Muslims Can't Be Good Americans ..... Huh?

A long while ago, I discussed one Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. He was, at the very least, one of the candidates most likely to be kicked out of the US Army, having given a June 2007 PowerPoint presentation that discussed “adverse events” that would occur if the Army did not accept the precepts of Islamic Shariah law and grant Muslims serving in the Army conscientious objector status.

I'm sure Maj. Hasan would be quite, quite happy to learn that the US Army has now taken his advise.

Enter Pfc. Naser Abdo, 21, a member of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. He refused to deploy to Afghanistan, claiming that Sharia law prevented him from killing other Muslims.....

Ahem ....

Let's start with the fact that Sharia is the sort of thing used in Sudan to justify hacking off limbs for theft, stoning for adultery, and crucifying members of other religions.  This is the sort of thing that makes you arch an eyebrow and wonder "What the....?"  

All in all, this is a generally Bad Idea.

Not to mention that it is pure and utter garbage.[More below the break]

Evil Religions 1: Allahu Akbar.

An evil religion blog post.



When I first proposed the "Evil Religions" series of blogs, I figured I would make it ironic. You may all remember the "first" Evil Religion post back on April 1st. This is the real one.



Before you get your panties in a twist, I warned readers of this blog quite some time ago that there would be a series of “Evil Religion” blog posts, and that it wouldn't be what you think it is. Guess what, it's still not going to be what you think it is. Read the rest of this preface here.



Now, let's start with our first “Evil Religion.”  The following can be footnoted in the works of Bernard Lewis, David Dalin, Ralph McInerny, or Roy Schoeman’s “Salvation is from the Jews”



The Middle East has a problem, and it's not Islam. It's their culture... which is also not Islam.



Yes, sorry, hate to break it to all of you, the culture of the Middle East was not substantially altered by The Prophet. Mainly because there were no real fundamental building blocks for the culture to be altered …



The trouble with the Middle East, in part, can be traced to the Nazis.



No, I am not being allegorical, but literal.



If you're a newcomer to this blog, you may not have heard of the term “Hitler’s Pope”: that Eugenio Pacelli, aka Pope Pius XII, worked with, for, or around Hitler in support of the final solution of the Holocaust.



What I'm almost certain you never hear about is what has been labeled Hitler’s Mufti.



To be more precise, he is properly called the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Now, a bit of background: in the 1920s, as a prize of World War I, Palestine was a mandate of Britain—they ran it and everything in it. Al-Husseini was installed by the English; he had, in fact, been put into power by a Jewish Minister of the Palestinian Mandate, Robert Samuel. Samuel even rigged the votes a little, in part on behalf of an anti-Semitic “advisor” Ernest Richmond (who may or may not have been al-Husseini's boyfriend; there were rumors, and Richmond was British, after all....).



Through the 1920s, al-Husseini incited two “intifadas” that killed mostly Jews (which I can only assume means that intifada now translates as “pogrom”), and Robert Samuel caved in each time, eventually cutting off any and all Jewish immigration into Palestine.



And you thought British appeasement started with Neville Chamberlain, didn't you?



Hajj al-Husseini was, in essence, local aristocracy. His brother had been the previous Grand Mufti, and his family had been in government positions for the previous seventy years. Unfortunately, his mind had been a little warped by a propaganda piece out of Tsarist Russia called the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”



For those of you who don't know about the Protocols, it is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that makes anything Dan Brown has written look like a well-researched historical treatise. According to the Protocols, the entire world is run by three hundred Jews out of Europe. Al-Husseini got it into his head that the British forces in Palestine were, in fact, there on the behest of their Jewish overlords, therefore, the British were mere puppets of the vast Zionist conspiracy ...



At this point, it feels like the moment I should grab the Thorazine and cue The Illuminati Polka.



Even after al-Husseini became grand Mufti, he called for an anti-Jewish jihad in Palestine during the 1930s, saying “Murder the Jews! Murder them all!”  This was how he started riots in 1929 and 1936-1939. He would later move his rhetorical style to Berlin radio, stating in one “Kill the Jews—Kill them with your hands, kill them with your teeth! This is well pleasing to Allah!” Al-Husseini’s connection with Hitler begins in 1933, when he sent emissaries to Berlin, first lending support, then suggesting collaboration. When the German anti-Jewish laws went into effect in 1934, the Islamic world sent them congratulations. Husseini would become friends with Adolf Eichmann (the banal evil that logistically engineered the Holocaust), and pushed for the extermination of Jews as soon as possible.



