Muslim worship center coming to Hoover?
Posted by BrianDan at Between the Links has written a couple of posts about the reaction to a proposed Muslim worship center in Hoover. Apparently some residents are not too excited about the idea. At first they hid their opposition behind traffic concerns, but now it seems that their real concern is apparent: Islam.
My only question: can you blame them?
The vast majority of organized, occasionally well executed, terrorist attacks are conducted by Muslims. It’s not that they happen to be Muslim by circumstance - the attacks are carried out in the name of their religion. One could easily investigate attacks before 9/11, which as you might remember was carried out by Muslims. But just looking at attacks and other atrocities since 9/11 shows that Islam is anything but a religion of peace. The Madrid, Spain train bombing. The bombing of The Tube in London. Two half assed attempted “car bombs” last week in the UK. Iraq. Afghanistan. Somalia. Darfur.
Of course the media all but refuses to admit that all of the people associated with the most recent car bombs are Muslims. The preferred way of framing it is to say they come from diverse backgrounds. The media attempts to strain to find commonality between them, while ignoring the most glaringly obvious similarity. They’re all Muslims! James Taranto did a great job identifying some of the media foolishness. Even the Prime Minister of Britain has refused to associate their religion with their crimes. One thing you may not have been told about the attempted bombing in Piccadilly Circus is that the bomb was strategically placed outside of a club holding a “ladies night” in order to kill as many women as possible. Such is the treatment of women in the peaceful religion of Islam.
Britain has been dealing with the effects of having a Muslim community that has established pockets of Sharia law within the island nation. So-called “honor killings,” which are anything but honorable, are on the rise there and are the focus of increased investigation after a recent murder.
Are all Muslims extremists? No. But there are a whole lot of Muslims and even a vanishingly small percentage is still a significant quantity of people. It has been shown that the extremists often meet and organize through their local mosques. So, is it any surprise that folks in Hoover would be less than excited about a new Muslim “worship center” in their fair city? The only real surprise is that any of them would have the temerity to speak against the project in today’s PC environment.
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July 6th, 2007 at 10:56 am
i understand their fears, too, but i don’t think opposing the mosque is the best way to deal with the problem of islamic terrorism.
all of your examples are from other countries. imho, the reason we don’t have as many truly wacky muslims here is because we’ve done a better job assimilating muslims. i.e., by letting them build their mosques in places like hoover, we help to americanize them.
July 6th, 2007 at 11:38 am
All the examples except the 9/11 attacks, of course. Your point is a good one, though.
I long believed that the roots of the Islamic terrorism were poverty and a lack of education, not the religion itself. More civilized cultures, like American and the UK, wouldn’t be very susceptible because of our education and pervasive wealth (even poor people in America have it pretty good). But since some of these extremists are, or were in some cases, educated people (an architect, doctors) with access to money I’m reevaluating my opinion. I hope that assimilation into American culture can stop extremism, but I have my doubts. Maybe if rubes like me would shut up it might go a little better.