Heated Opposition to a Proposed Mosque In the last few months, Muslim groups have encountered unexpectedly intense opposition to their plans for opening mosques in Lower Manhattan, in Brooklyn and most recently in an empty convent on Staten Island. Some opponents have cited traffic and parking concerns. But the objections have focused overwhelmingly on more intangible and volatile issues: fear of terrorism, distrust of Islam and a linkage of the two in opponents’ minds. “Wouldn’t you agree that every terrorist, past and present, has come out of a mosque?” asked one woman who stood up Wednesday night during a civic association meeting on Staten Island to address representatives of a group that wants to convert a Roman Catholic convent into a mosque in the Midland Beach neighborhood. “No,” began Ayman Hammous, president of the Staten Island branch of the group, the Muslim American Society — though the rest of his answer was drowned out by catcalls and boos from among the 400 people who packed the gymnasium of a community center. Yasmin Ammirato, president of the Midland Beach Civic Association, which organized the meeting in an effort to dispel tensions, bellowed into her portable microphone in the first of many efforts to keep control during the subsequent three hours: “Excuse me! This is a civic association meeting! Everybody have a little respect!” Opposition to new mosques has become almost commonplace. A similar uproar erupted during a Lower Manhattan community board meeting on May 25 over plans to build a mosque near ground zero. Protests also have broken out in Brentwood, Tenn.; Sheboygan County, Wis.; and Dayton, Ohio. Recent cases of so-called homegrown terrorism, like the Times Square car bomb episode, have increased anxieties, experts say. But organizations like the Muslim American Society, a Washington-based nonprofit group that helps plant new mosques in communities throughout the country, have adopted a strategy of engagement that they say they hope will eventually build mutual understanding. “We are newcomers, and newcomers in America have always had to prove their loyalty,” said Mahdi Bray, the society’s executive director. “It’s an old story. You have to have thick skin.” That admonition was tested on Wednesday, as irate residents took turns at the microphone, demanding answers from the three Muslim men who had accepted the get-acquainted invitation of the civic association. “I was on the phone this morning with the F.B.I., and all I want to know from you is why MAS is on the terrorist watch list,” said Joan Moriello, using the acronym for the Muslim American Society. Her question produced a loud, angry noise from the audience. Mr. Hammous, a physical therapist who lives on Staten Island, exchanged a puzzled look with two other Muslim men who had joined him on the podium, both officers of the society’s Brooklyn branch, which operates a mosque in Bensonhurst and faces opposition to opening another in Sheepshead Bay. “Your information is incorrect, madam,” he replied. “We are not on any watch list.” The other men, Mohamed Sadeia and Abdel Hafid Djamil, shook their heads in agreement. The State Department maintains a terrorist watch list for foreign organizations, and the Justice Department has identified domestic groups it considers unindicted co-conspirators in various terror-related prosecutions. The American Muslim Society is on neither of those lists. But more than a dozen speakers, including Robert Spencer, a writer whose blog, Jihad Watch, is widely read in conservative foreign policy circles, said that the society and its national director, Mr. Bray, had ties to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. The first two are on the State Department’s list. “Will you denounce Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations?” Mr. Spencer demanded. “Yes or no?” Mr. Hammous said he denounced “any form of terrorism, any act of terror — by individuals, by groups, by governments.” A church may be a church, and a temple a temple, but through the prism of emotion that still grips many New Yorkers almost a decade after 9/11, a mosque can apparently represent a lot of things. The plan to make a mosque out of the convent building on the grounds of St. Margaret Mary church — which would be used only for Friday prayers — is still in its initial stage. The church’s pastor, the Rev. Keith Fennessy, signed an agreement last month to sell the property to the society. The deal must still be approved by the parish board of trustees, which is made up of the pastor, two lay trustees and two officials of the Archdiocese of New York, including Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan. It is also under review by a State Supreme Court justice, as required under New York’s Religious Corporations statute, said Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the archdiocese. The timetable for completing all that, he added, was “not known at this time.” But for the near term, Wednesday night’s meeting indicated that the questions of neighborhood residents may take some time to answer. Among them: “Is Sharia law better than democracy in your view?” “How do you feel about the role of women in society?” “What are your views on Israel?” “Can you point to any single statement in the Koran that you would consider to be incorrect?” The tenor of the inquiry became so fraught that the meeting eventually collapsed in shouting around 11 p.m., prompting the police and security guards to ask everyone to leave. But just 20 minutes earlier, as Bill Finnegan stood at the microphone, came the meeting’s single moment of hushed silence. Mr. Finnegan said he was a Marine lance corporal, home from Afghanistan, where he had worked as a mediator with warring tribes. After the sustained standing ovation that followed his introduction, he turned to the Muslims on the panel: “My question to you is, will you work to form a cohesive bond with the people of this community?” The men said yes. Then he turned to the crowd. “And will you work to form a cohesive bond with these people — your new neighbors?” The crowd erupted in boos. “No!” someone shouted. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/nyregion/11mosque.html

