“American Muslims Were Not Behind the Terrorist Plot”

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

I am really getting disgusted with the cowardice and bigotry that is being demonstrated by our politicians and news media. This exchange on CNN between news anchor, Don Lemon and Eboo Patel, Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Corps revealed the media bias against the American Muslim community.

   Lemon: Don’t you think it’s a bit different considering what happened on 9/11? And the people have said there’s a need for it in Lower Manhattan, so that’s why it’s being built there. What about 10, 20 blocks . . . Midtown Manhattan, considering the circumstances behind this? That’s not understandable?

   Patel: In America, we don’t tell people based on their race or religion or ethnicity that they are free in this place, but not in that place —

   Lemon: [interrupting] I understand that, but there’s always context, Mr. Patel . . . this is an extraordinary circumstance. You understand that this is very heated. Many people lost their loved ones on 9/11 —

   Patel: Including Muslim Americans who lost their loved ones. . . .

   Lemon: Consider the context here. That’s what I’m talking about.

   Patel: I have to tell you that this seems a little like telling black people 50 years ago: you can sit anywhere on the bus you like – just not in the front.

   Lemon: I think that’s apples and oranges – I don’t think that black people were behind a Terrorist plot to kill people and drive planes into a building. That’s a completely different circumstance.

   Patel: And American Muslims were not behind the terrorist plot either.

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Where is the sensitivity by this retired firefighter, Tim Brown, to the American Muslims who lost loved ones on 9/11? The more this man spoke the more he proves his narrow minded bigotry. He is suing to block the building of the Islamic Cultural Center that is over 2 blocks from the WTC site. Shame on him for not having the same sympathy to surviving families who don’t look like him.

Michael Daly said it in his Op-Ed in the NY Daily News.

It’s an emotional issue, but blocking the Ground Zero mosque is just what the terrorists want

But I cannot help feeling that if we block this mosque we will not only be doing what Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh want, we will also be doing exactly what Osama Bin Laden wants.

On the day it murdered Mychal and Pat and Terry and Dennis and so many others, Al Qaeda was looking to hijack more than jetliners. The killers’ ultimate goal was and is hijacking Islam itself. And to do that they need us to make them into more than what they are.

Without us elevating them into enemy combatants in a war on terror, they would be just a couple of hundred murderous losers.

Even now, after all our mistakes, after we let Bin Laden slip away in Afghanistan and lost our focus going into Iraq, Al Qaeda is still more a gang than an army.

Wake up and smell the roses, Tim, your bigotry in the name of sympathy is no way to honor your fellow firefighters or all of those who lost their lives that day, it just gives bin Laden another victory.

h/t to Glenn Greenwald