In 1937, al-Husseini met with Hitler, and they apparently got along quite well. Afterwards, Al-Husseini tried for a Nazi tour of the middle east; he briefly led an overthrow of the government in Iraq, only to be run out by the British. He hid in the Japanese embassy in Iran for a little bit, until the British and the Soviets invaded. He ran through Turkey and made it to Mussolini's Italy. He finally ended up in Germany.



SS chief Heinrich Himmler took Husseini on tours of the death camps, and the mufti pushed for greater diligence in running the gas chambers. Eichmann’s deputy Dieter Wisliceny mentioned that the mufti “played a role in the decision to exterminate the European Jews.” At the Nuremburg trials, he stated that “the mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler… one of Eichmann’s best friends” And don't think Dieter got anything out of saying all of this—he was executed after the trial.



Al-Husseini also had a Muslim clerical school in Dresden, where Muslims could be trained in Nazism, and introduce it to the Middle East. In exchange for this service, Husseini went into Bosnia to recruit Muslims for the SS, Hanjar (or Handschar) units, who wore specially marked fezzes with the swastika on them. You can also see photos of Husseini in Bosnia inspecting the SS troops (see: Shoeman, 258. If you want to see more research on Muslim/Arab Nazis, hit the Yad vashem archives , or the Simon Wiesenthal Center). The Muslim SS Hanjar (“sword”) unit massacred about 90% of Bosnia’s Jews.



Husseini made it to France after the war, after the Swiss kicked him out. The pro-Nazi French government (which was still in charge for a while) refused to extradite him, and by the time the Allies could lay their hands on him, it was inconvenient to prosecute him (Tito didn't want the “Handschar units” as an issue in his ethnically-divided Yugoslavia; the new English government didn't want to antagonize the Arabs in their Middle East mandates, and the Soviets had their eye on the middle east as future clients). He managed to stay free and clear until 1974, when death caught him.



So why does Mufti al-Husseini matter today? Well, let’s start with the fact that the grand mufti imported Nazi experts to train young Palestinians in guerrilla tactics—the start of a group we know as the Palestinian Liberation Organization.



During the Six Day War in 1967, Israelis found Egyptian prisoners carrying issues of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Ironically, it had been translated into Arabic by a man known as el-Hadj…aka former Nazi propagandist Lius Heiden. Mein Kampf would be republished by Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority in 2001 and was an instant bestseller throughout the Middle East—in 1999, it was sixth on the bestseller list in Palestine (and this is before the reprint). By the way, did I mention that “Schindler’s List” is banned?



The legacy of al-Husseini lives on into the 21st century. To start with, it was in the form of his nephew—Abd al-Rahman abd al-Bauf Arafat al-Qud al-Husseini. If you blink you miss the key word—Arafat. Yes, that Arafat. Second Lieutenant Wilhelm Boerner, a guard at Mauthausen concentration camp, and Erich Altern (Gestapo, head of their “Jewish Affairs” section), trained members of the Palestine Liberation Front. Former Nazi Johann Schuller, supplied arms to Fatah. Jean Tireault, neo-Nazi, also paid by Fatah. In the 1970s, neo-Nazi Otto Albrecht was hired by the PLO to act as a middle man for weapons.



Then there’s the Grand Mufti’s grandson, Skeikh Ekrima Sabri, the current Mufti of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. He said recently “The figure of 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust is exaggerated…It was a lot less. It’s not my fault if Hitler hated the Jews. Anyway, they hate them just about everywhere.” Nice guy.



And let’s not forget that the Socialist nationalist party of Syria had a “Furher” and their banner donned the swastika as well. It's also known as the “Ba'athist party.” The one that's currently running Syria, and used to be Saddam Hussein's party.



Remember that pro-Nazi coup that got Husseini tossed out of Iraq? One rally member was a man named Khayrallah Tulfah. After the war, he lived with his nephew, and in the main room of his house he had an idolized portrait of Hitler on the wall. He raised the nephew personally, and had al-Husseini over to his home repeatedly until Husseini died. This nephew would grow up to be one mean fellow—one of his mistresses noted that he would look himself in the mirror and state “I am Saddam Hussein. Heil Hilter!”



