About that particular site of a proposed mosque in New York City:
Though established primarily as a Christian nation and rooted in Judeo-Christian tradition, the USA has long been officially tolerant of other faiths. Me, I have problems with people of various Christian denominations (and, yes, Christians have killed their share of people over the centuries) because, instead of bringing immigrants here with brains and skills, "relief organizations" all too often -- with government blessings -- gather up non-assimilating, routinely inbred human detritus, many of whom can't even comprehend how to use a toilet, and inflict them upon our troubled nation, expecting taxpayers to pick up the tab and schools to educate the ineducable as our language suffers and our porous borders become harder to manage. Our culture slips away, ever so slowly.
I understand that Islam is a very old and extensively practiced religion, and this country has always embraced freedom of religion. But parts of Islam are held together with too many explosive bolts, angry little devices consistently intent upon converting or destroying infidels, nonbelievers. There are, literally, no two ways about it. Though many American Muslims have been moderate in their beliefs, those who attend services at various mosques themselves warn that the radical element is becoming more popular, as Islamic youth in the U.S. slip away to train for terror in Pakistan and other "youth-friendly" places. And remember, in Islam, there is no separation of church and state.
An increasing trickle of women who escaped from Islamic countries tell their stories via books and talk shows, and they warn the world about sharia law and cruelty beyond imagination. In 2010, accounts of women treated like animals by cowards and mobs and societies ruled by torture seem so out of place, yet we know. We know. We also know that our incredible young men and women in the armed services lose their lives every month, trying to make a crucial difference in places which, for my money, should just be bombed into infinity with the finest weapons we possess, but WON'T use.
And just who are the "unclean" infidels? I'm not the unclean, Jack, and I'm never going to become a civilization throwback. To me, the unclean is anybody who won't accept a dog or cat into their home solely because their religion arrogantly convinces them of superiority to Creation's other creatures.
If murders at Fort Hood by an extremist Muslim U.S. military officer and the story behind this physician didn't drive specific points home to the common senseless in society, I suppose nothing will. But the truth is, we're nowhere near ready to welcome Islam with open arms because we constantly live in fear that those arms will be blown off with either political or actual IEDs, right here in the USA, and certainly in other countries.
It's a real hoot to see members of the Administration make light of the Islamic threat as they try to play nice with everybody, but I will say without hesitation that if my father and his brothers -- all World War II veterans -- were alive today, they would agree that some politically motivated faces intent upon non-confrontation and appeasement should be slapped. They knew what mattered and when not to walk away from an obvious fight that needed to be fought in an all-out manner.
Keep in mind, extremist Muslims themselves have killed more of their own people throughout history than anybody else, a fact worth mentioning particularly because certain Islamic leaders insist that Americans hold the record. Not true.
Remember -- the U.S. government has warned us time and again that the perpetration of another terrorist action here is only a matter of time. When that happens, it won't matter how practitioners of Islam portray themselves, mosques both built and intended will probably be in extreme jeopardy throughout the country. These continue to be very dangerous times for everybody.
Even France, the last place one might expect, just passed a law almost unanimously (save for one objection) forbidding Muslim women from wearing burkas. The reason should be obvious. The world is waking up and Europe is at least making feeble attempts to curtail certain future disaster as Muslim immigrants produce far more offspring than native cultures. Will we wake up? Yet another cartoonist, this time in the USA, is said to have drawn or prepared to draw an image of the prophet Mohammad, and death threats chased that person into hiding. This should never happen in my country, and if threats, extreme anger and murder are the "benefits" that extremist factions of Islamic immigration have brought to the nation, then we need to weed out these internal factions quickly, whatever it takes, and dispose of them in ways appropriate to their actions.
We welcome religious diversity. But at the same time, there really is no fanatic like a religious fanatic throwback from centuries ago, and oft-proven Trojan horses attired as objects of peace from the Middle East must not be allowed to roam freely within our borders -- and, I'm sorry to say this, but any rational mind can only see the NY mosque as a "victory" mosque. There are too many questions unanswered, and a global history of mosques built upon the lands and religious ruins of the violently conquered, with history and antiquities obliterated in the process.
One may only hope that Islam experiences a dramatic reformation -- which does happen -- and the majority of its followers in remote places reject bloodshed and other conflict.
How does one sort out the radicals from peace-loving practitioners of Islam? That's the dilemma for a country that chose freedom as its foundation, and from everything I've heard from members of strict Islamic nations who escaped and now tell their stories, Islam's accompanying sharia law is absolutely incompatible with our Constitution and freedom of the individual. Currently in the USA, masks of deception assume many forms, sometimes in the most unlikely of places.
Will this, a mosque among many others already in NY, be constructed at the intended location? Probably. Where else would one put a "victory mosque" in NY, if not on or as near "Ground Zero" as possible?
We still have a choice: Close the gates for now, protect the borders, find out who's in the country and deal with them -- or be prepared to happily skip, jump, text and e-mail our way to cultural suicide, oblivious to the danger closing in, one terrifying human birth and one shady immigrant at a time.
