The "Religion of Peace" (and "Tolerance") strikes again, Part MCMXXLVXXIII

They do this stuff all the time, folks!

SARGODHA, Pakistan, September 1 (CDN) — Muslims led by a hard-line cleric on Friday (Aug. 27) resumed building on a Christian cemetery in Mandi Bhawaldin, desecrating more graves in spite of a local government order to halt construction, according to the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA).

Radical Muslim cleric Mirza Abdul Ghani had built a mosque on the Christian graveyard off New Rasool Road in Mandi Bhawaldin after allegedly occupying the land 16 years ago, when area Christians were too intimidated to object, said Salamat Zia of APMA.

“No one could object to the construction of the mosque, as it is in the constitution of Pakistan that no religious worship place could be demolished,” said Zia. “Therefore all the Christians remained silent then.”

The cleric’s alleged desecration of more of the graveyard land around the Masjid Ahle-Sunnat-Wal-Jamaat mosque began three months ago, Zia said.

“This Christian graveyard was earmarked before the Indo-Pakistan partition on Aug. 14, 1947,” Zia added, “and their forefathers were buried there.”

Zia, a local journalist and resident of the Muhalla Ghorra area in Mandi Bhawaldin, said it initially appeared that Ghani’s workers were building an addition to the mosque, as only pillars had been erected. Now Ghani’s builders have completed a basement as well as possibly some shops, with cement plaster now being applied to the new units.

On Aug. 6 Zia led a seven-member Christian delegation intending to meet with District Coordination Officer (DCO) Muhammad Amin Chaudhary, another district officer named Syed Shahbaz Hussain Naqvi and District Police Officer Dar Ali Khatak of Mandi Bhawaldin about the encroachments on the Christian graveyard and to discuss how the graves of their loved ones were being demolished and desecrated.

As DCO Chaudhary was on leave, Acting DCO Shahid Rana took their application and forwarded it to the District Officer of Revenue and Tehsil Officer of Regulations with directives to visit the site and demolish all encroachments except the Masjid Ahle-Sunnat-Wal-Jamaat mosque, Zia said.

After inspecting the site, the administrative officers issued directives to stop the illegal encroachments, and for a few days the construction was halted, he said.

“But despite the stay orders of stopping construction, the Muslim men restarted construction over the Christian graves on Aug. 27,” Zia said.

Khalid Gill, chief organizer of APMA in Punjab Province, said that Muslim leaders threatened Christians who objected to the construction.

“They threatened that in case Christians protested against the resumption of construction they would also carry out a protest rally against Christians, and Muslim clerics said Christians would be responsible for the consequences,” Gill said.

APMA has demanded that the government allocate land for a Christian graveyard equivalent to the area allegedly occupied by the Muslims.

Local Urdu-language dailies in Mandi Bhawaldin have publicized the alleged encroachment on the Christian graveyard.

Joseph Bottum on the mosque and the messiness of democracy

In posting some random thoughts a few weeks ago, I noted that Islam is the one glaring exception (aside from atheism) to the mutual respect among the various particular religions necessary for religion in general to flourish in a free society and that, with regard to the construction of the Ground Zero mosque, the principle of freedom of religion must be tempered with respectful guidance about the responsibility that freedom requires. In his column today at On the Square, Joseph Bottum makes a similar observation, but goes a step further in addressing a deeper problem which the debate over the mosque has laid bare.

The offensiveness looks like this: Regardless of how it is intended, it will be perceived by radical Muslims around the world as a giant monument, in the heart of the beast itself, to their success in attacking America. Indeed, it will be perceived by many Americans that way. The funereal and memorial emotion that embraces one on a visit to the Ground Zero site will be weakened—poisoned, just a little—by the presence of this new, grand construction.

