No Mosque At Ground Zero – For Starters, Because Nobody’s Proposing One
Update 1/4/11: Additional discussion of the potential basis for the East Mountain Tea Party’s apparent bias against Islam can be found in our article East Mountain Tea Party Officials and Islam.
by John Weckerle
We had initially thought not to address the construction of a Muslim community center in downtown Manhattan (the Park51 Project, or Cordova House, commonly but mistakenly called the “Ground Zero Mosque), but since the East Mountain Tea Party has apparently decided to make this an election issue, we’ve decided to add some thoughts to the debate.
We’d like to begin, though, with a caution regarding a particular set of practices of discussion that seem to have become popular in certain quarters. The first is the device by which those who disagree with a particular position attempt to turn the argument back on the originator as some sort of personal critique. In spoken conversation, we often refer to this as the “I know you are, but what am I?” method, and have little use for it. The second is to just outright attack the person originating the position or those who agree with it in general. We’re not big on that one, either. We invite our readers to post whatever comments they like, but be aware that we will probably ignore these two literary devices where responding to comments is concerned.
We also have something to say to the nebulous “teapartynm” who posted the article: We don’t think you should have to put your money where your mouth is, but you should certainly put your name there if you truly believe in what you’re saying. To twist a line from the movie “Beetlejuice:” “Never trust the unidentified.”
»» No Mosque At Ground Zero – For Starters, Because Nobody’s Proposing One
East Mountain Tea Party Officials and Islam
Editor’s note: We consider it important to state at the outset of this article that it is in no way our intent to denigrate or disrespect anyone’s religious beliefs, in this article or elsewhere; in fact, it was the issue of religious intolerance that sent us down the path that led us to this piece. We’ve provided links to full articles where appropriate to provide our readers with the full context of the quotes; we have saved the key references in both PDF and PNG screen grab formats, so if any of the links in this story should become inoperative in the future, please let us know and we’ll do what we can to repair them.
Update 1/4/11: Our original article on the East Mountain Tea Party’s apparent anti-Islamic bias can be found here.
by John Weckerle
East Mountain Tea Party Co-Founder Therese Cooper (image via You Tube)
As many of our readers may remember, we took issue some time back with what we considered to be anti-Islam positions officially expressed on the East Mountain Tea Party (EMTP) web site (our articles on the subject, along with others, are now collected under the category “Tea Party-gate.”). The EMTP post informed readers that key members of the EMTP (Therese Cooper, Char Tierney, Silvana Lupetti, and Felicia Wilson), including at least two of its co-founders, had submitted a letter to Congressman Martin Heinrich’s demanding that he state his position with respect to a Muslim community center proposed for downtown New York. We objected to the anonymously-posted EMTP article, and received a surprisingly vitriolic response indicating a clear anti-Muslim bias. We had a little fun trying to track down the identity of the anonymous poster, who in our view is the EMTP’s official internet spokesperson – and after a while, partially lost interest in that aspect, but we continued to research the issue of religious discrimination, because we were frankly dumbfounded by the strong anti-Islamic sentiment that came across in “teapartynm’s” response.
Would You Like Some Apples With Those Oranges?
by John Weckerle
The “debate” (such as it is) does some less interesting form of raging this week in the Mountain View Telegraph as Valerie McElligott of Moriarty responds to a letter by Patty Walsh which raises the issue of whether all Christians are terrorists because Timothy McVeigh, the key figure in the Oklahoma City bombing, was a Christian – an issue we brought up in our September 2 article on the subject.
Now, this is not why all Christians are terrorists. All Christians are terrorists because discredited, fraudulent blogger Andrew Breitbart has been unable to procure video footage of each and every Christian not being a terrorist. The lack of video evidence, creatively edited or otherwise, is damning in the eyes of at least a few, and far be it from us to argue.
All kidding aside, though…