New York, New York
America the great, truly is a great inclusive, generous land of opportunities. America can be insulted and will turn the other cheek. It is a country of tolerant people. How else to explain that Hugo Chavez and others of his ilk, including his great good friend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, can insult the country and its leaders to their hearts' content and still brazenly elucidate their plans within the United Nations to change the world as we know it?
Despite that the United Nations' buildings in New York City host a city's-worth population on their own reflecting the presence of representatives from the most brutishly oppressive, dangerous countries in the world, all of whom have utter contempt for the West, for the United States, for liberal democracy and the very concept of freedom, the U.S. still acts as host country.
A country whose great population reflects in large part, citizens originally from most of those UN-member countries who have fled their totalitarian, oppressive rule, in fact. The Statue of Liberty, a gift from revolutionary France, invites the homeless of the world to arrive at its shores. New York, as it happens, is also the venue of the most violent, most significant attack on the United States from its vitriol-spewing enemies abroad whose most passionate wish is to destroy all that the country represents.
The devastation of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center, traumatized the city and the country. Attacks on the Pentagon and the planned attack on the White House which ended in Pennsylvania left the country reeling at the implausible reality of their vulnerability. The sinister mentality that revelled in transmuting the potential to the reality of using modern technology to destroy the heart of a modern metropolis by medieval-minded assassins was incomprehensible.
But, chortled the planners with the exhilaration of their success, this was ordained by Allah. And their dedication to the exhortations in the Koran to wage jihad in the name of Islam was more powerful than the complacent inattention to a looming existential threat than all the technology, expertise and intelligence and security that the great United States of America could bring to their disposal.
Now, covert and stealthy Islamic tradition is also at play. A quieter kind of revolutionary tactic, more useful and adaptable to infiltrating by design another stream of activity complementary to the violence of outright terrorism. Portray innocence of malign design, attest to social needs no different than those of Christian Americans, pledge allegiance to the American way of life, second only to Islam, and America forgives.
New York, in its generous spirit of open humanity feels it must lead by example. And by opening its arms to welcome the very religious institution of which violent jihad is a medieval vestige reborn, it informs its Muslim citizens that no harm done it in the name of Islam is too severe to halt Americans from generosity of spirit. Permitting the construction of a 13-story complex, a great mosque in the shadow of fanatic Islamists' assault on America is just and tolerant.
The city's mayor, an astute businessman, a Jew, a billionaire, and a philanthropist, opens his heart and urges New Yorkers to do likewise, in welcoming the mosque hard by where their friends and family members died in their thousands in a world-shaking horror. "We would betray our values if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else", he entreated.
And he's right. That is an American value. But he is also wrong, in stating that "To cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists - and we should not stand for that..." This is, in fact, a double victory for the terrorists; the first being the catastrophe that they visited on 9-11, the second being that Americans could be duped into accepting the dire need to prove just how accommodating they could be, even to their enemies.
Ordinary Muslims are not enemies. They are people, just like anyone else. They are also American citizens. They are generally law-abiding and for the most part comfortable being American citizens. But have they risen en masse to deny, decry and denounce Islamist jihad? Have American Muslims expressed their own unease at the presence of a huge mosque on that very piece of real estate?
Might it not appear unseemly to their American sensitivities that a mosque will appear a stone's throw from the very place where the atrocity of 9-11 occurred? Mayor Bloomberg is delusional in stating that to honour those who died, the innocents, the first-responders, it is incumbent on New Yorkers to extend constitutional rights to a Muslim community that fails to respect the feelings of others, and who express no inhibitions upon placing themselves where it gives pain to others.
Muslims claim they have been stigmatized, misunderstood, that Islam is a religion of peace. Islam is many things to many people. Those who interpret it as a peaceful religion are prepared to live in peace with others, and they undoubtedly represent the vast majority of Muslims. But there is a hard core and brutally vicious corpus within Islam expressing contempt for non-Muslims, dictating that Muslims live separately from infidels, and whose purpose is to harden moderates.
Muslims seem to find it difficult to believe that other Muslims have no moral compunction against mass murder. In the name of Islam. Even while the violent Islamists slaughter their own. Evasive disbelief in the reality of Islam's dark side and the passionate adherents to its dark side, ensure that the majority of Muslims remain complacent about themselves and their religion. Resenting that non-Muslims view them with suspicion on the basis of how the minority Islamists impact on the world.
Clearly, America, personified by New York City, is prepared to overlook the inconvenience of the incendiary threat of Islamism, insisting there is no connection between an innocent mosque whose imam insists will become a link between Muslims and non-Muslims, yet will not reveal the source of the funding of the mosque and community center, nor recognize how disturbing its presence is to those who have reason to fear its presence as a detestable reminder of catastrophe.
Labels: Human Relations, Political Realities, Religion, United States
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, August 04, 2010
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