler and Stalin. Even with the Taliban before '01. Yeah, the workers will probably be harassed but as long as they have the money, they'll do it anyway.

 

[gambit]

I don't the government will do that. And I have yet to meet anyone here who is making that demand.

As for no companies will do it, you forget that companies care only about money. You forget that companies and banks did business with Hitler and Stalin. Even with the Taliban before '01. Yeah, the workers will probably be harassed but as long as they have the money, they'll do it anyway.

Companies may elect but workers may not. Or at least enough of them may express reservations that the construction company may decide for PR reasons not to engage in this deal.

 

[Jigs]

Of course not. But I never said anything about the 'who' in that analogy. I only asked that if the local muslims feels strongly enough about any 'cultural center' proposed by any non-muslim group, and object, would their objections be as critically denounced here ? The question is how much respect should be given to local sensitivity, a moral issue, and whether that respect should VOLUNTARILY override legalism.

Moral issue eh ? Local sensitivity and respect ? Suggest you visit your posts in the Wikileaks Apache Guncam thread. Desensitization and all included of course. Or ignore it for more cherry picking.


Awaiting response with work around.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Of course not. But I never said anything about the 'who' in that analogy. I only asked that if the local muslims feels strongly enough about any 'cultural center' proposed by any non-muslim group, and object, would their objections be as critically denounced here ? The question is how much respect should be given to local sensitivity, a moral issue, and whether that respect should VOLUNTARILY override legalism.

A cultural center/Church, by say the Catholic Church, close to the site of the massacre, if we are playing by the exact same laws that are applicable in the State of New York, I personally would have no problem with.

Move on to your next strawman now ...