And I and Popper say that freedom and toleranc needs limits else they extinct themselves be becoming the cause of their own destruction. You are crucifying yourself over too much philosophical principal abstractions. when the allied troops launched Operation Overlord, the leaders in the West hardly had any doubts about the enemy - the Nazis - being the correctly identified evil of the earth of that time. When you read reports about the Gulags in the Soviet Union, you hardly can debate the ammount of moral selfjustification that Stalinist system may or may not have as an inherent quality - it was evil: basta and period. And when you work yourself into the scripture of Islam and secondary literature about it, you hardly can miss the totalitarian, inhumane nature of the material, and the political intention that has driven Muhammad. It is the programmatic self-justification of a violent conquerer and murderous supressor, a racist and defender of slavery.

Our senses of humour seem to mismatch quite often, yours and mine, you took literal in my earlier reply what I meant as an ironic reply. Well, do not trust me indeed, but also do not trust islamophile idiots running our societies today and dominating public opinion by nuking any critical thought about Islam by labelling that as racism and "like they did with the Jews" and hatespeach and whatever, and do not trust spokesman of Islam and Imams and such people as well, for by definition they have an interest to not tell you grim truths, but to deceive you by telling you lies, half-truths, and leaving out things and contexts. If you want an objective opinion about catholicism and it's history, you would be stupid if you ask the pope, thinking that he must know it best because he is the pope. Being balanced and objective on the church is not part of the job description for popes. But unfortunately, exactly this absurd behavior is common habit when it comes to Islam, linked with a tremendous ammount of selective attention: all positve claism about Islam get believed blindly, all critical statements, even if proven in Islam'S own basis, get systematically denied, refused, ignored.

I admit, though, that it takes much time and plenty of reading effort to get an overview on Islam that is not biased towards glossing over it. There is a reason why it took me over 30 books over ten years or so. But can you be sure that you/we can afford to take this as an excuse to give it the benefit of doubt anymore - after all the troubles it is causing all over the world, day in, day out, since decades, since centuries, since over one millenia?

Your freedom gets taken away from you right now that we speak, day by day, a tiny bit every day that you lose and will not get back. think twice before accepting this to go on for too long - at some time you will have lost something like a critical ammount, and then you are beyon d the point of no return. Absolute concerns of philosophical nature easily lead tpo nothing but fataolism and endless passivity. While you are hesitating - powerful islamic powers work hard to create irreversible political facts that are not any abstract at all, but are solid and real. And they are to your and mine and our children's disadvantage.

Or in short: philosphically excused passivity can be exaggerated. ;)

The data is clear at PEW. Even under optimistic conditions (calling "little" support equal to NO support), places like Gaza have a 54% support level (obviously higher when you add in the "little" support level).

http://pewresearch.org/assets/publications/1338-2.gif
Note that "not too much" is removed from that confidence stat.

They refuse to release the raw numbers as far as I can tell.

The complete report on US muslims (pretty progressive as the world goes):
http://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf

They have a 42% approval for AQ. (answering "don't know" here in the US is tantamount to "i support AQ."). Of that 42%, 27% was "don't know" or "refuse to answer." That's a multiple of 1.55 times the rest of the approval.

So we take the confidence above, say the Egypt number of 23%, and multiply by 1.55 to get almost 36% confidence.

I wouldn't have to do this if they published the other numbers, but they prefer to lump two opposite opinions to make it look better than it is.

Regardless, the world view is on the order of 25% full bore approval. That's 300,000,000 muslims.

Regardless, my point about historical buildings is the real issue. NYC better well not protect ANY buildings of a similar age, ever again.

I can see this Mosque causeing alot of issues in the future... I know it wont be able to sit there in peace... (I myself am against it.)

I am as well. To me it feels like a nose if being thumbed and it is in poor taste. But hey, that is just me.

:sign_yeah:

Is this what you are talking about Sky Bird?


The Senate should not confirm Elena Kagan, because her views render her the first Supreme Court Justice who actively favors the introduction of Shariah law into national Constitutions and legal systems.


