A group called the Muslim American Society wants to build a mosque on the grounds of an old convent in Staten Island, New York. Having purchased the building from the church, they went before a packed community meeting last night to discuss their plans. It wasn’t pretty.
Issues like this can bring out either the best or the worst in our communities. In this case, it is definitely the worst. Though, as is often the case, whether best or worst, whatever comes out reflects real issues in the communities involves.
In this case that means that as TV cameras rolled, people got to watch a rage-filled, deeply Islamaphobic group of Christians and Jews challenge a less than transparent and overly defensive group of Muslims. In short, everybody behaved as if they had been sent over from central casting to participate in a show called “people behaving badly in the name of God”.
I think the most troubling words came from one participant in last night’s shout-fest, Bill Owens, who declared, “This is our D-Day“. D-Day, Mr. Owens? Do you actually want to compare the struggle over whether or not a mosque gets built to the allied invasion of Europe and the long, bloody process of beating the Nazis? Do you really think this is a war, and if so, at that level?
The tragic irony is that such language is not all that different from the jihadist language which frames every communal and cultural struggle and a violent war against and all people who differ from the jihadists. The old adage is true – the longer one fights against an enemy, the more alike they become.
Reprinted from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield’s blog Windows and Doors: Where politics and pop culture meet 3000 years of Jewish Wisdom on Beliefnet
Thank you for this information.It is really not the mainstream of any group that causes the turmoil,it is always the extremists on the right or left that pervert the original teachings and use them for their own twisted purposes.Many think of the right and left in any group as a segment of a line,one on each end,and gradients between.i prefer to see it as a circle,the small mainstream at the top,and to each side the varying opinions and actions,and as they get further away from that centel,they begin to look more alike,until the most extreme meet at the bottom,where their methods and distortions are almost alike.Like communism and Nazi-ism,both ideologies became so extreme that they were virtually identical in many ways.We can not affort to let our world continue to be manuevered by these small groups of radical extremists,no matter what side they proclaim to represent. —bil
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All these hillbillies demonstrating about the Muslim Community center in NYC are moronic. It is not being set up at the momorial site. It’s being built in Manhattan, but not at the exact site. Should they keep out of NYC entirely? It’s stupid.