You’re right! It is bigotry for me to object to a Mosque (the Cordoba Mosque!) being built at Ground Zero. Just as it was bigotry for me to object to a convent being built at Auschwitz, bigotry for me to object to President Reagan laying a wreath at Bitburg, bigotry for me to object to the Japanese Prime Minister’s annual trip to the Yasukuni Shrine, and bigotry for me to object to the flying of the Confederate flag.

You sure have me pegged!

Compared to most other places in the world, certainly, American Moslems are getting along with their neighbors. Especially, those who have stayed to become citizens (or were born citizens) I have great hope for. Good neocons hope that George Bush’s idea – if you bring freedom to a group they will respond decently – might actually work, and recently I have had my doubts.

I will additionally grant, even though you didn’t mention it, that most places in England where Moslems are not living in tight communities, but are in the regular neighborhoods, also seem to do quite well.

However, as others have noted, there is not only a high crime rate, which might be expected in any clustered immigrant population, but an entirely disproportionate amount of serious, warlike, terrorist crime as well. As they are often people who have been here for quite some time but are often not citizens, I am not sure how we count them – as American Moslems who are clearly not getting along, or as foreign nationals who shouldn’t count against the side?

I am disappointed that your returned to the Catholic priest analogy in another recent comment. I thought I had dispatched that pretty solidly.

Here is a more general bit of information which might give you some perspective on what you read here. Your accusations imply that you regard us as narrow Americans who are reflexively hating outsiders or those we are told to hate. That may even be true of some here. But this particular group includes many who were once reflexive liberals, and sounded much as you do in earlier versions of ourselves. But not only have people here read and thought much about world events and history, which you might have been prepared to expect, many of us have had extensive dealings abroad in impoverished and dangerous places, some have lived abroad for extended periods, and some here are actully from other countries. We have seen evil in forms other than Islam, sometimes up close. Yet we come back to you, across the divide, and say “No, this is different. There is some greater evil at work here.”

For myself, two of my five children are Romanian, I have a fair bit of experience in the Balkans, and friends here who are refugees from former Yugoslavia. I tend to see world events and history through their eyes as well as my American ones. Also, we are helping a Sudanese church get started, and I know many Sudanese (and other African) refugees as well (no friends yet, but that will come in time). I see much of the world through their eyes as well. Others here could tell you similar stories.

You seem to have made an enormous assumption that just isn’t so. We tell you that something about Islam seems to be of a different order of evil, and we don’t all say it lightly or reflexively. We know that’s not the polite thing to say. We know it sounds intolerant. Yet we say it anyway. Something to think about.

He isn’t interested in being sensitive or a good muslim.

Remember:
The Qur’an commands us Muslims to, ‘Be considerate when you debate with the People of the Book’ – i.e., Jews and Christians [chapter 29, verse 46]. Building an exclusive place of worship for Muslims at the place where Muslims killed thousands of New Yorkers, is not being considerate or sensitive, it is undoubtedly an act of “fitna,” the letter added.

The same goes for Catholic priests, Gringo.

What say we start closing down all their schools…just to be safe?

Most of those charged are U.S. citizens of Somali descent. They are accused of sending money and fighters to Shabab, an Islamist army with ties to Al Qaeda.

Here is just one example of what pops up when IGoogle Dearborn Hezbollah

Dearborn man gets 10 years for trying to help Hezbollah
A federal judge on Friday sentenced a former Ford Motor Co. engineer to 10 years in prison for trying to supply global positioning satellite equipment and other materials to the terrorist group Hezbollah. “You allowed the depth of your feeling for what was happening in your homeland to overcome your judgment,” U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen told Fawzi Mustapha Assi, a Lebanese-born U.S. citizen. “These were serious misjudgments.”

Yes, many and probably most Muslims in the US are good citizens. But we have enough evidence to take the “trust, but verify” approach.

Bak, I hate to embarrass you once again but, THE UNDERWEAR BOMBER IS NIGERIAN.

Here is what Baklava said before referring to the underwear bomber:

Ponce ridiculously wrote,“The Muslims in America are getting along with their fellow citizens rather peacefully.”

OK Ponce, let’s deal only with US citizens who are also Muslim, whom you claim “are getting along with their fellow citizens rather peacefully.” Like that Army doctor at Fort Hood, Ponce? Like Faisal Shahzad, the US citizen of Pakistani origin who was arrested for the failed car bomb in Times Square in New York? That would be the Faisal Shazad who also met with leaders of the Pakistani Taliban. Like John Allen Muhammed, the Beltway Sniper? What about the 14 in U.S. accused of supporting Somali terrorist group:

Moreover, you can pettifog about the underwear bomber not being a US citizen. The fact is that he was in the “special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States.” That the 9/11 people were not US citizens in no way increases the ability of Muslims to get along peacefully in the US.

I do not deny that there are many instances of US citizens of the Muslim faith who get along with non-Muslims. A neighbor of mine is from Morocco. We get along fine. There have been a number of examples in which US citizens of the Muslim faith have turned in jihadis to the FBI. Nonetheless, there is enough of a track record for us to be concerned.

I hate to embarrass you once again but,

THE
UNDERWEAR
BOMBER
IS
NIGERIAN.