Burnt church in PakistanThe latest news from across the pond is that a planned supermosque for 70,000 will be blocked by the British government. Apparently,Labour Minister Ruth Kelly received a bit of an epiphany after attempting to meet withBritishMuslim leaders to try and come up with some guidelines for tolerance when she met withMuslim leaders last year.
The London Markaz was planned to be the largest religious structure in Britain, at a cost of £300 million and completed in time for the 2012 Olympics. The money was mostly coming from the Saudis, of course.
Just to provide some context,at the same time the mosque was planned, the Kingsway International Christian Center, Europe's biggest evangelical church with a capacity of 12,000, is being pulled down to make way for the 2012 Olypic Games...
The group behind the plans for the mosque is Tablighi Jamaat,a conservative and ultra-orthodox group with close links with the Wahhabi Islam practised in Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of British Muslims are sent by Tablighi Jamaat to madrassas in Pakistan every year, and two of the July 7 London suicide bombers attended one of its mosques. A leaked FBI memo alleged that al-Qaeda was using the organisation "as cover... to network with other extremists" and Tablighi Jamaat was called "an ante-chamber for fundamentalism" by the French Surete.
Here's a fair proposition..the British Government ( and ours,of course) should link any mosques or religious buildings funded by the Saudis and other Muslim nations to the Saudis ending the prosecution of Christians and Jews in their countries and allowing the building of churches and synogogues with complete freedom of tolerance to their worshippers.
Tolerance is as tolerance does...and if it's not forthcoming from Muslim nations, they have no claim to tolerance here in the west.
3 comments:
FF, one of the great things about the West is that we have freedom of religion here. It makes no sense to apply the same standards they use in Saudi Arabia to our own country for the simple reason that we are not Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Pakistan.
I believe that freedom of religon is one of the things that attract people here in the first place, of all religons. Keep in mind that some of the first settlers were oprressed Protestants. Does that mean they should have oppressed Catholics as they were oppressed by Catholics in Europe?
When some Muslims go overboard protesting cartoons, or what the pope said, I am as irritated as anyone else, but that doesn't mean that I would like to see mosques being knocked down.
Hi Nazar, nice to have you back on board..your insights have been missed.
A brief response to your comment,if I may.
No one is talking about `knocking mosques down.' What we are really discussing here is cultural imperialism funded by a foreign country, with the idea of promoting jihad and establishing Islamic rule, with all the `respect' for other faiths that implies.
I merely make the admittedly sarcastic point that Western nations should link permits to the Saudis for building mosques with freedom of religion and tolerance for Christians in Muslim countries.
We did something very similar with the Russians and human rights linked to trade during the Cold War, as I'm sure you know.
The Saudis and other Sunni autocracies have spent billions taking over the religious infrastrcture of Islam in Europe, Canada and the Americas. Through their front, the Islamic Society of Narth America, They have built hardline wahabi mosques and madrassahs, appoint the imams and teachers and supply the texts that promote jihad and teach hatred and dominance...one reason for the increased radicalization of younger Muslims and the rise in home grown jihadis. as studies in America, Britain and Canada have shown.
That sort of nonsense is NOT covered by the Bill of Rights, as Tom Metzger and the Aryan Brotherhood could tell you,and there are numerous Constitutional precedents that put the rest of the Constitution and its protections ahead of freedom of expression and the preaching of hatred and violence towards others.
Even religious beliefs have come out on the wrong end of Supreme Court decisions when US law is involved.
Unfortunately for them, people like the Aryan Brotherhood and the KKK lacked the financial clout of the Saudis, and the Arabs' ability to bribe politicians.
The Constitution was never intended as a suicide pact.
nb The US was settled by people of all faiths (not just Protestants) as Kings and the `official' religion in England changed.
Maryland, for instance,was predominantly settled by Catholics, while New York and Rhode Island had diverse populations (the oldest synagogue in the US is in RI).
The idea of the government making no law regarding the free practice of religion came from both Catholics and Protestants disliking the idea of an `official' State church, the exprience of the Thirty Years' War and from the need to knit diverse colonies together into a nation.
ff
Hurrah!
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