Roxbury mosque to open today

I welcome the opening of the mosque, as long as the wahabbist jihadist sharia-enforciing radicalism is not inculcated there. I must say i thought it funny from the article "Among the mosque’s defenders, Menino, the mayor, shrugged off the controversy, saying: “Are there some extremists in Islam, no question, but do I have some in my religion? Yes, there are. We have to get beyond that.’’"

But Mistah Maya, no extremists of your religion flew plains into the Twin Towers or the Pentagon.

Gaudete - your poor memory makes you forget about oklahoma bombing. Extremist have their own religion.

Islam believes and affirms Jesus existed.

Best wishes to the opening. Peace to you Gaudete.

This is a wonderful day for Islam in Boston and the Islamic community. I have been to almost all mosques in the greater boston area and I have never come across any Imam spreading hate. I invite any one to go attend friday surmon at any mosque of your chosing and see what they talk about. I salute Boston's political leaders to standy by what is right and just. Bravo!

Well, I welcome the day that an islamic leader (*any* islamic leader) says that Israel has the right to exist. I'll go to the friday sermons then.

I get the feeling that I'm gonna be waiting a long, long time for that...

Just wait until they want to install a loud speaker and yell their prayers from the minerets. Then all of you around Roxbury will be singing a differet tune. If you dont believe me, google it, this controversey is happening right now in England. What is happening there right now is a view into what a decade from now will look like in this country.

It is very simple. When the Saudi's start allowing church's to be built in their country, I will happily endorse mosques opening here. It will be a long wait. This is a nice 'feel good' article, but it fails to give any historical context. Islam is an exclusive religion in it's modern incarnation. You cannot preach or open churches in any predominantly Islamic country. I am not in favor of one sided tolerance. In fact, I think it is dangerous.

(Let's see if my comment is published.)
NAK, looks like you haven't been to the mosque in Baltimore then:

From here: http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/20081108.htm

"AS much of the world celebrated Barack Obama’s victory on Nov 4, I received a summary of a khutba, or address, at a mosque in Baltimore by Kaukab Siddique. As this missive was carried on a website that claims to be America’s biggest Islamic site, I assume many people read it.

I am including a few excerpts here to give readers a flavour of the kind of thinking that informs many educated Muslims living in America:

“Look at the people who are PLANNING, ORGANISING, IMPLEMENTING and FUNDING the campaign of the new ‘saviour’. All of them, at the national level, are Zionist Jews.

“He [Obama] came from a racially oppressed minority but are there any black leaders in KEY positions in his campaign? None! Not one!

“He is preparing for a bigger war than Bush and is openly talking of crushing the Islamic resistance in Afghanistan and is boasting of going into Pakistan and ‘getting’ Osama bin Laden. This is a recipe for disaster. If Bush, with a much larger army and a very aggressive policy could not ‘get’ Osama, what makes this man think he can do it.

“Muslims, including those who are planning to come here and become Americans, should realise that if they do not have an Islamic programme, they will be shattered by what the forces of evil are doing to America.

“There is much good in America but there is also evil. When we came here, we could not have known that homosexuality will be legitimised and adultery and fornication will be glorified. The price we have to pay for coming here is that we lose our children to a way of life which defies all decency and morality, be it Muslim or Christian. Zionism is strangling the soul of this nation.…

“Making overtures to the campaigns of the Democrats and the Republicans is spiritual suicide. When the mass culture is controlled from coast to coast by forces hostile to Islam and all decency, the conservative forms of religiosity cannot save us, our families or our children.…

“We cannot survive as Muslims by becoming part of the system which is strangling the soul of this nation. We must organise, mobilise and act OUTSIDE the power structure. Stay away from the oppressors who rule here and reach out to the people.…”

Advising Muslims to remain outside the society they have chosen to migrate to is a recipe for marginalisation and seclusion. Indeed, what Mr Siddique is saying to his congregation is the message many other Muslim leaders in the West are conveying to those foolish enough to follow them.

"But Mistah Maya, no extremists of your religion flew plains into the Twin Towers or the Pentagon."
Posted by gaudete June 26, 09 08:22 AM

But they have blown up health care clinics and assassinated health care providers, they blew up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, they've committed torture. Oh, and their little criminal adventure in Iraq that has cost tens or hundreds of thousands of lives.

The men who blew up the Oklahoma City building were NOT religious extremists, so don't throw everyone you don't like together.
Furthermore, whatever you think about Bush/Cheyny, they also are not religious extremists.

Bin Laden? Yes - a religious extremist.
Hamas? Yes
Hezbollah? Yes
Iranian Clerics? Yes
etc, etc.

