Gingrich: Shut Up

Newt Gingrich says both Koran-burning and the building of Cordoba House in Lower Manhattan "should be stopped."

Why does anyone take this clown seriously?

Op-ed: Persecuting a Conciliator

If a YMCA or a YMHA were planned for 51 Park Place in Lower Manhattan, two blocks from the Twin Towers’ former site, who would have noticed?

Instead, the equivalent of a Muslim Y (without the implied male exclusivity) is to be built there. What’s the big deal?

Read the rest of the op-ed here.

Who's Got More Blood on Their Hands?

Islamophobes, Shut the Hell Up

Updated 8/30/10

An American Muslim has been knifed. A Rev. Nutcase has declared Sept. 11 Burn A Koran Day. A Muslim center construction site in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, is struck by an arsonist. Will the bigots and cynical right wingers who inspire this crap just go away? Get the hell away and let the rest of us live in peace.

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The Last Word on the "Mosque" Controversy?

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Back on Antiwar Radio

My latest appearance on Scott Horton's great Antiwar Radio is here. We talked about several issues, including Islam, the Cordoba Initiative, and conservatives.

Fareed Zakaria, the ADL, and the Cordoba House

Fareed Zakaria of CNN and Newsweek has returned the First Amendment Freedoms Prize and $10,000 he received from the ADL in 2005 because of the organization's opposition to the Islamic Cordoba House planned for a site two blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood.

Zakaria said:

If there is going to be a reformist movement in Islam, it is going to emerge from places like the proposed institute. We should be encouraging groups like the one behind this project, not demonizing them. Were this mosque being built in a foreign city, chances are that the U.S. government would be funding it.

Zakaria rejected the ADL's position as bigotry, saying, "Does [ADL National Director Abraham] Foxman believe that bigotry is OK if people think they're victims? Does the anguish of Palestinians, then, entitle them to be anti-Semitic?"

Hats off to Zakaria for his principled action.

What Can You Possibly Say?

Leonard Peikoff wants the U.S. government to bomb the Cordoba House, an Islamic cultural center planned for lower Manhattan -- two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center -- once it is built. (Howard Roark, call your office.)

But it's private property, isn't it? "Property rights are limited and they are contextual," he says. ".... In any situation where metaphysical survival is at stake all property rights are out."

If you haven't heard, our metaphysical survival has been declared at stake by Dr. Peikoff. It looks more to me as though the metaphysical survival of Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Somalians, and Iranians is what's at stake these days. American society doesn't appear to be in any great danger (except from U.S. occupation forces).

Peikoff is clearly calling for terrorism -- what else would you call it? (Oh, sure he'd evacuate the center before bombing it.) Have any Objectivists denounced him? I think a few have.

Shame on the ADL

The Anti-Defamation League has come out against the building of an Islamic center a couple of blocks from Ground Zero because it will hurt the feelings of the survivors of the victims of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Why would it hurt their feelings? The perpetrators of the attacks are said to represent an extreme distortion of true Islam. If so, why this meddling with mainstream Muslims?

The ADL says it exists to fight bigotry. Well, not this time. I finally agree with Paul Krugman: The ADL's position is "Shameful — and stupid."

BTW, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich also oppose the building of the center. Figures.