You can build a mosque at ground zero when we can build a synogogue in Mecca

Michael Balter 8/23/2010 07:43:00 AM Politics
This is the caption on one of the signs (see photo at right) held at a protest against the "Ground Zero Mosque" yesterday, August 22. So this is how we set our standards of tolerance in the United States, according to those of religious fundamentalists? Boy, does this country ever need to go back to school for a civics lesson.

By the way, as Frank Rich pointed out yesterday in the New York Times, it's not a mosque, it's an Islamic cultural center with a prayer room. But I'm sure that doesn't make much difference to the bigots who attend these protests.

Anyway, I will be in New York for several months beginning August 31, and I am sure there will be plenty of demonstrations in favor of this building project for me to attend. Hope to see some of you there.

Photo: asterix11
Michael Balter

Posted by Michael Balter

I have been a working journalist for more than 40 years, beginning in Los Angeles as an investigative reporter and then in Paris as a travel, food, and science writer. For more than 20 years I have covered anthropology and archaeology writer for Science, Audubon, Scientific American, SAPIENS, and other publications. I have also covered sexual misconduct for The Verge, Scientific American, and others; I write about mental health, especially schizophrenia; and I engage in occasional media criticism. I returned to the USA in October 2017 after 30 years in Paris, and now live in the New York City area, where I currently teach journalism at City College of New York (I previously taught journalism at Boston University and New York University.) For more about me and what I do, copies of my articles, information about my book, and other goodies, please visit MY WEB SITE

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1 Comments

trencherbone said…
'Religious' tolerance?

The privileges of being classed as religion should be withdrawn from Islam.

If Hitler had claimed that 'Mein Kampf' was dictated by God, would we be forced to tolerate the Nazi Party as a religion? Islam is first and foremost a mind-destroying, totalitarian political ideology that spreads through the Body Politic like a virus.

Winston Churchill gave the correct diagnosis over a century ago, when he compared Islam to a contagious virus or meme - 'as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog' http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/islam-murder-meme-and-rabies-of.html

Consequently, Islam should be reclassified from 'RELIGION' to 'PUBLIC MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEM' - a virulent contagious mental illness. It could then be contained by the methods used to prevent the spread of typhoid and other lethal epidemics: enforced exclusion and quarantime of carriers, eradication of foci of infection, immunization of the susceptible population etc.
August 23, 2010 at 8:02 AM
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