As I have stated, I have disdain for religious fundamentalism, especially the violent radical Islamists. I also have disdain for the lying liars that use religion to divide people. Where do you think the hate and ignorance comes from?
Five myths about mosques in Americaby
Edward E. Curtis IV is millennium chair of liberal arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He is the author of "Muslims in America: A Short History" and the editor of the "Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History."1. Mosques are new to this country. Mosques have been here since the colonial era.
2. Mosques try to spread sharia law in the United States.Muslims do not agree on what sharia says; there is no one sharia book of laws. Most mosques in America do not teach Islamic law.
3. Most people attending U.S. mosques are of Middle Eastern descent.African Americans accounted for 35 percent of all Muslim Americans, making them the largest racial-ethnic group of Muslims in the nation.
4. Mosques are funded by groups and governments unfriendly to the United States.The vast majority of mosques are supported by Muslim Americans themselves.
5. Mosques lead to homegrown terrorism.To the contrary, mosques have become typical American religious institutions: In addition to worship services, most U.S. mosques hold weekend classes for children, offer charity to the poor, provide counseling services and conduct interfaith programs.
No doubt, some mosques have encouraged radical extremism. Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik who inspired the World Trade Center's first attackers in 1993, operated out of the Al-Salam mosque in Jersey City, N.J. But after the 2001 attacks, such radicalism was largely pushed out of mosques and onto the Internet, largely because of a renewed commitment among mosque leaders to confront extremism.
There is a danger that as anti-Muslim prejudice increases -- as it has recently in reaction to the proposed community center near Ground Zero -- alienated young Muslims will turn away from the peaceful path advocated by their elders in America's mosques. So far, that has not happened on a large scale.
Through their mosques, U.S. Muslims are embracing the community involvement that is a hallmark of the American experience. In this light, mosques should be welcomed as premier sites of American assimilation, not feared as incubators of terrorist indoctrination.
more from
WaPost...Here's where the hysterical hate comes from:
The merchants of hate are now issuing
denials.
And they say they're not escalating hate...how's this for 'escalation?'
2001: GW Bush said, "The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. ... The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics; a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam."
2003: Bush hires Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf on a diplomatic mission, having him work with the FBI on counter-terrorism efforts.
2006: Glen Beck
acknowledges Rauf as a "good Muslim" and that terrorists are just "a small portion of Islam that is acting in these ways."
2010: Glenn Beck
labeled Rauf's NYC Park59 Islamic center an "actual danger" and suggested it is an "Allah-tells-me-to-blow-up-America mosque."
2010: Mosque protests break out not only in NYC, but
across the USA. Churches organize "
burn the Koran" events. Anti-Islam marches take place around the US, some
organized by teabagger candidates, NYC Cabbie is
slashed in hate crime, Murfreesboro, TN Mosque site suffers
arson attack.
Escalation? The hate merchants
deny it. Fortunately, the radical religious sometime
turn on each other.
