PROFILE
Michael Klein
Michael Klein
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- Mosque Near Ground Zero
Comment: @Joy Wilmot: To say that choosing the name Cordoba "seems to signify in no uncertain terms the underlying reason for the proposed mosque: a silent, but determined, recognition to the Muslim people of the world of one more conquest in the West, in the United States" is simply purely unfounded speculation and the sort of speculation that only serves to add fuel to an already absurdly volatile scenario. That statement is akin to saying that the name "American University of Beirut" was chosen to signify in no uncertain terms that America was intent on annihilating the native Syrian and Lebanese population in the same manner American Indians were annihilated, and laying the foundation for slave labor. OR, perhaps, one might assume that the name American University of Beirut was chosen to signify the highest ethical principles of the United States in its relation to others. I assume that would be the preferred way of seeing things. I think it is fair to assume the name Cordoba was chosen to likewise signify a highpoint of multicultural cooperation (which in fact is the dominant view of that period, rather than the more recently cioned paranoid view which often emanates from the "Obama is a secret Muslim" set). With all due respect to Mr "Raymond Ibrahim of Pundicity", a columnist for the widely criticized and indeed extremist "Jihad Watch" website, he is hardly an unbiased observer on this matter, and his now-viral alarmist quote that you relied on has more propagandistic than historical content.
Posted on September 01, 2010 - Mosque Near Ground Zero
Comment: @Allen Kwok: Allen, I am indeed aware of the interpretation you offer about the Founding Fathers capitulating on slavery due to the necessity of uniting the new nation, avoiding sectional conflict and/or civil war, etc. While it's a legitimate argument, there is also a school of thought which finds such explanations overly influenced by a desire to not tarnish the heroic image of the Founders, and to reduce the conflict to a Manichean glorious "patriots" vs evil Tories/British. There is in fact evidence that the South was so weakened and bankrupted in the course of the conflict (in no small part due to loss of slave "property" as a result of escapes, including thousands of Black (and some white!) folks who went over to the British to gain freedom. And if indeed civil war was a possibility, wouldn't it have been better to have it then, then have to endure 80 years in which Black people were increasingly brutalized throughout the 19th Century, with the result being a civil war that was infinitely more destructive than it would have been in the 1780s? And THIS is what's relevant to the current "mosque" controversy--NOTHING good ever comes from capitulation to intolerance. You take issue with the term "hypocrite." But how else to describe Mr Jefferson, who railed publicly against the comparative intelligence and worth of African people, and who demanded that they be resettled far from the white colonists, lest white blood be despoiled--all while fathering multiple multiracial children himself! And who lied about his slave losses after the war in order to increase his personal compensation from the British? Of course, we could have not fought the War of Independence at all, in which case we might have turned out like some horrid, awful, oppressed land, like....(horrors) Canada! PS: A fine starting point for some background: Gary Nash' "The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution."
Posted on September 01, 2010 - Mosque Near Ground Zero
Comment: While Mayor Koch, like Mayor Bloomberg and others are to be applauded for their defense of the Constitution and sanity, the tragic irony of slaveholder and capitulator George Washington saying "the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction," seems as relevant as ever. We are a nation that from it's birth embodied glorious ideals and rank hypocrisy. It seems we still have a long way to go. Despite all the vitriol this issue has generated (inevitable when there are political forces and an profit-hungry media involved, another long American tradition), having this discussion can only be a good thing. No sooner did we see Americans attempt to stuff candidate Obama's initiative to open a dialogue on America's tortured racial history back into the closet, did we then we began shouting about the brown-skinned people of the Americas at our country's Southern borders. That seemed to be forgotten and shunted aside as Proposition 8 had us wrangling over which Americans may share in the joys and benefits of matrimony. Now that discussion has slid back into the "closet" as we brawl over whether longstanding First Amendment freedoms are trumped by the emotions and emotional appeals of those who would like to see a powerful nation of powerful ideals somewhat bizarrely (and perhaps less than honestly) assume a mask of eternal victimhood and a self-righteous vengeance against a phantasmagorical "enemy"--a posture which is largely nothing more nor less than a lashing out against a changing world they can barely comprehend. Mayors Koch and Bloomberg, more worldly-wise than the mob, thankfully have called for calm, although they have not always been untainted in their playing to the baser of our emotions. Let's hope the discussion continues, and we make a through the latest in America's endless grappling with it's haunted dreams and nightmares with something to show for it.
Posted on August 18, 2010
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