I had no intent for this to be "Hug a Muslim" day at AMERICAblog, but this growing religious right anti-Muslim bigotry really ticks me off. Particularly since these fundies are all in cahoots with the Bushies, yet no one asks the president how he can tell the Muslim world that we're they're friends, then his uber-Christian buddies here in the US slam American Muslims every chance they get.
The latest is yet another invective from the religious right new service, AgapePress, about Muslim-Americans in Michigan who want permission to broadcast a call to prayer from their local mosque. Now look, I've been to Muslim countries and have been shocked awake at 4:30AM by the call to prayer, so I get that this is an issue that needs to be thought through before just letting it happen. But having said that, the arguments coming from the opponents are some of the most bigoted things I've ever heard - not to mention, the fundies totally undercut their own efforts to impose a fundamentalist Christian theocracy on the rest of us.
To wit. Here are a few choice quotes from the latest article on this topic:
Jim Marquis is pastor of the New Covenant Worship Center in Wellston, Ohio. When he learned about the situation in Hamtramck, Michigan, where city council members were prepared to pass a new ordinance allowing mosques in the community to broadcast their calls to prayer, he decided to get involved. Last week Marquis took nine church members with him to speak on behalf of citizens in the community who felt passing an ordinance giving the mosques an exemption from the city's noise regulations would infringe on the rights of non-Muslim residents.Ok, first observation. If this were simply an issue of not wanting excess "noise" in town, then why is a church getting involved? Or is there a specific problem with the faith of the people making the noise?
"There's no place that you can go. You're going to be able to hear it in your home; you're going to hear it in your automobile, on your lawn, wherever you are -- you have no choice.Ok, so far, I'm with him.
Five times a day for up to five minutes at a time, you're going to have to hear this prayer recited to Allah, in whom we do not believe as Christians," Marquis says.Ok, now we're getting to the real crux of the issue. The problem isn't loud noise five times a day. It's loud noise about a faith to which we don't adhere. Funny, but these Christians don't have that concern when it comes to prayer in school. Kids "have to hear this prayer" even if they "do not believe." But apparently, that's ok if the religion that's being forced on them is Christianity.
The anti-"call to prayer" residents continue:
"They've made sure that you understand what they're saying in this foreign language," Marquis explains, "being 'Allah is great' four times in the very beginning of it, and 'Come to prayer,' and 'We believe Mohammad to be his only prophet.' It's disgusting, and it's just absolutely intrusive upon everyone's rights that this takes place.... It's a prayer that's being offered to a false God."It's a disgusting prayer being offered to a false God. Now we've cut through the crap. The same folks who want to put the Ten Commandments in every courthouse, and God in every school, have a problem when Muslim-Americans want to get their faith some civic attention as well. It's one thing to rightly argue that the noise might prove intrusive. It's quite another to argue that the real problem is that we don't like their view of God and it disgusts us to have to hear about it. If that were the standard for who has religious freedom in America, the fundies would have been told to shut the hell up long ago.
