Islamic mosque to be built near ground zero

[Jerome Scuggs]

while america is gettin' busy denying muslims their freedom of religion, europe's got us covered on the freedom of speech aspect!

"The court points out that the European Court of Human Rights, which considers freedom of speech of paramount importance and defends it thoroughly, makes an exception for the denial or trivialization of the Holocaust"

this is what i find most infuriating about statism, it's the arbitrary definitions of what a "right" is or isn't. everything's a-ok, so long as i approve of it! (perhaps i should dub it kthx-ism)

[kthx]

Sounds good to me. I am all for giving powers back to states instead of a federal government, but that would of course also only work if the will of the people was followed, like keeping faggots unmarried in California.

[genocidal]

I don't think someone who lives in a country that most muslims don't even know exists and doesn't have to worry about getting bombed can really comment on this. Leave it to Americans.

How about only New Yorkers? Or New York City residents, or better yet Manhattan ones? In fact, only people living within spitting distance of Ground Zero can talk. Everyone else shut the fuck up.

[genocidal]

Actually it would be more like banning a Greek Orthodox church from being near a school because some random Catholic priests somewhere have molested children. You can't be too careful, they're both Christian after all.

Even more puzzlingly, it's like building a YMCA next to a school because it's a community center that has a Christian affiliation. Insensitive if you ask me.

[kthx]

I don't think someone who lives in a country that most muslims don't even know exists and doesn't have to worry about getting bombed can really comment on this. Leave it to Americans.

[Epinephrine]

Ionno this seems like alot of fear mongering to me. My 2 cents.. If the mosque gets banned because of
reasonings being the 9/11 hijackers were Muslims and it would be insensitive to the victims, we should
also ban all Catholic Churches from being built within 1000 feet of any schools. Anything else would be
insensitive and unresponsible to the families and victims of molestation by pedophile priests.
My point being the religion didn't do the crime,just some people in it did.

Actually it would be more like banning a Greek Orthodox church from being near a school because some random Catholic priests somewhere have molested children. You can't be too careful, they're both Christian after all.

[Epinephrine]

Understood. But a closer analogy would be if the IRA blew up innocent victims and then showed up at the victims funerals.

Actually a closer analogy would be banning Southern Baptists from showing up at a funeral for IRA victims because they are Christian and thus very insensitive to the deaths of innocents caused by Christian terrorists..

[Jessup]

Non issue to me...

Ionno this seems like alot of fear mongering to me. My 2 cents.. If the mosque gets banned because of
reasonings being the 9/11 hijackers were Muslims and it would be insensitive to the victims, we should
also ban all Catholic Churches from being built within 1000 feet of any schools. Anything else would be
insensitive and unresponsible to the families and victims of molestation by pedophile priests.
My point being the religion didn't do the crime,just some people in it did.

[Jason]

bravo, squeeze!

p.s. i love you for correctly putting the punctuation inside of the quotes when you ended that snarky sentence bashing sarah palin.

:wub:

[Squeezer]

This is the biggest media hyping nothing that I've seen since that balloon boy.

I buy land.

I build titty bar/ gun shop/ liquor store/ mosque/ gay bar/ fast food joint/ cigarette mart/ chuck e cheese or anything else that I want as long as I have the license. It's my land, fuck what you have to say about it as long as I'm not doing anything illegal. I can build whatever means of snatching your money and slowly killing your kids through addiction that I choose and you can't say dick all about it because I own the land. Why is this any different? Oh right, brown people are involved and it's symbolic or some dumb shit because Sarah Palin opened her wide, dopey mouth to sprinkle some more retardation on the "issue."

What the fuck? Would you want muslims randomly coming to your neighborhood and stating what you can or cannot build? How is that American at all?

[project dragon]

Consideration for others. Tolerance for others.

This can go both ways

[Crescent Seal]

"in all fairness, we've been building ground zero's next to iraqi mosques since 2003"

loooool +1

[Jerome Scuggs]

i'm beginning to think my entire life has led up to this point, where allah used me to defend His Will against the hordes of TW infidels. but now... what is there? nothing is left.

[Vatican Assassin]

This 15 minute documentary does a good job of showing how Al-Qaeda and the Taliban came into existence and why. It is not anti American or pro American, it is a very objective, and we should all know the history of this enemy we are dedicating our lives and nation to fighting.

