As the debate over Park 51 continues, debate over the planned “9/11 Christian Center” has yet to begin. The $8 million center will be located two just two blocks from Ground Zero.
Sound familiar?
Bill Keller, an evangelical pastor from Florida who is no stranger to controversy, will head the center. Keller’s previous claim to fame came in 2008 when he told his congregation that voting for then-presidential contender Mitt Romney was akin to voting for Satan (because of Romney’s Mormon faith). Keller calls his center, “A Christian response to the Ground Zero Mosque.”
But what kind of response will this center offer? Will it be a place for interfaith dialogue, as Park51 is slated to be? Or will it instead be a breeding ground for Islamophobia? In his ominously titled, “The Coming Showdown Between Islam and Christianity,” Keller wrote the following statement, published in a daily devotional on his website liveprayer.com:
“The fact is, Mohammed was a murdering pedophile who dreamed up his false God, ‘Allah’, and the false religion of Islam out of a heart that rejected the one true God of the Bible,” Keller wrote.
Keller is a xenophobic pedagogue who dreamed up the idea for a Christian center near Ground Zero to further his hateful and inherently un-Christian message. How does mocking the Muslim religion in any way honor those who died on 9/11? Furthermore, how will a man who espouses such hatred help 9/11 families heal?
If we are ever going to heal as a nation, we must first forgive. I’m not saying we should try to forget what happened on 9/11. I am merely saying that we must recognize that the men who crashed the planes into the World Trade Center on 9/11 did so in defense of an idea that is not shared by all Muslims. People like Keller would have you believe that every one of the 1.5 billion Muslims with whom we share the world are closeted jihadists. This belief sounds laughable until one realizes that it is a belief held by many Americans.
These people fail to recognize that there are many sects of Islam, and that these sects have radically different views on how the Quran should be interpreted. A comparison can be made between the ideological differences between the various denominations of the Christian faith. If a fundamentalist Christian were to blow up an abortion center, would you expect protests to take place outside of an Episcopalian church? Of course not! The Muslims behind Park51 belong to the Sufi sect of Islam. Their views are so moderate that they themselves have been the targets of Islamic extremism.
In July of this year three suicide bombers attacked a Sufi shrine in Pakistan killing 41 people. If the Sufis were really in cahoots with Islamic terrorists, as people like Newt Ginrich would have you believe, then why are terrorists attacking their holy sites?
Park51’s Imam Abdul Rauf gave an interview to the New York Times in which he said the following:
“Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam. That’s just as absurd as associating Hitler with Christianity, or David Koresh with Christianity. There are always people who will do peculiar things and think that they are doing things in the name of their religion.”
It is not to be mistaken; the threat of radical Islam is very real. One only has to look at what is going on in Europe to become aware of this. However, if we sacrifice the principles of our founding fathers in our fight against radical Islam we have already lost. There will be a solution to the threat of radical Islam here in the United States, but that solution should be one that is uniquely American. It should not be a solution that causes us to sacrifice our devotion to religious freedom and tolerance. In the words of Benjamin Franklin:
“If an Indian injures me, does it follow that I may revenge that Injury on all Indians? It is well known that Indians are of different Tribes, Nations and languages, as well as the White People,” Franklin wrote in “A Narrative of the Late Massacres.”
Daniel Renfrow is an anthropology junior and may be reached at [email protected]
Attempts to invent a new label of Islamophobia and to try to equate it with racism are all doomed because first, Islam isn't a race it's a Borg-like ideology that has absorbed some races but wants them all, and second, it's the smart knowledegable people who fear what Islam can do to America, based on their long long track record going back before the U.S. was founded. Take the Historyscoper's free online Islam history course at http://go.to/islamhistory Keep up on the daily world news of Islam pro and con and see for yourself what it's doing around the world at http://tinyurl.com/islamwatch
I am not sure whether Islamophobia is a good term or the concept useful in itself. In my opinion this is another good example of what I have called 'tautological Islam"
http://marranci.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/pastor-j…
Hopefully people will read more about Islam and Muslims in books with credential rather than web sites which often are of of awful quality. The debate on the mosque seems more more European in style rather than American. Are we seeing an 'Europization' of the discourse of religion in the US?
Gabriele
There is no such thing as a "moderate" muslim. The foundational teaching of the Koran is that ultimately there must be total, universal submission to Islam and anyone who does not capitulate to that is an "infidel" — and ultimately all "infidels" are to be eliminated by any means necessary.
Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, moderation, and tolerance are fundamentally incompatible with the core teachings of islam. Instead, lying, deception, subterfuge, and even murder are entirely permissible and acceptable when used to further the objectives of islam.
The pretense of "moderation" and islam as a so-called "religion of peace" is a deception that exists only until islam becomes the dominant force in any given country or region … but then (as can be plainly seen in many regions in the world today), islamic "law" makes it illegal to even publish or present information about any faith or belief-system other than islam.
You sound like a cleric, or ultra-religious rabbi. Who are you to establish how people practice their religion? Do you know how well the bible could be substituted in your comment? Ever read how gentiles (infidels) are presented there?
>"The pretense of "moderation" and islam as a so-called "religion of peace" is a deception that exists >only until islam becomes the dominant force in any given country or region".
Islam has been the dominant force in several regions for many decades, if not even centuries, and in the past 100 years it was nearly always the uber-religious like you who made Islam in those regions intolerable. Just because the head honchos in Iran are crazy, doesn't mean that all of the citizens are, too. Read about it – the New Yorker has had some great articles discussing that region. A lot of Iranians are pretty moderate Muslims. Heck, go ask some of the Muslims at UH if they would like to live under the Islamic law that is writ in the Koran. For them, as for most of the people in the world who do not live by a literal interpretation of the Bible, things have changed, fortunately.
Here are some REAL Islamophobes. Are they Islamophobes or simply truth tellers?
Patriarch Cyrus of Alexandria on Islam
"I am afraid that God has sent these men to lay waste the world".
Gregory Palamus of Thessalonica on Islam
"For these impious people, hated by God and infamous, boast of having got the better of the Romans by their love of God…they live by the bow, the sword and debauchery, finding pleasure in taking slaves, devoting themselves to murder, pillage, spoil and not only do they commit these crimes, but even – what an aberration – they believe that God approves of them. This is what I think of them, now that I know precisely about their way of life."
Is the following man an Islamophobe or a realist?
John Quincy Adams on Islam
"In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind."
Sounds like the Mormons!
Is John Welsey an Islamophobe or someone who sees Islam for its true essence?
John WesleyJohn Wesley on Islam
"Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it…have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are raised from the foundation, and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth! Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind."
Another quote from that darn Islamophobe John Adams:
John Quincy Adams on Islam
"The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force."
Vern, the Islamophobe:
Vernon Richards on Islam
"The true Islamic concept of peace goes something like this:'Peace comes through submission to Muhammad and his concept of Allah'(i.e. Islam). As such the Islamic concept of peace, meaning making the whole world Muslim, is actually a mandate for war. It was inevitable and unavoidable that the conflict would eventually reach our borders, and so it has."
It isn't a church, it's a Christian centre.
It isn't at Ground Zero, it's a few blocks away.
And so is the guilt complexes. The white guilt, the Jew guilt, the male guilt, the success guilt….
Jew Guilt?