The Grand Mufti, this (literal) Islamofascist, helped form the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. And let us not forget Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser, who helped the Nazis in Egypt during the war, and who later led the Six Day War against Israel. He even adopted the slogan “One folk, One party, One leader.” His successor, Anwar Sadat, also had ties to the Reich—he spied for Germany during the war. Johannes von Leers, Goebbel’s executive officer, was put in charge of Egypt’s Ministry of Information in 1955. Gestapo man Hans Becher went on to become a police instructor in Egypt.



Let's look at the bad stuff that have come out of the middle east in the last hundred years, shall we? The psycho dictators have decided to enforce laws written down when Islam was still an emerging power, using the literal xenophobic rules of the day to enforce their own will. In fact, most of the stuff they're using isn't really the Koran, but bastardized versions of it, at best. They tend to work with scholars who have very.....old views about how Islam works, or should work.



Many of these were laws that were not in place during the Ottoman empire. It falls, and within a few decades, tada, archaic rules that no one noticed suddenly become applicable, and some which were completely made up two hundred years ago, or two decades ago – basically, whatever they “found” that could be useful. There is no Islamic Vatican. They devolved into a bunch of different opposing viewpoints that tended to disassociate Islam from itself more than anything.



Such transparent bull …



And let's target Israel, because, yes, a nation the size of Vermont is a threat to an Islamic geographical area equal to or greater than the entire United States of America … Israel just reminds Arabs that they're no longer on top of the world, and that there's no changing it.



One of the problems these psychos have taken advantage of is : you can't translate the Koran in the Middle East. Seriously, it's illegal. Which becomes a problem because most people can't read the Koran. I'm serious. Imagine how hard it is to read Shakespeare. It takes entire college courses, because it's poetry, and requires historical context. Now take the Bible, which also requires whole college classes (my bible course took a whole semester, and we only got through the Old Testament), because it's partly written in poetry, and also requires historical context. You get the worst of both possible worlds in the King James Bible.



Now, imagine that the King James Bible was written in Olde English—and I mean Beowulf English, not Chaucer.



And now you have the Koran, a document that's heavy on poetry, that is illegal to translate, study, dissect, or give any historical context to, written in a language no one has used in fifteen centuries.



And it has been translated. I've read it … it's still bloody unreadable.



Congratulations, your local leaders can now make it say whatever they like. Say what you like about the Bible, but it has been poked, prodded, dissected, vivisected, and footnoted to within an inch of its life, and it gets a new translation every few years.



And in Europe, you have a whole bunch of immigrant youth, being brought up in Mosques so insane that they're run by rejects from the Middle East, because they were so nuts even the Wahhabi's wouldn't take them. They're all in an environment that is either so antithetical that they're hostile (Chirac's France) or so accommodating that they're letting the nutjobs take over (Holland).



Oh, and you didn't have suicide bombers in the 1920s. Or the 1940s—and the technology was there, the Japanese Imperial Army had suicide bombers near the end of the war in the pacific. Suicide bombers were not invented in the Middle East ... they were invented by the Ayatollah Khomeini, in the 1980s, when he was fighting a war against Iraq, and losing, badly. Suicide bombers were his way of balancing the scales. And as one book notes, Khomeini was inspired by … post-modern, French deconstructionists.



At the end of the day, does being Muslim make you evil? Hell no. Otherwise we would already have the Caliphates of Dearborn Michigan, Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, and possibly Detroit. The problem with the modern Middle East actually start in the “Post-Christian” Europe, with Fascism, and Tsarist Russia creating the Protocols … if you never thought anything good ever came out of Tsarist Russia, well, you were right.  However, all of this grew up in a soil rich for planting – the middle east has a culture that hasn't changed in over two thousand years.



And it has nothing to do with the religion. It has everything to do with a warped cultural and political sense that occasionally intersects with bad religion and bad people. And the culture that is so very very static …



Still don't believe me?



There is An example that recently came to my attention: an old text that discusses the locals making their women cover their faces.



Was this written in the Wahabist 19th century? No.



In the High Imperial, Ottoman time period, in, say, the 1500s? No.



Was it even back in Mohammed’s time? No.



It was the Bible.



