Cordoba House is not some sudden and new issue, but the latest attempt by the Republican Party to displace meaningful political debate with pitch-fork-and-torches style mass hysteria.
The themes of these newest wave of delirium are familiar: Muslim conspiracy; infiltration by foreign terrorists; Liberal collusion.
Are we a nation ruled by mass hysteria — a nation that sees conspiracy behind every unfamiliar face? Or are we a nation that raises above the tyranny of the mob roused to rid the village of those in league with the Devil? Those are the questions that the Mayor and President should have asked, but nobody seems to be asking them.
When mass hysteria has been allowed in the past to drive public policy it lead inexorably to shameful results that destroyed lives and weakened democratic society.
Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.
For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.
The great Sufi saints like the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi held that all existence and all religions were one, all manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple, but the striving to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart: that we all can find paradise within us, if we know where to look. In some ways Sufism, with its emphasis on love rather than judgment, represents the New Testament of Islam.
“But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.”
Actually Islamic just war theory is available for those who wish to learn. Your characterization is inaccurate. If someone invades your land, inhibits your ability to live your life, worship God (Allah in Arabic) and perverts your gov’t then you can fight them. But, if the invader is willing to deal in good faith, honor agreements, you have no cause whereby to fight them. But, if they persist in double dealing, subterfuge and to fight you, then “go and fight them where you find them.” But, again, if they call for peace, you must honor this.
Now, after we invade their lands, bribe some to work with us, is there any wonder that traitors are attacked? Mr Dalrymple, you ignore that we’ve fostered civil strife, supported tyrants and puppets, work with these hand picked dictators to betray the interests of their subjects. Collaborators are killed. Those who are different are suspect, and may also be attacked.
We’ve betrayed our own ideals to rationalize, with lies, our invasions. We’ve rushed to use war rather than negotiate in good faith with patience and a global consensus. There are many liberal Muslims. Muslims never denied science it’s realm as we have. Jesus told us our to treat our neighbor as we’d like to be treated, and when asked, who is my neighbor? He pointed to an Arab.
There’s is indeed a Zionist conspiracy afoot. That the ground zero mosque is MUSLIM is made much of but that those who originally sought to destroy it are Zionists is NOT mentioned though the very suggestion is an abrogation of the Constitution’s freedom of religion and freedom of speech. One wonders if this is only one step in many by Israel’s right wing Zionists trying to dominate the USA through their neocon stooges.
Because our “defeat” in Vietnam brought many Vietnamese upon our shores, the neocons fear that “defeat” in the anti-Muslim wars they imposed on us will bring a lot of Arabs on our shores, they fear that those Arabs will numerically become a political force that can rival the Zionist force seeking to dominate American politics. And so the NYPost, the neocon rag of record, started a campaign against the “ground zero mosque,” not because they care about the mosque or where it will be, but because they need this event in their never ending attempts to mobilize Jews and Right Wingers to their cause of anti-Muslim hate. Recall that leading first generation neocons are ex-Leninists tactically bound by the motto: POLARIZE TO MOBILIZE. With the Christian Right fragmenting on issues of God, the environment, religious intolerance and racial hate, Israel is losing the power of its closest ally: paid-to-play “reverends.” Thinking that the Tea Party is a Republican force of revival as the angry right, they hope to mobilize it into a force for Israel and against Islam. After all, it was they who after 9/11 opportunistically declared “WORLD WAR IV” on Islam.
To my mind Zionists seeking to mobilize the right through hate and fear are nothing but Ziofascists. They would welcome a backlash American Krystalnacht by us “dumb goyim” as it would stampede American Jews to Israel in fear. The time has come for Americans loving DEMOCRACY to stand by Obama’s courageous initial statement– not the later Rahm Emmanuel signal to Zionists diluting re-write– and recall that anyone ONCE AGAIN seeking to abrogate the American Bill of Rights should be shunned so, while free to shout, their spitting into the wind promoting hate must be openly rejected as ANTI-American. Our Jewish fellow Americans are the first to reject this ground zero mosque paroxysm of hatefulness but the neocons dismiss them all as “self-hating Jews.” In fact, it is neocons that thus expose themselves goyim hating and demeaning NON-Jews (for I believe none of them are religious). Their Zionism is racist just like their “Negro Problem” since long ago as expounded by one of their founders. This too spits in the face of the Jewish devotion to fighting racism and discrimination.
So, OUR NATION’S FOUNDING FATHERS ARE CALLING TO US FROM THE GRAVE Communistoid assault on our Bill of Rights. Rise and defend what they died to give us! It behooves us not to turn a deaf ear to History’s call to demonstrate our commitment to America’s freedom-loving tradition and show openly our disdain for the neocon freedom-haters. Reagan regarded them as dangerous to world peace and he was right. But now we see that they are truly a danger to tolerance that assures American freedoms. So defend your freedoms if you are an American or you will lose them to these shysters as they will stop at nothing until we are all their puppets or are driven catastrophically to anti-Semitism express sing its ugly head in America so all our Jewish fellow Americans will feel obliged by fear to run to Israel with all their assets. He who would show anti-Semitic hate toward Muslims now soon shows the same anti-Semitc hate towards their Jewish cousins as both peoples are branches from one root. The issue is not their freedom of speech– for no one would do to the neocons what they are trying to do to all other Americans. But we must show our children that we still care more about the America we pass on to them, a nation of freedoms, rather than be dominated by fear of Muslims, led by neocons like a donkey (Democrat) to water (campaign donations).
In a remark as apt today as when it was first advanced 900 years ago, the
Crusades chronicler Guibert de Nogent noted that it was not important to know
anything about Islam in order to attack it: “It is safe to speak evil of one
whose malignity exceeds whatever ill can be spoken.”
Thanks to Dalrymple for bringing up Iman Feisal Abdul Rau’s background and embrace of Sufism. It makes his vision of the proposed center even more meaninful. Of course as the Crusade chronicler says that would make no difference in the current ‘tempest in a tea pot’ Mosque issue that the conservatives and their complacent pundits continue to rant about- “It is a really sad day for America when our politicians choose to look at a constitutional right and use that as basis for their elections.”
-Ground Zero –Pamela Geller and Death Panels – Betsy McCaughey; absolutely amazing what these two gossips were able to incite with the help of the LSM for the conservative agenda and propaganda. Only in America.