Hi Dave, Horse, DMB, Platt, When we think about why building a Muslim community center there may be regarded as objectionable (even though it ought not be prohibited) is that there doesn't seem to be moderate Islam of the sort where there are Muslim leaders willing to come out and say that Salmon Rushdie and apostates in general ought not be killed or to stop apologizing for those threatening the lives of cartoonists. Most Muslim's understanding of Islam is actually a very real and present danger to religious freedom. While militant atheists are working to eradicate all religion, a more reasonable approach is to condemn the specific religions or specific religious practices that are evil and support religious freedom rather that equating Islam with every other religion as equally problematic.
Harris from a speech called "The Problem with Atheism": "...consider how we, as atheists, tend to talk about Islam. Christians often complain that atheists, and the secular world generally, balance every criticism of Muslim extremism with a mention of Christian extremism. The usual approach is to say that they have their jihadists, and we have people who kill abortion doctors. Our Christian neighbors, even the craziest of them, are right to be outraged by this pretense of even-handedness, because the truth is that Islam is quite a bit scarier and more culpable for needless human misery, than Christianity has been for a very, very long time...To be even-handed when talking about the problem of Islam is to misconstrue the problem..The refrain, “all religions have their extremists,” is bullshit—and it is putting the West to sleep. All religions don’t have these extremists. Some religions have never had these extremists." Best, Steve 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
