Refracting America Through 9/11 Lens

FWIW: This imam signed the "Common Word" open letter to Christians appealing to the similarities between Christians and Muslims.
www.acommonword.com

To think that it is insensitive to build a Muslim community centre near ground zero is to fall for Hollywood style sentimentality. Let everyone mourn in their own way for the loved ones they have lost but to be sensitive to someone's bigotry simply because they are bereaved serves only to perpetuate the hatred that hastened that bereavement and make the loss pointless.

When a person requires heart surgery, if the surgeon subsequently discovers cancer, he won't dismiss the cancer because the heart surgery is traumatic enough. Fixing the heart is pointless if the patient dies of cancer. To appease those who ignorantly blame the Muslim faith for 9/11 is to allow the American heart to keep pumping while letting the cancer of ignorance and intolerance eat away its soul.

It breaks my heart that so few American minorities are willing to openly praise America for making a supreme effort to be fair to everyone - the majority of Americans and the American government should be praised for even having a heart for equality for everyone, since it goes against human nature. How sad that there seems to be only disgust from some minorities and those who support them, toward the one country that has deprived its own citizens in order to make room for outsiders and to make them Americans, too. Immigrants used to be grateful. That seems to be a thing of the past. This is the generation of 'more'. It gets tiresome. . . .

Many leaders of the Catholic church including Pope Pius X1 supported and aided Hitler. Is the Catholic church moderate enough to build community centers in Manhattan? Many Christians believe that Jesus will rule all the nations. Can they be trusted? Aren't your fears out of proportion to anything remotely resembling realistic concerns. Should Islam be excluded from the protection of the First Amendment or not?
These ideas are part of the same hysteria and fear-mongering that put Japanese Americans in prisons during WW2, and fed the crusades and the pogroms and ethnic cleansings that darken the history of those who claim to be led by Jesus. Are there such deeds in Islam's history? Yes. Judaism? The same. Both Islam and Christianity are missionary religions. Dawa is the preaching of Islam and no different from the Christian call to proclaim the Gospel. You have not provided any evidence that there is any threat of conversion through violence coming from this community center or it's leaders.

If you have a Moslem as a friend, you will better understand them and their faith. .

I have had a penpal in Amman Jordan for about nine years. He is an educated man of the Sunni branch of Islam. He is very religious and a true believer of both God's love to all of us and God's help in times of trouble.

I had to have laser eye surgery for glaucoma two years ago. I drove alone to the doctors very early in the morning through drenching rain and high winds. They performed the surgery and then I drove home alone through a true northeaster. When I finally got home, I was shaken and wishing that my late mother was greeting me at the door, I felt so alone. I entered the house to the ringing of the phone.

Answering, I heard a faint voice from far away

Rep. Ron Paul isn't considered a "leftist" by anyone's measuring. However, here is a great statement he made about the Cordoba Center.

http://www.ronpaul.com/2010-08-20/ron-paul-suns...
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"[Ron Paul]: Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery?

It has been said, "Nero fiddled while Rome burned." Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like the politicians are "fiddling while the economy burns."

The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.

Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be "sensitive" requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from "ground zero."

Just think of what might (not) have happened if the whole issue had been ignored and the national debate stuck with war, peace, and prosperity. There certainly would have been a lot less emotionalism on both sides. The fact that so much attention has been given the mosque debate, raises the question of just why and driven by whom?

In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it.

They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars. A select quote from soldiers from in Afghanistan and Iraq expressing concern over the mosque is pure propaganda and an affront to their bravery and sacrifice.

Thanks for your thoughtful post and forgive me not explaining more clearly what I meant in the first place. I certainly resonate with much of what you're saying, but want to clarify that I was not saying Michael is necessarily on "our" side. I was not speaking of current military conflicts and hesitate to take sides in these things. Yes to your last statement about the need for right conduct, as I do agree that our conduct tells about our hearts. What plagues the human race: hate, racism, murder, et cetera that we see in our world--all too often in the name of God, is of Shaitan and those who do such things, as Jesus said, are of their father the devil. He also said that the only remedy for an evil heart is new birth, through the Spirit of God, in other words being changed inside out.

