In every other place in the world when the Moslems erect a Victory Mosque they do it on the exact site of the important and central cultural symbols they are trying to erase, replace and show they conquered for Islam.
Whether the Bari mosque in India, the Fethiye Camii in Turkey, the Ummayad Mosque in Damascus, the Qutub Minar in Afghanistan, the Asqa Mosque in the Hague (formerly a Synagogue), and of course all in Israel: the Al Asqa Mosque/ al-Haram ash-Sharif, the Mosque in Tomb of the Patriarchs, the mosque attached to the Rambam shul (Hurva), to name just a few well known examples (and there are plenty more examples from all around the world).
In fact, this practice started with Muhammad himself when he conquered Mecca in the year 630 and converted the Ka’aba into a central Islamic site.
So New Yorkers and all Americans should be grateful that the latest Victory Mosque is not going to be on top of the Freedom Tower (should that ever be built) in the exact center of Ground Zero where the Twin Towers once stood, but only within the Ground Zero perimeter, and closer to the edge.
OK, obviously when the Freedom Tower will be built, I can guarantee there will be a demand to install a significant mosque in the Freedom Tower too, but in the meantime, New Yorkers and all Americans can sleep well at night knowing that this Victory Mosque, while within the Ground Zero perimeter, and clearly in everyone’s face, will not be in the exact center as they probably would have preferred.
It means Islam's victory over America isn't complete... yet.
Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד
16 comments:
Christians did the same thing - many churches are built on the sites of previous temples.
As you say, it is triumphalism.
from all the comments I read nobody seems to find anything to say about the fact that the mosque will be built by an outfit naming itself Cordoba.
Not only is Cordoba in Andalusia which is supposed to become part of a re-surrected caliphate anyway (why not Baghdad which was an equally cosmopolitan center of learning once upon a time), also as I have found out only about 4 years ago its history is not all glory and kumbaya - there were apparently short periods of it but nothing like the 700 or so consecutive years we are always made to believe.
I hope my biography of Maimonides when it finally arrives will tell me more whether he left the city because the climate maybe became a bit unbecoming? What about others? there must be stories galore?
My take is that Rome/the Pope played along or acquiesced to the romance of our-muslim-heritage-story which centers around Cordoba because for them it was more important to marginalise any suggestion that Byzantium may have bequeathed anything good to "its" area of influence.
Silke
A mosque at ground zero is the equivalent of a hitler memorial in Auschiwitz.
I can't believe the misinformation and disinformation that has been spread regarding the proposed Cordoba Center. This blog post continues that. For one thing, the site isn't within the World Trade Center perimeter at all; it is two blocks away in a run down commercial area. There was a mosque in the neighborhood before the World Trade Center was built (along with churches and synagogues); by the logic here the triumphalism would be in the other direction!
Worst of all, the group trying to build the community center represents the opposite of Bin Ladin, as Jeffrey Goldberg writes:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/08/if-he-could-bin-laden-would-bomb-the-cordoba-initiative/60833/
This is no "victory mosque" just a religious group trying to build an appropriate building in an area with the appropriate zoning.
Charlie
let's hope you are right
all that you say has been said about our Duisburg mosque also, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like very much the pictures of the (peaceful) hate-demos originating from there after the flotilla.
but of course America is different and will easily do things much better like never produce home-grown terrorists for example than any European can ever dream off
Silke
Close to the Brooklyn Bridge too. I hear it's for sale.
Statements by Feisal Abdul Rauf, the founder of the Cordoba initiative:
"I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened."
"Because we [the USA] have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA."
America must give an "American Culpa" speech to appease the "endless supply of young angry Muslim rebels prepared to die for their cause"
Is Hamas a terrorist organization? "The issue of terrorism is a very complex question".
The guy building the mosque thinks America is to blame for terror but doesn't think Islamic terrorists are terrorists because terrorism is a very complex question when it involves angry Muslims, and besides, America is to blame for terrorism, and he wants to promote Islam throughout America because American law has 5 out of the 7 components for Sharia law - Dawa.
Victory Mosque? No.
Trojan Mosque.
DittoKing
you are getting it all wrong ;-)
the Imam is Muslim and they see things differently. It's another culture and we must honour that.
I don't know when it started, but the Brits have been mea-culping again and again - has their slavery mea culpa brought a similar confession from any Arab whosoever? I don't remember one.
Germans beat their chest whenever asked and confess that it is us who have failed at integration
Did it help? - no!
and I have known enough decent Turkish people in my time to state that by sucking up to their loudmouths we are deserting them. If we tell them, those are the "moderates" and we want them to be "moderate" too, why should they believe that the majority likes them the way they want to be.
It is NOT by fooling ourselves into believing that the mosque is going to be a revival of Cordoba as it was in the intermittent times i.e. admirable for its time, it is standing by our muslim neighbours who want nothing of all that.
