GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

CNN Takes Note of “Draw Muhammad Day”

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I must admit, I’m stunned….

CNN.com Cover Story:  “My Take: Everyone chalk Mohammed?”

There is a difference between making fun of religious or other ideas on a TV show that you can turn off, and doing it out in a public square where those likely to take offense simply can’t avoid it. These chalk drawings are not a seminar on free speech; they are the atheist equivalent of the campus sidewalk preachers who used to irk me back in college. This is not even “Piss Christ,” Andres Serrano’s controversial 1987 photograph of a crucifix in urine. It is more like filling Dixie cups with yellow water and mini crucifixes and putting them on the ground all over town. Could you do it legally? Of course. Should you?

In Muslim culture, there is a longstanding tradition that to put something on the ground, where people step on it, is “the ultimate diss,” indicating “I hate you, you disgust me,” as I was told by Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America

To this add the fact that after 9/11 hate crimes against Arabs, Muslims and “those perceived to be Muslim” increased 1,700 percent in the United States, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Large numbers of innocent Muslims in the U.S. have been harmed or intimidated simply because they share a religious tradition with extremists. Can we reasonably suggest they not be reminded of this upon seeing their prophet, the most revered and admired person in their cultural tradition, underfoot?

CNN iReport –

There is a huge fight on the internet especially facebook about May 20th Draw Muhammad Day. I have thought long and hard about whether to draw Muhammad and I have decided that I will. I do not think people of certian religions should be able to tell other people not of that religion what they can and cannot do. I do not draw Muhammad out of malice but out of protest because I do not think it is acceptable for our artist to recieve death threats over cartoons. I understand that drawing Muhammad is offensive but many things in America are offensive. Republican and Democrats make signs all the time that are offensive too each other this is free speech to be able to say and expression our opinions to people we do not agree with. Drawing Muhammad does not constitute hate. I am doing this neither out of Malice or hate. If there are terrorist acts because of people drawing pictures I hope that America will wake up and see that people are killing over cartoons and that we should not give up freedom for security.

Maybe Nick was right — if CNN wakes up, perhaps today did change history.  Time shall tell.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

May 20: Standing Up For American Values

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Good morning.  There are a number of important things going on in the world today that warrant note as they all relate to an existential threat to the American Republic, its founding Principles & Documents, and the freedoms we take for granted.  I’m going to touch on a couple of them in this post and my fellow bloggers will hit the topic throughout the day as well.

Today — May 20 — was first mentioned as “Everyone Draw Muhammad Day” (EDMD) to protest and challenge the terroristic treatment of Swedish political cartoonist Lars Vilks.

Vilks, 53, recently was the target of an alleged murder plot that led to the arrests of two American women. He has faced death threats from Islamic extremists since depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a dog in a series of 2007 illustrations. That same year, a bounty was placed on Vilks’s head.

Well, Vilks continues to be targeted by fanatics and his house was torched last week.

The southern Sweden home of Vilks was hit by a suspected arson attack last Friday night, according to the Associated Press. Vilks, who sparked a violent protest Tuesday while speaking at Stockholm’s Uppsala University, was not home at the time of Friday’s attack.

UPDATE: Police have arrested two men in the fire-bomb attack, according to AFP. The suspects, 21 and 19, are Swedish nationals of Kosovar origin who were arrested after personal items were found near the scene, Swedish police said.

Since the attack, Vilks now says he is sleeping elsewhere. “During the day I don’t think it is dangerous because I can keep watch over myself,” Vilks told the Associated Press. “But I have to realize that I can’t be there during the night.”

There are a number of bloggers on the left and the right marking today with various iterations of “Draw Muhammad Day”.  My co-bloggers will cover those activities in other posts here today in their own style.

In the same spirit of celebrating the First Amendment and the valued tradition in America of debating right vs. wrong — I would like to bring to your attention this controversy:  A Mosque Is Planned At The Site of the 9/11 Attacks in NYC.

A group called “ACT for America” is sponsoring this petition drive:

We the undersigned join with millions of Americans who are opposed to the founding of a mosque at the very site where Islamist jihadists destroyed the World Trade Center and took the lives of nearly 3,000 people.

We are opposed to the grotesque symbolism represented by the building of this mosque at “ground zero.” We are especially appalled that those pushing for this mosque have designated its grand opening date for September 11, 2011 – the ten year anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.

We are deeply disturbed by the insensitivity to the families of the victims of the 9/11 jihadist attack exhibited by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his supporters. We find it grossly hypocritical that Islamists and their allies repeatedly lecture Americans about the need to be “sensitive” to Muslims while Imam Rauf and his allies practice the height of intolerance and insensitivity through the blatant act of building a mosque at “ground zero.”

We are offended by the views Imam Rauf has expressed about 9/11, such as his conspiratorial theory that Muslims did not perpetrate the 9/11 attack and that America’s policies were partly to blame for the attack. Such views are a slap in the face of the victims and families of 9/11.

We find it repulsive that Imam Rauf and his followers and supporters would seek to build a mosque near ground zero promoting the same Sharia ideology that the 9/11 hijackers used as the justification for their act of unconscionable murder.

Therefore, in deference to the families of the 9/11 victims and their memory, we call upon the elected officials of New York to oppose the building of this mosque near ground zero and for them to urge Feisal Abdul Rauf and his followers to find another location for it.

I encourage everyone to sign the petition and prevent this insult-upon-injury to the victims’ families from 9/11/2001.

So there you go — two hot button topics.  Please debate with civility and keep the vile personal attacks over at the DailyKos and Joe.My.God.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Islam: The First Cut Is The Deepest

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I highly recommend Mark Steyn’s Washington Times column this weekend.  He lays out a chilling case that those interested in advancing Political Islam are winning the ideological struggle hands-down.

Islam smells weakness at the heart of the West. The post-World War II order is dying: The European Union’s decision to toss a trillion dollars to prop up a Greek economic model that guarantees terminal insolvency is merely the latest manifestation of the chronic combination of fiscal profligacy and demographic decline in the West at twilight. Islam is already the biggest supplier of new Europeans and new Canadians, and the fastest-growing demographic in the western world. Therefore, it thinks it not unreasonable to shape the character of those societies – not by blowing up buildings and airplanes, but by determining the nature of their relationship to Islam.

For example, the very same day that Mr. Holder was doing his “Islam? What Islam?” routine at the Capitol, the Organization of the Islamic Conference was tightening its hold on the United Nations Human Rights Council – actually, make that the U.N. “Human Rights” Council. The OIC is the biggest voting bloc at the U.N. and it succeeded in getting its slate of candidates elected to the so-called “human rights” body – among them the Maldives, Qatar, Malaysia, Mauritania and Libya.

But along with the big headline victories go smaller ones. These days, Islam doesn’t even have to show up. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has quietly pulled representations of Muhammad from its Islamic collection. With the Danish cartoons, violent mobs actually had to kill large numbers of people before Kurt Westegaard was sent into involuntary “retirement.” Even with “South Park,” the thugs still had to threaten murder. But the Metropolitan Museum caved pre-emptively – no murders, no threats, but best to crawl into a fetal position, anyway.

Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians (AAP) noted that certain, ahem, “immigrant communities” were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo female genital mutilation FGM). So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They’re not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a “ritual nick” to young girls.

So, our own Attorney General couldn’t even utter the words “Radical Islam” last week during a Congressional hearing.  And liberals/feminists are silent about the chilling of free speech and mutilation of young women due to the PC-handling of Islam.

Enough said.  Read the whole thing.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)