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When have citizens been deprived? What minority American citizens have expressed disgust towards the government? What specific issue are you referring to? What are you talking about?

Are you responding to this article? If so, what points, specifically, are you addressing?

Both Islam and Christianity are missionary religions. Dawa is the preaching of Islam and no different from the Christian call to proclaim the Gospel.

This is not so. The privilege of announcing the Good News to the nations is exclusively Israel's, and of those who remained faithful to Jesus. It is a distinction given to the descendants of Isaac, Abraham's second son by Sarah, and not shared with the muslims.

The analogous activity in Islam is "making Islam known." It is not a missionary endeavor seeking recruits to the effort, it can only be overtly done by muslims thoroughly trained for ministerial obligations in Islam. Every muslim should be an "invitation to Islam" simply be being a muslim and acting like it. But overtly and publicly "making Islam known" is something that has to be done right, it is not an "amateur hour" undertaking, has nothing to do with "announcing the Good News," and is not a "fishing expedition" for "converts." Jesus heads the only missionary religion that God has established.

What's amazing is the number of muslims who don't know that, who go after people who don't want to hear it, go off half-cocked, don't know what they're doing, argue and cajole and contend, demand that what they say be accepted, and turn people away from God's Mercy for all humanity. But we can't stop them from doing that, although we certainly would if we could.

Jesus spoke to all and sundry who all had one thing in common: they wanted to hear what he had to say. What he said to one gathering of people differed from what he said to another gathering in its content: he did not tell people what they were not ready to hear, and never made a mistake in that, he knew exactly who was listening ~ every individual ~ and what they could take in and what they couldn't.

We're not Jesus. We don't have a general commission from God to teach or preach or proselytize. Some of us have ministerial duties that include making Islam known to people who speak our language and have something of a common understanding. We're trained and prepared for that over a course of at least nine years in immersion schools, with specializations and a horrendous dropout rate.

The followers of Jesus have a missionary mandate. The Children of Israel were prepared for a thousand years to carry out that mission. The followers of Jesus have it, it's an eternal jewel in their crown.

We don't have it, it's not our privilege. Too many muslims don't know that.

Rosen - I think what you're trying to do is a lost cause. John likes to criticize people who don't use terms the way he uses them. Sometimes he makes good points and sometimes he's just nit-picky and repetitious. I wouldn't bother with it.

Some high ranking govt official from Japan said that americans are simple-minded. I Thinks he's right!

You wrote According to the Bible, the most important battle Christians should worry about is spiritual (Ephesians 6), where it talks about how Satan and demonic forces oppose all that God is doing in this world.

"Spiritual" ~ as distinguished from "physical" and "mortal" ~ includes "mental" and "emotional." How do shaitan and his party among humanity afflict the faithful other than through thoughts and feelings and impressions? They make the worse argument appear the better, persuasive falsehoods appear as truth, and harmful things appear attractive. It's all manipulation of consciousness, subtle hypnosis, thought, feeling, and perception ~ shaitan and his party whisper into the hearts and minds and twist the electrical signals running from the eye to the brain. None of it is "physical" in the sense that we consider "physical," it's all "spiritual."

And it certainly has not stopped.

Look in your Book for the "war in the heavens." It hasn't stopped, it's on-going, and now it's been taken literally "to the heavens" on this Web of intangible, invisible, speed-of-light radiomagnetic broadcasts that deliver thoughts and emotion through thin air and no air to phosphorescent screens without a physical impact.

What are the wars on the ground other than physical expressions of what people think and feel? The real battle is not on the ground, it's spiritual ~ here, on the Web, in conversations, exchanges of thought and feeling, the emanation of love among the faithful and beyond our social spheres.

And here in the heavens, or "the skies" in the original Semitic languages, Michael slays dragons right and left.

The "Kingdom of Heaven" is that "Mind of God" that He created for us to know Him by. Those are the thoughts we think, we perceive that "Mind of God" or we don't. We fill our minds with the love of Jesus or other Lights of God and leave no opportunity for shaitan to inspire the darkness of his dominion.

