Our America: by Kaukab Siddique
Not Really a Mosque…. Not Really an Imam or Muslim. Long time FBI Collaborator.
Obama's Political Acumen: He fooled Muslims and Provoked Fox TV "Rightists"
The idea that a mosque is to be built at the site of the Twin Towers demolished on 9.11 by Muhammad Atta and 18 others shows the astute political moves of President Obama. He fooled the Muslims into thinking that an actual mosque is to be built. In fact there will be NO dome or minarets. There will be NO ADHAN reaching out into New York. Many Muslims were fooled by the media hype and started getting agitated and supported Obama.
A number of writers have noticed that, Cordoba House, as it is called, is not to be a mosque but a cultural center. Here is one relevant comment:
From Mark Sledge, July 28: "…the building planned for 45 Park Place is a cultural center with a prayer room -- not a single-purpose house of worship for Muslims, which is probably what we should reserve the word "mosque" for. As Haberman also explains, "That it may even be called a mosque is debatable. It is designed as a multi-use complex with a space set aside for prayer -- no minarets, no muezzin calls to prayer blaring onto Park Place. The 92nd Street Y, on which the Cordoba House is explicitly modeled, has a whole host of Jewish events take place inside of it, but no one calls it a synagogue. There's no good reason why Cordoba House should be misleadingly called a 'mosque.' I've been guilty of using this word too, in conversation and in writing, but it's inaccurate. Muslims already read the Quran and pray at 45 Park Place, but that does not and will not turn it into a 'mosque.' "
More interesting are the facts about Abdul Rauf, the so-called Imam of the so-called Ground Zero mosque. [It's not at Ground Zero and it's not a mosque.]
On August 18, 2010 Keith Olbermann, a staunch supporter of Obama, a good Jew, and veteran of MSNBC TV defended "imam" Abdul Rauf. The key point he made was that Abdul Rauf should be considered a patriot because he has been cooperating with the FBI for a very long time.
Even more interesting is an article which appeared in Atlantic Magazine. A Jewish writer, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote in defense of "imam" Abdul Rauf He quotes the "imam" as saying that he is a Jew:
"The right-wing campaign against the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" includes vicious personal attacks on the Muslim cleric who leads the Cordoba Initiative, the organization behind the plan. I know Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, and I know him to be a moderate, forward-leaning Muslim -- yes, it is true he has said things with which I disagree, but I have never expected him to function as a member of the Zionist Organization of America."
"In 2003, Imam Rauf was invited to speak at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, the journalist murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan. The service was held at B'nai Jeshurun, a prominent synagogue in Manhattan, and in the audience was Judea Pearl, Daniel Pearl's father. In his remarks, Rauf identified absolutely with Pearl, and identified himself absolutely with the ethical tradition of Judaism. 'I am a Jew,' he said. There are those who would argue that these represent mere words, chosen carefully to appease a potentially suspicious audience. I would argue something different: That any Muslim imam who stands before a Jewish congregation and says, "I am a Jew," is placing his life in danger. Remember, Islamists hate the people they consider apostates even more than they hate Christians and Jews." [The Atlantic, August 20, 2010.]
All this would not have come out if the worst enemies of Islam, the right wing extremists, had not launched a powerful campaign against Obama, using the "mosque" as a rallying point to condemn him. They jumped in head first: the worst scum like Spencer leading them. Mediocrities like Michelle Malkin, O'Reilly, Glen Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji etc etc flourish on the deep suspicions and fears of right wing Americans who think Obama might actually be a Muslim and a non-American. [Under the veneer of conspiracy theories crawls the monster of racism. Obama is Black or at least semi-Black.]
Allah is the Best of Planners. He has helped US Muslims to see both parties working against Islam. One side wants to deceive the Muslims, infiltrate them and win collaborators in Muslim lands. The other wants to launch military operations against Muslim countries, as if under Bush they did not drop enough bombs to kill tens of thousands of people.
Obama wants to use American Muslims, like Abdul Rauf, ISNA, CAIR, ICNA, Aga Khanis, Qadianis ["ahmedis"] and others to infiltrate Islamic communities and destroy them from within. The Republicans want to terrorize US Muslims and to brand them as potential terrorists. The Republicans are no match for Obama. Let's hope the Republicans do more. They might actually awaken the IMAN, asleep deep in the souls of many US Muslims who have been drugged by the 4-letter organizations.
