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Nine Years Ago; Would Anyone Have Believed This Could Be An Issue?
08/19/10 21:55, by OGRE / (Jeff), Categories: Welcome, News, Background, In real life, On the web, History, Politics, Strange_News A new survey reports a sharp increase in the number of Americans who, incorrectly, say President Obama is a Muslim. The increase has occurred over the last couple of years, and the poll was taken before the president stepped into the fray of the Ground Zero mosque controversy.
The findings are part of the "Religion, Politics and the President" poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life early this month. It also explores Americans' attitudes toward religion's impact on society and voting preferences in the upcoming 2010 congressional races.
According to the survey, nearly one in five Americans (18 percent) say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11 percent in 2009. Obama is a Christian, but the number of people say Christian when asked his religion has gone down sharply, from 51 percent in 2008 to 34 percent today. And 43 percent say they don't know what religion the president follows.
That last part is the most shocking to me. 43% say they don't know what religion Obama follows! That is a really big deal! People aren't sure what religion The President of The United States follows!? Why, he must have done something to cast some doubt amongst people.
In foreign policy as well, Mr. Obama would bring to the White House an important experience that most other candidates lack: he has actually lived abroad. He spent four years as a child in Indonesia and attended schools in the Indonesian language, which he still speaks.
“I was a little Jakarta street kid,” he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics — and more likely to be aware of their nationalism — if he once studied the Koran with them.
Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
Moreover, Mr. Obama’s own grandfather in Kenya was a Muslim. Mr. Obama never met his grandfather and says he isn’t sure if his grandfather’s two wives were simultaneous or consecutive, or even if he was Sunni or Shiite. (O.K., maybe Mr. Obama should just give up on Alabama.)
Our biggest mistake since World War II has been a lack of sensitivity to other people’s nationalism, from Vietnam to Iraq. Perhaps as a result of his background, Mr. Obama has been unusually sensitive to such issues and to the need to project respect rather than arrogance. He has consistently shown great instincts.
Oh that's right, Obama tried to be on both sides in the Ground Zero mosque debate. Yeah that's the only thing making people wonder...
Here is an earlier post I did related to the whole question of Obama's religious beliefs.
Maureen Dowd thinks that Bush did a better job of explaining The War On Terror/Radical Islam when compared to Barack Obama? I thought that Obama was supposed to be one of the most brilliant presidents. Now he's flip flopping on the subject of the Ground Zero mosque --within a two day period!
Maybe, for Barack Obama, it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.
When the president skittered back from his grandiose declaration at an iftar celebration at the White House Friday that Muslims enjoy freedom of religion in America and have the right to build a mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan, he offered a Clintonesque parsing.
“I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” he said the morning after he commented on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. “I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.”
Let me be perfectly clear, Mr. Perfectly Unclear President: You cannot take such a stand on a matter of first principle and then take it back the next morning when, lo and behold, Harry Reid goes craven and the Republicans attack. What is so frightening about Fox News?
The war against the terrorists is not a war against Islam. In fact, you can’t have an effective war against the terrorists if it is a war on Islam.
George W. Bush understood this. And it is odd to see Barack Obama less clear about this matter than his predecessor. It’s time for W. to weigh in.
This — along with immigration reform and AIDS in Africa — was one of his points of light. As the man who twice went to war in the Muslim world, he has something of an obligation to add his anti-Islamophobia to this mosque madness. W. needs to get his bullhorn back out.
She then goes on to say how "hyper-articulate" both Obama and Clinton are. This, of course, right after she mentioned how Obama is incapable of conveying his thoughts. Oh well...
I wonder why Obama has such a hard time expressing himself when it comes to his personal beliefs. He seems to have no problem telling the American people what they should believe.
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6 comments
As you know I do not often watch the news or keep up with politics. I read one article about this because my husband had seen a TV spot and brought it up. I think the article I read was from The Washington Post (if that matters).Here is what I gathered from that article: the Muslims intend to build on a site that is about 2 blocks from ground zero, it is private property, Obama made a comment about the rights of the the Muslim people to build there as they have freedom of religion too.
