Machjo

Yes, notice it talked about Muslim mobs, not the Muslim government. In fact, the Muslim mobs opposed the Muslim government here seeing that they'd stormed the palace. Clearly on occasion, some Muslims were less tolerant of other religions. Sound familiar among both sides today?

Oh my God. He supports a just system of government. Terrible. Absolutely sacrilegious. We need to hang him for that. Or better yet, bring in the firing squad.

So we can play it both ways here: 1. Since they'll all have a shared memorial anyway, we might as well just get rid of all the local religious buildings, or 2. Since they'll all have a shared memorial anyway at Ground Zero, then building a religious centre two blocks away does not matter. Since i believe in freedom of religion, I go for option 2 above. Now of course there is the third option of associating the centre with the terrorists based on all kinds of false logic.

"As a North American..."

The point is that that post implied that is was bad enough that the better option was to jump, but only for the non-Muslims. The Muslims were up there having a party and a BBQ I suppose?

Some of those falling bodies may have been Muslims too. Remember, Rauf's own congregation lost members to 9/11. So how best to commemorate them? Or does it only matter if the Muslim victims were captured in that specific video or it doesn't count?

Ah, I see. I'm a North American man too, my mother's side tracing her rots back to New France 400 years ago; my father a mixture of Irish and Cree, Cree going back a likely 30,000 years at least. But guess what; that is totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand. I could try to pull the card that because I've been here longer that I therefore have more say, but that would be totally false. So you're being a North American is irrelevant. By the way, I know First Nations people who believe in Muhammad, just as I'm sure there are straight-off-the boat immigrants from the UK to North America who hate Muslims. To bring in our family tree is totally irrelevant to the questions at hand here.

I disagree. There never is a wrong place and time to discuss a good idea.

No. What it means is that people have corrupted it. When Christian pogroms were busy slaughtering the Cathars and other 'heretics', that was not the fault of the Christian Faith itself, but rather the way it was corrupted. I'm sure many Muslims of the time (Islam was experiencing its Golden Age at the time, with many Jews and unorthodox Christians escaping to Moorish Spain for protection) must have been sickened at how corrupt the Christian Faith had become. in spite of that, Christians and Jews had full religious freedom, and the national library even placed the Qur'an an Bible next to each other. Just read Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Now, I'm sure some so-called Muslim bigots of the time likely called for the suppression of Christians because of what was going on in Christian Europe at the time. These are the same ones now protesting the Mosque today.

Many Afghan men sleep with boys too. Does that make it sanctioned by the Qur'an?

There's a wrong time to be discussing peace and coexistence? What should we be discussing then? War and division?

Doctors? None. 'Negroes'... surprise. None! These acts go against everything the Christian Faith stands for. Now how many doctors and blacks have been killed by self-professed Christians? Many. The KKK considered itself Christian too. How many died in the civil war? Oh, history, I'm sorry. Well, just as the Christian Faith had gone through its dark age (and some are still in it), so Islam is now experiencing its, unfortunately. We still cannot blame the religion itself, but rather the way some adherents choose to corrupt it.

About the only legitimate argument against the Mosque is that it could put some Muslims at risk of retribution.

Including the Muslim families? Or just the non-Muslim 911 families? What? That we don't blame all Muslims. Terrible. Wel, if they refuse to acknowledge the Muslim 911 families, and hate the message that we don't blame all Muslims, then Bingo.

So are you saying that all Christians, every single one of them, support killing abortion doctors? The same applies here. Your brush is way too wide.

Of course not. Says one mourner to the other: "I'm not blaming you for the death of your loved one, but for you to build a place of worship that represents the very ideology that killed my son is offensive to me." The second mourner retorts: "Are you saying the Islamic centre that I've given money towards via my religious community represents the ideology that killed my daughter?" "Yes." "Seeing that I am a member of that community, then you are telling me that I am supporting the ideology that killed my daughter." "No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that Islam killed my son." "So, did Islam kill my daughter?" "Yes." "Well, I'm a Muslim. So you are saying that my religion, my beliefs, my 'ideology' killed my daughter." If I missed something here, please feel free to correct it.

Of course not. Says one mourner to the other: "I'm not blaming you for the death of your loved one, but for you to build a place of worship that represents the very ideology that killed my son is offensive to me." The second mourner retorts: "Are you saying the Islamic centre that I've given money towards via my religious community represents the ideology that killed my daughter?" "Yes." "Seeing that I am a member of that community, then you are telling me that I am supporting the ideology that killed my daughter." "No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that Islam killed my son." "So, did Islam kill my daughter?" "Yes." "Well, I'm a Muslim. So you are saying that my religion, my beliefs, my 'ideology' killed my daughter." If I missed something here, please feel free to correct it.

