Across Nation, Mosque Projects Meet Opposition,The Times can’t help but treat the anti-mosque protesters as ignorant know-nothings, but the people are clearly better informed about the Religion of Peace than the queen of elite media.By Laurie Goodstein
New York Times, August 7, 2010
While a high-profile battle rages over a mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, heated confrontations have also broken out in communities across the country where mosques are proposed for far less hallowed locations.
In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting.
In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby.
In Sheboygan, Wis., a few Christian ministers led a noisy fight against a Muslim group that sought permission to open a mosque in a former health food store bought by a Muslim doctor.
At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their backyards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise – the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue. But now the gloves are off.
In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law. […]
Recently, a small group of activists became alarmed about the mosque. Diana Serafin, a grandmother who lost her job in tech support this year, said she reached out to others she knew from attending Tea Party events and anti-immigration rallies. She said they read books by critics of Islam, including former Muslims like Walid Shoebat, Wafa Sultan and Manoucher Bakh. She also attended a meeting of the local chapter of ACT! for America, a Florida-based group that says its purpose is to defend Western civilization against Islam.
Consider: what has been in the news about Muslims over the last little while that might concern Americans?
Offhand, I can think of several terrorist behaviors: the Christmas underwear bomber (Abdulmutallab), the bomb plot against New York transit (Najibullah Zazi), the Times Square bomber (Faisal Shahzad), dozens of Minnesota Somalis returning home to pursue jihad and the Fort Hood mass murders (Nidal Hasan).
So it’s not like well informed citizens are worried about nothing. Fox News recently presented an excellent hour-long piece about honor killing in America, focused on the murder of Sara and Amina Said by their father for dating non-Muslim boys. (Watch Part One.) Many citizens are beginning to realize that sharia-infested Muslim diversity is not a good fit with American values of freedom and individual rights, as noted by Geert Wilders when he remarked, ”Islam is not compatible with our western way of life.”
Is it unreasonable to think that mosques might be centers of jihad?
In 2005, Freedom House published its report Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques, which found Arabic documents declaring that Muslim immigrants must ”behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines” in the land of the infidels. The materials furthermore condemn democracy as unIslamic and state women should be veiled and subjugated. JihadWatch noted ”in 1999, the Naqshbandi Sufi Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani testified before a State Department open forum that eighty percent of American mosques had extremist leadership.”
On August 9, German police closed the Hamburg mosque that had been used as a meeting place for the 9/11 plotters because authorities believed it was again being used for terrorist purposes. (A Google search for mosque terror gets 2.4 million hits.)
Finally, there is no legislation in Washington calling for an end to Muslim immigration, so citizens are wisely targeting mosques to put out the unwelcome mat.
