Mosque protesters assault... mosque protesters

[TheLibertarian]

http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinion ... c=y&page=2

At one point, a portion of the crowd menacingly surrounded two Egyptian men who were speaking Arabic and were thought to be Muslims.

"Go home," several shouted from the crowd.

"Get out," others shouted.

In fact, the two men - Joseph Nassralla and Karam El Masry - were not Muslims at all. They turned out to be Egyptian Coptic Christians who work for a California-based Christian satellite TV station called "The Way." Both said they had come to protest the mosque.

"I'm a Christian," Nassralla shouted to the crowd, his eyes bulging and beads of sweat rolling down his face.

But it was no use. The protesters had become so angry at what they thought were Muslims that New York City police officers had to rush in and pull Nassralla and El Masry to safety.

"I flew nine hours in an airplane to come here," a frustrated Nassralla said afterward.

Hilarious. I am highly inclined to do nothing more than sit back and watch the brainless mass devour itself.

[micatala]

The right wing bloggers who instigated this have a lot to apologize for.

Sorry, I am missing where you see this "right wing blogger" in this article. Could you point it out please?

My bad. It was not mentioned in the article, but has been mentioned on various liberal news outlets.

Here is an article from Salon

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_ ... ue_origins

A group of progressive Muslim-Americans plans to build an Islamic community center two and a half blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. They have had a mosque in the same neighborhood for many years. There's another mosque two blocks away from the site.

I think it is relevant that mosques have been in the area for years. I also think it is relevant that there are a lot of vacant buildings in the area. Certainly a little development is not going to hurt the economy.


Specifically on the origins of the dust-up

To a remarkable extent, a Salon review of the origins of the story found, the controversy was kicked up and driven by Pamela Geller, a right-wing, viciously anti-Muslim, conspiracy-mongering blogger, whose sinister portrayal of the project was embraced by Rupert Murdoch's New York Post.

Here's a timeline of how it all happened:


•Dec. 8, 2009: The Times publishes a lengthy front-page look at the Cordoba project. "We want to push back against the extremists," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the lead organizer, is quoted as saying. Two Jewish leaders and two city officials, including the mayor's office, say they support the idea, as does the mother of a man killed on 9/11. An FBI spokesman says the imam has worked with the bureau. Besides a few third-tier right-wing blogs, including Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs site, no one much notices the Times story.
•Dec. 21, 2009: Conservative media personality Laura Ingraham interviews Abdul Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, while guest-hosting "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox. In hindsight, the segment is remarkable for its cordiality. "I can't find many people who really have a problem with it," Ingraham says of the Cordoba project, adding at the end of the interview, "I like what you're trying to do."
[Video clip at this point]

(This segment also includes onscreen the first use that we've seen of the misnomer "ground zero mosque.") After the segment — and despite the front-page Times story — there were no news articles on the mosque for five and a half months, according to a search of the Nexis newspaper archive.
•May 6, 2010: After a unanimous vote by a New York City community board committee to approve the project, the AP runs a story. It quotes relatives of 9/11 victims (called by the reporter), who offer differing opinions. The New York Post, meanwhile, runs a story under the inaccurate headline, "Panel Approves 'WTC' Mosque." Geller is less subtle, titling her post that day, "Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction." She writes on her Atlas Shrugs blog, "This is Islamic domination and expansionism. The location is no accident. Just as Al-Aqsa was built on top of the Temple in Jerusalem." (To get an idea of where Geller is coming from, she once suggested that Malcolm X was Obama's real father. Seriously.)
•May 7, 2010: Geller's group, Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), launches "Campaign Offensive: Stop the 911 Mosque!" (SIOA 's associate director is Robert Spencer, who makes his living writing and speaking about the evils of Islam.) Geller posts the names and contact information for the mayor and members of the community board, encouraging people to write. The board chair later reports getting "hundreds and hundreds" of calls and e-mails from around the world.
•May 8, 2010: Geller announces SIOA's first protest against what she calls the "911 monster mosque" for May 29. She and Spencer and several other members of the professional anti-Islam industry will attend. (She also says that the protest will mark the dark day of "May 29, 1453, [when] the Ottoman forces led by the Sultan Mehmet II broke through the Byzantine defenses against the Muslim siege of Constantinople." The outrage-peddling New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser argues in a note at the end of her column a couple of days later that "there are better places to put a mosque."
•May 13, 2010: Peyser follows up with an entire column devoted to "Mosque Madness at Ground Zero." This is a significant moment in the development of the "ground zero mosque" narrative: It's the first newspaper article that frames the project as inherently wrong and suspect, in the way that Geller has been framing it for months. Peyser in fact quotes Geller at length and promotes the anti-mosque protest of Stop Islamization of America, which Peyser describes as a "human-rights group." Peyser also reports — falsely — that Cordoba House's opening date will be Sept. 11, 2011.

