Feisal Abdul Rauf - Taking full advantage of democracy - When it suits him
A mosque should not be built on ground zero in New York. I agree with Americans I have heard who say that Muslims have the right to build but that they should not.
Why? Because to do so would be grossly insensitive!
Over centuries Western democracies have managed to throw off oppressive religions and now take pride in freedom of speech. So much so that it is enshrined in the United States constitution. I recall seeing the great and the good protest about the film The Life of Brian by Monty Python and I recall the storm over a ludicrous piece of art named Piss Christ. But the uproar did not sop these things it merely drew attention to them.
Wikipedia informs me that it was Evelyn Beatrice Hall summarising the beliefs of Voltaire who wrote “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” and this is oft quoted when defending freedom of speech.
Along with other peoples, Muslims now take advantage of secular society in Western countries. However, it cannot have escaped many people’s notice that they have an uneasy relationship with the concept of free speech. Recall the fatwah on Salman Rushdie and the uproar over a cartoon depiction of the profit Mohamed.
Though Western media take great pride in their lack of censorship I note that they refrained from the obvious course of action which was to reprint the offending cartoon. I imagine that they did this because of a mixture of sensitivity to Muslims beliefs and fear of being killed by Muslims.
As we all know, in 2001, a bunch of bastards, claiming to be Muslims killed around three thousand people by destroying The World Trade centre in New York and since then Al Qaeda have been shooting their mouths off claiming to be killing Americans in the name of Islam. Now someone wants to build an Islamic Mosque on the site of the deaths of these people.
Since Muslims are very keen that respect and sensitivity be shown to their religion and beliefs one has to ask why they show so little sensitivity to the feelings of the friends, relatives and countrymen of those killed in 2001?
To my mind this stinks of hypocrisy.
If a madman dressed up as Ronald McDonald, took a machine gun and murdered a lot of people in a parking lot would McDonalds have the right to build a restaurant on the site? Absolutely! Should they? Hell NO! I would expect that McDonalds would not try to build because they would not want to offend people and because they realise that their relationship with people would suffer.
The guy behind the plan for the mosque is apparently Feisal Abdul Rauf and he must know that his plans will offend people and that Islam’s relationship with non-Muslims will suffer. Yet he presses ahead! Obviously he does not care about either factor. If he goes ahead with this mosque then I hope that this defender of liberty, champion of free speech and protector of the American Way will be out there defending the rights of all Americans to act without sensitivity. I hope that we never hear this man whingeing and taking offence in the name of Islam.
However, I am not holding my breath as I suspect that Feisal Abdul Rauf is an insensitive boor and an offensive hypocrite.
The building of this mosque will do nothing to help repair the rift that is opening up between Islam and Western countries and should be condemned.
I heard that, in India today, a high court has announced that the site of the Ayodhya mosque which is claimed as sacred by both Hindus and Muslims is to be divided between the two religions. What may have been more sensible would have been to build a joint religious building to be shared by both faiths. Similarly in new York, if Muslims had wanted a mosque in the area, it would have been more in keeping with their penchant for respect if they had offered to build some kind of religious centre to be shared by all religions.
..oh…and atheists too as I don’t want to leave myself out.
airplane hackney
Art Photography
Who are all these bloody people?
Tags: Apollo, bollocks, Charles Babbage, Cray 1, difference, gas turbine powered Rover, Jet 1, london, Natural History Museum, politically correct, rockets, science museum, Tourism, tourists
The Rover Jet 1
I went up to London today. Bloody train from Hove was packed and I couldn’t get a seat. Then they attached some more carriages at Haywoods Heath and I got a seat next to a bloke who insisted on hanging on like he thought we were about to go into free-fall. At Victoria station getting through the ticket barriers was like a bloody football match and then there was an enormous queue to get into the underground. I gave up and got a bus which got as far as Sloane Square and then stopped along with all the other traffic. We waited for about half an hour moving a couple of inches every now and then and I got out and walked.
I haven’t been to the Science Museum in a while and they’ve tarted it up. By this I mean that they have built a restaurant by the entrance, a restaurant at the back and a snack shop and a gift shop on the 1st floor. God forbid anyone should look at the bloody exhibits. In addition they have a lot of this interactive tosh with screens and whatnot. All geared to get the kids and the intellectually lazy into the museum and God it has worked. Pearls before swine. The politically correct appear to have taken over the first floor with exhibits about gender and race. One moronic piece consisted of a pencil drawing animation of a naked man’s torso and then naked woman’s torso. Drawn in simple line drawings. As they rotate faster, according to the bit of text, it becomes harder and harder to differentiate male from female and, again according to the blurb, by extrapolation this proves that men and women are not very different. What absolute bollocks!
OK, that’s got the rant out of the way.
The old cars and lorries were good. I remembered the fantastic Jet 1 from when I was a boy. This is a gas turbine powered old Rover – It’s still there! What a car! There were some interesting exhibits in the trendy section related to psychology. One that you put your hand into a hole which was stroked by a brush while an artificial hand in front of you was also stroked by a brush and just for second I thought that the hand behind the glass was my hand. Which, apparently, was the point.
The space section still has some great stuff. The real Apollo 10 capsule and a lot of rocket engines. All exhibited in a gallery painted black and lit with spot lights. Personally I’d prefer that they just painted the walls white and lit the entire room well so you could have a good look at the exhibits rather than have some bloody designer trying to give you their impressions of the subject……there I go again, ranting.
Old Ferranti Computer
The aircraft section was good, of course, and they had some excellent very old computers from Babbages mechanical difference engine to a Cray 1. One ancient old valve machine consisted of wardrobe sized cabinets with handles like old car door handles. They built computers with attention to detail in those days. Strangely they had embedded a clock on the front and it amuses me that this old machine probably did not have the capacity to run a clock program yet today we have digital clocks in everywhere.
They also had a lot of consumer goods from the 1940s to 70s including old hand tools like drills, radios, hair dryers, telephones. All very strange to look back at when you’re as old as me. I also had a look around the section for ships with numerous models of old square riggers. Thankfully old ships don’t seem to be very fashionable and the babble of kids died away allowing one time and space to wonder around and appreciate what marvels these machines were.
After leaving the Science Museum I’d more or less had enough but I thought I’d take a quick look in the main half of the Natural History Museum which is around the corner housed in a beautiful gothic building. However, the queue to get in was enormous and one has to ask: Where the hell do all these people come from? When I lived in London it was possible to jump on a bus or a train at weekends and you had the whole city to explore. Now London seems flooded by tourists following each other around in great crowds gawping at the great wonders that exist here like a cow gazes at a tractor.
One of the worst trends of the late 20th and early 21st century is tourism. It floods the wonders of the world with people who really don”t care and just want to buy a book of pictures and drink a bloody latte. I wish they’d all go home.
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