In their statement the ADL assured everyone that they “…regard freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the American democracy, and that freedom must include the right of all Americans – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other faiths – to build community centers and houses of worship.” Shortly after this statement, however, they suggest that that “cornerstone of democracy” shouldn’t apply when it upsets some people:

The controversy which has emerged regarding the building of an Islamic Center at this location is counterproductive to the healing process. Therefore, under these unique circumstances, we believe the City of New York would be better served if an alternative location could be found.

But then to show that they are not really caving into religious bigotry the ADL proceeds by invoking an all too familiar stereotype:

In recommending that a different location be found for the Islamic Center, we are mindful that some legitimate questions have been raised about who is providing the funding to build it, and what connections, if any, its leaders might have with groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values.

The suggestion that the Cordoba House, the name of the community center project, is being funded by terrorists is without basis and serves to try to justify bigotry and fear. It is perhaps the most offensive element in the ADL’s missive because it attempts to justify their irrational bigotry by plucking the strings of terrorism and the hateful notion that all Muslims are somehow connected to global terrorists.

If there was a single group which would be keenly aware of religious hatred and what may result from it, one would think it would be the Anti-Defamation League. The ebbs and flows of religious bigotry in this country have a long and sorted history: from the brutalization of the Quakers to anti-Catholic violence — which my own family encountered with the Klan — to the persecution of the Mormons and to the rampant anti-Semitism of the 20th century our nation has often seen minority groups of faith persecuted and made scapegoats for the ill of their times. Time, however, has a tendency to move religious hatred around. The transitive property of bigotry almost ensures that the evils ascribed to one faith will be assigned to another in the future. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that bigots spoke of an international cabal of Jews trying to destroy western civilization and working out of local synagogues. The ADL should be keenly aware and very sensitive to this history, and yet they seem to happy to join in with the bigots and haters who claim Islam is a devil religion, or a cult, (pejoratives used in the past to describe Judaism), or with those who simply wish to fan religious enmity to gain power. By lying down with angry bigots and hucksters of hatred the Anti-Defamation League has sullied itself for years to come. For to take any future claims from the ADL of religious intolerance would be akin to giving weight to charges of racism from David Duke. To quote the great bard, “Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues We write in water”.

Islam, NYC Mosque, ADL, Cordoba House

The Church’s position on abortion and life is well known, and it is pointless to try to debate faith with reason. Still, for an organization which seems to show so much compassion and forgiveness for ordained child molesters to deny Sister Margaret the sacraments and Christian fellowship seems beyond cruel. It has taken a difficult decision by the mother of four and Sister Margaret and applied a simple manichean  template to it. The Church has abandoned any any  notion of the individual conscience and has replaced it with dogmatic execution. In do so the Church has also abandoned any claim it may have on compassion, forgiveness, or humanity.

I actually find it hard to believe that the Miss America pageant continues to this day. It seems so antiquated and patriarchal that I had actually thought they’d discontinued it. Yet, I find that a new Miss. America was crowned last night. Rima Fakih, Miss. Michigan, is the first Muslim woman to win the prestigious title. My immediate reaction  was an apathetic “Ok” until I read the deep thoughts of ever insane Debbie Schlussel:

The Hezbollah-supporting Shi’ite Muslim, Miss Michigan Rima Fakih whose bid for the pageant was financed by an Islamic terrorist and immigration fraud perpetrator–won the Miss USA contest.

Yes, my friends, the evil terrorists plan to terrorize us into submission by taking over our beauty pageants, for why else would they be sponsoring terrorist pageant operatives? First, Miss Michigan then Miss USA, and next Miss Universe. Can nothing stop their onslaught against us?

Four hundred and two years ago today, Guy Fawkes was seized outside of the House of Lords. When captured, with matches and fuse, he gleefully admitted his intention to blow up the King and his lords. Fawkes was taken to the Tower and tortured, under the explicit permission of King James I, for three days. On the fourth day, Fawkes named conspirators who had already been known or arrested. Fawkes jumped to his death at the scaffold, saving himself the gruesome punishment of being drawn and quartered.