We are God's reflection in the mirror of creation, the channels through which God's Love flows into the world. Or doesn't, when we allow shaitan and his party to stop the flow within and through us and turn it into hate, anger, doubt, envy, and suspicion (make the acronym). What we need is the sanity, heedfulness, aspiration, devotion, and ecstasy (again make the acronym) that only comes from God, directly to each of us, through knowing Him, to shade us from the fires of shaitan that we see raging against others created in His Image around the physical world today.

"Disarmament" is not the solution. The solution is given to us by God, in the heavens, in our thoughts and feelings and perceptions of Him, and in what those inspire of what we do.

Perhaps if you'll read my 5:46 post again, you'll see what I was saying. The bottom line is that Michael is on the side of those who are on God's side. That's what Lincoln was asking: "Are we on God's side?" Or are we on the side of hatred, anger, doubt, envy, and suspicion?

It's something everyone should ask himself often. We don't get Guidance from God unless we ask for it and try to live by it.

And God knows we need it. Constantly.

If you have a Moslem as a friend, you will better understand them and their faith. .

I have had a penpal in Amman Jordan for about nine years. He is an educated man of the Sunni branch of Islam. He is very religious and a true believer of both God's love to all of us and God's help in times of trouble.

I had to have laser eye surgery for glaucoma two years ago. I drove alone to the doctors very early in the morning through drenching rain and high winds. They performed the surgery and then I drove home alone through a true northeaster. When I finally got home, I was shaken and wishing that my late mother was greeting me at the door, I felt so alone. I entered the house to the ringing of the phone.

Answering, I heard a faint voice from far away

I'd still like this statement explained:

"It is beyond ironic that those who are called to be peacemakers are instead seeking to start a war on prayer."

Does sensitivity to the families who lost loved ones in that vile, cowardly, and criminal attack include the families of the 59 Muslims who died? How must it feel to these families to have fellow Americans essentially blame them for the terrorism that killed their loved ones?

Oh, Jim, we muslims know without doubt that all of those murdered on 9/11 are already admitted to paradise, without any accounting for any of the wrong they may have done in their lives, including any who may have cursed God as they fell or were burned or crushed to their deaths. He used them to start this very conversation we're having, as well as so many others that have inspired people to draw nearer to God. They have forgotten what happened to them.

And we overlook the ignorance of blaming us all for 9/11, we know it was intended by the 9/11 plotters, and see it only in the media, not in the eyes of our American neighbors.

On Hajj, in 2002 just months after 9/11, I found no one among the four million muslims on pilgrimage who held any rancour for Americans, despite the aggression against so many muslim countries of the previous years or the certainty that Bush would send death and destruction to the innocent of Afghanistan (or perhaps he already had, I don't recall when our common expectation became reality).

Oh, I heard some chanting from behind high walls and out of sight, once while in Mina for a day and a night. But it was directed at the Deniers ~ those who know the truth and cover it up with falsehood and falsification ~ and not at the American people. We (Americans) are held in high regard in the muslim world because of our proven dedication to religious liberty. That's why muslims come to America ~ they have no religious liberty in the terminally-collapsed millennial muslim world, only Jews and Christians do.

Those who suffer the absence or disability of their loved ones blame those who carried out the 9/11 attacks, who are certainly in the Fire, and those who facilitated those attacks, who are or will be.

But ignorance is curable, for anyone with an atom of faith in his heart. That's what we pray for, and what 'Abdur-Ra'uf is working for.

The most likely effect of this brouhaha is that muslims who before would not support Cordoba House because of 'Abdur-Ra'uf's "sufi" associations will now support the project, as it has been turned into an issue directly aimed at Islam and the First Amendment. Only those of bin Laden's ilk will join the opposition, seeking to intensify the conflict of the Deniers against Islam.

There's no need or wisdom in taking to the trenches to fight against the jihad of the Deniers (that's what it is, it's a contrived religious war engineered by a few among the parties of contention).

