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Jewish World Review August 19, 2010/ 9 Elul, 5770 An Unholy Alliance of Radicals By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
With regard to the Ground Zero mosque, I am truly fascinated by the progressive elitists' newfound enthusiasm for religious tolerance. Aren't these the same people who have spent the last few decades doing their best to exorcize virtually any expression of religion from the public square? Aren't these the same people whose fellow-travelers in Hollywood have done their utmost to debase Christianity and its adherents at every opportunity? Aren't these the "lovable" folks doing their best to turn the Christmas season into a "Winter Solstice" celebration? Didn't the president himself ridicule Americans who "cling" to religion? So why are progressives suddenly gung-ho regarding religious freedom?
One can only speculate, but I suspect it has far more to do with the particular religion under discussion than it does religion per se. For example, if progressives held the expression of Islam to the same standard as they do Christianity, one would be at a total loss to explain how the public school system in California mandates the teaching of Islam in the seventh grade, including the study of Koranic scripture. One would be at a loss to explain why a public school in Nyssa, Oregon required seventh-grade students to dress-up as Muslims as part of a four-week course on Islam.
When the former case went to litigation, it got as far as the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that such manifestations of Islam in the California curriculum--including the wearing of Islamic religious symbols, or shouting "Praise be to Allah" when prompted by teachers-- didn't violate the First Amendment's establishment clause.
Can anyone imagine the same court permitting students to say, "Praise be to Jesus?"
So why the double-standard? The most plausible explanation centers around an old Arabic expression: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Nothing threatens the status of progressive elitists, largely secular and leftist, more than American Christians, largely religious and right-leaning. It irks the progressives to no end that the "Religious Right" feels accountable to a "higher power"--one that isn't government controlled by progressives.
What other group of people have an even greater contempt for Christians? Islamic radicals--and more than a few so-called "moderate Muslims." It is also no secret that vast numbers of Muslims around the world consider Christian "infidels" second-class citizens (dhimmis) at best, and utterly beneath contempt at worst.
Both groups see Christianity as the foremost obstacle to their remarkably similar ambitions: for Muslims, the permanent entrenchment of a world-wide religious caliphate. For American progressives, the permanent entrenchment of big-government run by the Democrat party.
Thus, the ruling element within both groups has embraced marriage of convenience, with each group using the other--until such time when the inevitable showdown between them occurs.
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And it most assuredly explains the all-out effort by progressive elitists to tar anyone opposed to a mosque near Ground Zero as a bigot.
Both progressive and Islamist elitists--and it is important to make the distinction between the political operators in both groups and ordinary liberal Americans and genuinely moderate Muslims--know that an America guided by even the most temperate expressions of Christianity, such as the reference to a "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence, is one which will not succumb to their grandiose ambitions. At least not all at once. This is precisely why the strategy of incrementalism--the bit-by-bit undermining of American customs, language and culture--has been adopted by both groups.
Incrementalism explains why American religious traditions, such as Christmas creches in a town squares, considered an expression of religious freedom for the better part of two centuries, are now deemed violations of the church-state separation doctrine--which is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. It is why the "live and let live" nature of such traditions has been usurped by the "One Whiner Rule," which deems any expression of religion in the public arena, even one supported by the vast majority, will be forbidden, or litigated against by the ACLU, if it "offends" even a single individual.
Incrementalism explains why Americans are expected to unquestioningly accept the idea that the Ground Zero project's leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a "moderate" Muslim, despite the fact that he refuses to condemn Hamas as a terrorist group and referred to America as "an accessory" to the 9/11 atrocity. It is this incrementalism that allows progressive elitists to insist the "majority of Muslims are on America's side," absent any convincing evidence--and much evidence to the contrary. And it is the more advanced version of incrementalism found in Europe that has resulted in the creation of wholly-segregated Muslim enclaves that police in England and France refer to as "no go zones"--and the Archbishop of Canterbury to comment on the "unavoidability" of Sharia Law in the UK.
Both progressives and the so-called moderate Muslims attached to the Ground Zero mosque know this project is deeply offensive to almost seventy percent of Americans. They also know it has nothing to do with freedom of religion, which most of the people opposed to this project have made crystal clear. Ever since this incident reached national proportions, both points have been made over and over again. Only one question remains unanswered to this point: what is the reason that it is necessary to build a mosque in that precise location?
Not why can you, but why must you?
Radical Islam and progressive elitism are all about establishing beach heads. Establishing those beach heads requires unstinting assaults on traditional values, be they assaults on Christianity, internationally-accepted rules of war, the concept of assimilation, or the difference between freedom of religion and freedom from it. Neither group will be satisfied until their power becomes absolute, or at the very least, until they're the only two dogs left in the fight for the civilized world. Until then their alliance will resemble America's alliance with Josef Stalin's Russia during WWll: a marriage of convenience designed to defeat the greater evil of Nazism.
Right now, the "greater evil" is conservatism and Christianity. Both must be brow-beaten into submission. And while much of this endeavor has been ongoing, much of it has occurred "beneath the radar" of average Americans. It took 9/11 to make us realize that radical Islamists had indeed declared war on America. It took the election of the most radical president and Congress in history to make Americans realize that progressive elitists are every bit as intent on "re-ordering" America as the Islamic radicals are. The Ground Zero mosque is nothing more the latest flashpoint in this sorry saga. It is an attempt to push the envelope of "tolerance" for two entities both determined to impose their worldview--by any means necessary.
It won't be the last one.
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© 2010, Arnold Ahlert |
Mitch Albom | |||||||||||||||||||