Lots of opinion makers on the right read the Post, so it's not surprising that, starting that very day, the mosque story spread through the conservative — and then mainstream — media like fire through dry grass. Geller appeared on Sean Hannity's radio show. The Washington Examiner ran an outraged column about honoring the 9/11 dead. So did Investor's Business Daily. Smelling blood, the Post assigned news reporters to cover the ins and outs of the Cordoba House development daily. Fox News, the Post's television sibling, went all out.

Within a month, Rudy Giuliani had called the mosque a "desecration." Within another month, Sarah Palin had tweeted her famous "peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate" tweet. Peter King and Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty followed suit — with political reporters and television news programs dutifully covering "both sides" of the controversy.

Geller had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.

I saw O'Reilly on FOX last night continuing to rail and demagogue on this. They have a narrative they want to push for political ends. They are willing to fan the flames of anti-Muslim feelings to do so. Most appalling was when one guest suggested Obama was engaging in strong leadership by trying to put the proper perspective on this, O'Reilly jumped down his throat. Bill does not want anyone looking at this in a reasonable perspective, he wants to bash Obama with it. His disengenous claims about trying to "be fair" to Obama are ridiculous.

No spin zone indeed.

I am not a fan of O'Rielly, so I cant comment on him. But what I am reading from the article is that people on the right can not be against the mosque without being properly incited. Thats the same kind of logic Obama implies every time he attacks "right wing bloggers" or "Fox News" and blames them becuz people do not like his actions. Its kind of arrogant on his part to assume that he is so right that only people who are being fed the wrong information could ever in their right mind disagree with him. His approval ratings are very low, yet he does not think its because he is being disagreed with, he thinks its because he is misunderstood. That seems like an arrogance that borders insanity.

I am not sure if I am following you. I would not say that people have no justification for having some emotional feelings about the situation. What I object to is that a few right wing extremists have used dishonest propaganda to inflame passions and have succeeded in doing so through these dishonest means. I think it is fair to say at least some of the public opinion has been manipulated by this phenomenon.

I also object to the use of propaganda to create a mob mentality in order to, in effect, trump the first amendment. What is going on is not unlike people in earlier times fanning racial prejudice in order to coerce blacks into accepting second class status, or to convince whites to support racially discriminatory laws, or to justify lynchings or sham trials of black defendants. The effects may not be as extreme, but the dynamic is eerily similar.

[Goat]

I am not sure if I am following you. I would not say that people have no justification for having some emotional feelings about the situation. What I object to is that a few right wing extremists have used dishonest propaganda to inflame passions and have succeeded in doing so through these dishonest means. I think it is fair to say at least some of the public opinion has been manipulated by this phenomenon.

I also object to the use of propaganda to create a mob mentality in order to, in effect, trump the first amendment. What is going on is not unlike people in earlier times fanning racial prejudice in order to coerce blacks into accepting second class status, or to convince whites to support racially discriminatory laws, or to justify lynchings or sham trials of black defendants. The effects may not be as extreme, but the dynamic is eerily similar.

This trend of using inflammatory language for political purposes is highly desturbing to me, and it looks like it is turning the right wing side of the republican party into the party of bigotry and hate. I see it sometimes on the left, but far less frequently.

[micatala]

Here are a few articles readers of this thread might find intresting

Some Muslims question ground zero mosque plans

This article suggests including a synagogue in the plans as a good will gesture if the developers plan to proceed. I personally think that is a great idea.

Grou=http://www.twincities.com/newslett ... party, GOP

Ted Olson suggests Obama is right in his statements on the mosque.


Imam was Bush peace ally

Tuesday, Reps. Peter King (R-NY) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) called Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf -- best known for his work with multicultural Cordoba Initiative to build a mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan -- a "radical" and criticized the Obama Administration for including him on a Middle East speaking tour. That tour, which includes stops in Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, is designed by the public diplomacy office to explain to Muslims abroad what it's like to be a Muslim in America.

Outside of how getting constantly called a radical by American politicians busy flacking the proposed "Ground Zero mosque" for political purposes might affect Rauf's view of what it's like to be a Muslim in America, there's one other big problem with King's and Ros-Lehtinen's accusation: Rauf already represented America in this way, under the Bush Administration.

