Alyrium Denryle wrote:
I wrote this for part of my own arguments. Perhaps some of you will find it useful. Particularly with the bigotry angle
There are three primary branches or sects of Islam. There are... ...lots of little ones, but it is kind of like dividing them into Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant. The first split happened after the death of Muhammad.
When the Prophet died, the Sunni (which is what Osama bin Laden is), believed that the first four Caliphs were his rightful successors and that them and their heirs were their rightful and legitimate religious leaders. There was an unbroken line of succession from them until 1920 with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
Shiites believe that it was only Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law who was the rightful religious leader, along with his heirs. This caused the split, and a brutal civil war. When the 11th Shiite Caliph died, his son disappeared. It is their belief that God "hid" him from public life and that he will come again. Sort of like Jesus.
Here is where things get interesting. Sunnis make up some 85% of Muslims world wide. They have a crazy fundamentalist sect started by a guy named Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. His branch of Islam became very expansionist and eventually had to be stopped from seizing control of the Arabian peninsula by the ottoman turks. It is dominant religion of Saudi Arabia. They are the source if the 9/11 high-jackers. They were all from Saudi Arabia, they were all Wahhabist Sunnis, and they got their marching orders from a Wahhabist group called Al Qaeda, operating out of Afghanistan which at that time was ruled by the Taliban, which was a Wahhabist theocracy.
Ok. We have have the history lesson. How does this apply? The community center in question is operated and populated by Sufi Muslims. Sufi Muslims are a mystic sect of Muslims founded sometime before the end of the tenth century. It focuses on having a personal relationship with Allah, and rejects the legalism (such as the Wahhabi school of Sunni jurisprudence) which leads to extremism. Historically they have been champions for the poor and downtrodden, and actively embrace the concept of universal love and respect for all faiths. In mannerism and theology, they are basically the Quakers of Islam.
So, being angry at Sufis for building a cultural center is like being angry at Quakers, for what Catholics did at the Massacre of Acre in 1191. The only difference is that the religious split between Sufi and the rest of Islam was a thousand years ago, and the Quakers of today are separated by almost a thousand years from the Catholics who committed the Massacre. The number of innocent men, women, and children is even almost exact--2700 for Acre, approximately 3000 for 9/11.
The logic behind that anger makes no sense. Why should a group of people who are not only personally innocent, but also institutionally innocent feel the need to "respect" the uninformed opinions of those who are offended by this? That ignorance is not excusable. Ignorance does not excuse prejudice. Lets substitute race for religion here for a second.
Lets say someone by the name of Tyron Ramashadaran Nguyen Goldberg (so as to make his race a complete non-issue) was attacked by a cuban guy and spends the rest of his life hating or being uncomfortable around all hispanics. Is that acceptable? Lets assume for the sake of argument that somehow he is statistically prone to be attacked by cubans for some reason. Lets assume that he has an implant in him that makes cubans angry, and that he does not know about this implant (When arguing by analogy this way, I can stipulate all sorts of silly things for the sake of argument). Is it acceptable or reasonable for him to feel this way toward a guy from Argentina? We will call him Mr. Flores. Should Mr. Flores "respect" Mr. Goldberg's prejudice and decide not to move into a house he has owned for longer than the time which has elapsed since Mr. Goldberg's attack?
Clearly the answer to this question is that prejudice is wrong. Therefore it is not Mr. Flores who is at fault here. He is not at fault for the attack on Mr. Goldberg. He is not one of the group that seems overly likely to attack Mr. Goldberg. And Mr. Goldberg is in the wrong for hating him. He owes Mr. Goldberg's prejudice absolutely no respect in this regard whatsoever. If you disagree with that conclusion there are very few ways you can justify it. The only real way is to say that innocent people are morally beholden to the prejudices of others. If you believe that then you disagree with School Integration, the Civil Rights Act etc which were all predicated on the notion that bigotry is wrong and that those who are the victims of bigotry do not owe the bigot their "respect". It does not matter why that person is a bigot either.
