Archive for the 'Islam' Category

Muslims Fight Police in Amusement Park

Cidu Bill on Sep 1st 2011

Is there any way to satisfy both safety concerns and religious accommodation?

Filed in Bill Bickel, CJA, Islam, polls, religion, safety | Comments Off

Burn a Koran Day

Cidu Bill on Sep 7th 2010

burnkoran.jpg

You have to wonder how many of the politicians who rallied against the “Ground Zero Mosque” for their own political ends are saying now “Okay, well, I didn’t mean for it to go this far.”
For that matter, you have to wonder how many of those politicians are saying “Hell, yeah!”

The story

Filed in Bill Bickel, Islam, religion | 145 responses so far

Too Close

Cidu Bill on Sep 3rd 2010

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced today that Saturday’s fire at an Islamic Center being built in Murfreesboro, Tennessee was, indeed, arson. Protestors had complained that it was disrespectful to allow the building only 886 miles from Ground Zero.

Filed in Bill Bickel, Ground Zero, Islam, arson | 36 responses so far

Little Mosque in the Big City

Cidu Bill on Aug 11th 2010

New Yorkers, opportunistic politicians, and the ignorant and intolerant are up in arms over plans to build a multi-story mosque just blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. Well, not a multi-story mosque exactly, more like a community center open to the public (sort of a YMMA), which includes a prayer room, but let’s not let facts get in the way of hysteria.

The two Egyptian men behind the plan say it’s meant as a statement against extremism, to bridge the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims. A Tea Party spokesman calls it a memorial to the 9/11 hijackers.

An upcoming ad campaign, to appear on New York City buses, will demand that the city prohibit the building from being constructed. The ads will show pictures of one of the planes hitting the World Trade Center.

A spokesperson for the group paying for the ads said that being allowed to run the ads is a victory for free speech and tolerance.

A victory for free speech and tolerance.

The sound you hear is George Orwell turning over in his grave.

As an American, this all disgusts me. And it’s stupid as well as wrong, because what we’re telling the Muslim world that we think of every Muslim as our enemy.

As a Jew, the fact that so many Jewish groups are joining the hysteria troubles me. And it’s stupid as well, because traditionally, when a government looks for excuses to single out and discriminate against a religious group, it tends to be the Jews. Letting hysteria decide where Muslims can’t build… is that a precedent we really want to support? Hatred of Muslims is just the flavor of the week: anti-Semitism endures.

Filed in Bill Bickel, Islam, Judaism, Muslims, New York City, discrimination, media, mosques, politics, religion | 83 responses so far

Trivia Fact of the Day

Cidu Bill on May 20th 2008

In the Muslim faith, anybody born to a Muslim father, regardless of the mother’s religion, is a Muslim (which might have implications in the case of Barack Obama); while Judaism uses the opposite rule, that a child is Jewish or non-Jewish depending on the mother — under the logic that you can be 100% certain who the mother is, but…

(None of this is to say, of course, that parents can’t and don’t raise their children however they see fit; but this is what Muslim and Jewish law dictate)

Filed in Barack Obama, Bill Bickel, Islam, Judaism, Muslims, religion, trivia | 13 responses so far