Europe shows the result of total insistence on tolerance
The American people, having been put through endless sensitivity training over the past few decades, know offensiveness when they see it. And they see it in the mosque proposed for lower Manhattan.
So, yes, the American people are a bit stunned to find the fingers pointed at themselves when controversy erupts over a $100 million Islamic project just two blocks from where 10 terrorists brought down two 110-story towers in the name of Islam. They don’t find this turning of the sensitivity tables ironic, but outrageous.
They are more than irked to hear the speaker of the House of Representatives suggest that those Americans speaking out against the mosque should be investigated to see who’s bankrolling them, not least since the identities of the mosque’s donors are still being withheld.
They hear lofty talk about tolerance and upholding the First Amendment — or at least part of it — and they think, “The freedom to practice Islam in this country does not hinge on the specific placement of one mosque in downtown New York. That’s not what this is about.”
They find it hard to believe that reputedly moderate Muslims dedicated to “improving Muslim-West relations,” as the Cordoba Initiative group behind this project says it is, would be surprised to learn that Americans’ wound hasn’t scabbed over in nine divisive years. Or think that they can demonstrate good faith by tacking on a 9/11 memorial at the last minute.
In fact, if the Cordoba planners and their supporters understand anything about America in 2010, they will see a country that can’t seem to snap out of an economic downturn, that is underemployed and overextended, where an entire coastline stands to be covered in oil (until it isn’t), where the states are suing the feds over a health care law and the feds are suing a state over an immigration law and everyone is suing everyone else over gay marriage laws, where anti-war protesters are throwing pies in the faces of Democratic senators and flight attendants are cussing out their passengers and taking the emergency chute.
And they will think, maybe this is not the very best moment to gauge the national reserves of tolerance and patience.
The wiser heads among us will think about the ground zero mosque and that immigration law, and their thoughts will turn once again to that place that so often lately has been showing us the future consequences of our present actions: Europe.
They will recall that the political class’ general prescription for everyday Europeans’ misgivings about their substantial Muslim influx has been more insistence on tolerance, more multiculturalism and the dismissal of any concerns to the contrary from polite political conversation.
They will observe that the result in formerly tolerant places like Holland, where a filmmaker and a politician critical of Islam and immigrants were assassinated, and Belgium, where certain immigrant-heavy areas of the capital Brussels and the port city Antwerp are virtual no-go zones for people who look European, has been a spike in the popularity and electoral success of openly anti-immigrant, anti-Islam political parties.
They will note that the failure of political leaders in these countries, and in places like Denmark, Switzerland and even Britain, to deal seriously with popular complaints about the other has not ended the complaints but made them louder and uglier.
And they will conclude that even in America, with a prouder history of assimilation and inclusiveness than Europe has, it would be prudent to meet this outrage with something other than finger-wagging.
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508 comments Add your comment
Mack Denny
August 19th, 2010
6:42 pm
To all the liberals out there, will you also object when the muslims decide to build a mosque at the site of the book depository at Dealaney Plaza, or how about putting a mosque at Arlington?
It’s not the fact of a mosque being built, IT IS WHERE THEY PLAN TO PUT IT, ANYONE WITH A BRAIN AND KNOWLEDGE OF HISTORY KNOWS THIS IS NOT A ‘COMMUNITY CENTER’ IT IS A MONUMENT TO 19 MARTYRS OF ISLAM TO BE BUILT ON WHAT MANY AMERICANS CONSIDER HALLOWED GROUND.
Don't forget
August 19th, 2010
7:05 pm
Republicans Block Bill to Aid Small BusinessBy DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Thursday rejected a bill to aid small businesses with expanded loan programs and tax breaks, in a procedural blockade that underscored how fiercely determined the party’s leaders are to deny Democrats any further legislative accomplishments ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The measure, championed by Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, had the backing of some of the Republican Party’s most reliable business allies, including the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business. Several Republican lawmakers also helped write it.
But Republican leaders filibustered after fighting for days with Democrats over the number of amendments they would be able to offer. A last-ditch offer by Democrats to allow three was refused by the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Putting party ahead of country is pathetic.
saywhat?
August 19th, 2010
7:17 pm
Double standard md? Hardly. I made two comments about an unnamed poster, who is regularly rude, obnoxious, and offers nothing of value to any debate. YET, even though unnamed, everybody who is on the blog, including the subject herself, knows exactly who is being referred to. Perhaps its a case of the shoe fitting? When the day comes when I fill this blog with only 5% of the posts it receives (not the 30% or 40 or sometimes 50% that she does), all of them pointless, then you can accuse me of having a double standard. To paraphrase you, they may have the right to pollute the blog, but is it appropriate?
md
August 19th, 2010
7:48 pm
“To paraphrase you, they may have the right to pollute the blog, but is it appropriate?”