One of Joseph's brothers sleeps with a “Canaanite woman” who had her face covered, in the custom of “her people.” It was a scam, but it made me think. Canaan was a long, long time ago… does anything ever change there?



Because in the beginning, there was the Persian Empire. You know them, you saw 300—and the Persian Empire was actually worse than the film portrayed. No, they weren't Lord of the Ring-like mutant orcs, that was dramatic license when the story is told in bardic format. But the Persian Empire had no concept of freedom or liberty. No concept. No frame of reference. Not even the basic idea. How do I know? Simple.



There was no word for “freedom.”



Eight hundred years later, after Darius III, Alexander the Great, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Byzantines … all of whom weren't big on freedom, unless you were a citizen of said empire (and that only came in with the Romans). And up comes the rise of Islam, The Prophet, blah blah blah … When exactly was the word “freedom” supposed to come into play?



Add Western fascist ideology. Stir well.



I believe I will leave the last word to my friend, Jason Bieber (this is paraphrased, so bear with me).  "Islam changed the culture at the top. It didn't change the culture at the bottom."



And, when you consider that large parts of the culture hasn't changed much since Xerxes, that says something.

********************

Comments are welcome.  Disagreements are encouraged, but only if you are coherant, and can at least offer evidence for your arguments (references wouldn't hurt).  Also, this is a PG blog.  Any R-rated language will result in your comments being deleted, no matter how good your points are.  I dislike pointing that out, but prior events have made it a necessity.

Osama Is Dead: Requiem for a Terrorist

Osama bin Laden is dead.



Last week, a man who has been a plague on mankind was put out of our misery by some US Navy Seals via a gunshot to the head; if I hear correctly, Osama had been using a woman as a human shield at the time.  It was a fitting end -- Osama wanted a culture that would require women to wear nothing but burka and veil, an outfit that would make a Catholic nun look like she was wearing a slinky dress in comparison, and he died hiding behind a woman.



At the very end, the man went out showing his true colors.  He could send the poor, the desparate, the starving, and the mildly insane to their deaths, but he couldn't try for a standup fight with soldiers.  Considering he came in at the last minute of the Soviet war with Afghanistan, and made himself into the John Kerry of the Talbian ("I fought in Afghanistan against the first Great Satan!"  When he fired a few rounds at the Soviet's retreating backs).  In the end, he went out like a cowardly movie villain, and the noble hero gets to make an impressive killshot.



Osama bin Laden is dead .... Now what?





To start with?  There are going to be numerous thriller authors in mourning, seeking a new bad guy. The fiction post-Saddam Hussein went into a tailspin, trying to come up with someone else to beat up on.





After that, there's a little issue of where he was found: in a mansion, in a city just outside of Islamabad.  A town filled with miltary personnel.  Conflicting reports state that the Pakistanis were in on the kill, others state that they were informed after the fact.  In either event, the man was living there for at least six months. Someone is going to want to explain that.  I suspect there will be several some bodies on the ground, with their heads in a separate corner of the room.



I am a little sad that Osama is dead.  Why?  Because I think there will be people who will use Osama's death to say "Great, the war on Terror is over, let's go home and pretend this never happened."  Which would be nice if Osama didn't have, you know, an entire terrorist network.  And if Osama has really been a figurehead for years, as some have suggested, then the work isn't over.  It's a good start though.



Also, I'm even more worried about the intelligence issue.  If I were in charge of intelligence on this, the press release about Osama's death would be ... premature.  I would have sent in SEALS with orders to capture bin Laden alive, then ship him off to one of the fabled "Black Sites," where he could be interrogated for as long as possible.  There are that state that the interrogated would lie through their teeth; to start with, perhaps, but that's why (again, if I were running things) I would say Osama was dead, so that everyone he knows personally would feel safe and secure knowing that Osama couldn't talk to anyone. Facts could be corroborated, and then repeat the process until the truth comes out.  If this were the case, I would have released photos of Osama "dead," covered with Hollywood makeup.  And frozen in place with a hint of curare.

But that would be me.  I don't mean to spread conspiracy theories.  I'm probably ahead of the curve on the tinfoil hat brigade.  And if they aren't there yet, they have a conspiracy, gratis.  That he's dead means that we would have to rely on whatever paperwork was lying around in his immediate vicinity.  I'm not encouraged, but I may just be a pessimist.

