The couple behind the Ground Zero mosque project, Imam Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan, talk a good game. They are all about building bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims, between the Arab world and the West.
Or at least that was the message when the story about their intentions to build a mosque within spitting distance of what was the World Trade Center first made news. But how deep is their love for America?
For Rauf that question is answered in a YouTube video clip from 2005. In it, he makes the claim that "the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims." The comment is on its face bluntly self-contradictory to Rauf's claims that he's "one of us," rather than "one of them."
Putting aside the sheer effrontery of comparing his adoptive country to a bloodthirsty terrorist regime, Rauf's purported justification for the comment doesn't hold water. His argument rests with the millions of Iraqis who died as a result of U.S. imposed sanctions on the country during Saddam Hussein's rule. But even Bill Clinton, who was president when the sanctions were carried out, understood that corrupt Iraqi dictatorship was the one responsible for the genocide in the country, not America.
How about the imam's wife, Daisy Khan? How tolerant and level-headed is she? She is apparently so deficient in both qualities as to accuse anyone opposed to the mosque project as Islamophobic. She compared the tone of the argument over this controversial building to antisemitism carried to the extreme.
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Comments
Well they're right, aren't they?
We have a tremendous amount of Arabic blood on our hands. In Israel alone, our "aid" money is being used in acts of ethnic cleansing and outright murder stretching for decades..
We need to hear the grievences of thos who accuse us of such things. Because up to this point, you haven't been listening hard enough.
And there's a whole network of people in the government and the western media that intend you never do...
x
The progress of Western culture (to include Europe) within its past 100 years has placed nearly all of its stock into the modern idea of respect for other human beings, their beliefs, their ideas, and their cultures.
Often times to a degree in which political correctness becomes absurd and fallacious.
So if there exists, anywhere in the world, a polarization of sides. Or an idea of "us vs. them." Then I guarentee you that somehow. . . some way. . . religion is involved.
The western countries (and its eastern Allies) can donate blankets. They can construct water wells. They can build schools and help communities. They can even do their best to try and respect fanatical "us vs. them" ideas. They can even design modern weapons with pain staking accuracy to do their absolute best in avoiding non-militant targets.
But when religiously polarizing fervors are involved all these efforts are minimized.
You see people will always tend to have an ear for fanatics of their own faith or ethnicity before they would lend an ear to more modern ideas. It is a sociological fact: if your father, your mother, or the people with whome you identify yourself claim to be victims. . . then the chances are that you will too.
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