Making the list of the Easter Eve baptism for adults by the Pope is surely an honor for those chosen. However, anything that is done by the Pope relating to his church and Islam will be viewed under a microscope considering his past comments. Surely the Pope and his advisers knew exactly what they were doing (including the negative fallout in the Muslim world) when they chose a high profile Muslim convert to baptize at the Vatican yesterday. The church can chose the people they like, of course, but sheesh, why do they have to always thumb their nose at others like this? How is this helping to bridge the gap between the Catholic church and Islam? When the church wonders why their numbers are falling in Europe and the US, they can think about actions such as this.
Jason Elam, Denver Broncos kicker, has penned (or at least stamped his name on) a new book, cleverly titled "Monday Night Jihad". Because it's about football and scary terrorists! It's not really worth anybody's time to put too much thought into what appears to be a jingoistic screed, but I just wanted to relay this priceless quote:
"I knew there'd be some people who'd have issues with the terrorism element, which we cover through the context of football. But you know what? Radical Islam is here to stay. Since 9/11, it's almost something we don't want to think about."
Riiiiiiight, we *stopped* thinking about radical Islam after 9/11. Totally.
I'll bet they would protest just the same if it was a Christian school being constructed. AFP:
Hundreds of people have protested against the building of a new Islamic school on the outskirts of Australia's largest city, local officials said Tuesday.
Around 1,000 people held a meeting late on Monday to object to the proposal by the Quranic Society to build the 1,200-place school in Camden, a satellite town southwest of Sydney.
Large parts of southern Sydney are now heavily populated by Middle Eastern migrants, many of them Iraqi Muslims, but opponents deny any anti-Muslim bias.
"Let the people decide," Emil Frenchevich, the organiser of Monday's meeting, told national radio.
It reminds me of Democrats and liberals always having to say how much they love the troops, even when our love for the troops is totally irrelevant to the discussion. Or how gays used to always be asked to respond to every gay pedophile story. Somehow, as a class, we're expected to be responsible for every member of our class. I've always found parallels between anti-gay prejudice and anti-Muslim prejudice. More from Ali Eteraz over at Huff Post.
They never offer a real apology. It's always some well-scripted line about how they didn't mean to offend you, or they're sorry if you were offended. They're not sorry for what they said. They're sorry if you misunderstood it. To wit: This idiot Republican Congressman, Rep. Bill Sali of Idaho, who said that the Founding Fathers never intended Muslims to be elected to Congress.
"We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes — and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers," Sali said, according to an article on the network's Web site.
Now he's offered an "apology."
Sali responded days later, sending Ellison an e-mail explaining he meant no offense.
"He said that he wanted to make sure that Congressman Ellison understood that he meant no harm or disrespect," Sali spokesman Wayne Hoffman said.
Did you get that? He meant no offense, harm, or disrespect when he said that the Founding Fathers would have never wanted a Muslim-American elected to high office in America. Then what exactly did he mean? What does he think of the substance of what he said?
Why does the media accept these non-apologies as true apologies. A real apology would be: I was wrong, I was rude, I was offensive, and I'm sorry. In this case, the congressman actually pretty much stood behind what he said, all he's talking about what his "motivation" in saying it. Well that's nice. But lots of bigotry in America isn't motivated by a desire to be a bigot. It's usually motivated by your sense that you're correct, that you have morality and God and history on your side. Very few people with bigoted views actually intend to be bigots. Usually, they intend to be Godly. But they're still bigots.
BillOReilly.com says that American Muslims are "freakin idiots," and that you should "never trust a Muslim!!!!!" Does BMW agree with the hate that BMW is sponsoring? Ask them. Then ask them why Lowes and Home Depot have dumped this hate, but BMW hasn't.
"He is a Muslim. He will say anything, He will do anything. No oath of office means anything to him. History is irrelevant.... He is a Muslim, It is what they do."
Wow, do jetBlue and Home Depot agree with their good friends at BillOReilly.com that their Muslim-American customers will say anything, do anything, because "it is what they do"?
"Maybe it's time to burn down the capitol building like Hitler did with the Reichstag building."
And how do jetBlue and Home Depot, big supporters of O'Reilly, feel about launching a terrorist attack against the US Capitol that would assassinate all 535 members of the US Congress?
This photo in today's Washington Post of Islamic fundamentalist students rioting in Pakistan got me thinking about the difference between Islamic radicals and America's religious right. Both want to live in a theocratic state where they can force others to live under their own warped, hate-filled, minority version of an otherwise peaceful mainstream religion. And yes, the Islamic radicals are more violent than our Christian radicals, but only because our Christian radicals know that violence isn't acceptable in America. So they express their violence in their hearts, and their souls, and their politics. But at their core, they're no different. They hate all the same, and they'll happily bash with the power of a club or the power of the state. Both claim to represent the true God, both think they speak for all Muslims and all Christians, and neither does.