Instead, we should fight for the faithful of all religions, and for the religious liberty of all Americans, and for the good that comes of faith.

"Anti" is never a persistent organizational foundation ~ once the "enemy" is vanquished, organization falls to ruin. But organizing for the good will never lack for further objectives, and will go on forever, improving the human condition until all men thank God for the lives they live.

Which is where I think this is all headed.

God is running the show. And we're nowhere near the final curtain ~ there isn't one.

Except for the Deniers.

I have enjoyed reading Jim's columns before, but this one seems to be making a straw man argument in that "freedom of religion for all or freedom for only my religion..."

There are many religions through the United States that have had to alter their practices because of United States law. Mormons had to abandon having more than one wive, Compounds have been erected and torn down and one leader recently was not bothering anybody out in the middle of Texas, but he was brought in with all of his followers. These people were practicing religions but had practices that violated law. The general public has questions about the religion that has constantly tried terror tactics on United States Soil. If all of these would have been successful, this country would be in a mess. I do not blame all muslims, so please don't think I do. What confuses americans is not just the one small group, or radical one or two instances, but the continual attack of Islamic idealists in all areas of the globe, contrasted with the peaceful followers of the religion. Americans can't reconcile the two polar opposites.

I agree with Jim in that that this is a bold move by the Cordoba house organizers, but they are showing poor leadership. They had to anticipate a response of some kind, based on what I said before. The developer has not talked at all and Kahn went on the Sunday news shows and talked about Muslimphobia, or whatever she called it. There are quotes circulating the media, (not just fox news) where Rauf has some comments that need explaining. Take out a full page ad in the Post, Time magazine, USA Today, something. Answer some of the questions out there. Be pro-active. Try to educate. Blaming the other side is just pouring gas on the fire, hence the poor leadership.

Just a few of my thoughts...

@jonabark's "Your personal opinions on what is the appropriate format for the proclamation of Islam is just that, one person's opinion. Within Islam there appears to many more than me to be diverse opinions. Are you a published authority on Islam or a Mullah?

Actually, I'm an internationally-recognized professor of Islam and a line shaykh of the Qadiri (Sufi) apostolic succession, centered in the mosque of the Prophet in Madinah, which happens at this time to be surrounded and isolated by a kingdom ruled by the family of Ibn Sa'ud. When I was in my early thirties, I was known among the Arabs as "the ultra-orthodox shaykh." What I say about "Islam" is authoritative and definitive, what I rule as a muslim judge is binding on those muslims who have asked me to accept jurisdiction, and what I say about muslims of old and in today's world is merely historical notice. And yes, my writings have been published ~ some of them are used as instructional materials in muslim schools that have translated them into several languages including Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, and others. My writings are much preferred over the "textbooks" written by the CIA for the Deobandi muslims of Afghanistan and Pakistan that radicalized the "Islamist" factions against the Soviet occupation and later raised Osama bin Laden to fame among the insane and infamy everywhere else.

But if what I write doesn't accord with your personal sense of truth and the elements of faith, then ignore it. "Credentials" are meaningless where what they certify is study that does not lead to learning, but only an ability to reflect to the certifiers what they already think.

My point was simply that both Christianity and Islam are missionary or proselytizing religions.

This is simply not true. The privilege of announcing the Good News to the nations was explicitly and exclusively given to the Children of Israel and those who joined Jesus in that missionary endeavor. It is the eternal distinction of Israel, that they were a light unto the nations and led the people to the Kingdom of God. God established no other missionary religion, irrespective of the delusions of some muslims.

Muslims are told "Invite to the Way of your Lord with good counsel," and the vast mass of muslims today think "good counsel" means only "embrace Islam." During the Abbasid Tyranny, "good counsel" was "submit to the rule of the Abbasid Dynasty or die." Today in Saudi Arabia, "good counsel" is "do not deviate from the corrupted version of Islam written by the Abbasid Tyranny or be executed as an apostate," and the "good counsel" given to others is "You're all going to hell." Islam did not spread by the sword, as did the Arab muslim empire after the transformation of the Promised Land, and what you call "missionary" in today's terminally-collapsed millennial muslim world most certainly did not come from God, but from political ambition and corrupted faith.

