Oldgringo wrote:Topbuilder wrote:Original report:
"a witness who asked to remain anonymous told Radio-Canada that two masked individuals entered the mosque.
"It seemed to me that they had a Québécois accent. They started to fire, and as they shot, they yelled, 'allahu akbar!' The bullets hit people that were praying. People who were praying lost their lives. A bullet passed right over my head."
It now appears as though the witness misremembered how many shooters there were. Did he also mis-hear "allah is greater!" in Arabic being shouted repeatedly? We will probably never know. The combined names of the original suspects would lead most people to believe "islamophobia" would not have been the motive. More likely just another moslem on moslem killing.
Hmmm? My understanding of the definition of "Islamophobia" is that it is the dislike/hatred of muslims. From what I've seen and read, some muslims don't like some other muslims - a whole lot; ergo, Islamophobia is not restricted to non-muslims. Just askin'.....
The problem isn't islamophobia, although it exists, and wherever it does, it is as ugly as any other kind of prejudicial hatred. The REAL problem is that western leftist apologists, and their fellow travellers among
radicalized Muslims, label as "islamophobic" anyone who is concerned about
radical Islamist jihad.......which IS a real thing, and which MUST be dealt with. These apologists and
radicalized Muslims use the word "Islamophobic" the same way they drop the race-card or the homophobia-card if you object to unlawful behavior of ANY kind. It is both morally bankrupt, and it rises to the intellectual level of three-year-old's tantrum. It
really needs a swift spanking. Their goal isn't
justice, it is the destabilization of the society, to create a vacuum
Although, as a Bible-believing Christian, I have serious
theological issues with Islam, and I do
not believe we worship the same God, I
DO believe that the 1st Amendment protection of Freedom of Religion protects the right of the Muslim to practice his religion freely in this country - but
no more and
no less than my right to practice mine. The leftist and the
radicalized Muslim calls what I just said "Islamophobic", under the absurd notion that my insistence of the primacy of the Constitution in matters of human rights necessarily places limits on what the radicalized Muslim can do or not do.........exactly as it would to me if I were a "radicalized" Christian. They cannot be reasoned with, as no
reason undergirds the thought or actions of radicalism of any stripe. They are
immune to the stabilizing influences of reason. But, whatever particular fantasy about favored status that the Islamo
fascist might believe (and I use that term very deliberately and separately from the larger class of decent Muslims), the Muslim and the Christian each share the
same right to their religion in the public square as the other. But where that right ENDS, for BOTH the Muslim and the Christian, is when that behavior violates the law, or the rights of others - including atheists. So for instance, calling out a Muslim man for an act of "honor killing" is NOT Islamophobia, it is enforcing the law
equally for
everybody. Why? Because THIS is America, not some backwater country from which a Muslim immigrant fled to find a better life. It is NOT a country where women do not have rights equal to men.
My claim that Christ is King above all other kings, his name above all other names, is my First Amendment right to proclaim. The Muslim's right to proclaim that Allah is god is equally protected. My right to
compel the Muslim to behave according to the tenets of MY faith ends at (1) the edge of my property line, and (2)
maybe the property line of my church. The Muslim's right to
compel me to behave according to the standards of Islam begin and end at the property boundaries of
his home, and (maybe)
his mosque. And NEITHER of us has the unfettered right to any behavior that violates local, state, or federal laws,
ANYwhere, including inside our homes or places of worship.
PERIOD. A Muslim man who
beats his wife because he says that Mohammed proclaims it the duty of the husband to discipline his wife, is in violation of any number of laws that govern ALL of our behaviors, and he must stand for the consequences of it. A Muslim man who disciplines his wife in other ways may or
may not be in good standing with local, state, and federal law, so long as (A) his disciplinary actions do not rise to the level of abuse by
secular legal definition, and (B) so long as his wife is willing to submit to the discipline
of her own free will, and without fear of repercussion if she refuses. If the discipline rises to the level of profound incompatibility, then she is as free to seek divorce as he is, and there isn't a daggum thing that Sharia can say about it, because THIS is America. And if his behavior rises to the level of abusive according to the law of the land, then she has the same recourse to relief under the secular law that ANY other wife in ANY other family, of ANY other faith enjoys under the law.
There is only ONE way that Sharia law can be implemented in the United States, and that is at the extreme local level, within a local community of Muslim believers, and
entirely voluntarily. Anything else is simply forbidden by the Constitution. Assume a town in America populated entirely by Muslims, who have chosen voluntarily to enter into Sharia law to govern their behaviors, and assume I move in there as a non-Muslim, not one single iota of that Sharia law has any force of law over ME, because I am not subject to their religious laws, but only the laws of the land under the Constitution. If this town further establishes Sharia formally into local laws and ordinances, I can ONLY be compelled to be obedient to those laws so long as they do not violate my rights under the Constitution, and they do not contradict state or federal preeminence. This idea of Muslim enclaves where Sharia reigns
above secular law is pure hogwash - JUST as it would be with Catholic or Mormon enclaves. NO religious law takes precedence over secular law, or THE NATION CEASES TO FUNCTION.
