You know I've been wondering..how tolerant are Muslims of the Christian or Hebrew faiths in the Muslim countries? It is my understanding that religious freedom is not reciprocated in Muslim countries like those of the Muslim faith enjoy in the United States. Religious freedom is why many immigrants have come to this country. I'm not sure how I feel about a mosque being built so close to ground zero and I question the motive behind it. Perhaps after ten years of war and having friends and relatives fighting over in Iraq and Afghanistan I am a little sensitive about the subject. But I do believe that religious tolerance is in order here and maybe a BYOG (Bring Your Own God) church is what is needed instead of a Mosque. I wonder if it would work. Wouldn’t that be something? We need more harmony in this world. Maybe we need a national meditation day across the world and maybe there will someday truly be peace.

EPR Wrote:

"You know I've been wondering..how tolerant are Muslims of the Christian or Hebrew faiths in the Muslim countries? It is my understanding that religious freedom is not reciprocated in Muslim countries like those of the Muslim faith enjoy in the United States."


What you say is true EPR, others are not very tolerant......but as my Mom used to tell me over and over when I was a kid, "Two wrongs don't make a right!"

Absolutely "two wrongs don't make a right" and I think in this case history is the guilty party for all sides in this case. So sing with me.. "Last night I had The starngest dream..I'd ever dreamed before..I dreamed the world had all agreed.. To put an end to war"..
Makes sense don't it? Wonder if the idea of an end to all wars will ever come true? We can only have hope.

I'm singin' with you.....in four-part harmony, with feelin'........

I'm not sure I'm really keeping up here. I thought we were talking about opossums...and how ugly they are!

You musta missed where it moved along to singing possums.......

an a cappella choir of possums

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3520/323 ... 5459_b.jpg

When we become selective about rights and freedoms, we no longer have either.
I would hope, but not require, that this mosque if built, would be a uniting force run and attended by tolerant true peace loving muslims.

How hard was it to "sell" the Christian religion to thinking people after the inquisition?

Wyld, the landing gear of one of the planes went through the ceiling of that building, so apparently, it was close enough.

Just what the heck do you think this will achieve? Understanding?

The MTA approved ads for the New York buses asking "Why There?" The unions may refuse to work on it. My sense of this is the outrage will keep building and the notion that this is a bridge-builder of interfaith understanding will go down in flames. How smart is that? A "Bring your own God" church would be a smart idea but it isn't being considered. Other churches are in that neighborhood but they were there before 911 and some of their members didn't declare global jihad or fly planes into the WTC. They didn't raise funds in their churches to sponsor mass casualties. The ADL was the first organization to step up and support Muslims after 911 and now they are being called racist bigots.

On the other hand, the State Department is sponsoring a tour for the Imam to explain his position and raise money for the mosque. Why? For whom? Meanwhile some of his not-too-stellar connections and remarks will get 24x7 play on the usual channel and even MSNBC is starting to take another look. If it does get built do you think the organizations that sponsored those little detours off the scheduled flight plans aren't going to trumpet this as a victory over the evil westerners?

Michelle goes to Spain while the jobless hunt, Barack goes to The View while the Boy Scouts boo, Hillary sponsors the Imam, Congress votes another $23 billion.

Tone Deaf.

We can't force people to believe what we believe. Satyagraha. We lose their truth and they won't accept ours.

Kiss Obama Bye Bye because this administration is over and the nation will take a sharp hard right turn in 2012. I hope I'm wrong but if I'm not, God help us, it will be our fault because we lack patience and discernment.

The Pope asked for Christian churches in Saudi Arabia and Yemen because of the 1 million Christians living there. He was ignored. When I worked for a company that shipped products to Saudi, we had to scour every document to ensure no mentions of Israel or any accidental Star of David characters were anywhere in them. We didn't do that by favor but by contract. Ten medical team members were just ambushed and executed by the Taliban.

The answer is, not very. It isn't that their elite particularly hates everyone, it is that they like our last administration stay in power by stoking the hate that is common there. They teach it in the madrassas and keep their poor poor by keeping them too angry to notice their royals live lavishly while they live as they have for centuries.

Still, this is not about their lack of tolerance or our "we're better than them" attitude which disguises our own deep yearning to rub fundie noses in our moral imperatives. It is about being insensitive to the victims and families, to the 62% of New Yorkers who oppose this. It is about the tone deaf politics that make us look like intellectual elitists who know better than the majority in a city still trying to recover. It is about giving up the White House because we are so politically inept that we can't see or don't care what will happen in the voting booths if we insist over all objections on our way when it is certain to add insult to injury.

At the risk of sounding naive, if we don't learn to live together, we won't.If we give in to primal fears, we lose as a species, and the Mayan calender may prove itself to be correct.
I mentioned before that giving in to these fears among other things is ignorant, and it is. However, it's not only the ignorant that might be looking at this in ways other than I do. Len being the perfect example.I'm not gilding the lily when I say that Len seems to be one of the smartest and most perceptive people I've met here, and his arguments do hold intellectual merit. I still disagree with his conclusion that this project should not go forward if it's the will of those involved.
The more dividing lines we draw, the more powerful the extremists become by recruiting the weak minded and the frustrated.
The muslim world does have some legit complaints about the west to go along with many of the unjustifed ones.The more we work to eliminate the justified complaints, the less unjustified complaints will survive.
Hold out and hand, don't hold out a hand clenching a daggar.

No doubt that is true if the hand is taken and not ignored.

Why there?

Murray asked a good question on FB: why don't we object to the Canadians having an embassy near the White House they burned during the War of 1812? Because everyone who would object to that is long dead and over the following centuries we rebuilt the friendship. In other words, it takes time.

Why there? Why now? Why this soon?

Those who say not there assume that the hand being held out contains the daggar. My understanding is that the project is being run by those that are holding out a hand.
Have Japanese officials not layed wreaths at Pearl Harbor?
Have American officials not participated in memorials at Hiroshima?
If state sponsored events can find reconciliation, why can't that be the case with shaddow elements? We hand the shaddow elements victory on a silver platter if we give in to their brand of hate.
Look at the methods and results of Dr. King, Gandhi, South Africa.
That's the path I'd choose.

That is the path: satyagraha. Someone has to speak for the rest.

Here is a good article:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/08/why_jews_should_support_mosque_near_ground_zero.html#more

And one has to consider the comments in the article. One has this link to the Cordoba House's Sharia Index Project:

http://www.cordobainitiative.org/?q=content/shariah-index-project

Even the article attempts to paint those who oppose the site, not the project, as 'political opportunists'. Undoubtedly some are but the article uses the same broad brush to paint opponents of the project into a single category.