Now, the article went on to say that many people read into that comment saying that Obama feels no qualms about the proximity of the mosque to ground zero.
When did Obama say he felt it was a tactful thing to do? From what I read, he simply stated that they have a right to build there according to the law. I have to agree with that. As bad as it sounds, we can't deny one religion that right or else all other religions would be subject. America did not force Christianity upon its people, you see. Religion remains free.
Hollie:The interesting thing is that nobody on either side of the issue has said that the government should intervene with the building of the mosque. The Muslims have a constitutional right to build wherever they want. Everyone knows that. The president's response to the issue was completely pointless. There was never any question of rights! Obama also tried to back pedal on what he said the following day, as soon as he found out that it was unpopular. The only conflict when it comes to the constitutionality of the issue lies within the Obama administration.
With that said, there is far more at play here than what I listed in the article. For example, the imam who's behind the plan to build the mosque refuses to consider terror organizations --terror organizations...
Take a peek at this New York Times article.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/imam_terror_error_efmizkHuBUaVnfuQcrcabL
The imam behind plans to build a controversial Ground Zero mosque yesterday refused to describe Hamas as a terrorist organization.
According to the State Department's assessment, "Hamas terrorists, especially those in the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, have conducted many attacks, including large-scale suicide bombings, against Israeli civilian and military targets."
Asked if he agreed with the State Department's assessment, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf told WABC radio, "Look, I'm not a politician.
"The issue of terrorism is a very complex question," he told interviewer Aaron Klein.
"There was an attempt in the '90s to have the UN define what terrorism is and say who was a terrorist. There was no ability to get agreement on that."
Asked again for his opinion on Hamas, an exasperated Rauf wouldn't budge.
"I am a peace builder. I will not allow anybody to put me in a position where I am seen by any party in the world as an adversary or as an enemy," Rauf said, insisting that he wants to see peace in Israel between Jews and Arabs.
Rauf also would not answer a question about Egypt's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
"I have nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. My father was never a member of the Muslim Brotherhood," he said, disputing a rumor.
Rauf's position has come under a microscope as he leads an effort to build a $100 million mosque and community center at 45 Park Place, near Ground Zero.
Meanwhile, a pastor on Staten Island who signed off on a controversial plan to sell a former convent to the Muslim American Society has changed his mind.
St. Margaret Mary R.C. Church Pastor Keith Fennessy sent a letter to Archbishop Timothy Dolan saying that, "after careful reflection," he has withdrawn his support for the convent sale.
But New York Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling told the Web site SI Live, "The contract was signed, and [Fennessy's withdrawal of support] does not cancel that."
This imam is going to "possibly" (more than likely) take funding from terror organizations to build a mosque in New York. I don't think this should be taken lightly.
Should the government intervene, what do you think? I don't think the Muslims will be able to build it because there isn't a union employee within 1,000 miles who would be caught dead working on the site!
Did you read this?
This is an earlier post I did related to the whole question of Obama's religious beliefs.
It might help you to understand.
Imam is a new word for me. Well, I can see the imam's point in that it would be unfair to sterotype an entire people group based on a portion of said group's purported actions. Once the mosque is built, -- I'm sure this could be done sans American union workers! -- and at some point down the road, there will be a change in leadership. Hopefully, its occupants will remain peaceful, but if they do not? The government, under current law, could only intervene AFTER some law is broken.Here is my biggest concern (quote taken from http://www.nccs.net/articles/ril71.html):
•Departure From The Basic Values To Which The Founders Subscribed
Although the word "rights" remains an important part of the political and social vocabulary, the perception that individual rights are of divine origin has been largely excluded from public discourse. What was once the very cornerstone of the philosophy of freedom expounded by the Declaration of Independence-that a Creator endowed human beings with rights and the liberty to enjoy those rights - has virtually disappeared from the textbooks of the nation and from the public statements of many leaders. Indeed, rights are now thought of as man-made and emanating from government. As such, the concept of rights not only has been secularized but trivialized as well. After all, what is the authority for such rights? Any self-proclaimed entitlement to special treatment, privilege, status, or benefit conferred by government can, by inference, be withdrawn. Moreover, the modem notion of man-made rights does not embody the natural law injunction that the exercise of a right embodies a corresponding obligation to observe the rights of others, nor does it recognize the "laws of nature and of Nature's God" described by the Declaration of Independence.