The vast majority of Religious scholars agree on that, and it is really self evident.

The vast majority of "religious scholars" in the muslim world are on government payrolls. The one scholar from al-Azhar who told the world that "death for apostasy" was not a religious prescript but strictly a political penalty for "treason" was required to deny that he ever said it, two days after it became public. Sufi shaykhs are not on any payroll for their work in the applied science of tasawwuf.

Both religious traditions have varying interpretations of theology and appropriate means and both have used various means to accomplish the spreading of their faith. For people claiming any of the Abrahamic faiths this has included everything from mass murder to gentle persuasion and exemplary living.

Muslims themselves are an invitation to life in the Presence of God, or they're not. What muslims say and do in an attempt to argue or persuade someone away from their other faith that inspires them to beneficial conduct, they are not supposed to do. If my life and the conduct of those around me is not admirable to those who see us from the outside, then nothing I could say or do would "invite" people to Islam. My children attended public school, one of them was awarded a four-year college scholarship by a local group that we didn't even know existed. I suspect we're doing something right somewhere along the line. But we don't go knocking on doors, don't advertise or proselytize, and don't try to argue people away from their faith that inspires them to beneficial conduct, even if only for themselves.

I am a non-creedal member of the Quaker tradition and reject most of what passes for the Abrahamic faiths, including the authority of any holy book or religion.

God leaves you free to do that. If, as Abraham did, you ask God to show you your way and rely on that, then that is a path to Him. In my opinion, you've turned away from a valuable body of knowledge of God which, if you know Him, would ease your heart, lighten your burdens, and open up to you another world. But I don't have any problem with your stance, every Guidance that He has sent down has been "doctored" by ambitious priests, or by those servile to worldly rulers, beyond recognition. And at least in America, turning away from organized religion and priesthood hierarchies is actually an act of faith for many people. That includes "muslims" who do not know their religion and turn toward communities of gentle Christians whose guiding Light for the way they live is Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and his example, whether or not they labor to spread the Good News.

Your notion of apocalyptic war is abhorrent to me, and I find your claims of special knowledge unimpressive.

I claim no "special knowledge." What I claim to know is not "special," it's widely known to those who pursue knowledge of God, it's written down, discussed, taught and transmitted, and recognizable to people of any faith at all.

As for "apocalyptic war," have you read the newspapers or watched television "news" lately? Have you considered the wars of the Twentieth Century in context with the history of humanity?

But I'm not engaged in those wars, other than to notice them. I'm engaged in the war in the heavens, right here, reaching out through the skies on the invisible electronic threads of the Web, to the minds and hearts of the faithful, calling them to abandon fixation on the life at hand, turn their attention to the Presence of God in their lives and what He has given us of His Mercy and Guidance, and ask Him to depose shaitan and his party among humanity from his dominion over their thoughts and perceptions. Read Revelation 12:7 to see what I'm talking about and tell me whether what God has ordained is "abhorrent" to you.

Nevertheless I want to live in a legal framework that allows the free exercise of religion without endorsing or establishing any state approved faith. We seem to agree on that anyway.

I'll prefer to live in a legal framework that has no authority or power to interfere in religious worship, activity, or practices within any of the Houses of faith or in cooperation between them, and by fundamental law and before any other consideration, favors all religions that honor the same restraints with regard to people of other faiths or none. That's what the Constitution originally established. God has Mandated federations of faiths, not religious empires. And secular government of those of no faith, no faith tradition, or no faith community strenghtening their human nature in which He created us, is something I'll support until God returns everyone to Himself.

Now is there, in today's world, any nation closer to that than America?

I just don't think there is ...

I know I am racists, ignorant, a bigot and everything else, and none of what I said is true but just some hateful rhetoric from some right wing nut job, that's right my tolerant and peace loving friends, people like me are just crazy.