Silke
I can't believe there are still foolish bloggers like you that don't realize that now is the time to start kissing Islam's collective ass. Charlie's got the right attitude. If you don't start acting like a proper dimmi now, when sharia is implemented in the US you'll be at the front of the line to be beheaded, right after Pamela Geller.
Am surprised that no one's put into that Wikipedia link (about non-Muslim places of worship being turned into mosques) the Temple Mount and Makhpela. ??? What, those weren't Jewish prayer sites for millenia before the advent of Islam? There are only two 'synagogues' listed in the article.
It would be interesting to see how much of this protest is actually coming from citizens of New York City. Having lived here for over 20 years, within the plethora of culture, races, nationalities and beliefs crammed onto an island, yet (for the most part) working and living together - it isn't even an issue. Bloomberg, as our mayor, spoke for our city.
Anything else just reeks of politics and culture war. Before you start rolling out propaganda under coined buzz words ("Ground Zero Mosque" is now "Victory Mosque")...buy a ticket here, go down to the site and see for yourself the effort that is being made, by all faiths, to heal a deep wound, both emotionally and physically, in our home.
Until then, mind your own business.
As you point out - there goes our Bill Of Rights, freedom and religion and democratic ideals when we lose the war against the type of hypocritical intolerance you're waving around.
Cite all the polls you want...come here and tell me what you see and find.
As for the Tea Party / any political movement - more power to them for bringing up the concerns of voters - when it comes to issues of taxation / big government / corruption. Shame on any of them however when it becomes a platform for misinformed hatred.
The country is slowly being ripped apart by partisanship and fear mongering - you seem more than happy to just wave a flag rather than fixing the widening holes in the ship.
God bless us all
Islam in Two Americas
By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: August 15, 2010
There’s an America where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run. An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims.
But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.
These two understandings of America, one constitutional and one cultural, have been in tension throughout our history. And they’re in tension again this summer, in the controversy over the Islamic mosque and cultural center scheduled to go up two blocks from ground zero.
...
Too often, American Muslim institutions have turned out to be entangled with ideas and groups that most Americans rightly consider beyond the pale. Too often, American Muslim leaders strike ambiguous notes when asked to disassociate themselves completely from illiberal causes.
By global standards, Rauf may be the model of a “moderate Muslim.” But global standards and American standards are different. For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, they’ll need leaders who don’t describe America as “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 (as Rauf did shortly after the 2001 attacks), or duck questions about whether groups like Hamas count as terrorist organizations (as Rauf did in a radio interview in June). And they’ll need leaders whose antennas are sensitive enough to recognize that the quest for inter-religious dialogue is ill served by throwing up a high-profile mosque two blocks from the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam.
They’ll need leaders, in other words, who understand that while the ideals of the first America protect the e pluribus, it’s the demands the second America makes of new arrivals that help create the unum.
Islam in Two Americas
By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: August 15, 2010
There’s an America where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run. An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims.
But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.
These two understandings of America, one constitutional and one cultural, have been in tension throughout our history. And they’re in tension again this summer, in the controversy over the Islamic mosque and cultural center scheduled to go up two blocks from ground zero.
...
Islam in Two Americas (cont.)
Too often, American Muslim institutions have turned out to be entangled with ideas and groups that most Americans rightly consider beyond the pale. Too often, American Muslim leaders strike ambiguous notes when asked to disassociate themselves completely from illiberal causes.
By global standards, Rauf may be the model of a “moderate Muslim.” But global standards and American standards are different. For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, they’ll need leaders who don’t describe America as “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 (as Rauf did shortly after the 2001 attacks), or duck questions about whether groups like Hamas count as terrorist organizations (as Rauf did in a radio interview in June). And they’ll need leaders whose antennas are sensitive enough to recognize that the quest for inter-religious dialogue is ill served by throwing up a high-profile mosque two blocks from the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam.
They’ll need leaders, in other words, who understand that while the ideals of the first America protect the e pluribus, it’s the demands the second America makes of new arrivals that help create the unum.
The Imam from the religion of peace has issued a fatwah against all who oppose the mosque at ground zero.
Enough said.
You want to call it a "victory mosque"? Whatever, go ahead, use a phrase to imply that a worldwide culture is unified in their desire to destroy. I mean, after all, words obviously have absolute, indelible meanings. Look at the infallible Bible; obviously there were never mistaken meanings in its translation...
The only people calling it a "victory mosque" are those against it, but perhaps it is an apt description.
I hope the victory mosque stands, as it should, as long as there is a community that needs it.
After all, it IS a victory mosque. We are still America, and if we have achieved any victory it is that we remain a nation where people are free to practice and express their culture and beliefs.
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