1. PRO-SHARIAH MISSION: With Kagan’s direction, Harvard’s Islamic Legal Studies Program developed a mission statement (here on 9/2008, also 6/2009) dedicated “to promote a deep appreciation of Islamic law as one of the world’s major legal systems.” That mission statement guided her actions and those whom she directed as Dean.
Under Kagan’s direction, her chief staff at the Islamic Legal Studies Program aggressively expanded non-critical studies of Shariah law – fulfilling her mission “to promote a deep appreciation of Islamic law.” In 2003, the year Kagan became Harvard Law School Dean, Islamic Legal Studies Program Founding Director Frank Vogel and Associate Director Peri Bearman founded the Massachusetts-based International Society for Islamic Legal Studies. In 2007, Bearman and Vogel founded the Islamic Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools (inaugural panel audio here).


2. PRO-SHARIAH MONEY: When Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal offered $10 million to New York City’s Rudy Guiliani on October 11, 2001, Guiliani refused to accept it, because the prince insisted that U.S. policies in the middle east were responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attack. Guiliani stated flatly, “There is no moral equivalent for this act.” But – when Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal offered $20 million to the Islamic Legal Studies Program in December 2005 – Kagan accepted it; after all, the Saudi royal family had funded the program since its inception, to establish the moral and legal equivalency between Shariah law and U.S. Constitutional law. As Newt Gingrich has noted, Harvard Law School currently has three chairs endowed by Saudi Arabia, including one dedicated to the study of Islamic sharia law.
In 2001 Guiliani made a decision not to accept Talal’s blood money; In 2005, Kagan made a decision not just to accept it, but to implement Talal’s policies at Harvard.

Read more:
http://bigpeace.com/cbrim/2010/08/04...ans-decisions/

Some quickly searched arguments why we should show a deep appreciation for Sharia law:

<graphic images removed> NeonSamurai

So noble. So humane. So superior. So civilised. The shine and glory of human history.

Show your tolerance! show how reasonably you weigh the pro and con of it! do not be quick in your judgement, maybe you are racist and just do not know it! Take care you do not see it out of the ennobling cultural context! You must be sensible to their needs! Their basic goodness! And blah! And blah! Blablablablah!

So you take a 5% and turn it into 42%:rotfl2:

So you are making up numbers yourself.

So you are making up numbers yet claimed they were numbers given in a survey.

Regardless?????? Come on Tater you were making up numbers and have then gone and given a made up 25% again.
But anyway , on that last thing you made up numbers abouit , did anyone specify what they thought "the right thing" meant?

So leaving aside the made up numbers do you understand anything about preservation of buildings for their cultural, historical or achitectural importance?
As this building didn't fi tinto any of those categories just like many other older downtown buildings wouldn't while many newer ones would be top of the list for preservation.
So what you are doing there is aiming to alter a very specific legal criteria because you do not like a ruling on that issue due to your views on a completely unrelated subject.

Shoot, now I'm regretting all the times I've given answers like that in Republican robocall polls.

Really, since when does a refusal to answer equal "I love Al Qaeda"? Because it sounds like you've done some juggling to get the 42% approval figure - like somehow interpreting the "somewhat unfavorable" 10% as "favorable" and adding that to the 5% who actually do favor Al Qaeda and the 27% who didn't know/refused (referring to the chart on page 5).

They chose a place that would stir up controversy in the middle of a war.

So that is what you were talking about. :salute::yeah:

No doubt that Sharia law is behind the curve when it comes to human rights. I remember reading something about stoning in the Bible years ago, so does that mean that Christians once practiced that form of punishment?

No. It means the Jews practiced stoning. The new testament chronicles the early Christians (maybe). Crusades were more to Christian liking.

And who do you set up as the autocratic arbiter of these limits? Yourself?

And then you ask if I don't trust you? Sorry, sounds like a dictatorship to me. "It's for your own good", and all that.

Abstractions? Either you have freedom or you don't. That's not an abstraction at all.

You cite multiple instances of tyrannical oppression of freedom to justify your claim that freedom is its own enemy? Those folks didn't support freedom, they took it away.

When did I ever do that? I despise racism in all forms. I believe in freedom. Period.

As to the rest, I'm willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, since if you don't you have no freedom at all. If they want to peacefully build a mosque, let 'em. It's not my place to say yea or nay. If they start trouble, then do something about it. Otherwise you don't trust anybody.

With freedom comes responsibility. I think that is the part that many people miss in their arguments. When I say responsibility I mean it as not only for themselves but for their neighbors and for future generations of neighbors.

Stop being so selfish.