Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Park 51 And Patriotism - This Is A Joke...Right?
Park 51 And Patriotism - This Is A Joke...Right?
February 2, 2011
February 2, 2011 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - The newly redesigned website for imam Rauf's triumphalist 9/11 mosque project contains a featured section entitled, "Park 51 and Patriotism," written by a lefty lawyer [Seema Saifee ] and mouthpiece for a group of Uighur terrorists who were captured on Afghanistan's battlefields.
Ms. Saifee's argument is that establishing the mosque is consistent with America's respect for religious freedom. However, she seems to have difficulty internalizing how the religious freedom argument [one of many, for sure] which the founders used to justify severing ties with the motherland gnaws against the hand she is attempting to play here.
What the settlers from the old world resisted was the idea of the state imposing a religion, any religion. Specifically, this meant they were rebelling against the Anglican church, the Church of England, established as a breakaway from Roman authority when the pope would not grant Henry VIII the divorce which he sought.
It could have been any religion and that is the key point.
Though she is apparently unmindful of the contradiction, using her logic, Islam of the type that Mr. Rauf espouses [judging from his numerous statements] is exactly what the Founding Fathers detested and why they would have never entertained supporting this provocative undertaking.
It is difficult to find any Muslim society in which religious freedom has any meaning. It is simply the nature of Islam as it is now popularly practiced. In those societies Islamic law is the law.
People like Mr. Rauf, Ms. Saifee and their cohorts present a picture of the religion which is at odds with reality, and that reality is the looming presence of Shari'a as the guiding principle for Muslims...and non-Muslims alike.
When one contemplates a strictly enforced Shari'a, the Taliban or Saudi Arabia or Iran...or [fill in the blank] should come to mind, not religious freedom and the debates which took place during the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
Despite hollow assurances that in Islam there is no religious compulsion, in the politicized Islam so ascendant today, religion is all about compulsion, sometimes under pain of death for those [apostates] who try to leave the faith.
In short, the Islam that Mr. Rauf and his mysterious backers are pushing is one that is not only inconsistent with American principles, but one which is subversive and seditious. It is a political ideology, shrouded in religiosity, which seeks to dominate via the constant encroachment of Shari'a into the very fiber of society.
Those who oppose Rauf's mosque, should oppose any mosque built anywhere in the United States by him or under principles similar to his. It's not the location, it's the ideology which will flow from such an institution - Shari'a - one that is distinctly un-patriotic and anti-American.
If Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, George Washington and their brethren had the misfortune to have been born into a Wahhabist theocracy and were somehow allowed to break free, does anyone in their right mind think that they would have allowed such a belief system to masquerade as a religion in a newly founded country and given Constitutional protection to start the process of oppression anew?
Not bloody likely...
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