Howard Dean talks sense on Ground Zero mosque with Keith Olberman
Posted on Friday, August 20, 2010 at 12:38 AM
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(part two below)
Howard Dean was a breath of fresh air last night when he spoke at length on the "Ground Zero mosque" controversy. He believes Muslims have every right to build the mosque, but should reconsider making a freedom of religion cause out of Ground Zero.
(Self-serving talk show hosts should not co-opt Martin Luther King's speech at the Lincoln Memorial, in a similar can/should problem. The nuns dismantled their memorial on the edge of Auschwitz in a can/should solution that was not afterwards framed as a defeat for free expression.)
Disgusting anti-Muslim rhetoric has been flying on the airwaves, making everyone crazy in ways that seem unAmerican, if only it were so.
Dean defends location-critics unfairly stigmatized and lumped-in with the bigots.
Almost every objection Keith Olbermann makes is against the extreme bigots, which is important, but that leaves the thoughtful location-critics out of the conversation. The center is supposed to be about dialogue, but so far, one side refuses to talk to the Governor, and is adamant to make a legalistic and argumentative stance when there are more pragmatic solutions.
47 comments
BrendanPKeane | Aug 21, 2010, 03:17 AM EDT
DennisQ: re WTC7, I don't believe any 9/11 conspiracy theory that is not published in a scientific journal and debated by respected scientists.
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BrendanPKeane | Aug 21, 2010, 03:15 AM EDT
Bull***t. This is not a right of privacy argument. This is a zoning issue. The Constitution does not provide that we have to allow the Saudis to fund a Wahhabi sympathetic mosque on top of a building destroyed by the airplane on 9/11. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saudi/analyses/wahhabism.html
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DennisQ | Aug 21, 2010, 02:50 AM EDT
Judges routinely instruct juries that if they catch a witness in a lie, they don't have to weigh the truth or falsity of anything else that witness has to say. A single lie destroys the credibility of that witness. The Latin saying is Falsus in unum, falsus in omnia - False in one, False in everything.
I don't believe that Building Seven fell down. That's my cue to disbelieve everything else we've heard about September 11th. I don't know who did it, and I don't know why. Bush told us on the afternoon of September 11th that Al Qaeda did it, because they were jealous of our freedom. I don't believe a word of it.
As to your repeated claims about the role of Wahhabism on September 11th, I don't have either knowledge or belief to dispute anything you say. However, I am skeptical that Wahhabis are likely to finance a Sufi center, because the two groups don't get along.
As to your claim that Park 51 should refuse Saudi money because it's dirty, all we know is that they're not saying. And I don't blame them. Frankly, it's their business what they do with their money.
I don't believe that Building Seven fell down. That's my cue to disbelieve everything else we've heard about September 11th. I don't know who did it, and I don't know why. Bush told us on the afternoon of September 11th that Al Qaeda did it, because they were jealous of our freedom. I don't believe a word of it.
As to your repeated claims about the role of Wahhabism on September 11th, I don't have either knowledge or belief to dispute anything you say. However, I am skeptical that Wahhabis are likely to finance a Sufi center, because the two groups don't get along.
As to your claim that Park 51 should refuse Saudi money because it's dirty, all we know is that they're not saying. And I don't blame them. Frankly, it's their business what they do with their money.
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BrendanPKeane | Aug 21, 2010, 02:31 AM EDT
DennisQ: No one was killed in Building 7. You should study the relationship between Big Oil money in Saudi Arabia and extremist Wahhabism. This $100 million project sounds like Big Oil. I don't see why Muslims would want to be associated with Saudi funding. So far organizers have explicitly refused to ban Saudi oil money (or demands attached to donations).
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BrendanPKeane | Aug 21, 2010, 02:25 AM EDT
It's said to say but the type of Islam practiced by many of the Big Oil barrons is not moderate Islam. Normal Muslims suffer from the influence of these Wahhabi hobbyists with the money that can make a $100 million project possible. Building a mosque on a building destroyed on 9/11 would be read by Saudi Arabian Wahhabis as a triumph memorial. It's best to keep Saudi oil money away from Ground Zero. If that's anti-Muslim, there is something wrong with your definition of Muslim. Saudi oil and Wahhabis are not Muslims, but it will require their money to build this project on that site. Ignoring that problem is unsatisfying to those who have studied the Saudi funding sources behind 9/11 hijackers.
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DennisQ | Aug 21, 2010, 02:22 AM EDT
Uh, no, I don't know what role Wahhabism had in the events of September 11th. I don't know very much about September 11th at all. However, I do know that Building Seven didn't collapse because somebody put a hex on it. And if it collapsed because of a fire, it's an event that's so anomalous that it's almost miraculous.
The difference between me and people who readily accept wildly improbably official theories is that I'm modest enough to recognize that something that could not have happened did not happen. In that respect, I acknowledge my debt to George Boole, whose statue stands on the campus of University College Cork.
