Well, sort of. It wasn't 9-11-01, but 9-11-10, and I wasn't in New York City, but upstate New York. I was in a town called Inlet, NY in the Adirondack Mountains a couple of hours from Syracuse for my annual Army reunion (404 MP company-4th Armored Division). For the 5th year in a row, we came together, many with wives, and remembered the good old days of our Army years in Germany in the 1960s-and in some cases, the 1950s).
This time there were only two gentlemen who had served in Erlangen, one with me in 1967-68 and an older gentleman who had been in Erlangen from 1962-64. (He went on to become a VP with Chrysler.) He recalled very little about Erlangen, but did recognize one photo of one of the older MPs who was there when I arrived in 1966.
Inlet is a tiny village located in the lake region of the Adirondack mountains. It is incredibly beautiful, and the people are not at all like you would find in that other city called New York. They are simple (in the good sense) and friendly.
It seems that everybody is complaining about the corruption in Albany-just as we in California complain about the corruption in Sacramento.
I happened to read a couple of newspapers from NYC and Albany while I was there. Obviously, I paid attention to the coverage of the 9-11 demonstrations in New York. It was clear that the media had their bias, which was to paint a sympathetic portrait of the pro-mosque demonstrators while describing the tone of the anti-mosque demonstrators as "hateful". Yet, there were no real concrete examples of what they were terming hateful. There were no reports of violence or vandalism, nor were there descriptions of hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric from the speakers. A couple of quotes were garnered from Ground Zero commemoration attendees criticizing the hateful tone of the anti-mosque demonstrators a couple of blocks away. No mention of specific things said that were so "offensive"....
...but it was "hateful" according to the media.
So at this point, I am linking the report from Pam Geller's Atlas Shrugs blog, which has her description of the day. Geller is an opponent of the mosque project in New York and an opponent of radical Islam and Sharia law. She spoke at the anti-mosque rally as did Robert Spencer, both of whom are described by their opponents as being Islamophobes. Here it is. Interpret it and the photos as you wish:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/09/media-coverage-of-fdisioa-rally-of-remembrance-worse-than-pravda-the-big-lie.html
Did you see Ramsey Clark there? How about those Che Guevara t-shirts? But I forgot; I was going to let you interpret it as you wished.
Sorry.
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18 comments:
Is this concrete enough for you?
Islamophobia? What Islamophobia???
Anonymous,
Congratulations. Out of tens of thousands present, you found 2 who acted inappropriately? Looks like that guy with the f-bombs had a lot of company.
Are you willing to apply that same logic the next time you're tempted to pick out the few nuts in a left-wing demonstration and try to paint whole crowd with the same brush?
Or how about when you pick out the nutty Muslims who are the clear minority and try to paint that whole group with the same brush?
Well, how about it?
Anonymous,
Usually, when I object to a particular demonstration, it is not just that there are a couple of nuts in an otherwise well-behaved crowd-as you did with the NY demonstration. As an example, I am giving you a link to a post I did on the UK situation. It features a photograph (and there are many similar photographs).
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2007/12/islam-vs-west-where-are-we-headed.html
Tell me which one in the photo is the nut.
Pathetic! There are still some who believe the Islamic Extremists are a few nuts that are an embarrassment to the vast number of peaceful Muslims.
Where are the Muslim protests in the streets against the daily Muslim atrocities around the world? In decent the majority rejects the acts the few nuts on their side who do outrageous things. They demonstrate their anguish over the tragedies. There were mass demonstrations in Israel against the guy who assassinated Rabin. Years ago they demonstrated against the guy who shot up a mosque. It was clear that he did not represent them.
Where are the Muslims who object to the murders in the name of their God? Not just the few who may issue a statement, but the vast majority who belong to the Religion of Peace???
Ask any of them if they support Hamas... or if they believe Israel has a right to live in peace as a Jewish state (just like all the Islamic states in the world). I'd say less than 2% would pass this test.
The NY mosque is another attempt to impose their will on the rest of the country... like it or not.
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"Congratulations. Out of tens of thousands present, you found 2 who acted inappropriately? Looks like that guy with the f-bombs had a lot of company."
Yes he did, as a matter of fact. I saw NO ONE attempt to contradict or condemn what he was saying. That is a tacit endorsement of his statements by the rest of the crowd in his immediate vicinity.