Yes, there have been other mosques in the vicinity for years, but they are small, ordinary things, not this grand statement. And yes, the organizers of the project insist that they are moderates, with a history of intra-religious cooperation. So what? Muslim institutions do not have a good track record for preventing themselves from being taken over by radicals, and moderation relative to the rest of Islam (as Ross Douthat has pointed out) isn’t moderation relative to the rest of America. People died here in the name of Islam, and we’re not really eased all that much merely because the people behind the Cordoba Initiative insist they hold a different kind of Islam.

Meanwhile, the constitutionality looks like this: The government really shouldn’t be in the business of regulating the ways in which the sheer existence of a religious building offends the public sensibility. “This is America,” President Obama intoned, “and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.”

Yes, the New York City government is still refusing permission for the Greek Orthodox church destroyed in the attacks of September 11 to rebuild. And yes, one wishes that the unshakeable commitment to religious freedom didn’t get shaken so much when the topic is, say, forcing pro-life pharmacists to issue morning-after pills or requiring Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.

But the principle remains sound, even when it is violated or honored only in the breach. It isn’t simply that religious institution have a right to be treated no worse than other institutions. They have, in fact, a right to be treated better, with more deference, by the government under our constitutional scheme. If such an institution wishes to be offensively bloody minded, there isn’t—or, at least, there shouldn’t be—much that an American government can do about it.

Which is almost what Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama (initially) said. Almost. They rightly insisted on the constitutional principle that government could not intervene, but then they drew the conclusion that the discussion should thus be over—and that only bigots and un-American theocrats would continue agitating against an Islamic center near Ground Zero.

The self-congratulation in all this is a little hard to take—a kind of belief that, unfolded in full, would betray a vast sense of superiority to both those culturally backward Muslims who must be offered such tolerance and to those culturally backward Americans who must be lectured on tolerance.

The deeper problem with this line, however, is that it assumes government is the only actor: the only power, the only arbiter, the only law in America. If the government can do nothing, than nothing can be done.

The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a column that might be the model for this kind of thinking about public affairs—this way of feeling about public affairs. Curiously calling for ex-President Bush to enter the debate and calm the people current-President Obama was incapable of soothing, the column was profoundly bothered by the mere existence of criticism. The failure to build the mosque, Dowd perversely declared, would be a triumph for those who hate America: “the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers is the moral timidity that would ban a mosque.”

Real democracy is messy. It’s got protestors and agitators and banners and manners and morals and financial pressures and gossip and policemen on horses keeping an eye out to make sure it doesn’t turn violent. Oh, yes, it’s also got government, but apart from paying for those policemen, government ought not to be too deeply involved as these things sort themselves out. If what the Muslims want to do is not illegal, than government should have nothing more to say.

That does not mean, however, that everyone else should also have nothing more to say. The attempt to build a large, new mosque and Islamic center anywhere near the site of the World Trade Center is so offensive, so bizarre, and so deliberate that it should be stopped.

And stopped it will be, through the offered mediation of New York’s Archbishop Dolan, or the skittishness of the financial community, or the disturbance of the neighbors, or the anger of the protestors, or the refusal of the building contractors. It will be messy, and it will be sharp. Inspiring and disturbing, with loud shouts on the streets and a few quiet words in the back rooms.

But that’s democracy—it’s how things get done when you accept that government shouldn’t do everything. The churches and the synagogues have long experience with this kind of democratic negotiation. Time for the mosques to learn how to do it, too.

Beckwith: "Rhetorical McCarthyism" undermines rational discourse

Francis Beckwith introduces a new term to describe a tactic often used by politically correct elitists to dismiss those who disagree with their enlightened opinions.

