charlestonscmilk
Posts: 27
Joined: 6/13/2005 Status: offline
|
When Tim McViegh blow up the Federal building in Oklahoma City, no one condemned all Christians. He professed his Christianity. Wide swathes of people did not suddenly think that churches were breeding grounds for terrorists. Why? Because in America, we are only scared of terrorists if they are dark. There are several million Muslims in this country. They are peaceful, law abiding citizens and many Muslim families have been here for hundreds of years. In my city of Charleston, SC, the first Muslims arrived in 1753. 1753. There is a lovely Mosque here. The Muslims go about their business as all regular citizens do. Why? Because they ARE regular citizens. Posting snippets of a story from the NY Times, hoping that someone will try to take in the FACTS. "... Feeding the resistance (to Muslims and the erecting of new Mosques) is a growing cottage industry of authors and bloggers — some of them former Muslims — who are invited to speak at rallies, sell their books and testify in churches. Their message is that Islam is inherently violent and incompatible with America. But they have not gone unanswered. In each community, interfaith groups led by Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, rabbis and clergy members of other faiths have defended the mosques. Often, they have been slower to organize than the mosque opponents, but their numbers have usually been larger. The mosque proposed for the site near ground zero in Lower Manhattan cleared a final hurdle last week before the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hailed the decision with a forceful speech on religious liberty. While an array of religious groups supported the project, opponents included the Anti-Defamation League, an influential Jewish group, and prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. Islam did not bomb the World Trade Center. Yes, it's true that the men responsible were islamic radicals. Now imagine that Catholic or Protestant radicals had planned and carried out the World Trade Center. Would anyone try to prevent a Catholic or Protestant church being built near the World Trade Center site? I think not. "As someone wrote recently, "Moslems should have the right to build mosques in Europe when Christians and Jews and Buddhists will have the right to build their places of worship in Saudi Arabia" and I agree with this position." Look here, that is the most asinine and ignorant statement that has been repeated by many posters here...just asinine. The United States does not engage in stupid "if you [insert country] do this we will allow that too" policy. The United States' values and freedoms are far different from the countries that you and the other like-minded ignorant posters have discussed. The United States' doesn't engage in doling out its values and freedoms based on what other countries allow. No, our values and freedoms are available to all that live within our sovereign control regardless of whatever any other country allows or does to allow. So it absolutely doesn't matter whether Saudi Arabia will allow Christian churches to be built or not. We, the United States, grant Muslims (and all people) the same rights and freedoms to do whatever is legal and constitutional within the sovereign bounds of the United States. The United States doesn't based its values and freedoms on what other countries do or don't do within their own sovereign control. Period.
|