lol@"wakaa, wakaa"

Originally posted by rudy-Diiriye: Peacenow lives in Milan and not Sweden. Them kids were good. They stood up 4 their rights. Most moslem pple these days walk with their head down and take alot of abuse since 9/11. If one lives in democratic society, one should exercise his or her rights and not back down. LOL@"Them kids were good. They stood up 4 their rights" <---- They stood up by burning a building down, how is that possibly good? and@"If one lives in democratic society, one should exercise his or her rights and not back down" <---- Where's my torch? I was denied entry to an upscale club the other night, I'm gonna burn that sh*t down If those kids were indeed Somali, then they're just giving Somalis a bad name, it's as simple as that.

^^ hate FIFA or love it, ya'll will be hooked to the TV screens when it starts... ... let the games begin!!

something's definitely wrong with those kids, a couple of screws loose me thinks...

Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally. All this suggests that we think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as “the asymmetry” and it is not easy to justify. But rather than go into the explanations usually proffered — and why they fail — I want to raise a related problem. How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world? Is the standard of life experienced by most people in developed nations today good enough to make this decision unproblematic, in the absence of specific knowledge that the child will have a severe genetic disease or other problem? If there were to be no future generations, there would be nothing for us to feel to guilty about. Is there anything wrong with this scenario? The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer held that even the best life possible for humans is one in which we strive for ends that, once achieved, bring only fleeting satisfaction. New desires then lead us on to further futile struggle and the cycle repeats itself. Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none. Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone. Here is a thought experiment to test our attitudes to this view. Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about. So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction! Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off. Is a world with people in it better than one without? Put aside what we do to other species — that’s a different issue. Let’s assume that the choice is between a world like ours and one with no sentient beings in it at all. And assume, too — here we have to get fictitious, as philosophers often do — that if we choose to bring about the world with no sentient beings at all, everyone will agree to do that. No one’s rights will be violated — at least, not the rights of any existing people. Can non-existent people have a right to come into existence? I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings? What do you think? Readers are invited to respond to the following questions in the comment section below: If a child is likely to have a life full of pain and suffering is that a reason against bringing the child into existence? If a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life, is that a reason for bringing the child into existence? Is life worth living, for most people in developed nations today? Is a world with people in it better than a world with no sentient beings at all? Would it be wrong for us all to agree not to have children, so that we would be the last generation on Earth? Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His most recent book is “The Life You Can Save.” http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/should-this-be-the-last-generation/

^^ he probably changed his name to Ben Dover and is picking up bars of soap from the communal bathroom floor as we speak

so this is the best time to buy BP stock?

funny story

at the pace that we're fcuking this planet it won't be long before we destroy it, I wonder how many generations will that take? just the other day I read somewhere that a bird species was recently declared extinct somewhere in Africa... very sad indeed

never heard of him

hang on, correct me if I'm wrong but weren't people on this forum, after news of honors she received from the Somali community after her escape, saying she's an attention-seeker and doesn't deserve those honors?

Originally posted by Emperor: Why Somaliland Painter and not Somali painter, surely the people are Somali. He is a skilled artist, well done to him Somalilandi vs Somali ..hmmmmmm.. :confused:

.... and this is news because??

