Recently I've been receiving phone messages from Congressman Chris Smith and his Democrat opponent in the fourth district, Howard Kleinhendler, accusing the other of not being Islamaphobic enough. First Kleinhendler left a message accusing Smith of supporting the Islamic Center in Manhattan, now a message from Smith stating that that is not true and that he is on record of "strongly opposing" Mosques.
Congressman Ron Paul is correct in his recent statement calling this grandiose demagoguery.
The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.
The justification to ban the mosque is no more rational than banning a soccer field in the same place because all the suicide bombers loved to play soccer. - Ron Paul
Ron Paul admits that there exists a subset of Muslims who wish to do us harm, but instead of destroying our heritage of freedom we should ask ourselves why. I note that we have been busy building ground zeroes around Islamic Mosques for quite some time.
Regrettably, Islamaphobia is getting quite popular. Our politicians are using this issue to get the voters excited into supporting them. Our politicians are encouraging Islamaphobia in order to continue an ongoing interventionist foreign policy.
On The Fr33 Agents Network, Szandor Blestman, likens this attitude towards the witch hunts against Jews by the National Socialist Party in the 1940's.
Didn’t we already go through this? How often does this deja vu have to happen before we get it? It wasn’t that long ago when a national socialist country decided it wanted to restrict and regulate people due to their religion. The German Nazis were quick to label Jews as evil. They were the reason for all of mankind’s woes. They were the spawn of the devil. They were racially inferior and needed to be controlled. Oh, it started off in a seemingly harmless enough fashion, with registrations and the like so that the government could keep an eye on them and make sure they were on the up and up and doing all their business by the rules, but it quickly devolved into something much worse. It quickly became one of the darkest chapters in human history. - Szandor Blestman in "Will You Hide a Muslim In Your Attic?"
As American's we must stand up for our values of religious freedom, tolerance, freedom of expression, and property rights. We must not allow the demagogues, war mongers, and Islamaphobes in our society to cause us to enact laws restricting our freedoms either in the name of Islamaphobia or as a defense against the hatred. The builders of the Islamic center have the right to build and at the same time Islamaphobes have a right to their statements as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others.