As I said, double standard. You claim the mosque folks have the right and it is appropriate. GF – not so much……….I guess it only applies when it is you that finds it offensive.
leonvang
August 19th, 2010
8:29 pm
Kyle- You must have been sipping the Kool Aid for a while before you wrote this or you are just trying to get us to see the farce that has become US foreign policy of apology after apolology to the ungrateful mid east malcontents.
1. Two weeks ago the germans closed a Mosque where radical Islam was being preached and where many 9-11 plotters attended. That is more backbone than any US official has shown. And Germany has gone overboard to show religious tolerance since WW II;
2. France has oulawed Muslim headgarb in certain places;
3. Several European countries have tightened up their loose immigration laws.
Please explain why if we are intolerant we spent billions (and maybe trillions)in Kosovo, Kuwait , Indonesia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq , Afghanistan and now Pakistan giving Muslims aid when their wealthy oil sheikhs save their booty for terrorist funding only? How much Saudi aid is going to Pakistan?
And now explain to me why two administrations pay money to the good Imam Rauf to travel Rauf to travel all over probably collecting money forhis 9-11 monument to Islam’s conquest when the same person stated in 2004 the true killers of civilians iare Christians and the Us for bombing Dresden and Hiroshima?
Is that more intolerance by the US and its hate mongers?
Why 13 stories if not a statement of conq
leonvang
August 19th, 2010
8:43 pm
Kyle: You must have been drinking the Kool Aid all day to write this piece of trash. One more in a long list of apologies for our intolerance that does not exist.
Germany closes a Mosque several weeks ago where readical Islam was being preached and we pay an Imam who blames us for 9-11 to travel on our State Department dime (probablyto raise funds for his monument to the 9-11 conquest by Muslims.And that is a country that has gone overboard on religious freedom since World War II,
This so called man of peace preached in 2004 that the true killers of civilians were Christians and the US at Dresden and Hiroshima in WWII, This is code for the 9-11 attacks being justified He’s no better than Ben Laden for preaching that garbage!
We are too sensitive/ Really- .What if Toyota decided to build a 13 story Japanese religious shrine at pearl harbor?
The leader of the Arab World – the Grand Mufti stoof at Hitler’s side and broadcast hate from Berlin during World War II- Nothing has changed. At least Europeans and jews remeber that piece of history.
And who gives more foreign aid ands emergency relief to the Muslim world the Us or all the Arab countries with their oil wealth combined?
stan James USA
August 28th, 2010
6:42 pm
America, for all it has accomplished has been a hotbed of hatred against minority groups. Much of it religious, much of it economic.
Try slavery, the KKK, segregation. try hatred of the jews. Try hatred of gay people. Try hatred of Catholics, the brothers and sisters of the talibangelicals who believe in a very similar God. And try the latest immigrant group hatred – of hispanics.
And try the utter greed on wall street that damn near destroyed our and the world economy, thanks to republican deregulation and greed. The previous great republican depression combined with european hatred of Jews gave us WWII and 55 million deaths.
Yes there are some utterly insane religious extremists in Muslim societies. People who simply mirror the same madness that gave them the christian crusades of 900-1500 AD. When 50 million were murdered.
And those people’s clones still exist today in America.
\
The battle over the Muslim cultural center is just another way for the republicans to fire up their base, because hate sells well in politics.
While they ignore the fact that the IMAM of this center is actually contracted to be an envoy to the middle east. To help build bridges to these muslim nations.
Bridges and cooperatiion we need if we are to ever rid the world of the Muslim extremists.
But the repubs don’t want that – they’d rather go to war with a billion people. Because of war profits that feed their greed.
Remember the good republican to whom we owe so much – it was he who orchestated the destruction of Nazi germany – Eisenhower – who warned us of the Military Industrial Complex.
How times have change – the republican party – is the party of hatred of minorities, and the party of utter greed. For whom mankinds worst adventure – war – organized mass murder – is ok, as long as it feeds their greed for private jet planes and private ocean going yachts.
Muslims, the First Amendment, and another bad idea | Kyle Wingfield
September 7th, 2010
12:31 pm
[...] because an act is constitutionally protected doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. I made that argument a few weeks ago in the case of the mosque planned for a site near Ground Zero, and I’ll make it again today [...]