Watching the news recently and trying to understand the objections to the Mosque "at Ground-Zero".
Now for clarification, "at Ground-Zero" is in quotations, because any jack with Google Maps can see that the proposed site for the mosque, which has been causing much hubbulb in the news, is in fact not at Ground Zero. It is merely in Lower Manhattan.
The problem of this debate, is that it undercuts the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution. Yes, that handy little document which Conservatives claim to be the soul protectors and guardians of. (Despite their assaults on the documents over the last 10 years, including but not limited to: The Patriot Act (which is the biggest undermining of the Founding Father's principles yet), The NSA illegal wiretapping (which directly confronts and destroys our right to be free from illegal search and seizure), The Arizona Law (Which by the way in bringing our country one step closer to some sort of totalitarian Regime, and also by the way, fuck you for asking for my papers. This is America. I can be without my papers anywhere I want.) And most recently, their outcry against a religious organization building a center for worship, within the same area as Ground Zero, which directly affronts the First Amendment.
Now to be clear about something here. The Muslim community center has more than a right to build on that location, they are guaranteed that right by our Bill of Rights and we will afford them that right just as we allowed other churches or religious organizations to build where they please. The fact that it is an Islamic organization should not even be relevant to the discussion.
The fact is, is that the Right and even some members of the Left are confused about the spectrum of beliefs once again. What I mean is that within any type of belief or political system, you are going to have a spectrum of beliefs, which will be stratified by intensity. You can draw a bell-curve to demonstrate the spectrum, in terms of per-capita of members.
Most people will fall in the middle of this bell curve. The far left side is apathetic, the middle is the norm and the far right end is the Extremist.
Let me be absolutely clear on this next point: Extremists from any camp, creed, party, organization or system are the most dangerous people in the world. They see the world as With-us or Against us. There is no compromise with extremists, otherwise they would be more in the middle of the spectrum of Belief. I am not arguing against conviction, I am arguing against entrenching yourself in a belief system so deeply that you cannot see another's perspective.
Extremist are the most vocal and offensive and, notably, memorable of any organization. They speak first, they use the sharpest tongues and they are frequently self-righteous.
Let's review other organizations (American organizations), where generalizing extremists as the norm, makes the entire group seem awful.
This next section will have broad offensive generalizations, if you are offended by this, you aren't paying attention to tone.
Let's see,
All Christians don't believe in evolution, or gay rights..
All Wiccen are clearly witches and sorcerers
All Buddhists are ineffective due to their serene and meditative ways
All Spiritualists are necromancers
All Mormans are polygamists and child-rapists
All Free-Masons are part of a broad conspiracy to take over the world.
All Right-wing members of our government are unintelligent yokels, clutching their guns, waiting for JC's return
All Left-wing members of our government are socialists and communists.
As you can see, any generalization serves two purposes: it tells one story for a belief system, when in fact there are millions of stories to be told and it makes the generalizer sound like a Jack-ass.
It is absolutely evil to generalize one religion by its extremist elements, and in fact it is more than offensive to fear-monger against muslism (especially as the violent element of our society can't seem to id Muslims, they keep attacking Sik's and Jains, two of the most nonviolent religious, who happen to wear turbans).
Fear-mongering or instilling racism of any sort is vile and more offensive than any religious group, lifestyle or sexuality, or race.
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