The difference between me and people who readily accept wildly improbably official theories is that I'm modest enough to recognize that something that could not have happened did not happen. In that respect, I acknowledge my debt to George Boole, whose statue stands on the campus of University College Cork.
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BrendanPKeane | Aug 21, 2010, 02:08 AM EDT
Sufis don't have a hundred million. Normal Muslims don't have that kind of money. Of course they'd want a beautiful center. But it's not their money. Wahhabists do have that money. It will be Muslim hopes, but Wahhabist money. The Saudis are going to build a mosque on a building destroyed on 9/11. That's what you want people to get cool with. It's outrageous the more I think about the refusal of center organizers to divulge financial backers.
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BrendanPKeane | Aug 21, 2010, 01:46 AM EDT
Everyday Muslims have nothing to do with extremists. It just so happens that the rich Muslims that pay for lots of new mosques in the Middle East lean Wahhabist. Wahhabists would love to build a victory memorial on some piece of land the jihadists destroyed on 9/11. There should be strict guarantees about what the $100 million backers believe this mosque will symbolize to them. Building it off Ground Zero would prevent any symbolic messing about.
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BrendanPKeane | Aug 21, 2010, 01:40 AM EDT
DennisQ: Was Wahhabism a contributing factor to 9/11? Would Wahhabists view a mosque on that spot as a victory mosque? In the event the Catholic Church developed a sect that bombed something, then that religion has passed into the realm of sleeper cell. It would be racism if Wahhabists were a race, you argumentless dolt. They are violent ideologues that use religion to escape your scrutiny. To raise $100 million, Persian Gulf oil money may want to have their Wahhabist views reflected somehow in this as of now koombayyah pie in the sky vision of a center that has no financial backers we can know about it. Muslims are enamored by this wonderful prospect of getting a wonderful complex, and I understand that, but it's not a community coming forward with money. The money is a separate thing. The money is going to have to come from Wahhabist oil barrons.
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BrendanPKeane | Aug 21, 2010, 01:27 AM EDT
Give up on Imam Rauf. He's just the salesman. They sold Tara Circle the same way. It's all about the money. The spirit of that mosque will be determined by the people willing to fork up $100 million. In the Middle East, the Persian oil money interests like Wahhabism.
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DennisQ | Aug 21, 2010, 01:25 AM EDT
Brendan, can you imagine the uproar if some politician demanded to review the books of the Catholic Church? Why is it OK to demand a look at the books of the Park 51 group? It's because Muslims have a collective guilt for September 11th, isn't it? Well, nuts to your theory of collective guilt. That's not religious tolerance, it's racism.
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DennisQ | Aug 21, 2010, 01:17 AM EDT
Brendan, you've now crossed over to a serious discussion of abridging freedom of religion. I don't even know where you got this Wahhabism stuff from; it sounds like you got it from some Muslim-bashing website. We don't have the right to vet religions - what a repulsive idea!
Tell us where you got this Wahhabism talk from, Brendan. Why do you believe that the Wahhabis and the Sufis are suddenly friends, after centuries of animosity? I take Imam Rauf at his word about his intentions - he deplored the attack on September 11th, but he won't allow anti-Muslim prejudice to prevent him from building a community center.
By the way, 100 million dollars is a fair piece of change, but it's not immense. You're just throwing things at the wall.
Tell us where you got this Wahhabism talk from, Brendan. Why do you believe that the Wahhabis and the Sufis are suddenly friends, after centuries of animosity? I take Imam Rauf at his word about his intentions - he deplored the attack on September 11th, but he won't allow anti-Muslim prejudice to prevent him from building a community center.
By the way, 100 million dollars is a fair piece of change, but it's not immense. You're just throwing things at the wall.
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BrendanPKeane | Aug 21, 2010, 01:06 AM EDT
DennisQ: What are you talking about? The organizers have refused to define its funding sources. The organizers have refused to talk to the Governor of New York. How is that dialogue? Get some facts and spare me the PC bullshit. People just want answers. And the Burlington was a five story building, three floors knocked out when the fuselage from the plane crashed through the roof. I'm not parsing that, you ghoul.
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BrendanPKeane | Aug 21, 2010, 01:02 AM EDT
DennisQ: Are the same people who financed the Wahhabi mosques going to contribute to this center? The terrorists that hijacked the airplanes were financed by Saudi Arabian sources that are not vetted well. This is a 100 million dollar project for a "community" that is undefined and not located in that neighborhood. Dean is calling for dialogue so that these financing concerns, for example, prevent Wahhabi-ists from contributing to a mosque that will be built on a building destroyed on 9/11--it's potentially symbolic in that way and until the financing issue is understood publicly there is right to be concerned about the pet projects of Saudi Arabian oil barrons. Many believe these unpunished financiers escaped scutiny. Where is this 100 million coming from? Why must the Muslim community be defined by immense money that does not have to tell us who is providing that money?
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