feitclub

jamesurbaniak:

Seriously, Daily News photographer Debbie Egan-Chin deserves a Pulitzer for this shot of Rapture proselytizer Robert Fitzpatrick in Times Square today checking his watch.

I’ll never understand these people. The dude on the left honestly believed he was going to meet Jesus and ascend to Heaven so he wore THAT T-shirt?

NYT Poll Shows Majority of New Yorkers Oppose Islamic Center Near Ground Zero

This is a headline that shouldn’t surprise anyone, given that a few weeks ago there was an angry mob protesting outside the former Burlington Coat Factory, excuse me, “hallowed ground.”

What does surprise is some of the specifics that the data turns up. For example:

• One-third disagreed with (or didn’t answer) the question “Do people have a right to build it?”
• Nearly two-thirds said politicians from outside New York should not take a stand. I thought that would be a lot higher.
• 41% who say they are “close friends with a muslim” still oppose the project.
• When broken down by education, the higher level respondents are more tolerant than the lower level ones. That’s reassuring.

I’ve had arguments with friends over this, so I know it’s a topic that gets a lot of people upset, but I prefer to side with the First Amendment here: let them pray wherever they want to pray.

My fellow New Yorkers, grow up. Just grow up. Don’t fall for blind ignorance. I may be 7000 miles away but I couldn’t help but notice this story and this story in the New York Times. If you seriously believe that protesting a new Muslim community center or mosque is a worthwhile use of your time, you’re not thinking straight.

Did the Times Square guy scare me? Sure. But if there’s a worse way to handle that situation than to summarily assume that every new Muslim-related project in the tri-state area is connected to terrorism, I can’t think of it.

Why do think a US citizen (naturalized or otherwise) would attempt to blow up his or her own country? Being derided by fellow citizens would be a start. Being made to feel unwelcome at a place of worship is another.

Let me be more direct: the louder you cry that having Muslims in your community is “disrespectful” to victims of terrorism, the more you push said Muslims into thinking that maybe America isn’t such a wonderful place to live.

And please, no more specious reasoning like “Wouldn’t you agree that every terrorist, past and present, has come out of a mosque?” That’s not only patently false, it wouldn’t mean anything if it were true (which it isn’t and I can’t stress that enough).

Islam DOES NOT EQUAL Terrorism anymore than Christianity equals the Westboro Baptist Church. You wanna protest something, go drown out those assholes the next time they show up at a funeral.