Even though I sympathize with some of the individuals who joined in the protests against Cordoba House, the over-all effect and much of the leadership was accurately described as "hateful."
Anyone willing to pose that it is inappropriate for any Islamic institution or any edifice where Muslims will worship to exist within a defined radius of the World Trade Center is saying, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, that Islam, in toto, all of it, as a faith, is responsible for what happened there 9/11/2001, and all Muslims should suffer for it, at least a little bit.
All the spluttering denials to the contrary are sheer hypocrisy.
Incidentally, there WAS a Muslim worship center INSIDE the World Trade Center. The people who worshipped there, like everyone else who worked in the building, either did or didn't make it down the staircase, and those who did not, died, like everyone of every other faith who was inside the building.
Anonymous,
What were they supposed to do, arrest him? One lady in front was saying something, but I couldn't tell if she was criticizing him or supporting him.
Had I been there, my response would have been to ask him to tone it down because he was giving the other side a Youtube moment and discrediting everybody else. It's what I did at UCI this year, but that was with an out-of-control lady. I suspect the guy's reaction would have been to take a swing at me. Then there would have been a fight and I would have been arrested and...
I don't like the guy's behavior, but I can't condemn the whole crowd.
Anyone willing to pose that it is inappropriate for any Islamic institution or any edifice where Muslims will worship to exist within a defined radius of the World Trade Center is saying, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, that Islam, in toto, all of it, as a faith, is responsible for what happened there 9/11/2001, and all Muslims should suffer for it, at least a little bit.
All the spluttering denials to the contrary are sheer hypocrisy.
Siarlys, I strongly disagree with you sometimes, but other times you manage to put into words exactly what I've been thinking. This is EXACTLY what these people are saying, and it's insulting the fact that most American Muslims feel that 9/11 was just as much an attack on them as non-Muslims.
Lance,
I also agree with much of what you say and I think I have been pretty clear over the years that we should not blame all Muslims for 9-11.
I am against this mosque because of the prior statements of Rauf, his attitudes, which I think are suspect and the questionable funding. If he intended to build bridges, he is not doing a very good job. He is increasing the opposition daily.
He has the legal right to build this mosque-we all acknowledge that, but why does he insist on this location in the face of opposition? It leads me to suspect-suspect-that his intent is to build a memorial to conquest. (Why the name Cordoba?) Rauf has done nothing to lesson the suspicion or the tension. He thrives on it. Even Hussein Ibish, an American Muslim leader, calls him a self-promoter.
As to the majority of American Muslims who are not part of the problem, I have said before and will say again-I feel they are basically prisoners of the activists and Muslim advocacy groups who rule the dialogue. It is the same in Canada as here. Thus, so many are quiet.
There are a few who have dared to break out and speak out-like Zuhdi Jasser. They do so at the risk of their lives. They are to be applauded and supported. This mosque at GZ is a disservice to all of them.
The name Cordoba has been explained with great simplicity from the beginning: it is a place where Muslims, Christians and Jews built a great culture which fostered the most advanced learning in Europe at the time. Only a factually challenged demagogue like Newt Gingrich would proclaim it a memorial to conquest.
Now if you want to dig into the Almohade dominion, that had anti-Jewish precepts. But the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba, actually Emirate at first, later Caliphate, was a great place to live no matter what your religion - say, 756 to 961. After that things began to fall into the chaos of the Taifa states, from which emerged kingdoms that retroactively invented the myth of the Reconquista. Half the Christian knights in Spain fought in Muslim armies as often as they fought in any other kind.
Actually Cordoba and Moorish Spain was a great place to live in if you were a Muslim man. For women it was a horror, just a little better than being a slave. For Jews and Christians it was being an second-class citizen. Just as long as you paid the jizah you were given the privilege of being allowed to live. Forget to pay and you were tortured at best.
There never was a time any where in the Muslim world that non-Muslims were ever treated as equals.
So just when was this Golden Age and for whom? Not for Jews, Christians, Hindus, or Buddhists.
Findalis, you are betraying gross ignorance. When it comes to the history we have been batting around, my first source is, as I've said many times before,
God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215. by David Levering Lewis.