To:
jadamirada@yahoo.comFrom:
jadamirada@yahoo.comDate: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:48:23 -0700
Subject: [bangla-vision] The "mosque" debate is not a "distraction"
By Glenn Greenwald
Opponents of the Park51 Islamic community center held a rally yesterday in Lower Manhattan, and a 4-minute video, posted below, reveals the true sentiments behind this campaign. It has little to do with The Hallowed Ground of the World Trade Center -- that's just the pretext -- and everything to do with animosity toward Muslims. I dislike the tactic of singling out one or two objectionable people or signs at a march or rally in order to disparage the event itself. That's not what this video is. Rather, it shows the collective sentiment of those gathered, as well as what's driving the broader national backlash against mosques and Muslims far beyond Ground Zero.
The episode in the video begins when, as John Cole put it, "some black guy made the mistake of looking Muslimish and was harassed and nearly assaulted by the collection of lily white mouth-breathers at the event . . . At about 25 seconds in, he quite astutely points out to the crowd that 'All y'all dumb motherfuckers don't even know my opinion on shit'." As this African-American citizen (whom the videographer claims is a union carpenter who works at Ground Zero) is instructed to leave by what appears to be some sort of security or law enforcement official, the crowd proceeds to yell: "he musta voted for Obama," "Mohammed's a pig," and other assorted charming anti-mosque slogans. I really encourage everyone to watch this to see the toxicity this campaign has unleashed:
The New York Times article on this rally describes similar incidents, including how a student who carried a sign that simply read "Religious tolerance is what makes America great" was threatened and told that "that if the police were not present, [he] would be in danger." Does anyone believe that their real agenda is simply to have Park51 move a few blocks away to less Sacred ground, or that they're amenable to some sort of Howard-Dean-envisioned compromise that accommodates everyone?
All of this underscores a point I've wanted to make for awhile. There's been a tendency, which I find increasingly irritating, to dismiss this whole Park51 debate as some sort of petty, inconsequential August "distraction" from what Really Matters. Here's Chuck Todd mocking the debate as a "shiny metal object alert" and lamenting "the waste of time" he believes it to be, while Katrina vanden Heuvel, in The Washington Post last week, condemned "pundits and politicians [who] are working themselves into hysteria over a mosque near Ground Zero" on the ground that it won't determine the outcome of the midterm elections. This impulse is understandable. If you chose to narrowly define the topic of the controversy as nothing more than the Manhattan address of Park 51, then obviously it pales in importance to the unemployment crisis, our ongoing wars, and countless other political issues.
But that's an artificially narrow and misguided way of understanding what this dispute is about. The intense animosity toward Muslims driving this campaign extends far beyond Ground Zero, and manifests in all sorts of significant and dangerous ways. In June, The New York Times reported on a vicious opposition campaign against a proposed mosque in Staten Island. Earlier this month, Associated Press documented that "Muslims trying to build houses of worship in the nation's heartland, far from the heated fight in New York over plans for a mosque near ground zero, are running into opponents even more hostile and aggressive." And today, The Washington Post examines anti-mosque campaigns from communities around the nation and concludes that "the intense feelings driving that debate have surfaced in communities from California to Florida in recent months, raising questions about whether public attitudes toward Muslims have shifted."
To belittle this issue as though it's the equivalent of the media's August fixation on shark attacks or Chandra Levy -- or, worse, to want to ignore it because it's harmful to the Democrats' chances in November -- is profoundly irresponsible. The Park51 conflict is driven by, and reflective of, a pervasive animosity toward a religious minority -- one that has serious implications for how we conduct ourselves both domestically and internationally. Yesterday, ABC News' Christiane Amanpour decided to let Americans hear about this dispute from actual Muslims behind the project (compare that, as Jay Rosen suggested, to David Gregory's trite and typically homogeneous guest list of Rick Lazio and Jeffrey Goldberg and you see why there's so much upset caused by Amanpour). One of those project organizers, Daisy Kahn, said this during her ABC interview:
This is like a metastasized anti-Semitism. That's what we feel right now. It's not even Islamophobia; it's beyond Islamophobia. It's hate of Muslims, and we are deeply concerned.