This week, Time magazine published this question on its cover, "Is America Islamophobic?," inspired by the debate over the building of the Ground Zero Mosque. There is, of course, no actual ailment called "Islamophobia," as there is with claustrophobia and arachnophobia. The latter two are diagnosable irrational fears that people acquire for a variety of reasons. The first is a rhetorical invention intended to marginalize factions of the American public so that the rest of us will feel shamed into believing we should not take our fellow citizens seriously. It is, in short, an argument stopper, and thus is meant to undermine and not advance rational discourse on a matter of public controversy. This is not say, of course, that there are not people who in fact hold false and bigoted beliefs about Islam, just as there are people who hold false and bigoted beliefs about Catholicism, Protestantism and Mormonism. But it should go without saying that offering critical comments about a religion or its beliefs and practices is not automatically the result of inaccurate observations and/or bigotry. For if that were the case, then the worst bigots in the world would be the New Atheists who maintain that all religious beliefs and practices are not only false but harmful. Because the New Atheists seem to be the darlings of the Time magazine set, one can only conclude that the difference between a bigot and a respected intellectual is that the former rejects one less belief than the latter. This results in the amusing judgment that it is intolerant and bigoted to believe one religious belief is true and all others false, but the pinnacle of tolerance to believe that none are true and all are false. This is, of course, perfectly stupid, though considered the height of sophistication by the most cerebral custodians of our public culture. This is why they prefer power over reason; they can only win with the former but not the latter.

If there's one thing you can always count on in contemporary America, it is this: some enterprising political spin doctor will invent a short-hand insult (disguised as an assessment of your sub-rational motives, as if they can actually be known) in order to insulate his own opinion from legitimate criticism. In fact, I have a name for it: "Rhetorical McCarthyism." Now, if anyone calls you "Islamophobic," you can then accuse them of "Rhetorical McCarthyism." That evens the playing field so that perhaps a rational discussion may break out. It can happen.

I've not published anything about the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, simply because I'm still trying to think about it in a detached and objective manner. As a strong proponent of religious liberty, I can see the reasonableness of the pro-Mosque position. But as someone who will never forget what happened on September 11, 2001--the consequence of Islamic terrorists putting their beliefs into practice--I fully understand the objections raised against the Mosque. However, when a magazine like Time attempts to paint one side of the debate as consisting of nothing more than bigots moved by an irrational fear, I see Rhetorical McCarthyism. It is a shameful and undemocractic way to conduct a discussion in a Constitutional republic, since its purpose is to end the discussion rather than to advance it, to shut people up rather than to treat them with equal respect and dignity. It is the plagiarized cultural cliff notes of the intellectually lazy.

Daniel Greenfield: Islam and the end of religious freedom

Daniel Greenfield makes some observations similar to mine concerning Islam and religious freedom, with a few more details to back up his argument.

Religious freedom requires that the religions which enjoy it, agree to tolerate each other. If they do not, instead of religious freedom, there is a religious war.

Looking at the religious map of the world today, Islam has grown in non-Muslim countries, while non-Muslims continue to dwindle in Muslim countries. And even the number of non-Muslim religious believers in non-Muslim countries dwindles, when Muslims are introduced into the equation. If Islam were a fish in a fish tank, it's clear that it would be a piranha. If you put it into the fish tank, very soon you have a lot of Islamic piranhas and only a handful of other fish that survive, only because the piranhas need to keep some of them alive in order to feed on them. If you don't like that picture, take an honest look at the Muslim world, with its dominant Muslim caste and inferior non-Muslims living in the cracks of their walls, and draw a better one.

The question is do we want to import this into the United States? Because history and current events show that there is no better way to insure the end of religious freedom in the United States, than to introduce Islam into the picture. Over and over again, the rise of Islam has meant the eradication of religious freedom. And those who fail to learn from that past, will be doomed to repeat it.

Obama attempted to position his remarks as being against religious intolerance, but yet he spoke in defense of religious intolerance. Because what greater act of religious intolerance could there [be] than building a mosque in a place where Muslims had previously murdered 3000 Americans? Nor are such actions unique on the part of Muslims, who have routinely hijacked other people's sacred areas and structures to make a statement about Islamic supremacism. If Islam were truly as tolerant as Obama claims, its adherents would not attempt to build a massive mosque complex that they do not actually need in this place.

And what of the Iftar dinner itself which Obama spoke at. The Iftar dinner is the nightly break in the fast of Ramadan. And what is Ramadan? It commemorates the revelation of the first verses of the Koran to Mohammed. And those first verses of the Koran conclude with, "Guide us the straight way, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians)." That same verses appears in the daily prayers of Muslims.