Well, you certainly pretend to be very well. But I'd like you to take a look at some of your numbers:

There are 44 countries in the world with some sort of conflict between Muslims and non muslims ...

And those would all be muslim-majority countries where invaders have come in aggressively ~ or perhaps you've included India, where Hindus routinely torch muslim neighborhood and the muslims in them, while the government throws up its hands in despair of being able to do anything about it? Or perhaps you've included Somalia, which is the closest thing in the world to a Libertarian society, after rejecting nationalism and while being invaded not just by American forces, but by al-Qa'eda forces who want to impose the falsified nationalist "shari'ah" of the Abbasid Tyranny?

Or maybe you've included the oil barons' war for the oil fields in the south of the Sudan, where animists are an overwhelming majority and the minute population of Christian animists has provided a gateway for the oil-seeking armies?

Probably you count Afghanistan, where Venezuela's franchise for an oil pipeline from the Caspian Basin was canceled by the American invasion that delivered that franchise to a consortium of American oil companies.

And Iraq, with the third-largest oil reserves in the world, that Saddam Hussein ~ along with Venezuela ~ was going to sell for Euros instead of dollars, deposing the dollar from its position as the bench-mark currency?

Or perhaps you're including Kashmir, a muslim-majority province that was sold to India during the 1948 partition process by a treasonous despot governor, whose successors have blocked anything resembling a referendum on self-determination?

And probably Palestine ~ oh yes, Palestine, where European and American billions build infrastructure that is casually destroyed by Israeli "Defense Forces" with American-supplied weaponry and munitions, I'm sure you count that among your 44.

Oh ~ and Egypt, home of al-Azhar, one of the oldest, if not the oldest, continuously operating university in the world (founded 988 AD). Home of the pyramids, an ancient civilization. Where Cleopatra loved Marc Antony, and Coptic Christians have lived since before the establishment of Islam. And you say they complain of discrimination and oppression by the secular one-party government of today's Egypt? How strange ~ the muslim majority of Egypt complain of exactly the same thing.

36 to go, but we'll find the same or a similar situation in all of them ~ muslims, living in their own country, in their own homes, under attack of one form or another from the West.

Oh, sure, there are exceptions ~ the followers of a false prophet claiming to be muslim in Pakistan are not at all popular, and they are often attacked by fanatic muslims. But they're still there, and in America and elsewhere, they are not under any threat of annihilation like some would like we muslims to be in America. And some few Christians have made themselves offensive, as a newly-minted Christian from there is touring American churches distributing demonization DVDs and telling us, whereupon marauders might burn down their villages ~ apparently that happened once.

And in some places, including Israel, Christians proselytizing among muslims or jews are breaking the law and get prosecuted for it. Do the people in those countries have a right to live under public laws of their own choosing, or not? Certainly when Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons come to my door, we invite them in for a pleasant conversation ~ which I think is not unusual in Muslim America, we protect and defend Christians and Jews and their absolute right to live according to their own chosen religion.

Islam is not like any other world religion there are currently 1.2 billion Muslims in the world most estimates have the radicalized Muslims around 15-25% that's somewhere between 180 to 300 million radical Muslims or roughly the population of the United States.

In America, anyone who prays five times a day is a "radical religious fanatic." Of the world's 1.5 billion muslims, perhaps 0.7% are extremists willing to participate in terrorism ~ which is absolutely contrary to Islam and nothing more than murder. That 0.7% is a government intelligence count, by the way. Still, 0.7% of 1.5 billion is a pretty large fringe group ~ something like 10,500,000, slightly smaller than the world's Jewish population.

Fortunately they're scattered and vagabond, and not very organized at all except in small groups ~ like the group gathered around bin Laden when the CIA was shipping arms and munitions through Pakistan to be used against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and financing a string of mosques across America to recruit mujahideen for the fight over there. And of course they don't go near mainstream mosques, where they'd be arrested or worse.

From the latest report on hate crimes in the US, there were 1606 religious motivated hate crimes; 65% were against Jews, 8.4% against protestants and Catholics, you know how many against Muslims? 7.7%.

