While checking out TheReligionOfPeace, I came across this story.
Instead of trying to simply retell what the article says, let me try to re-construct some plausible approximation of how it might possibly had happened.
First, we have the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’. And, yes – the undercarriage of one of the airplanes that hit ‘The Towers’ on 11/09/2001 actually fell on top of this building and damaged it: this makes the building ‘Ground Zero‘. Imam Rauf, who is building the Ground Zero Mosque cannot, by any reasonable person, be called ‘moderate’ – not with what has been learned about him… and certainly not based on his behaviour.
Anyhow…
Yesterday (Wednesday), imam Rauf is quoted in the linked article as saying that
‘nothing is off the table’ when asked whether he would consider moving the site.
Today, (Thursday), Donald Trump is reported to have offered that he would buy the building from imam Rauf for 25% more than it had cost him: not because he wants the building, but because he would like to end the controversy amicably. Considering that imam Rauf and his gang had paid $4.8 million for the damaged building, Mr. Trump is truly putting his money where his mouth is.
So far so good.
But things go from good to bad rather fast.
A nutty and, by the sounds of it, somewhat unpopular preacher Terry Jones from Florida got annoyed by something and declared September 11th, 2010, to be ‘International Burn-the-Koran Day’. (No, not a ‘Burn-an-imam Day’ – just destroying some inanimate objects he owns.)
Could it have been the very existence of the Mosque at Ground Zero? Or, perhaps the speed with which it’s breezing through all the building permits while St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, the tiny little churched destroyed as the South Tower collapsed on top of it, appears to be fatally entangled in the red tape which denies its reconstruction? Or was it hearing about the hundreds of bibles burned by Iran?
Perhaps he was expressing solidarity with the Muslims in Iran who have posted this video of themselves, burning the Koran, as a symbol of protest against the oppressive theocracy which is ruining their country? (Thanks, BCF, for digging this one up.)
Perhaps it was a little bit or everything.
Perhaps he was simply exercising his freedom of religion!
Whatever the cause, the fact remains that preacher Jones is well within his rights to destroy his own property, however he chooses to, and nobody has the right to meddle!
Of course, meddle they did.
And this is where it gets rather ugly…
‘Everyone’ has been meddling!
It was just ugly when it was just the usual media lackeys who condemned him.
It was emotional blackmail and just idiotic when people ‘all over’ tried to make him somehow responsible for the potential actions of other people. Yet, that is exactly what happened!
But when General Petraeus, the American Troops top commander in Afghanistan, came out and started telling anyone who’d listen that how a specific citizen of the USA chooses to exercise his Constitutionally guaranteed rights, he’ll be guilty of putting American troops into danger – that is when it gets downright scary!
Since when do we live in a society which permits military generals to dictate who gets to exercise their Constitutional rights, and how? Do we even WANT to live in such a society?
Of course, the media ignored the constitutional rights issue and instead of demanding that General Petraeus be stripped of his position and dishonourably discharged from the military (the minimum reasonable reaction to a general caught bullying civilians out of their civil rights) , they have given the military man a pass and continued to beat up on the nutty preacher. Sad, even if predictable.
Of course, this is not where it ended.
US President Obama – the guy who found nothing offensive in decades of reverend Jeremiah Wright‘s ‘God Damn America’ sermons – condemned his own citizen for exercising his freedom of religion. In this abc piece, Obama is quoted as saying (regarding Terry Jones’s plan to exercise his freedom of religion):
“If he’s listening, I just hope he understands that what he’s proposing to do is completely contrary to our values … this country has been built on the notions of religious freedom and religious tolerance,”
In other words, Obama says that the USofA ‘has been built on the NOTIONS(?!?) of religious freedom’, but believes that exercising them is ‘completely contrary’ to American values. (I am presuming here that when Obama says ‘ours’, he actually DOES mean ‘American’.)
Does Obama really not realize what is coming out of his mouth?!?!?
Last night, the internet provider pulled the plug on the prea
Today, when Secretary of Defense Gates did not only not fire Petraeus, but actually personally phoned Jones up and parroted Obama and the disgraceful general, preacher Jones began to show cracks.
So, let me recap.
So far, we have tons of pressure on preacher Jones to cancel his ‘Burn-a-Koran Day’ day, which he is ostensibly holding as an exercise of his freedom of religion, because he is so annoyed with imam Rauf’s arrogant project which has created so much discord in the American psyche.
We also have imam Rauf claiming ‘nothing is off the table’ when he was asked if he would be willing to move the mosque’s location to a less controversial spot.
Donald Trump takes imam Rauf seriously and offers to buy out the ‘Park 51’ property from him while giving imam Rauf a 25% return on his investment.
In comes the ‘moderate’ imam Musri,reportedly an influential Muslim from Florida.
Preacher Jones meets with imam Musri and comes out of the meeting convinced (rightly or wrongly) that since the Ground Zero Mosque builders have agreed to move their project, he is calling off the ‘Burn-the-Koran Day’!
Yes, he has called the ‘Burn-the-Koran Day’ off!
But, he has done so in the honest belief that the reason for his decision to so publicly exercise his freedom of religion by burning the Koran was no longer there – that the thorn has been removed from his side!
Once the ‘Burn-a-Koran Day’ was called off, the ‘moderate’ imam Musri says that there must have been a misunderstanding: he only promised that the two of them (Musri and Jones) would travel to New York to seek an audience with imam Rauf in order to ask him to, please, be so kind as to consider, may be, perhaps, moving his project elsewhere.
If he’d like to.
Pretty please.
Gee – how could such a misunderstanding have come about?!?!?
On a completely unrelated note – have you ever heard of the Islamic concept of ‘taqiyya’?
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