In this connection, the rights specified in the Bill of Rights frequently have been interpreted in an arbitrary manner without regard to the tradition or values which they were designed to protect and preserve. For instance, the First Amendment's provision that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" has been 'interpreted' in a manner not in keeping with Jefferson's idea that the "liberty to worship our Creator" had been "proved by our experience to be its [government's] best support." In this and other areas, rights are upheld quite apart from the Framers' concerns for civil or ordered liberty, or for the ends of government, especially those set forth in the Preamble. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's scathing critique of Western moral values, and those which have gained currency in the United States in particular, drives this point home:
"Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror."
Professor Lino Graglia, a harsh critic of the Supreme Court and its interpretation of the Bill of Rights, makes much the same point in another context: "The Court has created for criminal defendants rights that do not exist under any other system of law-for example, the possibility of almost endless appeals with all costs paid by the state and which have made the prosecution and conviction of criminals so complex and difficult as to make the attempt frequently seem not worthwhile...By undermining effective enforcement of the criminal law...the Court has diminished our liberty to walk the streets of our cities with a degree of security".
Hollie,You must have read NONE of the articles I referenced.
Another great explanation of rights I've heard heard from Walter E. Williams: The way our Constitution's framers used the term, a right is something that exists simultaneously among people and imposes no obligation on another.
As I said before the mosque is NOT a rights issue. It is a common sense issue.
If I came to you and said that I wanted to paint your house for you as a gesture of good faith, what would you say? Yes I suppose. Now what if I told you that I was going to paint it florescent yellow. You would probably say, "I think I'll pass on that, but thanks for the offer." That is what is going on with this mosque. The imam pushing to have the building erected claims that he is trying to bridge a divide, and allow for a greater understanding of Islam. The only problem is that the people of New York DON'T want the mosque right next to the site of Ground Zero. What divide is he going to bridge by angering the public?
Another point is that the mosque will be in a financial district of the city. It just doesn't make since.
Here's a quick history lesson. Whenever Muslim conquerors took control of a city, country or whatever, they would turn the largest church into a mosque. It served as a message to all who lived there that Islam was the only true religion.
If you really want to know what it's about, just pay attention to what the imam references. The Cordoba Initiative is what they are calling the building project. The Cordoba mosque in Spain used to be a church. When Muslims conquered Cordoba they converted the church into a mosque.
But remember it's just a peaceful little mosque right... Good Ole' peaceful Islam... ha ha ha!
Obama stated that Muslims have the right to freedom of religion and to build on private land with private funds "in accordance with local laws and customs."Then, remember several months ago, when he condemned the Jews for building homes on JEWISH land with PRIVATE funds that were in accordance with local laws and customs?
Seems Obama is only interested in facts, laws, and reality when it suits his ever increasing pro-Muslim, anti-Christian, anti-jewish social agenda.
But just on the pretend "legal grounds" that he feigns being concerned about: how about the reality you noted that the funds for the mosque is terrorist-connected? How about the reality of Islamic-customs (not American customs, as he stated) of building "victory mosques" on land they perceived as having "conquered?" It's no accident that there is a mosque standing on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where the Jewish Temple was thought to have stood. It's no accident that the Muslims built it there immediately after conquering Jerusalem long ago. And there are scores and scores of examples of such "victory mosques" that stand today that were built immediately after Muslims conquered a people and on the exact location where the conquered people's main cultural and religious institutuions once stood.
Just on these grounds alone, there could be enough legal fodder to trump any "religious freedoms" of these Muslims to build. On national security interests alone and the fact that Congress has declared war on terrorism, the building of this mosque in the context of funding and motivation of a "victory mosque" can be taken as an ACT OF WAR. And Acts of War transcend religious freedoms just like "religious expression" does not protect anyone from performing human sacrific and ritualistic murder.
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