Let's follow the thinking involved. A person insults a large group of people, perhaps inadvertently though there are many questions about his motives, and engenders a back lash. What does the typical, caring, concerned citizen do next?
1) Make a heartfelt apology and reconsider the decision?
Or?
2) Reject those who have had the temerity to raise objections, claim that he is being attacked unfairly, and re-double his determination?
Historically, we know that the Carmelite Nuns, when they unintentionally insulted Jewish survivors and descendants of the Holocaust, apologized and moved their planned Convent from Auschwitz.
At the other extreme, neo-Nazis went to court to insist upon their right to march in a Jewish suburb of Chicago.
Few people will argue that the neo-Nazis insult was inadvertent; they meant to provoke and hurt people and they had the right to do it; however, they never, to my recollection, claimed that they were the victimized parties.
Recently the 9/11 Mosque controversy arose in New York. Granting Imam Rauf the benefit of every doubt, let us assume he did not appreciate the emotional reactions his planned Mosque would evoke. If he was surprised by the reaction, the appropriate reaction would have been #1. So, how do American Muslims react? (This is from the AP via the JPost.)
Muslims to hold summit over Ground Zero Islamic center
NEW YORK — A proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero is slowly being embraced by some Muslims who initially were indifferent about the plan, partly in response to a sense that their faith is under attack.
A summit of US Muslim organizations is scheduled to begin Sunday in New York City to address both the project and a rise in anti-Muslim sentiments and rhetoric that has accompanied the nationwide debate over the project.
The rest of the story is drearily predictable, and note who is involved:
But Shaik Ubaid of the Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York, one of the groups organizing the gathering, said he has a growing sense that some American Muslims who initially had trepidation are now throwing their support behind the plan.
"Once it became a rallying cry for extremists, we had no choice but to stand with Feisal (Abdul) Rauf," he said, referring to the New York City imam who has been leading the drive for the center.
Groups scheduled to participate in the summit include the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Muslim Alliance of North America and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The private meetings were to take place at a hotel near Kennedy Airport, and the group was planning to hold a news conference Monday at the site of the proposed Islamic center.
Either these are the among the most innocent and astonishingly uncomprehending (ie, intellectually deficient) of peoples or they know exactly what they are doing and it is all in the service of furthering the inroads that Shariah continues to make in the West. Shariah insists that all others must defer to the Muslims, be it to their rage, their determination, or their skillful abuse of Western tolerance.
My Christian friends have the perfect aphorism for the occasion:
Matthew 7:16
By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
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