^^ we'll battle it out in an auction then

amazing skill... is there anyway to support this artist by purchasing his work? I particularly like this one:

War with Israel will put a cap on their EU membership bid

Imagine if it were Iran that did this? All hell would break loose and the trigger-happy members of the US Congress would call for an invasion. Israel has shown time and again that it can do whatever it pleases without fear of consequence. It's a frustrating ordeal for the Palestinians in Gaza having democratically elected a government then suffer a siege at the behest of the occupier. What are they to do? They are trapped in an apartheid state and at the mercy of the Israelis, the world having turned their backs on them, their nearest Arab neighbor shut its border, while the Israelis are tightening their grip.

^^ very interesting yaa Nuune, thanks for your advice... however, in contrast to your approach of total lack of criticism, I prefer to criticize what I see as wrong and that fits exactly into the "making my own judgments and conclusions" bit you just stated, so my advice in return would be to not swallow everything, criticize matters which you think are unjust and wrong instead of looking the other way... perhaps we don't see eye-to-eye in certain matters of Islam, and that's just fine.

^^ of course no one's going to kill me ... the truth is out there for those interested... so start searching yaa Nuune, you just might finally be able to be at peace with yourself

The law on apostasy is not completely agreed upon, there is no universal Islamic view that states apostates must be killed, it is simply a false notion. There certainly is violence in the Muslim community resultant out of nothing but sheer ignorance of the religion and the lack of comprehension of its true message of peace. This matter will require a lot time to settle and I think it's up to the educated Muslim generation to bring the true message of Islam to light and discard these violent ways. Extremist Muslims, much like extremists of all religions, cannot provide strong evidence to support their viewpoints. In case of these so-called Muslims, they often quote a weak hadiths to justify their actions for killing a human being, for example: Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 260: Narrated Ikrima: Ali burnt some people and this news reached Ibn 'Abbas, who said, "Had I been in his place I would not have burnt them, as the Prophet said, 'Don't punish (anybody) with Allah's Punishment.' No doubt, I would have killed them, for the Prophet said, 'If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him. '" This hadith has only one chain of transmission, it cannot be verified so it's not enough to validate taking of a human life, similar to some of Abu Hurayra's misogynistic hadiths which were clearly contrary to the Prophet's utmost respect for women. While in the Quran an entire Surah has been dedicated to the theme of non-violence in conversion. Suratul Kafirun: Say, "O disbelievers". I do not worship what you worship. Nor are you worshippers of what I worship. Nor will I be a worshipper of what you worship. Nor will you be worshippers of what I worship. For you is your religion, and for me is my religion." Suratul Kahf:29: And say, "The truth is from your Lord, so whoever wills - let him believe; and whoever wills - let him disbelieve. " Indeed, We have prepared for the wrongdoers a fire whose walls will surround them. A simple fact to comprehend is that apostasy is between the apostate and his/her Creator... period. We have no jurisdiction and must not force people against their will. If you want to do something for fun, check out the Christian laws on apostasy, you'll be surprised at what you'll find

well turks are not really 'white' at least not to the 'white' people lucky little troublemaker!!

"a place for apostates to go" "it's not meant to be offensive" stuff and nonsense... ignore and walk away...

christians can't seem to go beyond the fact that what they believe in today was decided upon in a documented series of ecumenical councils, starting with the first council of nicaea where Arianism, based on the teachings of Arius from Alexandria that rejected mainstream Trinitarian Christianity, was labeled as heresy and through emperor constantine's power this nicene creed became the standard christian belief, if one was to disagree one was deemed a heretic and put to death. anyway, islam believes in the holy spirit (see below) but obviously not in the same misguided view as christians, "But He fashioned him in due proportion, and breathed into him something of His Spirit. And He gave you (the faculties of) hearing and sight and feeling (and understanding): little thanks do ye give! (The Holy Quran, 32:9)" "And Mary the daughter of 'Imran, who guarded her chastity; and We breathed into (her body) of Our Spirit; and she testified to the truth of the words of her Lord and of His Revelations, and was one of the devout (servants). (The Holy Quran, 66:12)" what early chrisitians have done is put Jesus on a pedestal, they were so awed by his powers and his message that they started to worship him because, i think, they were of the view that this person is no ordinary human being and such must be worthy of worship... the ecumenical councils solidified the decisions of the bishops (who basically were sort-of mini-Gods themselves in the sense that they laid down what is to be worshipped and what not) and made it law punishable by death... there basically was no ijtihad until the protestant reformation and yet the protestants as well failed to leave the doctrine which was laid down by those early bishops. having said that there are chruches nowadays such as the "United Church of God" that distance themselves from trinitarian views...