Now, there have been philosophers who have argued there must be a Hell, if only because there are some crimes so insidious that it cries out for justice.  If there weren't an afterlife, the sheer horror of these crimes would create one, just for those particular bastards.

I believe that Osama is in for a surprise.  Not even for a Christian deity.  But for something else. 

Looking at the Koran a moment, there is Sura 81, “When the girl, buried alive, is asked what what crime she is slain … ” and it goes on for a very long while. Sura 81 is “the Cessations,” and deals with the punishment of the wicked on Judgment day … and it has nothing to do with Skynet.

I've read that particular verse (Sura 81: 8-9) interpreted by a mullah as being a matter of "God will punish the murderer of children, for children have committed no crime." In Sura 5, “the Table”, that those who fight against God or "His Apostle," thereby bringing disorder to the world should be exiled, or be crucified. Considering how many Islamofacist terrorists have butchered plenty of children, and their fellow coreligionists, if they were to be looking at the whole thing literally, Osama would have been nailed to a set of 2x4s by his own people.  And does inviting the United States military to come down on parts of the Middle East like the hand of God count as spreading disorder?

But, at the end of the day, Osama was just a guy conveniently clipping lines from the Koran for his own convenience.  He didn't like Western Culture.  And the way he went about it, if anyone were honest, would have gotten him killed under the culture he claimed to fight for.

If atheists are right, Osama is nothingness now.  If believers are right, he is either in a purgatory for the insane, or in Hell.  Unless he discovered a sudden desire for forgiveness before the end.  It's possible.

Though I doubt it.

Europe Has Some Problems.

Europe Has Some Problems.



[Before reading this blog, I would to ask readers to go through it with a critical eyes. I would prefer it if someone could supply me with numbers for or against anything I am saying here. I am relying heavily on anecdotal evidence and half remembered details. I retain a lot, but that doesn't help much. In short, I'm flying blind. Any numbers for or against what I'm saying would be appreciated.]



In the Brooklyn museum, during the reign of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, there was an issue involving two piece of “art.”



One, was an image of Jesus Christ, symbol of the entire Christian faith, in a jar of urine.



The other was a statue of the Virgin Mary, symbol of at least the Catholic church, smothered in elephant dung with photos of female genitalia plastered all over.



While Giuliani went postal, and complained about the museum, nothing really happened. No one was assaulted. There were no riots. Nothing was burned down. The “artists” were not hunted down and burned at the stake by a horde of angry Christians. Though I think the “artists” should be forced to stare at their own creations for a week.



Let's go to Europe.



There was a Danish political cartoonist who wanted to note how much Muslims self-censor any condemnation of Islamic terrorists, and that you can't even do a critical analysis of Islam like you can of, say, the old testament.



And, to show that Islam could tolerate criticism and would not censor anyone ... they had weeks of riots in reaction to the criticism and tried to censor the danish cartoonist.



I will grant you that political cartoons aren't funny, but this is like Norway having a riot over Hagar the Horrible. Were the cartoons worth the lives of over a hundred and thirty nine people and over eight hundred injured in the international rioting?



Imagine if it wasn't a cartoon, but a movie. Then you can imagine Theo Van Gough being knifed to death in an alley.



Not long ago, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that creating a multi-cultural society has completely failed.



Apparently, this little bon mot was started by central bank board member saying the country was being made “more stupid” by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.



Merkel's comment: “Multikulti”, the concept that “we are now living side by side and are happy about it,” does not work. “This approach has failed, totally,” she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany’s culture and values.



“Subsidising immigrants” isn’t sufficient, Germany has the right to “make demands” on them, such as mastering the language of Goethe and abandoning practices such as forced marriages.....



I'm going to agree that Europe's idea of multiculturalism is stupid. Multiculturalism on the continent is more Balkanization than anything else. The Balkans were held together by Empires and dictators for centuries; there were multiple groups, with separate cultures and identities, who did not want to associate with each other, hated each other's guts, and wanted to kill each other for about a thousand years.



In France, they keep their Muslim immigrant population in glorified slums.



In Holland, government officials have suggested making sharia law officially part of the legal system of the Netherlands (sharia: stone female adulterers, cut off the hands of thieves, and a legal defense for rape ).