Seen in that light, Ramadan marks the beginning of Islam's intolerance for other religions, as embodied in its scriptures. When Muslims schools teach pupils that Jews are apes and Christians are pigs, they are relying on the wellspring of hate already in the Koran. A non-Muslim country holding an event to mark any aspect of Ramadan is as mad as sheep celebrating their own slaughter.

* * * * *

Religious Freedom must be defended, from all those who would take it away. The history of Islam is the history of genocide, oppression and ethnic cleansing practiced by Muslims against non-Muslims. Islam is the death blow to religious diversity and freedom. And nowhere better is that seen than Mecca, a city that was once a mecca for different religions, which is now barred to all but Muslims. Mecca is the Muslim ideal. And it exemplifies what they hope to accomplish.

Meanwhile, Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, the Imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, has praised terrorism saying "Allahu Akbar! These are signs of victory: Jihad has remained the only wining card and the light of hope in the hands of those sincere people among the Ummah". He has called Jews "scum of the earth" and "rats of the world", Christians, "cross-worshipers" and filled with "rotten ideas and poisonous culture" and had similarly charming things to say of Hindus. This is how the world looks from Mecca, the heart of Islam. And this is why Islam and religious freedom are incompatible.

See also "The Muslim Hijacking of Ground Zero."

Freedom and responsibility at Ground Zero (just a thought)

Freedom of religion is a principle rooted in several presuppositions. First is the presupposition of religion itself as inherently beneficial to society. Religion ought to be free because religion ought to flourish. A society in which religion flourishes is a better society than one in which religion is controlled or discouraged. That is, a society in which religion flourishes is a truly free society.

Second is the presupposition of mutual respect among the various religious parties. While the path has not always been easy, the U.S. has progressed over the last 200+ years into a society in which Jews and Christians, Protestants and Catholics have been able to co-exist peacefully and respectfully while, along the way, assimilating several distinctly American religions (Mormonism, Scientology) and some lesser Eastern religions (which usually come and go according to the latest pop culture fads) into its religiously pluralistic culture.

Aside from atheism (which is a philosophy, not a religion), Islam is emerging as the one glaring exception to the mutual respect necessary for religion to flourish in a free society. Insisting on building a mosque on the ground held sacred by persons of all faiths is merely the latest illustration of the Islamic tendency toward supremacy and triumphalism that is, as yet, untempered by its interaction with the wider American religious culture. Yes, there is a time for celebrating freedom and extolling the virtues of this grand experiment we call America. But there is also a time to offer sober and respectful guidance to those new to the American experience, so as to instill in them an understanding of the responsibility which that freedom requires of them.

Ground Zero: Mosque, yes! Church, no!

H/T to Jihad Watch via Human Events.

The battle raging over the Ground Zero mosque is bringing new attention to another, less publicized controversy involving a house of worship in Lower Manhattan.

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which once sat right across the street from the World Trade Center, was crushed under the weight of the collapse of Tower Two on September 11, 2001. St. Nicholas was the only church to be lost in the attacks, and nine years later, while City of New York officials are busy removing every impediment to the building of the Cordoba mosque two blocks from the site, St. Nicholas’ future remains unclear.

The last bit of hopeful news for St. Nicholas came two years ago, in July 2008, when church officials and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced a deal which would have allowed the church to be rebuilt about two blocks from its original location.

The Port Authority agreed to give the church a parcel of land at Liberty and Greenwich Streets, and contribute $20 million toward construction of a new sanctuary. The Port Authority also agreed to build an explosion-proof platform and foundation for the new church building, which would sit on top of a screening area for cars and trucks entering the underground garages at the new World Trade Center.

Trouble emerged after St. Nicholas announced its plans to build a traditional Greek Orthodox church building, 24,000 square feet in size, topped with a grand dome. Port Authority officials told the church to cut back the size of the building and the height of the proposed dome, limiting it to rising no higher than the World Trade Center memorial. The deal fell apart for goodin March 2009, when the Port Authority abruptly ended the talks after refusing to allow church officials to review plans for the garage and screening area underneath. Sixteen months later, the two sides have still not met to resume negotiations.

