Monday, September 20, 2010

Analogies and Harry Reid

This post is coming a little late to the controversy, but that's how I do things, I suppose. Several weeks ago Senator Harry Reid commented on the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" that while he supported the right of those who are building it to build it wherever they want so long as they obtain all the legally required permits, that he does not believe they should build their mosque so close to ground zero. I thought of writing him a letter saying how disappointed I was in him. As a left-leaning Latter-day Saint, it is nice to have Senator Reid as a political example, and I wanted to let him know I support him in most of his actions, hope that he wins against Sharon Angle because the last thing this nation needs is Senator Angle, but to express my frustration that anybody who is LDS would not wholeheartedly support the religious rights of others in this country. Religious intolerance of the LDS people led to an extermination order of all Mormons in the State of Missouri and in the eventual Mormon Exodus to Utah as nobody within any of the States of this Union was willing to accept us. We, of all people, should be especially aware of religious intolerance in our nation.
But, I'm saving that topic for a paper I'm working on in my class on the Equality Principle in U.S. jurisprudence and culture (the idea that all men are created equal and how that has evolved from a constitution that allowed slavery to today). But, I wanted to make a point by way of analogy against the arguments of insensitivity and callousness that are made against the faithful Muslim people who want their community center.

So, SAT style here goes some analogy.
Muslims are to 9/11 terrorists as Christians are to ________
Let's fill in the blank -
Mussolini
Jim Jones
Many famous murderers killing in the name of God
Timothy McVeigh

It's terrible - there are Christian churches within blocks of where these people terrorized people. Don't you know it's disrespectful to those who died in the Oklahoma City bombing for a church to be near there? How could you be so insensitive?

That's a ludicrous argument, just as the argument that having a mosque near the World Trade Center site is disrespectful to those who died on 9/11. Muslims died on 9/11 too.
The people I named above corrupted Christianity! They aren't real Christians, they're people who corrupted and twisted a beautiful religion for their own sick purposes. Just like the 9/11 terrorists.
I read somewhere a rebuttal against the idea that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian, where the author wrote "His action and deeds definitely does not reflect that of a virtuous believer." Timothy McVeigh did not act in the name of God, it is true, and his actions are not those of a virtuous believer. Nor were the actions of the 9/11 terrorists those of virtuous believers in Islam.
It is not insensitive to build Christian churches near where members of a Christian faith have committed terrible deeds, it's a blessing that others can see that Christianity is not what those people represent, but the beautiful religion of "virtuous believers" in Christianity. I believe the same is true with Islam and mosques.

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