Read it, and then give me specific examples of the nonsense you just spouted, or, cite to your own primary research in the archives in Cordoba, or your preferred reference, and again, give me specific examples.
It is true that life for women in 800 A.D., whether under Roman law, Salic Law, Visigothic Law, Byzantine Law, or various forms of Islamic law, did not measure up to the standard of the 20th century USA. Exactly which country during that century would you have preferred to live in? It is, however, a documented fact that Jewish populations, oppressed by both Byzantines and Visigoths, were openly supportive of the armies of the caliphates, and flourished, meaning having an honored and prosperous place, under both Umayyads and Abassids, as well as the later Ottoman Turkish dynasty.
(Additional reference: Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean by Edward Kritzler.)
Let me give you some history.
Jews in Muslim lands have to pay the Jizya, a special tax that allows them to live. This way true in the 7th century as it is today. Jews under this system cannot own certain businesses, worship openly, build homes higher than a Muslims, etc.
This is a historical fact regardless of what your idiot book claims otherwise.
So when was this bullshit golden age for non-Muslims?
My dear, you haven't given me any history. You have given me some pathetic bursts of profanity, punctuating an off-hand opinion you picked up on the street somewhere. When you can offer me detailed and reliable references, rather than spluttering "but I've often been told that..." then you will have something worth taking seriously.
I am not unaware of the jizzya. It is one of the main reasons the rashidun caliphs and the Umayyad caliphs had no interest whatsoever in converting their new subjects to Islam. The jizzya financed their governments.
It wasn't "so they could live." The caliphate would have been worthless without the people who did all the work of producing agricultural produce, making fine metal works of art, designing beautiful mosques. Do you think the Arabic conquerors did all that? They were a tiny, tiny population compared to those who inhabited the lands. No caliph had any intention of perpetrating mass slaughter.
Once again, don't splutter about 20th century standards of "taxation without representation." The Byzantine empire taxed its subjects to the limit, as did the Sassanids, and squandered it all fighting wars that wiped out each other's armies over 30 years, which is why the caliphs conquered all the territory they did. The jizza was a rather modest tax by comparison. Basically, all the subject peoples, who had been subject peoples to start with, went on with their lives, most of the local officials and administrations continued to do what they did, reporting to a new set of imperial rulers, and found their tax burden a little bit lighter, not much, but a little.
If there was a republic of the people, by the people, for the people, somewhere in Europe, western Asia, or Africa during that period, I haven't heard of it.
My dear, you haven't cited one historical source. You haven't offered a direct quote from one person who visited the lands in question.
If you state a fact, and I agree that it is a fact, then if I state a fact, and you agree that it is a fact, we can then debate why we differ about the significance of those facts and what, if anything, should be done about them.
But when you say "this is a fact" and I say "no, you're wrong," or vice versa...
...well, neither of us has first hand knowledge. We didn't live then or there. Neither of us. So, we are each forced to rely on second hand sources. As my fourth grade teacher said, when teaching us how to research and prepare outlines for formal debate, just because its in a book doesn't mean its true, but always know where you got your facts from.
You haven't even offered where you got your facts from. I have. Until you do, my argument is superior to yours. Once you offer me a direct citation that I can go look up, we will have something to talk about.
Or, you could explain in a rational manner why you don't believe Lewis is correct -- AFTER you read exactly what he said, and offer a better source than is found in his footnotes.
The reason its going to take me a few extra hours, maybe even an extra day, to respond to your direct citations to the Qu'ran is that they ARE direct citations. So on that, I will have to do a little research. Here, you have given me nothing to research, except that "Findalis says..."
Siarlys,
Are we supposed to rush out and buy this book by Lewis? Also, if you think the Jizya is such a minor thing, why don't we pass a Jizya tax here in the US? What the hell is one more tax, anyway?
Here is a source. The Koran. It dictates how people are to be treated.
Koran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."
How about the Hadiths?
Muslim (19:4294) - "If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them"
Bukhari (53:386) - Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says:-- "Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master." This is being recounted during the reign of Umar, Muhammad's companion and the second caliph who sent conquering armies into non-Muslim Persian and Christian lands (after Muhammad's death).
Ishaq 956 & 962 - "He who withholds the Jizya is an enemy of Allah and His apostle." The words of Muhammad.
Always start at the beginning.
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