Now, add up all the religious extremists and tell me the largest group?

And yet they don't behead criminals OnTheLeft. A few extremists have bombed abortion clinics (not health care providers, a woman in danger of dying due to fetal issues is brought to a hospital, no health care or check ups are done at clinics) and an insane man blew up the Murrah Building because he was upset at the Federal government's high taxation, ban on weapons, and impedement of states rights. (Mostly things associated with the left, by the way) As for the war in Iraq, call it criminal or illegal, but it was in response to the extremism.

Bush certainly is a religious extremist - or do you think that his references to our being in a "crusade" are typical mainstream stuff? Besides murdering as many as a million civilians, Bush approved the widespread use of torture. He may not have used beheadings, but he murdered them anyway. And the blood-stained history of Christianity is full of beheadings, burnings at the stake, etc. etc. As for McVeigh, he apparently had contacts with the Christian Identity movement and was furious about what happened at Waco. And the war in Iraq is hardly a response to anyone's extremism, with the possible exception of Bush's Cheney's and the rest of the criminal neocons. By the way, Peter, in your list of religious extremists you left out Operation Rescue, Christian Identity, the Army of God, the Concerned Christians, the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian, the Lambs of Christ, and, of course, the Ku Klux Klan. And that's just here in the US.

OnTheLeft, I fail to grasp your logic - please feel free to explain further.

Just because there are some Christian lunatic extremists who go around shooting abortion doctors, why does it make it OK for Islamic extremists to exist? Is this some kind of 'tu quoque' going on here? Shouldn't the logical position be to protest *all* religious extremists, whether they be Christian or Muslim? One type of extremism doesn't excuse the other. Your weird logic of 'an enemy of my enemy is my friend' is not just plain stupid, but dangerous.

Or are you saying that no Islamic religious extremists exist? Here's a simple test for you: write down on paper what your views are on secularism, human rights, gay rights, women's rights and freedom of speech, and then compare that to what Islamic ideology says. Feel free to *discuss* these issues with the Muslims who go to the mosque, and then come back and let us know. What leftist/Marxists (who are supposed to be atheists) find admirable in Islamic ideology/religion, or where the overlap is, is beyond me. The only thing I can think of is some hatred of capitalism and American hegemony, or capitulating because of fear based on Rushdie-fatwa/Danish cartoons, but it's illogical to me how an alliance with Islamic ideology will take care of American hegemony. Loony left is so apt.

Bostondude,
I think if you follow what OnTheLeft posts he does protest all religious extremism and has not limited himself to Christian or Islamic. I believe he was pointing out a little hypocrisy involved in "But Mistah Maya, no extremists of your religion flew plains [planes] into the Twin Towers or the Pentagon."

Of course, I will opt to not get involved in this debate and won't mention that the terrorists I grew up listening to stories of were the IRA... I will also forget to mention that the IRA got a lot of their funding in places like Boston...

Kai, thanks for the clarification.

I'm not Irish, and neither am I Jewish or Christian, or for that matter, white. I don't care for, and neither do I carry all this past historical baggage that you mention.

So the fact that the IRA got its funding from Boston in the past, or that there were IRA terrorists in the past, or that white liberals labor under huge guilt related to slavery, treatment of Native-Americans or the Vietnam war/foreign policy which fogs their view of reality - all that is irrelevant to me and not in any way connected to the issue of Islamic terrorism/extremism or the deeply intolerant Islamic ideology, which is a global phenomenon. So, if some want to use 'tu quoque' and mention IRA, slavery, foreign policy etc., that's their issue, not mine. I don't see why I should act white and turn a blind eye to the bigotry of Islam just because the IRA got its funding from Boston in the past. Two wrongs do not make a right. I opposed Bush's war in Iraq, but that doesn't make me support Osama-bin-Laden or Islamic terrorists - those two are mutually exclusive issues, and mixing them up is dangerous and foolish.

OnTheLeft, I understand your point in general. I certainly do not discount the many errors and issues you highlight. However, I also know that there is a world of difference between the generally tolerant and open societies we enjoy in the West and the generally repressive and closed societies in most of the Islamic world. Again, try to open a western type institution in any Islamic country that makes any attempt to criticize the prevailing religious or institutional views of the government. Don't worry, you will not have to try too long before you are detained. Although I deplore the tactics we have recently deployed in the US 'war on terror', we are openly debating and changing those policies today.

This comment is to Steve fotos,
You said "You cannot preach or open churches in any predominantly Islamic country" if you google how many churches exist in Islamic country you will be little surprised church exist in Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the list is very long.
Islam always proved to people that it accepts people of all religion and races so be open mined and don't be mislead of what you hear.
Thanks