Sticking Your Head In the Sand – Not Just For Ostriches?
From Matt Sledge writing for HuffPo (and yes the link is worth it):
The “Ground Zero Mosque” that we have been and will be hearing so much about is not exactly a mosque, nor is it at Ground Zero.
Ah. Whew! I guess we dodged a bullet there. That not-a-mosque not near ground zero seemed a like real stick in our eye for a minute there. Although…the map he uses to prove how ridiculously far away the un-mosque is…looks suspiciously like a map I would use to prove how close it is.
Okay but at least it’s not like it’s called the Death to the Infidel Victory in Manhattan Mosque. Just the Cordoba Center — a center for outreach, and whatnot. Oh shit, Cordoba? We should probably ask the 8th century Spanish what they think about that, since Muslim invaders conquered the Cordoba region in southern Spain and built a…well…glorious victory mosque. But those 8th century Spanish were probably racists anyways.
So it was originally going to be named the Cordoba House, after a mosque that was built in celebration of conquering the Christians of Spain, and it was originally going to be opened on Sept. 11, 2011. All I can say is: I get it. No, really, message received. Can it be any more clear? I wish we could ask the founding fathers their opinion on “religious freedom” in this particular instance. But I think they would slap me on the head if I asked them that, and tell me to use just a little common sense and a very basic knowledge of Islamic history.
I wonder if there were any contemporary 8th century Spaniards who said “Don’t worry, the mosque they’re building on the rubble of our church isn’t really a mosque, it’s more of an outreach center!”. Yes, it is a ridiculous comparison. Who cares what happened 1200 years ago, can’t we all just get along? Of course! I know for me personally, millenia-old disagreements don’t keep me up at night – but I make the comparison because the people behind this mosque obviously do too.
To all the feel-good liberals out there whose ideology is the center of your self-esteem I make this offer: I will gladly be the fall guy for your self esteem. I will be that “bigoted”, “small-minded” hick from “somewhere west of Manhattan” who provides the moral outrage for keeping this particular mosque out of your city. It’s time to let the grown-ups take care of this, because whether you realize it or not, these people want to fucking kill you and film it for Al-Jazeera.
Oh, shit!
We come for you too, ostrich!