Can anyone watch the video of that disgusting hate rally and dispute that? That's exactly why I've found this conflict so significant. If Park51 ends up moving or if opponents otherwise succeed in defeating it, it will seriously bolster and validate the ugly premises at the heart of this campaign: that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11, Terrorism justifies and even compels our restricting the equals rights and access of Americans Muslims, and more broadly, the animosity and suspicions towards Muslims generally are justified, or at least deserving of respect. As Aziz Poonawalla put it: "if the project does fail, then I think that the message that will be sent is that bigotry and fear of Muslims is not just permitted, it is effective."
That's exactly the message that will be sent, and that's what makes this conflict so significant. Obviously, not all opponents of Park51 are as overtly hateful as those in that video -- and not all opponents are themselves bigots -- but the position they've adopted is inherently bigoted, as it seeks to impose guilt and blame on a large demographic group for the aberrational acts of a small number of individual members. And one thing is certain: if this campaign succeeds, it will proliferate and the sentiments driving it will become even more potent. Hatemongers always become emboldened when they triumph.
The animosity and hatred so visible here extends far beyond the location of mosques or even how we treat American Muslims. So many of our national abuses, crimes and other excesses of the last decade -- torture, invasions, bombings, illegal surveillance, assassinations, renditions, disappearances, etc. etc. -- are grounded in endless demonization of Muslims. A citizenry will submit to such policies only if they are vested with sufficient fear of an Enemy. There are, as always, a wide array of enemies capable of producing substantial fear (the Immigrants, the Gays, and, as that video reveals, the always-reliable racial minorities), but the leading Enemy over the last decade, in American political discourse, has been, and still is, the Muslim.
That's why the population is willing to justify virtually anything that's done to "them" without much resistance at all, and it's why very few people demand evidence from the Government before believing accusations that someone is a Terrorist: after all, if they're Muslim, that's reason enough to believe it. Hence, the repeated, mindless mantra that those in Guantanamo -- or those on the Government's "hit list" -- are Terrorists even in the absence of evidence and charges, and even in the presence of ample grounds for doubting the truth of those accusations.
And there's no end in sight: the current hysteria over Iran at its core relies -- just as the identical campaign against Iraq did -- on the demonization of a whole new host of Muslim villains. A population that is constantly bombarded with tales of Muslim Evil (they want to kill your children and explode a nuclear suitcase in your neighborhood) will be filled with fear and hatred -- sentiments always exacerbated during times of economic strife and uncertainty -- and very well-primed to lash out. That's the decade-long brew that has led to this purely irrational, hate-driven demand that they not be allowed to desecrate and infect the Sacred, Hallowed Space of Ground Zero (the religious terminology used to talk about 9/11 is both creepy and no accident). This "debate" over Park51 is many things. An inconsequential "distraction" from what Really Matters is not one of them.
UPDATE: Ron Paul issued a statement today excoriating conservative opponents of Park51 for violating their alleged belief in religious freedom and property rights, and added:
In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it.
They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars. . . Defending the controversial use of property should be no more difficult than defending the 1st Amendment principle of defending controversial speech. But many conservatives and liberals do not want to diminish the hatred for Islam -- the driving emotion that keeps us in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. . . .
The outcry over the building of the mosque, near ground zero, implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to those who are condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on 9/11 spoke for all Muslims. . . . . This is all about hate and Islamaphobia.
It is indeed "about hate and Islamaphobia," and that is the driving, enabling force behind so many of America's most controversial and destructive policies.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/23/park51/index.html
Classical economics is only value-free on its surface. In actual fact it ignores power in the world. In actual fact it ignores that its outcomes ALWAYS hurt the lesser much more than they do the greater. Economics is not just the dismal science, it is the shameful fancy window dressing of the exercise of naked power by the rich and the owners against the poor and the workers. It is the condom which makes safe and obscure the ways we are screwed. Wythe Holt 5/21/09
Solidarity is the path as well as the destination of socialism. Solidarity grieves when a worker loses his job or sees her pension slashed. Solidarity cheers when a union wins middle-class pay. Solidarity rejects the greed of insurers as the distributor of healthcare and demands single payer for all. Solidarity smells the rat who divides white from black, black from gay, native from newcomer, or America from the rest of humanity. By Phillip Bannowsky
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