ISTANBUL — If you stand in the center of the Hagia Sophia here and gaze upward at what is one of the world’s tallest domes, you can be staggered by the overlapping layers of ruination and grandeur in this Church of Holy Wisdom. And I don’t just mean the scaling paint, the scaffolding promising overdue restorations, the haunting mosaics disclosed under layers of plaster. SLIDESHOW - 2010 European Capital of Culture For a millennium after its construction in the sixth century, this was the world’s largest cathedral, the most prominent monument to Byzantine Christianity. And it still manages to seem delicate and weighty, introspective and commanding — quite an amazing accomplishment, given the centuries of religious conquest and plunder that have stripped it of nearly all its trappings. The crusaders of the 13th century were so offended by the cathedral’s alien Eastern Christianity that they looted its treasures. After functioning as a Roman Catholic cathedral for a short time, it again became a Byzantine church. Then in 1453, after the conquest by the Turks, Sultan Mehmed II turned the church into a mosque; later rulers erected minarets that still give the exterior a strange ambiguity. Even now, enormous calligraphic roundels in Arabic impose themselves on its cavernous space, affirming that if this is a house of God at all, the commanding spirit is Islam. Finally, in 1934, by order of the founder of the secular Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the mosque was turned into a museum, though the incomplete restoration suggests that after almost 80 years, it is still a work in progress. These were not innocent transformations, and few structures here remain as solid and firm as this one, weighted down by more than 1,500 years of battles, bloodshed and commingling influences. Something similar, of course, always happens in the wake of religious wars; the great mosque of Córdoba, in Spain, for example, was transformed into a Roman Catholic cathedral after the Christian reconquest in the 15th century. But maybe because in Istanbul transitions have been so violent and go back so far (and not just in this building), and maybe, too, because I visited the city recently, just as debates over Turkey’s identity as a secular state were heating up, everything here seems to shimmer with unsteadiness. You can see all the layers at once. Nothing is allowed to become comfortably familiar. And right now, the forces of secularism and Islam are in contention. Walk down this city’s main pedestrian mall on Istiklal Caddesi, and eventually you seem to be strolling through a cosmopolitan European shopping area with upscale stores and restaurants, or negotiating crowds like a theatergoer in Times Square. But pass the mosques around prayer time in the neighborhoods of Fatih or Balat, and secularism seems like an alien fantasy. In some cases, like the museum that was a mosque that was a church, these forces overlap. In other areas — like right now, in Turkish politics, in which debates about the nature of the judiciary and prosecutions of military figures are being led by the governing Islamic-oriented party — they clash. For an outsider, the threads intertwine with almost byzantine complexity. I get this feeling, too, from reading the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist, Orhan Pamuk. In his novel “Snow,” a poet is stranded by a blizzard in a Turkish border village in the 1990s, trying to make sense of what he finds. There have been a spate of suicides of young women, at least some of whom have killed themselves because their secular schools have outlawed Islamic headscarves; meanwhile, an Islamist is running for town mayor. There are Islamic radicals who are fearsome, ruthless, and there are secularists who are also fearsome, ruthless. The conspiracy theories by the secularists match those of the Islamists, and both may be true. Mr. Pamuk keeps things slippery. Though there is something almost too facile in Mr. Pamuk’s establishment of equivalence, this may be close to the way things look, at least here, partly because secularism has a different set of implications in Turkey. Usually, in the West, we think of secular life almost as a negative thing. It comes from the bracketing off of religious belief, or by transcending it altogether. Secularism’s origins are in the Enlightenment; its dominant conviction is that Reason rather than Faith should reign in the public sphere. But that isn’t really the nature of secularism in Turkey. Until the early 20th century, so intimate was the connection between political and religious power that when Ataturk founded the republic in 1923, he imposed secularism almost as a religious doctrine. The concept of a secular republic had to be forcibly developed from the ruins of an Ottoman Empire, whose sultans were Islamic warriors. At the same time, the secularism of the modern republic had to