In one of the more insane episodes in the Jihadist war, a community board in New York City has approved the construction of a mosque in the vicinity of Ground Zero.After 9/11, they started talking about what should replace the fallen World Trade Center and I was often tempted to suggest a gigantic cathedral with a synagogue next to it because that would drive the Jihadists bonkers. I didn't do so, however, because I thought that would be in bad taste. And from me, that's saying something. Now we learn that this so-called board, in the name of "closer relations", approves the most abject example of dhimmitude since they whitewashed the Hagia Sophia.
God, we are in trouble.
6 comments:
Who whitewashed the Hagia Sophia? I thought they just slapped a coat of paint over the icons, put up some minarets, and called it good enough.
Anyway, not sure what can, or should be done in this case. If the land is for sale, and the man who buys it happens to be Muslim, he can buy it, and if the place is zoned for places of worship, he can put a mosque on top. Without changing existing laws in potentially very bad ways (or appealing to good taste---good luck with that!), I think you're suggesting that some low-level pencil-pusher should have made it very inconvenient to file the appropriate forms. Alternative would be to change the zoning, but would Mayor Bloomberg do this? Probably not.
The thing is, unless we declare ourselves to be at war with Islam, rather than Islamism, I'm not sure that, barring good taste making an appearance, there is anything to do. A difference between tribal and civilized warfare: by tribal rules, any member of the enemy's tribe is fair game; civilized, you try to kill only the ones that need killing. I've been told that Israel and its enemies both kill children, so are equally bad. Not so: one rejoices when it kills Jewish children, the other has been known to call off air strikes when the target hid among too many civilians---the comparison couldn't be farther from the truth. I'm afraid that we're stuck tracking the Sauds' second biggest export (radical imams), and if we want to take the war to the enemy, hitting him at the seat of his power, overseas.
Dave, I think it's time we (the West) apologized for putting those buildings in the way of those planes. That's the only way to make peace.
Christopher, I think we (the West again, naturally) need to apologize for inventing the planes in the first place, and giving the barbarians something to crash into our buildings. They're victims of coicumstance, I tell youse! Well, I guess we're doing that anyway with the whole CO2 business.
You are right Sergej. I feel ashamed to live in a country that has embraced reason and science. Fortunately, as you noted, we are changing that.
Sergej,
I take your point and agree with it, but we are in a bit of a pickle when we are dealing with Jihadists who aren't playing by the same rules. I think the best example is the supermosque proposed near the Olympic grounds in London that was so insanely large that all the Muslims in the area could have played handball in it. I was rather impressed when one columnist said "It isn't meant for them, it's meant for us." In other words, against the day when the former infidels would be pounding their foreheads on the carpet. It's one thing to build a place of worship. It's another thing to mark territory. It's something else again to do so, as in New york, with a committee patting itself on the back for getting multiculti brownie points.
My own solution to this is simple. By all means let them build their mosques–provided every time planning permission is approved we haul in the Saudi ambassador and shout at him (literally) about how Mecca is closed to non-Muslims while St. Peters is open to all and how there isn't a single cathedral in the whole of Saudi Arabia.
Hitting the ambassador with a rolled up copy of the Times I leave to the discretion of the shouter.
Big mosques, tall minarets and frequent calls to prayer are all intended to dominate the landscape, visual and auditory. Cathedrals and church bells are as well, I think. Nothing necessarily wrong with it. An Italian might like the sound of bells, and President Obama (not Muslim, I think, but a post-everythingist faculty lounge lizard) once said that he liked the muezzin thing, likely because it reminded him of his childhood in Indonesia. But, no question that from the Islamists' point of view, it is a sign of Islam taking over new territory. From my point of view, it's a bloc of immigrants who aggressively refuse to assimilate, and that's bad. From the multi-cultis' point of view, it's a bloc of immigrants who aggressively refuse to assimilate, and that's good.
Humiliating the Saudi ambassador might be personally satisfying, but I think that a request to extradite a few subjects, and remove a few members of the royal family from the government, delivered quite publicly by several gunboats, would be much better. There's plenty of Saudi royals to go around (dynasty is only what, four generations deep? but at 20 wives per king, it adds up), so they won't run out of people to run the country. No compliance, maybe we kick their Riyadh back into the sand and set up toll booths on all the pilgrimage routes to Mecca. Islam is less then 1500 years old, so, kind of old, but this Salafi revival goes back less than 100 years. It is in our interests for it to end now.
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