BCT Editorial – 8/13/10

What is it with lefties that they always seem to believe Americans need to demonstrate how tolerant we are?  This is the Times second mention of the mosque issue in a week.

The editorial says, “Should we judge Islam by the acts of a small minority?  No.  Yet many Americans don’t grasp that, as can be seen in the opposition to building a mosque and Islamic center a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Center.  This conflation of terrorism to Islam worsens the situation because it creates an us-vs.-them environment that empowers extremists.”  (On a side note, you have to get a kick out of lefties complaining about “creat[ing] an us-vs.-them environment” when that’s their fundamental tactic.)  For whatever reason, the Times and its fellow travelers don’t seem to get the proposed mosque has nothing to do with religion; it’s about building a shrine to the 9/11 murderers.  You can find my detailed comments on this topic in my critique of “No reason to stop mosque construction.”  The Times doesn’t need to take my word for it; it can check with the Muslim Canadian Congress.  On its website, the MCC says, “Many Muslims suspect that the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation, to thumb our noses at the ‘infidel.’  We believe the proposal has been made in bad faith and, in Islamic parlance, is creating ‘fitna,’ meaning ‘mischief-making,’ an act clearly forbidden in the Qur’an.”

The Times’ attempt to draw some analogy with John Brown assumes ignorance of history on our part.  At the time there was lots of anti-slavery vs. pro-slavery violence in Kansas.  While John Brown’s murdering and other violent actions can’t and shouldn’t be defended, they did not take place out of the blue as the editorial would like us to believe.

The editorial says, “Even though most of the North condemned the Harpers Ferry incident, Brown had enough prominent defenders, if not of his actions, of what he was trying to accomplish, to give credence to the secessionist arguments of Southern fire eaters.”  Read that sentence carefully.  It says you can’t support a person’s goals (in this case abolition of slavery) and condemn the person’s methods.  The modern day analogy would be abortion.  Other than a few nuts, people who oppose abortion don’t support violence against abortion providers.

There’s one thing the editorial failed to remind us about.  A jury of John Brown’s fellow Christians (the “evangelical Protestants” the editorial mentioned?) convicted him of treason and he hanged.

The editorial concludes with “Present-day Americans must not make the same mistake regarding Islam.  Don’t judge the many by the few who use Allah as Brown did God to justify their evil.”  Beyond opposition to the location of the subject mosque, where is all the anti-Muslim activity the Times would like us to believe exists?