I wonder how the Muslim family members of the victims of 9/11 must feel today. They have gone to commemorate their loved ones side by side with non-Muslims who also lost loved ones on that day, ever-aware that the person standing next to them blames them for the death of their loved ones, only to to have faced the same person yesterday as a protester in front of their mosque at noon while going into the mosque to pray, likely thinking about the commemoration today. For those Muslim mourners, I can only imagine what it must be like not only to have lost a loved one on 9/11 but then to be essentially blamed for his death based on your own religious beliefs. I can't think of anything more offensive that to have your beliefs blamed for the murder of your loved one, which is essentially what the proests are about.

Yes, but that synagogue is being built for local Jews, not the Jews who caused the carnage. You can't blame all Jews for the actions of some who caused these crimes in the name of God. If you start punushing Jew X for the actions of Jew Y, then you're giving Jew Y ready fodder for his propaganda campaign, and you can guarantee he'll use this to legitimize further carnage... ... Oh, kind of parallel to the New York centre.

I was reading in the paper today that Imam Rauf had said in an interview that had he known all the protests this would have brought about, that he would never have considered establishing the mosque there. We say he should have known. But how? Sure some in his group may have anticipated this, and he may have brushed it off as paranoia. Yes, they turned out to be right, and he wrong. However, in a sense we should take his ignorance as a compliment that he sincerely believed that the American people would not have blamed his congregation for 9/11. Yes, it turns out he was wrong, but clearly he thought better of them. Now as to whether the project can be cancelled without costing money is difficult to say. After all, by the time the protests were up, for all we know, he may have committed some of those funds already, and we can't say he did not try to get a feel for the pulse of the population by first getting the blessings of the local government, the democratic representative of the people, the local religious communities, and even the media initially. He had every reason to believe that the warnings others were giving him were paranoia. Now the question is whether he can back out without losing money. One possibility I suppose would be to offer to sell any commitments that community had made to that location to the protesters at a fair price. If they refuse, then he continues on with the development and just tells them that they should have informed them earlier, not later, too late. After all, it's not like the thing was a secret, and the representatives of the NYC people had already given their blesings before hand anyway.

Ignore this post.

Interesting video here: Since the French government made the wearing of the hijab illegal in its public school system, more French Muslims are now sending their children to private Muslim, secular, and even Catholic schools, with both secular and Catholic schools being accepting of the hijab (after all, nuns wear it too, and French Catholics have already experienced a similar issue over wearing the cross in public school before, which would explain the identification with Muslims on their part here). The primary objective of this policy was to assimilate Muslims. Instead, not only has it pushed Muslims into the private school system, but I'm sure owing to economies of scale with more Muslims frequenting Muslim, private and other religious schools, that it will make private education more affordable for others of religious persuasion too, be they Muslim or otherwise, thus pushing more people of religion,regardless of religion, into the private system, risking more disintegration than before all these silly laws were passed. Honestly, what's the problem with a Christian student wearing a chain with a cross around his neck in public view if he wants that, or a Muslima wearing a scarf, etc. Clearly if these laws are now pushing them all into the private system, it's only going to cause more segregation and ghettoization, and possibly even bring French people of different religious persuasions together against excessive secularism in France. How ironic it would be to have Catholics and Muslims together stading up for their religious rights shoulder to shoulder.

In a nutshell, they're saying French culture is based on Christian traditions, they protest that a French-government department owns shares in the Quick chain, and they oppose the 'Islamization' of France. About the only two valid points they came up with were: 1. France's Christian tradition (though still a weak argument in that if it's based on Christian 'traditions', then it should also be based on loving our neighbour, no? And Christianity is supposed to be a living Faith, not just a blind 'tradition' pulled out as a wild-card for nationalist causes. And finally, add to that that officially France is supposed to be secular. So which is it?), and 2. that a French-government department owns shares in Quick. Fair enough argument, granted, but like any other corporation, the final decision ought to rest with the company's board of directors. If the government does not like it, it's always free to sell of its shares. As for Quick going mostly halal in several locations (though it still sells beer) was a strictly commercial decision on the part of the company based on market research, and has nothing to do with any Muslim community having put any political pressure on the company.

OK, I'll admit that I'm ignorant of how cattle is slaughtered in Canada. This research was done in Germany, where captive bolt stunning is the common method, where it was found that in some cases it is more painful than the Islamic method. So at least within the German context (though I don't know how it is in France either, I admit), the Islamic method is more humane than the commonly used German method. So looking at it that way, whether the Islamic method is more or less humane will depend on the country being referenced I suppose. In fact in Germany one reason the court did in fact make an exception for the Islamic method was in fact based on this research. Again, this might not apply in France or Canada, but I'm certainly open to education there. Do we use captive bolt cutting here? And what about in France?