Showing posts with label Muslim Brotherhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslim Brotherhood. Show all posts

9.02.2010

PZ Makes My Argument Better

"I don't like the Manhattan mosque, but they've got the right — as long as I've got the right to point and laugh"
Naturally, I dislike the idea of constructing religious buildings anywhere, since they are a colossal waste of community resources, typically represent unproductive holes in the tax base, and promote stupid thinking — but guess what? Those aren't legal cause to interfere with people's right to waste their time and money. Also, if we accept the privilege of individual autonomy and personal freedom, we don't have moral cause to interfere.
I get spooked out by any religion claiming "insensitivity." It's a building, nothing more, nothing less. Let's not add to what it is until those who occupy it do so. Then, we can point and laugh, or rally and protest, or let the government raid it for terrorism.

The first amendment is hard, and insensitivities are not its standard.

5.15.2009

3.03.2008

Notre Dame?!?

The Wacky World of Tariq Ramadan
By Jeffrey Breinholt

Tariq Ramadan is an enigma. The grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al Banna and the son of the late top Brotherhood leader in Europe, the Swiss academic is the probably the most celebrated Muslim public "intellectual" on the planet today. He is no longer welcome in France or Egypt, and his appointment to the faculty of Notre Dame is very much in doubt, based on the Department of Homeland Security's denial of his U.S. visa. The denial is premised on his financial support to Hamas, which Ramadan claims was - ha! - inadvertent. There is now the first book-length English biography of him, a translation of Caroline Fourest's Frere Tariq (in English, Brother Tariq). My review of it can be found on the website of the Investigative Project on Terrorism .


Read it all @ Counterterrorism Blog.