Fawkes, and his conspirators, had planned their act because the religion and politics in England had become too intertwined. Catholics and Puritans were being heavily discriminated against by James I and his Archbishop, Richard Bancroft. The roundup and trials of Fawkes and his compatriots were War on Terror of the day.

COULTER: Well, OK, take the Republican National Convention. People were happy. They’re Christian. They’re tolerant. They defend America, they –

DEUTSCH: Christian — so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?
…

COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?

DEUTSCH: So I should not be a Jew, I should be a Christian, and this would be a better place?

COULTER: Well, you could be a practicing Jew, but you’re not.

DEUTSCH: I actually am. That’s not true. I really am. But — so we would be better if we were – if people — if there were no Jews, no Buddhists

…

DEUTSCH: That isn’t what I said, but you said I should not — we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or –

COULTER: Yeah.

…

COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

…

DEUTSCH: But that’s even a scarier thought. OK –

COULTER: No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want you being offended by this. This is what Christians consider themselves, because our testament is the continuation of your testament. You know that. So we think Jews go to heaven. I mean, [Rev. Jerry] Falwell himself said that, but you have to follow laws. Ours is “Christ died for our sins.” We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all.

Since her appearance, Coulter has been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and other for being antisemitic or simply theologically ill-informed. Ann Coulter, ill-informed? Shocked, I am! Shocked, I say. . . But Ann, and her defenders, insist that she is not antisemitic, simply ‘pro-christian’. And they are correct; Ann is no more antisemitic then Christians have been throughout history. She is simply expressing a tenant of her faith — as a conservative evangelical Christian.

Conservative and fundamentalist evangelicals believe that they have the only inside scoop on ’salvation’ and are the only true Christians. But good conservative evangelicals understand the God singled out the Jews in his operator’s manual, the Bible, as special. Pastor Hagee, the fundamentalist founder of the powerful Christians United for Israel, has built a religious and political empire on his theology of imperfect Jews. For Hagee, Jews combined with the state of Israel form a prophetic key which opens a magic gate and allows Jesus to return. Unfortunately, this prophetic ‘happening’ doesn’t bode too well for the Jews, as Bruce Wilson has pointed out:

Many Christian Premillenial Dispensationalists — the theological persuasion Pastor John Hagee belongs to — believe that the majority of the Jews currently living in Israel will be killed in the period of warfare that follows the “Rapture,” when “believing” Christians ( fundamentalist Christians, that is ) are bodily transported up to safety in heaven. The standard interpretation is that 2/3 or more of Israeli Jews will be slaughtered during this period but that a righteous “remnant”, who have realized the error of their ways and converted to Christianity, will survive what Christian Zionists often call the “final Holocaust” or the “second Holocaust.”

I am not trying to assert that Ann Coulter shares Pastor Hagee’s theology, simply that the belief that Jews are imperfect is one which is very prevalent in contemporary conservative Christian culture. Certainly Coulter and Hagee share similar notions of America’s role in the world. Both desire America to attack Iran, both view Islam as threat to world order, and both see secular conspiracies all around them. And, it would seem, that both share the notion that Jews need to accept Christ as their savior or messiah in order to be better human beings.

What Ann Coulter did this week was to speak a tenant of her faith, one which is not usually spoken out loud. She voiced a tenant that is understood among believers, but rarely spoken of outside of prophesy. For this she should be applauded. Her honesty and childlike recitation of dogma helps others to better understand conservative evangelical Christianity. Her words have helped spread a knowledge of her faith, and we can only hope that those words reverberate so that every American can understand the faith which has asserted itself as the true American Christianity.

Anyone who has had to go through the intro to western civ sections as a college freshman understands that it was the re-introduction of reason and logic from the ancients which fueled the expansion of western knowledge and civilization. Even as early as the fifth century St. Augustine wrote:

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are.