Hmmm. I think that 7.7% is exaggerated. But let's compare your numbers:

8.4% of 250 million Christians is 21 million, or roughly one in twelve.
7.7% of 19 million muslims is 1,463,000, or roughly one in thirteen.
65% of ~ let's say six million, that's a popular number among Jewish Americans ~ is 3.9 million, or roughly two out of three.

Would we like to guess where the "latest report" came from, or where the raw data on "religiously motivated hate crimes" might have turned up?

And just out of curiosity, did those "religiously motivated hate crimes" include the Jewish college professor who painted a swastika on her car and broke all its windows in California? Or college students who "fomented disorder" in a classroom by asking very pointed questions about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza? I think I'd like to see a little more detail about these "religiously motivated hate crimes" that show that Jewish Americans are far and away the victims of most of them.

By the way, the public use of the word "Jew" by anyone other than a Jewish comedian is regarded as "antisemitism" by the ADL. You should watch yourself, the blacklist grows longer every day.

You can't name any religion in today's society with that kind of track record ...

Well, you're right. We don't burn heretics or witches at the stake, we don't throw widows onto their husband's funeral pyres, we don't launch crusades, we don't fly over sleeping populations dropping blockbuster bombs and anti-personnel weapons designed to attract children or ravage a crowd spread over a large area, we don't bomb churches when the people are inside praying or at any other time, and we don't walk into a church and spray machine-gun bullets through the entire congretation or make heroes of those who do things like that ~ or like 9/11.

Yes, some muslims do consider bin Laden a hero, just as some Americans think Pat Robertson and the guy burning a Qur'an in Florida are prophets. But there certainly is no other religion that as a track record like Islam ~ ask any of the Christian or Jewish historians about Islamic Spain or the refuge their predecessors found in muslim countries from the Reconquista and the Inquisition. Predecessors like Moses Maimonides, also known as Rambam, who with the contemporary Muslim philosopher Averroes, promoted and developed the philosophical tradition of Aristotle, which gave both men prominent and controversial influence in the West, where Aristotelian thought had not been known widely. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas were notable Western readers of Maimonides. Rambam did most of his work in Morocco and Egypt, where he was a notable in the muslim court. His fourteen-volume Mishneh Torah still carries canonical authority as a codification of Talmudic law.

All done after he was driven out of Catholic Spain during the Reconquista.

So no, you're not "some right wing nut job" or "just crazy." You're horribly misinformed.

That can be remedied.

FWIW: This imam signed the "Common Word" open letter to Christians appealing to the similarities between Christians and Muslims.
www.acommonword.com

Many leaders of the Catholic church including Pope Pius X1 supported and aided Hitler. Is the Catholic church moderate enough to build community centers in Manhattan? Many Christians believe that Jesus will rule all the nations. Can they be trusted? Aren't your fears out of proportion to anything remotely resembling realistic concerns. Should Islam be excluded from the protection of the First Amendment or not?
These ideas are part of the same hysteria and fear-mongering that put Japanese Americans in prisons during WW2, and fed the crusades and the pogroms and ethnic cleansings that darken the history of those who claim to be led by Jesus. Are there such deeds in Islam's history? Yes. Judaism? The same. Both Islam and Christianity are missionary religions. Dawa is the preaching of Islam and no different from the Christian call to proclaim the Gospel. You have not provided any evidence that there is any threat of conversion through violence coming from this community center or it's leaders.

Where is the information that details about what this Iman is doing
right now?

http://www.cordobainitiative.org/?q=content/fre...

Both Islam and Christianity are missionary religions. Dawa is the preaching of Islam and no different from the Christian call to proclaim the Gospel.

This is not so. The privilege of announcing the Good News to the nations is exclusively Israel's, and of those who remained faithful to Jesus. It is a distinction given to the descendants of Isaac, Abraham's second son by Sarah, and not shared with the muslims.

