Rant on.<\/p>\n
On Friday of last week, President Obama hosted a dinner at the White House attended by diplomats from Muslim countries and members of the U.S. Muslim community.\u00a0 At the dinner, he stated, “As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country.\u00a0 That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”\u00a0 This was in support of a proposed Muslim community center two blocks from Ground Zero.<\/p>\n
Pretty quick, conservatives weighed in on what he said, loudly voicing their opposition to this.\u00a0 Quoting the MSNBC article about Obama’s remarks:<\/p>\n
Mark Williams, a spokesman for the conservative Tea Party political movement, said the center would be used for “terrorists to worship their monkey god.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That’s just great.\u00a0 What a great way for him to say, “Anybody who doesn’t think and worship the way I do is evil and should be insulted.”\u00a0 Mr. Williams, I would like to remind you that this country was founded on the very principle of Freedom Of Religion.\u00a0 The Pilgrims, who we pay homage to every November, came to this land from England because they didn’t want to worship the way the rest of England did.\u00a0 They were persecuted there, so they came here.\u00a0 Now, however, you want to persecute people of a different religious persuasion, going so far as to make fun of their version of God.<\/p>\n
The problem people are having here is one of perception.\u00a0 It’s a problem which has existed for quite some time, but it was brought into sharp focus almost nine years ago, when Al’Qaeda terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center.\u00a0 These terrorists were Muslims, and so people equated, more than ever, that faith with terrorism.\u00a0 People have carefully ignored the majority of the Islamic faith who strongly object<\/em> to terrorists and terrorist activities.\u00a0 Mr. Williams and his ilk, many of them prominent folks in high political positions, want to see all members of this faith, terrorist or not, watched closely, probably jailed, and in general persecuted.<\/p>\n
Freedom of Religion, however, is in the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution:<\/p>\n
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The American Tea Party Mark Williams represents, however, is in part about strong support for the U.S. Constitution.\u00a0 Yet here they are, arguing against support for what is arguably the most important of all the amendments to it.<\/p>\n
Obama clarified his statements a day later, saying, “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there.\u00a0 I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.”\u00a0 Why do people need this sort of explanation?\u00a0 Seriously, he wasn’t saying a mosque should or should not be put there to begin with, he was saying religious freedom was important.\u00a0 No more and no less.\u00a0 But people like Mark Williams, who equate the one and a half billion<\/em> worshippers of Islam to terrorists worthy of derision, saw it as something else.<\/p>\n
Let me be clear about this.\u00a0 I don’t support any<\/em> form of terrorism.\u00a0 I am not an Islamic worshipper.\u00a0 I do, however, strongly support freedom of religion and more importantly respect for everyone’s religious beliefs, no matter what they are.\u00a0 If the Muslims want to have a Mosque close to Ground Zero, so be it.\u00a0 If the Christians want a church next door, that’s great.\u00a0 Perhaps a Unitarian Universalist-sponsored community center should be in between to provide balance.<\/p>\n
Rant off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rant on. On Friday of last week, President Obama hosted a dinner at the White House attended by diplomats from Muslim countries and members of the U.S. Muslim community.\u00a0 At the dinner, he stated, “As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}