Are their limits to religious freedom?
In a way, this question lies at the heart of Ground Zero Mosque controversy.
The left, who support the mosque, claim that this is an issue of religious freedom. It's a Constitutional issue, they insist, like true fundamentalists.
This is an odd position for those who are always telling us that the Constitution is “a living breathing document.”
I guess it only lives and breathes when it's, um, convenient.
The counter-argument is simple: we do not oppose the Ground Zero Mosque on legal grounds. We feel that it's inappropriate and insensitive to build a monument of Islamist triumph where 3,000 American were slaughtered in the name of Islam by Muslims.
If anyone buys the argument that the Ground Zero Mosque is designed to promote healing and interfaith dialogue, well, they are morons.
I mean, look at all the healing that's going on.
The next argument the left uses is that Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy are moderate Muslims and we should be encouraging moderate Islam.
Only problem is that any Muslim who proposes a Ground Zero Mosque is no moderate. He is, by definition, an Islamist, cynically using America's freedoms to subvert that very freedom.
Rauf himself is an Islamist apologist who freely practices taquiya, dissembling to advance Islam, on gullible westerners. In a 60 Minutes interview that aired on September 30, 2001, He blamed the 9/11 attacks on the US saying 9/11 was caused by US policies, not Islamist terrorism. "I wouldn't say that the United States deserved what happened, but United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened... in fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.”
In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Rauf expanded on this theme, saying it was Christians who started mass attacks on civilians.
"The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets."
I'm sure the millions who died during the Islamic conquests of India, Southern Europe, Spain, Asia and the Middle East would disagree with Rauf. After all, Mohammed's first act of brigandage as recounted in the hadiths was to massacre and enslave the Jews of Medina who had taken him in as a refugee after he fled Mecca...simply because he was angry that they refused to follow him and he wanted their wealth.
Rauf has other questionable beliefs as well. He has endorsed Britain's setting up of mandatory sharia courts. In March 2009, Rauf said that “Islamic law and American democratic principles have many things in common.” Anyone familiar with both our Constitution and the dictates of the Qu'ran and sharia law understands easily that the differences are so profound as to make them incompatible.
So: let's imagine that a well known Muslim terrorist, say Osama Bin Laden, proposed a Mosque at Ground Zero.
I assume that sane Americans—this, naturally, excludes Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd—would oppose such a mosque.
So, clearly there are limits to religious freedom, just as there are limits to the freedom of speech.
You can't yell fire in a crowded movie theater.
And you should not build a Mosque at Ground Zero.