The analogous activity in Islam is "making Islam known." It is not a missionary endeavor seeking recruits to the effort, it can only be overtly done by muslims thoroughly trained for ministerial obligations in Islam. Every muslim should be an "invitation to Islam" simply be being a muslim and acting like it. But overtly and publicly "making Islam known" is something that has to be done right, it is not an "amateur hour" undertaking, has nothing to do with "announcing the Good News," and is not a "fishing expedition" for "converts." Jesus heads the only missionary religion that God has established.

What's amazing is the number of muslims who don't know that, who go after people who don't want to hear it, go off half-cocked, don't know what they're doing, argue and cajole and contend, demand that what they say be accepted, and turn people away from God's Mercy for all humanity. But we can't stop them from doing that, although we certainly would if we could.

Jesus spoke to all and sundry who all had one thing in common: they wanted to hear what he had to say. What he said to one gathering of people differed from what he said to another gathering in its content: he did not tell people what they were not ready to hear, and never made a mistake in that, he knew exactly who was listening ~ every individual ~ and what they could take in and what they couldn't.

We're not Jesus. We don't have a general commission from God to teach or preach or proselytize. Some of us have ministerial duties that include making Islam known to people who speak our language and have something of a common understanding. We're trained and prepared for that over a course of at least nine years in immersion schools, with specializations and a horrendous dropout rate.

The followers of Jesus have a missionary mandate. The Children of Israel were prepared for a thousand years to carry out that mission. The followers of Jesus have it, it's an eternal jewel in their crown.

We don't have it, it's not our privilege. Too many muslims don't know that.

You wrote According to the Bible, the most important battle Christians should worry about is spiritual (Ephesians 6), where it talks about how Satan and demonic forces oppose all that God is doing in this world.

"Spiritual" ~ as distinguished from "physical" and "mortal" ~ includes "mental" and "emotional." How do shaitan and his party among humanity afflict the faithful other than through thoughts and feelings and impressions? They make the worse argument appear the better, persuasive falsehoods appear as truth, and harmful things appear attractive. It's all manipulation of consciousness, subtle hypnosis, thought, feeling, and perception ~ shaitan and his party whisper into the hearts and minds and twist the electrical signals running from the eye to the brain. None of it is "physical" in the sense that we consider "physical," it's all "spiritual."

And it certainly has not stopped.

Look in your Book for the "war in the heavens." It hasn't stopped, it's on-going, and now it's been taken literally "to the heavens" on this Web of intangible, invisible, speed-of-light radiomagnetic broadcasts that deliver thoughts and emotion through thin air and no air to phosphorescent screens without a physical impact.

What are the wars on the ground other than physical expressions of what people think and feel? The real battle is not on the ground, it's spiritual ~ here, on the Web, in conversations, exchanges of thought and feeling, the emanation of love among the faithful and beyond our social spheres.

And here in the heavens, or "the skies" in the original Semitic languages, Michael slays dragons right and left.

The "Kingdom of Heaven" is that "Mind of God" that He created for us to know Him by. Those are the thoughts we think, we perceive that "Mind of God" or we don't. We fill our minds with the love of Jesus or other Lights of God and leave no opportunity for shaitan to inspire the darkness of his dominion.

We are God's reflection in the mirror of creation, the channels through which God's Love flows into the world. Or doesn't, when we allow shaitan and his party to stop the flow within and through us and turn it into hate, anger, doubt, envy, and suspicion (make the acronym). What we need is the sanity, heedfulness, aspiration, devotion, and ecstasy (again make the acronym) that only comes from God, directly to each of us, through knowing Him, to shade us from the fires of shaitan that we see raging against others created in His Image around the physical world today.

"Disarmament" is not the solution. The solution is given to us by God, in the heavens, in our thoughts and feelings and perceptions of Him, and in what those inspire of what we do.

Perhaps if you'll read my 5:46 post again, you'll see what I was saying. The bottom line is that Michael is on the side of those who are on God's side. That's what Lincoln was asking: "Are we on God's side?" Or are we on the side of hatred, anger, doubt, envy, and suspicion?

It's something everyone should ask himself often. We don't get Guidance from God unless we ask for it and try to live by it.

And God knows we need it. Constantly.