St. Nicholas Church’s difficulty in getting approvals to rebuild stands in stark contrast to the treatment that the developers of the proposed Cordoba mosque have received. New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, state Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo, and a raft of city officials have all come out publicly in favor of building the mosque, and the city’s Landmarks and Preservation Commission recently voted unanimously to deny protection to the building currently occupying the site where the mosque is to be built.

The mosque is proposed to rise 13 stories, far above the height of the World Trade Center memorial, with no height restrictions imposed.

Inspired by former representative Vito Fossella (R-NY), Human Events and RedState.com are sponsoring an online petition calling on New York officials to take action to stop the mosque from being built.

The contrast has not been lost on at least one candidate for Congress. George Demos is a Republican running in New York’s 1st Congressional District. Demos has made the Cordoba mosque an issue in his campaign, even though his district is on Eastern Long Island, and is highlighting the plight of St. Nicholas Church.

In an exclusive interview with Human Events, Demos had harsh words for the Port Authority, which he accuses of blocking the church from being rebuilt. “The Port Authority is a creation of Congress and should be answerable to two states [New York and New Jersey], but in reality is answerable to no one,” Demos said. “The Port Authority is insular and simply doesn’t care about public opinion. They are simply not making this a priority. Chris Ward is the Port Authority director and he is not allowing this to go forward.”

For its part, the Port Authority says it had no choice but to break off negotiations with the church to avoid delaying the World Trade Center project any longer. The authority said that the church retains the right to rebuild on its own at its original location. “We made an extraordinarily generous offer to resolve this issue and spent eight months trying to finalize that offer, and the church wanted even more on top of that,” Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority said last year. “They have now given us no choice but to move on to ensure the site is not delayed. The church continues to have the right to rebuild at their original site, and we will pay fair market value for the underground space beneath that building.”

Demos said it is the church that has been unjustly delayed. “One place of worship was destroyed in the attacks. That should be the first thing on that board’s agenda. That should be the first priority,” he said. “There were actually relics of St. Nicholas in that church that were lost in the attacks. Why is it that the same government officials who are so ferverently fighting for the mosque’s right to be built aren’t also fighting for the church to be rebuilt.”

Demos was critical of Mayor Bloomberg’s recent comments on the occasion of the Landmarks Commission vote. In a speech immediately following the vote, Bloomberg said, among other arguments, that allowing the mosque project to go forward would be a victory of sorts over the forces that attacked America on 9/11.

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans,” Bloomberg said. “We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.”

Demos called those remarks “premature” and echoed New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio’s call for an investigation into the funding of the mosque. “We need to investigate sources of funding for the mosque. If in fact it is being funded by terrorist regimes, then it is the terrorists who are winning by building a mosque at Ground Zero,” Demos said. “Bloomberg’s comments only beg the question of why aren’t we investigating?”

Demos calls his district, currently represented by four-term Democrat Tim Bishop, a bellwether for Republicans in the fall elections. The district is a traditionally Republican seat, which President Obama narrowly won with 51% of the vote in 2008.
While Demos is focusing his campaign on the issues of jobs, government spending, and his opponent’s voting record—which he characterized as out of step with the district—he said that the plight of St. Nicholas Church is resonating with voters.

Recent polling in New York shows that a majority disagrees with the plan to build the mosque so close to Ground Zero.
Asked what prompted him to take up St. Nicholas’s cause, Demos said the apparent favorable treatment the mosque’s developers received served to illuminate the issue to him as simply a question of right versus wrong.

“This is not a partisan issue,” he said. “It’s an issue of fair-minded candidates for office stepping up and doing the right thing. The focus should be something we can all agree on—getting the church rebuilt.”

Is it necessary to offer any further comment at this point?

Facebook: Rebuild St. Nicholas Church at Ground Zero