By rejecting the idea that reason should trump doctrine, Bitterman’s students are rejecting the very core of the class they are taking. They are telling their college that knowledge should not challenge their preconceptions or beliefs. By firing Bitterman the college has sided with this ignorance. Instead of telling the offended students that they should grow up — or perhaps find a different class — the college has said all students now must bathe in the ignorance of the few. They have sacrificed Bitterman to the modern inquisition of fundamentalism.

It is very apparent that if the complaining students have their way there would be no western civilization, and certainly no study of it. For they have decided to reject the fruit of the tree of knowledge and embrace ignorance. Unfortunately, they want to drag the rest of us to their fairy tale land with them.

The organizing guide for the event makes the agenda fairly clear:

If you are looking for a challenge this fall, if you want to break through the barrier of politically-correct doublespeak that prevails on American campuses, if you want to help our brave troops who are fighting the Islamo-Fascists abroad — bring Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week to your campus this October.

The list of planned events include:

1. A showing of Suicide Killers, Obsession, or Islam: What the West Needs to Know or the ABC mini-series The Path to 9/11
2. A panel on the Oppression of Women in Islam or any facet of the Islamo-Fascist threat
3. Distribution of materials on Islamo-Fascism including the pamphlets The Oppression of Women in Islam, The Islamic Mein Kampf, Why Israel is the Victim, Jimmy Carter’s War Against the Jews, and What Every American Needs to Know About Jihad.
4. A “sit-in” outside the offices of the Women’s Studies Department protesting the silence of feminists over the oppression of women in Islam

Somehow, I find it hard to believe that these conservatives actually care about the rights of women in the Middle East , or anywhere else. Rather, for these people the plight of women around the world becomes just another rallying cry for their race-baiting.

The real problem with all of this, aside from the dehumanization, is that these kinds of demonizations actually harm the security efforts of our country. America has not suffered from the disaffection of Arab or Muslim youth seen in Europe because we have not ghettoized these groups of immigrants. America has treated these immigrants no differently then others. By demonizing them we risk loosing their cooperation and isolating them from the rest of society. In general, isolation breeds radicalism. Mr. Horowitz and his followers don’t see this as a problem, the see it as a goal: they seem to like their Muslims as charactictures: bearded, turbaned, and bomb throwing. And the goal of an event like this is to get the rest of us to see the Muslim world with the same hateful stare that they have.

Father God,

In our hearts we believe that you will hear our prayers and will put all these curses upon our enemies and on those who hate us, who persecute us. We will keep not silence, for the mouths of the wicked and the mouths of deceit are opened against us; they have spoken against us with lying TONGUES. They have compassed us about also with words of hatred, mockery, and deciept; and have fought against all that is Holy without a cause. In return for our agape love they are my adversaries, but we now resort to prayer. They have rewarded and laid upon us evil and slander for good, and hatred for love. Set a wicked man over them as judge, and let a malisious accuser stand at their right hand come Judgment Day.

When Liberal talk show host Randi Rhodes and her followers; when the wicked and mockers at Democratic Underground are judged, let them be condemned, and let their prayers for leniency be turned into sins. Let their days be few; and let others take their offices and charge. Let their children be parentless and their souses become widowed. Let their children be continual vagabonds as was Cain and beg; let them seek their bread and be driven far from their ruined homes.

IN JESUS NAME, I BIND UP EVERY DEMON COMING ACROSS THE COMPUTER LINES, AND I RETURN THEM AND ANY CURSES.

In Your Name, Amen.

As an example of an imprecatory prayer, or curse, it’s pretty mediocre, but the mere idea of such a prayer would strike many as anti-christian. We can easily imagine that muslim fundamentalists pray for similar retributions� against American citizens. The barbarity of religion begins when hate turns to prayer and then prayer turns to action. It seems that we are two-thirds there.