State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley responded to the accusations Tuesday:

"His work on tolerance and religious diversity is well-known and he brings a moderate perspective to foreign audiences on what it's like to be a practicing Muslim in the United States," State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley said Tuesday. He added that the department's public-diplomacy offices "have a long-term relationship with" Rauf - including during the past Bush administration, when the religious leader undertook a similar speaking tour.If one were to hearken back to the halcyon days of the Bush Administration, one would remember that, when Bush adviser Karen Hughes was appointed Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, the Bush Administration saw improving America's standing among Muslims abroad as a part of its national security strategy. And, as such, Hughes set up listening tours, attended meetings and worked with interfaith groups that -- shocking, by today's Republican standards -- included actual Muslims.

I also saw that Kathleen Parker, conservative columnist, argues we should allow the mosque to go forward.

In fact, the headline states it must be built.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 04399.html

And again, we have a case of the media in general using an inaccurate moniker for many of these stories. It is NOT a mosque. It is a community center.

[Slopeshoulder]

I am not a fan of O'Rielly, so I cant comment on him. But what I am reading from the article is that people on the right can not be against the mosque without being properly incited. Thats the same kind of logic Obama implies every time he attacks "right wing bloggers" or "Fox News" and blames them becuz people do not like his actions. Its kind of arrogant on his part to assume that he is so right that only people who are being fed the wrong information could ever in their right mind disagree with him. His approval ratings are very low, yet he does not think its because he is being disagreed with, he thinks its because he is misunderstood. That seems like an arrogance that borders insanity.

The people that disagree with him on this issue aren't the righteous mobilizing masses of America. They're undereducated, low-rent hicks who, in any properly functioning society, would be Constitutionally denied the right to influence political decisions.

While I'm no fan of undereducated low rent hicks, and I sometimes secretly dream of a new system that would deny them the right to vote, I'm not proud of it. More importantly, can you name a current "properly functioning society" that parcels out voting rights based upon education, rent level, and urbanity? I'd be interested. And in your opinion can libertarianism be more than a small club if it is as elitist, hateful, and exlusionary as your pattern of posting would suggest?

[Slopeshoulder]

"Out of the blue"? It's the system we used in this country before ~1824. I would love to see a return to property qualifications for voting, coupled with a rigorous test on political knowledge.

I don't suppose you could elaborate on what benefit property ownership would serve in creating an electorate? I know a great many individuals of substantial political awareness, who are greatly active in politics, who live (or lived) in apartments or dormitories. Why should they not have a say in how the country is run?

I'd also like to know. For 46 of my 50 years I didn't own property even though I have an ivy league masters degree and a great business resume. Perhaps the country would have been better off without my vote and participation? I do own $100K worth of guitars and audio gear though. Would that count? Shoild I be incented to give up a career that pays little but offers incredible rewards in order to vote?
Anyway, now I live in a 3400 square foot home on 1.5 acres with a pond, and the bank owns 80% of it.
Reactionary libertarian crankiness is some funny ass sh--!!

[Jester]

Moderator Comment

I am under no obligation to treat you statists as anything other than what you are. You will earn civility when your stated policy positions cease to threaten my liberty. Until then, feel free to remove yourself from my thread if something offends your sense of political correctness.

Calling other members sadists is against the rules.
While not against the rules in itself - claiming that civility must be earned in this fashion does contradict the position of the moderators. In our eyes, civility is "earned" by clicking the 'join' button. You are free to have a different position about civility, but please keep in mind that you are not free to practice it here.

[Jester]

Moderator Comment

Reactionary libertarian crankiness is some funny ass sh--!!

This doesn't seem to serve any purpose, save as an inflammatory remark.
Also, both euphemistic swearing and swearing with a letter or two censored are against the rule about profanity.

[TheLibertarian]

And it's happened again, except this time the victim happened to be black.

Oh, but I can't wait for East of Eden to come in here and call me a "Jew-hater" just because I want my America back.

[Jester]

Moderator Formal Warning

Oh, but I can't wait for East of Eden to come in here and call me a "Jew-hater" just because I want my America back.

Unless you wish to be placed on probation, then subsequently banned from the site, keep personal comments to yourself.

[Jester]

Moderator Correction

I am under no obligation to treat you statists as anything other than what you are. You will earn civility when your stated policy positions cease to threaten my liberty. Until then, feel free to remove yourself from my thread if something offends your sense of political correctness.

Calling other members sadists is against the rules.
While not against the rules in itself - claiming that civility must be earned in this fashion does contradict the position of the moderators. In our eyes, civility is "earned" by clicking the 'join' button. You are free to have a different position about civility, but please keep in mind that you are not free to practice it here.

Due to personal brain misfiring, I read "statists" as "sadists". Comment about the rule breach retracted in that case (with apologies).
The caution that follows it stands, though it is only a caution.