embrace the Islamic history of that empire. You can see the nature of the problem in the museums of Topkapi Palace, where the sultans once lived. In one gallery there are sacred relics once viewed only by the royal family and its guests. The labels tell us we are looking at hairs from Muhammad’s beard, the staff that Moses used to strike a rock in the desert, King David’s sword and a turban worn by Joseph. Secularism has to be more powerful than it is here to contend with such objects (let alone examine them for authenticity). And secularism here was a form of militarism: the veil was prohibited in schools and in the government. Religious services and sermons were controlled. And the military became the arm of secular authority. Democracy was trumped by secularism. In that sense, the most powerful, double-edged tribute to Turkish secularism may not be the commerce of Istiklal, or the nearby art galleries, but the enormous Military Museum, a building whose cabinets are stocked with body armor, scimitars, revolvers and 20th-century weaponry. More than a thousand years of Turkish history are told in the form of military history, and the narrative winds around an imposing building that was the military academy where Ataturk himself studied. The exhibitions begin with an inspirational quotation from Ataturk: for more than 7,000 years, it portentously declares, “have these lands been the Turkish cradle”; now, out of “thunder and lightning and the sun” emerges, triumphant, “the Turk.” The museum is nothing less than an attempt to shape a modern mythology in which Turkish history becomes part of a single coherent tradition culminating in the modern secular state. This effort to shape a tradition accounting for the triumph of the Turk may also be the reason for the way the 1915 massacres of Armenians are treated here. Though the killings predated the republic and were clearly related to religious differences, the interpretation in the Military Museum makes it an issue of state. In the Hall of Armenian Issue With Documents, we read that there had been an era when Armenians had demonstrated the principles of “Tolerance, Affection, and Justice,” the basics of “traditional” Turkish rule. But then, in the 19th century, the Armenians turned hostile. An “Armenian terrorist organization” killed “thousands of innocent Turks.” The gallery is full of photographs meant to provide evidence not of the Turkish massacres of Armenians, but of the Armenian massacres of Turks — signs, supposedly, that the Armenians had abandoned the doctrines of tolerance embodied by the secular state. This sometimes perverse association of militarism and secularism must have also led to a compensatory association of Islam with liberalism, which has been tapped into by the current governing party (and, sentimentally, by some in the West). But this is a precarious association. There was undoubtedly a tradition of tolerance of minorities in Islamic Istanbul under the sultans, though it was exercised only in the presence of varying degrees of deference and demands. But why is it so difficult to recognize this? The Jewish Museum of Turkey here seems deliberately to ignore qualifications; it opened in 2001 under the auspices of a foundation established to celebrate 500 years of tolerance and harmony between Turks and Jews. Many of the Jews in Istanbul (once one of the largest urban Jewish population centers in the world) were exiles from the 1492 expulsion from Spain and Portugal. The displays in this small museum repeatedly stress the welcome Jews found here, and the religious freedom “provided by both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic.” Panels celebrate the triumphs of Turkish Jews in civil society. For more than 500 years, it seems, no shadows are worthy of mention. But this is far too eagerly sweeping and wildly out of sync with the empire’s bloody history and its sultanic power. The very presence of the museum inspires some skepticism on this point. It is housed in an old synagogue, not because of any imposed idea of secularism, but because whatever remains of the Jewish community here has dwindled. In recent years Islamist terror has struck: attacks against other city synagogues have killed dozens and wounded hundreds. And though the museum is near one of Istanbul’s main thoroughfares, it is almost impossible to find. It is in a small alley in a neighborhood dominated by hardware stores and marine equipment. At the end of that alley, there is a little sign that says, without elaboration, “Museum,” with an arrow. The sign is mounted on a closed white booth housing an armed guard. More information about the Hagia Sofia, the Military Museum and the Topkapi Palace is at http://english.istanbul.gov.tr. More information about the Jewish Museum of Turkey is at "">www.muze500.com.[/i] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/arts/design/26museums.html