I live in Queens. We have 167 ethnic groups speaking 117 different languages. We get along fine. I am the whitest guy I know, yet can walk through the Barrio, Harlem, three Chinatowns, and Brighton Beach, without anyone looking at me like I came from another planet. Then again, within four miles of me, I have dozens of flavors of Christianity, a Bhuddist temple, a synagogue, and a cultural mix of Hispanic, Asian, Indian, Italian, Irish, and those are just the restaurants. We generally all speak English, or we at least attempt to, and if we can't understand each other, there is usually someone who will translate nearby.



So, what the hell is Europe's problem?



They have several. France, for example, insists on a cookie-cutter policy. If you deviate or stand out in anyway, you're a target. The only place for hajibs or yarmulkes are in Catholic schools. Wearing a cross is also banned. Most of these policies were passed under Jacques Chirac, and don't seem to be going anywhere.



Then you have the Netherlands, where the growing Muslim population are mostly young, the first generation born in country (mostly young folk) are growing up with extreme feelings of identity—to their religion. This could just be their version of being a teenager, but instead of being Goth or Emo, it's extreme religion. Unfortunately, until recently, for over ten years no one objected when they assaulted groups of Jews, or committing assorted other hate crimes.



And, recently, one of their politicians was put on trial for … being politically incorrect in a film. Since I haven't seen it, I can't say how offensive it is, but in America, CAIR could have just filed a lawsuit, and made money. People would have boycotted the film. Life moves on. In the Netherlands, you can't even say bad things about Muslims, even when there is a segment of the population that is becoming an issue?



I'm not 100% certain about Germany's problems, if their Islamic population has any specific grievances, or what trouble, if any, they may have caused in Germany in order to spark Merkel's comment.



So, I agree with Merkel that Europe has no idea what they're doing. Time for them to come to Queens.



Then there is Merkel's next line … “We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don’t accept them don’t have a place here.”



Wait, what? I'm sorry, I'm going to hit the brakes right here. Christian values? This is the same Europe that rejected anything religious in the European Union, right? The EU founded on anti-religious Enlightenment ideas? When Pope John Paul II suggested that Europe even had Christian roots, he was told to stuff it. So, Chancellor, you're a little late.



Here's where I seriously start developing problems: A recent study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank showed around one-third of Germans feel the country is being “over-run by foreigners” and the same percentage feel foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce. And nearly 60 percent of the 2,411 people polled thought the around four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices “significantly curbed.”





Now my BS detector is going into red alert.



Germany has already banned something labeled as a religion. Scientology has been outlawed as being fascist. But I'm assuming that there were not four million scientologists in country when they passed the law.



If this new German thought process is an indication of where Europe's policy is going, I'm worried. It is one thing to ignore, kowtow, or be afraid of a problem, it is another to blindly lash out at a whole group only because a percentage of the group is being a problem.



Maybe if Merkel's “Christian Values” are more like France's Catholic schools, we can talk. But would anyone want to place money on that?  In Europe's past, they have shown only two settings: cower in a corner, or go fascist.  I'm hoping for something in the middle.



Maybe the Brooklyn museum would like to make an image of Muhammad and cover that in excrement. If anyone complains, it can always be covered by free speech.  Should there be a riot in America, like there was in Europe, I wonder if the NYTimes would refer to it as fascist censorship, (like they said about Giuliani) or if they would call it "freedom of religious expression."

The Ground Zero Mosque. Or: Why I hate Politics.

Thriller writers seem to be dragged into a lot of politics. Vince Flynn, because his protagonist is a government counter terrorist agent; Lee Child, because his protagonist is a former Military Policeman, and deals with a lot of army politics.

I personally hate politics, but, since I've already started by having a discussion on the Church, the Pope, and handling priests, I figured I'm due for another round....

Some may not know, and fewer may care, but there is talk of a mosque going up in downtown Manhattan, on what is currently a vacant lot, or a giant hole in the ground, depending on your point of view. Yes, someone wants to put a mosque at Ground Zero, the site of the New York City 9-11 attack.

There are multiple points of view on the matter, but I would like to address the one that no one else seems to be considering: The Muslim point of view.

Yes, I know I'm Catholic, but I'm turning on my empathy for five minutes. And it's not too hard. For example, we can break down the Islamic world into three camps: those who want to kill us, those who don't care, and those who rather like America and who have either already moved here (or want to).

