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"Those who say that not everyone who opposes the Cordoba community center is a racist may be right, but everyone who opposes it is supporting a practice that has in the American past been deeply connected to racism, which is the dictation to minorities of where they may live and worship within American cities. Just as today's protesters said that they don't challenge the right of Muslims to build mosques and worship, 'just not here,' so the 'protective councils' in early twentieth century Los Angeles said exactly the same thing to Jews about their synagogues and Japanese Buddhists about their temples. Moreover, the fact is that the building of mosques is being widely opposed and interfered with throughout the country and not just in lower Manhattan. This generalized bigotry is clearly racist, and looks exactly like the prejudice implemented against other minorities in the age of 'separate but equal.'" -- University of Michigan history professor Juan R. I. Cole, "What would Martin Luther King Say? Mosques and the New Jim Crow in America", 2010-08-23
From flaviarassen
This is an instance where I find the knee-jerk reaction of the left to be just the same as the right: "Oppose the mosque & you're a bigot" is the exact equal to "Oppose the war & you're a traitor." Just as there were loyal Americans who had questions about the war, so are there decent Americans who don't want the mosque built just there:
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/7568/a-mosque-at-ground-zero-moderate-muslims-say-no
Re: From flaviarassen
Re: From flaviarassen
(Well, given that you're citing Jeff Jacoby as an authority, there is something wrong with your self-to-reality interface.)
Besides which, it's not a mosque, for fuck's sake -- it's basically a Y (as in the former YMCA), and it's not at the former WTC site (it's two blocks away, which, in Manhattan distances, might well be on another planet).
Besides which again, the group in question that wants to develop Park 51 owns the site and since when are Americans into telling the lawful owners of property what they may or may not do with that property, excepting compliance to the same rules and regulations as everyone else has to follow, huh?
Re: From flaviarassen