Tuesday, November 28, 2006

More bigotry

I have heard that a bunch of mouth-breathers are upset that Keith Ellison will be sworn in with his hand on a Qur'an. Seeing as how he is Muslim and all, I guess he thought it would make sense to take an (unfortunately) religious oath using a holy book he believes in. Right-wingers are trashing this, saying it is an affront to 9/11 victims, blah blah blah.

It's time to admit that in this country, there are a lot of people with a psychopathic hatred of Muslims. They don't just hate extremists. They don't just hate the fanatics who have hijacked Islam to justify their murder. No, they also hate liberal Muslims like Keith Ellison. There is nothing that any Muslim can do to placate these people, short of renouncing their faith. To borrow a phrase used to describe another minority, the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.

So once again bin Laden is laughing. It does the U.S. no good to argue that we are not in a religious war against Islam when prominent conservatives say that we are. These aren't fringe characters. These aren't people sitting around in wife-beaters in the trailer park, ranting at the TV. These are people with TV shows, newspaper columns, radio programs. And they unabashedly hate Islam and want to see it obliterated from the face of the Earth, by force if necessary.

I'm sick of these wankers wanting to destroy more than 200 years of religious freedom in this country. I don't believe in Hell, but if I did, I think Lucifer would set aside a special part of it for these cowards.

Afterthought: I won't provide a link to the Townhall.com column about this because it so monumentally disgusting, but it starts off like this:

"Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.

He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization."

And it only gets stupider from there, not to mention factually inaccurate...

5 comments:

  1. Although I agree with you that Mr. Ellison should be free to take his oath on a holy book of his choice, I think you don't understand - in fact misunderstand - where the hostility toward Islam comes from. It really has little to do with religion. Many people in this country and in Europe are beginning to understand that for many Muslims, Islam is not a religion in the sense of the word that we understand it, but a political agenda. Many Americans are educating themselves and realizing that Islam is indeed an ideology that embraces conversion by violent force.

    Mr. Ellison has associated for years with "moderate" Muslims that have proven themselves to have ties to Islamic terrorist fund-raising. His reputation and his real affiliations are bound to catch up with him. For more on his questionable past, see the CAIR-Watch site at: http://www.americansagainsthate.org/cw .

    Mac at ASKEW
    http://askew.blogharbor.com

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  2. Dude, this is very scary. I tried looking through the news and blog sites to find info about the six imams and whether Ellison had finally put out a statement, and found hundreds of right-wing hate screeds by right-wing bloggers.

    It's like the hate has blown up to such a huge level that any time something happens in public that is offensive to ordinary people, the haters get so puffed up they have to seize on it and spew their hate all over it.

    I am really afraid that these people will try to openly seize power if another "terrorist" attack happens, and then it will be us ordinary liberals trying to protect Muslims, Arabs, and I guess Latinos and African Americans from these lunatics.

    God help us.

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  3. I'll just quote the man himself here.

    [...]

    MILLER: I’m wondering about how you’re going to approach some of the demagoguery that goes on, and that you’re bound to hear about Islam and the issue of violence. You know, it has not been that long ago since someone like Franklin Graham – Reverend Billy Graham’s son – was quoted as saying, “The God of Islam is not the same God of Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a very different God, and I believe, a very evil and very wicked religion.”

    Now, I don’t know how candid most people would be if they shared those views, but you know that there are other people out there who share those views and there are a lot of misperceptions of this. How –

    ELLISON: You know, I’m glad you asked that, Kerri, because of course there are always gonna be people who express an ignorant point of view. But I would like most people to know that, you know, Islam is – all the prophets of Islam are the same prophets in Christianity and Judaism. Muslims believe in Jesus, we believe in his mother Mary. Muslims are – really, when we talk about the Judeo-Christian ethic, we should be talking about the Judeo-Christian-Islamic ethic. We go back to Abraham and follow the line all the way up through. So, I think that people who are not Muslims should know this, that it’s not a foreign faith. As a matter of fact, it’s – many of the themes that you would hear in a Muslim sermon would be very common and familiar, and would not be unusual.

    Now, of course, Muslims believe that the Quran and the word of God was revealed through the prophet Muhammed, peace and blessings be upon him, and that is not something that is part of the Christian or Judaic tradition. But other than that, it’s very similar, and I think people just should know that.

    --Midmorning, November 9, 2006.

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