I agree with Jerome, when all the media and politicians start yelling about something, it is almost always a unimportant diversion away from much more pressing issues. Let's take a look at 4 news stories from this week:

1. As Jerome discussed, first responders who lost family members, and many who got asbestos and other toxins in their lungs from the dust have officially been told they should not expect any help from our government for their efforts. Meanwhile Dick Cheney's daughter and other GOP headliners are funding millions of dollars to run a television advertising campaign against the building of a mosque by using emotional testimony from 9/11 victims families pleading with us to never forget 9/11. Yes, members of the GOP are spending millions of dollars to use the victims emotional tales to stop a mosque from being built while at the same time denying these same people any compensation from the government.

2. The Democrat controlled senate (with the help of 2 republics votes) passed an unnamed bill authorized the senate to borrow 50 billion more dollars to stop the immediate laying off of 100,00 thousand teachers, cops and firefighters across the nation. That's right, our country is so poor and its economy is so bad that we are continually having to bail out the moist essential and important recipients of our tax dollars, over 50% of which goes to the wars fighting against nations which practice the same (though not exactly the same) religion as those trying to build a mosque in Manhattan.

3. John Bolton, former US ambassador to the UN, stated this week that Israel has 2 more days (from today) to attack Iran, or else it's first nuclear reactor will receive fuel from Russia, and Russian civilians will be in Iran, ending any possibility of attacking it without dire consequences from Russian reprisals. Yes, that's right, while US military is spread across the world and fully engaged in Afghanistan, key political figures are still thinking of expanding the war into Iran, a nation that has a military about 100x greater than Iraq or Afghanistan. Such an attack would immediately see the price oil skyrocket as the middle east shuts down, and, well, there are millions of reasons why beginning another war would be totally insane for the USA right now, but still you got itiots pushing for it.

4. A Muslim mosque is being built a few blocks from ground zero.

Which of these 4 stories do you think politicians want us all to talk about? The last story has absolutely zero effect on anyone here at all besides causing some moral indignation. What it does accomplish is it gets every forum and talk show and dinner table talking about something that doesn't affect us, that convinces us to find exceptions for the first amendment, and to totally divide us into bickering parties. The first 3 stories affect all of us, they ought to all pit us against the politicians who are doing such a poor job of representing us and such a great job of representing themselves and their corporate donors, and they are each a huge threat to our nation's as well as to our own well beings. And here we are, ignoring these pivotal stories, watching the spectacle provided for us by fox/cnn/nbc/GOP/democrats. Why do we keep taking the bait? This thread is full of duped people investing their forum energy into a red herring.

edit : forgot to add video

[Ephemeral]

Except this isn't even at Ground Zero. There's already another mosque and a few churches, and many strip clubs closer to ground zero than this ever will be. And you can't even see ground zero from this building because it's blocked by other buildings. And it's built in an underutilized area, and it's not even a mosque as much as it is a community center. Remember... this is New York, where two blocks can be the difference between a multi-million dollar condo buildings and a homeless crack addict street...

Respectfully disagree. My opinion is that 2 blocks from the WTC is ground zero. A typical city block is 311 feet. The WTC was 1728 ft tall. Obviously you can't drop a 1728 ft tall buildings within a city block. Additionally, objects such as one of the planes landing gear hit the mosque and went through its roof.

...Not to mention that equating 19 highjackers of a particular religion with a religion which has 1 billion followers and multiple branches within it is idiotic. That's like saying that no baptist churches should be built anywhere near IRA bombing sites because those IRA (catholic) bombers were Christian and those damn Baptist Christians should... show some consideration...

Understood. But a closer analogy would be if the IRA blew up innocent victims and then showed up at the victims funerals.

...The particular branch if Islam that these guys follow is actually having their places of worship being suicide bombed by the Taliban in Pakistan. I think that shows you how completely ignorant people are about these things, and perhaps it's the general public that should show some consideration and respect for these values (aka freedom of religiou) that the USA says it supports and actively lectures other countries about.

I concur that the general public is ignorant. I also think that no country, religion, or government has a monopoly on ignorance. SO I am back to my original point again. This is a human issue, not some political or religious issue. And what would fix this human issue? Consideration for others. Tolerance for others. You know, like most of the players in TW show for one another.
eph