There is an analogy here in other communities - specifically some of the stranger fringe sects of the LDS where polygamy is practiced. It's not just that the polygamy is unlawful according to local, state, and federal laws, but also that in some of the darker communities, the "faith" is used to justify rape, kidnapping, physical and psychological abuse, child abuse, child
sexual abuse, etc. This is unlawful behavior for the polygamous LDS, the Catholic, the Hindu, the Jew, AND the Muslim - REGARDLESS of what their religious texts tell them.
Among a whole host of serious issues we face as a society today, we have a serious problem in this nation.......well.......we have a LOT of serious problems in this nation, all having to do with faithlessness to the Constitution.....but I am referring in this case to the unique problem of integrating Muslims fully into American life. We have strayed
so far from the Constitution that, as a nation, we no longer know how to justly broker the outcome of this conflict. This is just ONE of the consequences of the left's deliberate efforts to dumb down knowledge of the Constitution, and both the limits it places of gov't, and the
human rights it protects. It is NOT Islamophobic to state that I do not believe in or want any part of Islamic law to have any control over MY life. It is NOT Islamophobic to declare that whatever Muslims want to do among themselves is fine by me, so long as they do it with a due regard for secular law and a respect for the Constitutional rights of ALL Americans. It is NOT Islamophobic to declare that any Muslim who violates the law should be subject to the consequences. It is NOT anymore Islamophobic to declare those things than it would be to declare them to ALSO be true for Christians, or Jews, or Zoroastrians, or Bahai, or Hindus, or Scientologists, or
atheists. It is as true for Beiruty (a friend of mine) as a Muslim, as it is for me, as a Christian.
The Constitution is the highest law of the land, higher than what ANY of our multitude of religious texts say. My Christian Bible may declare certain principles which
I view to be higher than that, but those principles have no
secular force of law. For any Muslim to successfully integrate into American society, he or she must recognize the same thing for themselves and the Quran. That is the common denominator that makes it possible for Muslims, Christians, or Jews, or Zoroastrians, or Bahai, or Hindus, or Scientologists, or atheists to all live together
peacefully.
Our society does not work unless new arrivals to it are willing to be integrated into it. Anyone thinking that he or she can come here, choose to remain apart from everyone else, and then expect everyone else to cater to his or her special whims and needs is not only being unreasonable, he or she is being deluded, and they fully do NOT understand what America is.
That was a long-winded way of saying that sometimes, Islamophobia does exists. And sometimes Islamofascism exists. There are plenty of good decent Muslims, and there are plenty of intolerant rednecks. There are also plenty of obnoxious Muslims, and there are plenty of good decent Americans who are beyond frustrated at having extended the hand of freedom to immigrants in need, only to find that some small number of those immigrants used that generosity to stage terrorist attacks against those good decent Americans........INCLUDING against those good decent Americans who are Muslims.
And there are plenty of people of ALL religions, Muslims included who are concerned about a specific threat ......from ISIS..... and a secondary threat from Al Qaeda. Those two groups HAVE declared war on decency and democracy and liberty everywhere, including in both Muslim and non-Muslim nations. Whether or not good and decent Muslims want to admit it, the FACT is that ISIS and AQ
claim that what they do they do in the name of Islam. That might be theologically unsound and not consistent with Muslim doctrine as understood by all the quiet and peace-loving Muslims, but that is what THEY the terrorists say and THEY the terrorists believe. THEY have declared that they will cynically use the immigration process to try and sneak terrorists into the US and other western democracies. That places upon those nations an extra burden of due diligence to make sure that the immigrants they do admit have no ties to terrorism........and THAT takes time. There is no other way around it. You can either have decreased security, along with an heightened risk terrorism, or you can have security and impose some kind of stricter vetting process than what's in place. You can't have both, and saying that you can is simply infantile. Perhaps that places an unfair burden upon law-abiding Muslims.....or does it? If they are already here, and already law-abiding, then they have nothing to fear. It DOES place a greater burden on a Muslim immigrant from one of the seven nations that Trump has targeted, but until they
arrive here, they don't get a say in the matter.
Foreigners don't get to decide US
domestic policy, no matter how hard that makes
their lives. After all, they are seeking to come here, not the other way around. So it has to be on our terms.
Those terms may well be subject to refinement and improvement over time, but you have to start
somewhere, and it is not Islamophobic to place the interests of Americans, including Muslim Americans, first, ahead of the interests of people who want to come here to escape what is happening in their own countries.
The biggest lesson for foreign countries is this: increase the level of liberty access to prosperity enjoyed by your citizens, and THEY will give you the kind of nation people want to move to. But become a cretinous dictator who rules with an iron fist and an insistence on making your minority religion citizens into second class subjects, and not only will your own citizens hand you chaos in return, but your toxic manner of looking at the world will be exported to better nations, turning
their social order into chaos. Bashar Assad, I'm talking to
YOU. Give your citizens the right and the ability to defend themselves from both wicked criminals and despotic gov't, and they won't have to move anywhere. They'll create their own version of an orderly and just society right where they are, and everyone prospers, not just a few warlords.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT
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