From the “kill them all” camp (terrorists, supporters, sympathizers, Ron Kuby), I can only imagine a mosque over the scene of the biggest, most successful terrorist attack on American soil would be like planting a flag over captured enemy territory. From their point of view, a mosque would be a great idea, the bigger the better. Party time..

From the “I don't care” camp, I could only imagine a reaction of “What the....?” This mosque is going to be fourteen stories tall in the middle of downtown Manhattan— bigger than St. Patrick's Cathedral. Nearby areas consist of Greenwich Village, Chinatown, Wall Street, and a very Little Italy. Now, unless the Village has undergone a drastic demographic shift, or the official religion of China has become Islam, I can't imagine too many people going to this great big mosque. There's a heavy Muslim population in New York... in Brooklyn, on Atlantic Avenue. I would imagine that someone, somewhere out there, is wondering “Whose bright idea was this? And why couldn't we get them to build this near a major Muslim population center?”

The “moderate Islam” we hear so much about, who like America, hate terrorists, and came to this country to FLEE customs in the homeland, I can imagine being disturbed. I know that if my coreligionists had launched a terrorist attack on my country of residence, I would want as much distance between my faith and the attack site as possible. I could imagine this side of the Islamic spectrum viewing the mosque like the terrorist viewpoint, as a flag of victory, and consider that a very bad, disturbing thing.

Someone is going to try to put any of the above statements into my mouth and proclaim them mine. So I'll make my viewpoint clear...

In the biggest attack on American soil, Pearl Harbor, we have a war memorial. One of the ships that was irrevocable lost is still there, hull partially out of the water, one drop of oil coming up every minute or so. We did not put a Shinto shrine. With another slaughter, Gettysburg, it's also a war memorial, of sorts. We did not put up a Christian church; I believe there are smaller, individual crosses for the deaths of people who all happened to be one variety of Christian or another, but no massive Cathedral (I couldn't find one, feel free to check).

It isn't possible to make a war memorial in lower Manhattan on the scope of either of the above mentioned, since the real estate rates are somewhere in high orbit. If you built another World Trade Center with a war memorial in the lobby, and antiaircraft batteries on the roof, and make the rest of the building dedicated to standard business practices, I think that would cover all bases. The original lobby was huge, and all the things you need for a memorial are already constructed: I recall that we have a Vietnam-style wall with the names of those lost, we have a cross made out of I-beams that was put up by the construction workers (I would put it there less for religious reasons and more for the fact that it was created from pieces of the Twin Towers), and believe we have a statue of the iconic image of the three firemen raising the flag at Ground Zero. You get a memorial to the dead, patriotism, and a physical piece of what was lost.

As for the mosque itself, I'm more curious about other things...

(1) Are there really so many Muslims in lower Manhattan that we need something the size of a small skyscraper? If you take the terrorist attack out of the equation, building the Mosque anywhere in lower Manhattan isn't the brightest move. When the biggest groups are the Chinese, Wall Street, and the people of the Village, it's a bloody stupid idea.

(2) If there aren't “so many Musilms”, whose bright idea what this? I can tell you people who support it, but I can't tell you who's funding it. It's possible it's funded by someone who doesn't know New York City demographics, or someone with cross-cultural public relations problems, or someone who really does want to plant a flag on Ground Zero.

(3) Do American Muslims really want to put a mosque that close to an area of mass slaughter? I would think that would be up there with putting a temple on top of a graveyard.

(4) Before everyone plans for the war memorial, the mosque, or anything else, I would like the politicians to do one thing: BUILD US ANOTHER WTC.... I don't care if it's the 1776-foot tall “Freedom Tower”, or if they just build the originals again.

My position is simple: it's been nine years and three Governors since we lost the World Trade Center, and construction should have been started at least five years ago (count four years of red tape). Someone, get to work....

Oh, and no matter what designs are picked, I want the battery of Surface-to-Air-Missiles... and a giant sign that says “TRY AGAIN. PLEASE.”

Please feel free to comment; I put in as much data as I could find, and everything I can think of without going into a rant. If I have any Muslim fans of the book, I want to hear from you in case I missed something; like I said, I turned my empathy on for five minutes, so the above analysis of opinion is, essentially, a guess.

UPDATE [1-31- 2011]



And, maybe, just maybe, someone should tell this Imam how close he is to the village before he starts talking like this.