First, let me state I am Jewish and have been a kibbutznik..
Most readers know about the different branches of Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism. However, most readers do not know the different interpretations of Islam are similar; Islam is not monolithic.
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You know where this is heading: the Islamic Cultural Center, two blocks from where the World Trade Center stood.
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The Center, similar to a YMCA or YMHA, is being built by a congregation of Sufi Muslims. The Sufi branch of Islam is what Judaism would look like if the Reform branch merged with Kabbalah - קַבָּלָה - adherents. I have a cousin who married a man from Senegal, and became a Sufi convert.
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The Sufi branch has as much to do with the carnage of 9/11, as the Quakers have with the Holocaust. And Islamophobia is handing Islamic nihilists a silent victory. Frank Rich of the New York Times put it best of all: "How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?" The Islamophobia is starting to look like Kristallnacht. Time has a more complete article. The New York Times has a story about attacks on a mosque and Muslims in upstate New York.
A Mosque Invisible to Many Is a Target
"Vandals have shattered car windows and thrown beer bottles on the lawn. One night about five years ago, the wooden fence in front of the mosque was set afire. And then, this week, a car filled with local teenagers sideswiped the 29-year-old son of one of the mosque’s founding members, said Joseph V. Cardone, the Orleans County district attorney. One teenager was charged with firing a shotgun into the air near the mosque a few days earlier, after driving by and shouting epithets."
A Mosque Invisible to Many Is a Target
"Vandals have shattered car windows and thrown beer bottles on the lawn. One night about five years ago, the wooden fence in front of the mosque was set afire. And then, this week, a car filled with local teenagers sideswiped the 29-year-old son of one of the mosque’s founding members, said Joseph V. Cardone, the Orleans County district attorney. One teenager was charged with firing a shotgun into the air near the mosque a few days earlier, after driving by and shouting epithets."
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What really should concern everyone, is that this is an assault on the 1st Amendment. Don't bother writing me with a careful explanation of the lack of civil rights in other countries, or that churches or synagogues cannot be built in some countries. No one ever suggested that because there wasn't freedom of the press in the Soviet Union, Russians here should be muzzled or harassed.
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As long as we're on the subject of the Constitution, conservatives are making another assault on it: the rumor campaign to portray President Obama as a Muslim, rather than a Christian, which apparently is central to the presidency.
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I would like to quote what many do not know: "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." - United States Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 3.
