Islamophobia

Lately we've seen an exceptionally large amount of Muslim bashing going around, both in the real world and in the media. The entire religion is apparently being held responsible for the actions of a very small minority of extremists.

A taxi driver in Manhattan was recently savagely attacked merely because the assailant believed him to be Muslim. A crazed minister in Florida who has about 50 possibly deranged followers is making headlines by threatening to burn copies of the Quran. A proposed mosque located a couple blocks away from the WTC site is causing volcanic levels of hysteria in the right-wing media and blogosphere.

The mosque thing really gets me. Who cares where they put a mosque as long as it's built according to legal code? According to the Faux News nutjobs, we're supposed to somehow obstruct a religious institution from building a place of worship on the ridiculous grounds that some extreme adherents were responsible for a terrorist attack?

Gee, I guess that means we shouldn't allow any Christian churches to go up in Oklahoma City, because the Federal Building there was attacked by extremists who were upset over the Waco incident involving the Branch Davidians. I obviously don't need to make a list of abominations that were committed by extremists who claimed to be working in Christ's name. We all know Christianity is a religion of peace, but that doesn't stop some nutjobs from bombing the occasional women's health center, does it?

Those who say it's insensitive to build something like a mosque so near to sacred ground should take a look at Mount Rushmore, which has a likeness of the four whitest men in American history scraped into the very rock that is sacred to Native American tribes.

I guess the winners get to decide which ground is sacred-er.

The very fact that we're reacting with such vehemence will only play into the hands of those very extremists who are responsible for the terrorist attacks. Pictures of Americans burning Qurans will be the most effective insurgent recruitment tool since photos of the Abu Ghraib degradations circulated in the Muslim world. Actions like that will only damage attempts to bring peace to the troubled regions and will likely cost more American lives.

From the AP:

Gen. David Petraeus took the rare step of a military leader taking a position on a domestic matter when he warned in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence."

That's just what we need; another reason for crazed religious extremists to hate the USA. Great job, idiots.