Steve said:
I don't know if you saw Sam Harris's article on the mosque thing. It sounds
like he would count himself in the 70% though he does not think legal action
should be taken to prevent the building of the mosque. A lot of those 70% may
be right to think it is in bad taste (to put it mildly) even if it ought to be
allowed under the Constitutional right.
dmb says:
That's disappointing, although I'm interested to know exactly how he put it so
I'll try to find that article.
Obama sorta backed away from his principled stance the following day. His
speech asserted their RIGHT to build a mosque, he said, but he did not and
would not comment on the WISDOM of it. This is a lot like the suggestion that
it would be in bad taste but not bad enough to take legal action.
But the more I find out about the actual details of this plan, the more I think
the whole thing is just more manufactured outrage from the Republican hate
machine. Olbermann's news show had maps and photos and such. It's not really a
mosque at all. It's the old Burlington Coat Factory that is to be converted
into a cooking school, a pool, and there are some prayer rooms on the two top
floors. It's two blocks away from the edge of the world trade center site, but
there are tall buildings in between such that you can't even see this building
and it doesn't look like a mosque. It's just a building like any other building
and they're just going to fix it up. There has been a similar kind of Islamic
cultural center nearby, four blocks away, since 1970. No problems in 40 years.
The guy who wants to open a new one served the Bush administration as a kind of
amateur ambassador and it widely respected among the moderate, interfaith
types. It seems more and more like a normal real esta
te development project has been whipped up into a nice frothy lather of not
much.
Maybe I'm just numb but the actual project doesn't seem distasteful or unwise
to me. If I had to think of something to complain about, I'd say the project
itself is kinda boring.
Maybe I'm just naive but I was thinking that we should build an actual mosque
directly on top of the world trade center site, the biggest mosque in the
world. This could be our chance to send a message to the world about religious
freedom, not to mention acceptance and forgiveness. These are good messages.
Come to think of it, I don't know if domes and turrets are going to work in
lower Manhattan. Being distinctive is one thing, but that would probably stick
out like a sore thumb, especially if they use traditional colors. Nope, come to
think of it, building a mosque on the site would be in bad taste. And with the
vacancy rate what it is in that neighborhood, I guess it would be unwise too.
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org/md/archives.html
