Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - Mosque planned to be built near Ground Zero

- Tilted Politics (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-politics/)

- - Mosque planned to be built near Ground Zero (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-politics/155204-mosque-planned-built-near-ground-zero.html)

Most of the Christians I've known weren't fundamentalists. One was even a pastor. None of them ever told me that I should get used to the feeling and smell of fire and brimstone.

Fundamentalists of any religion are generally those who take most if not all teachings at their word. They believe there is no other way...whether it be to God or simply to live. Their reality is mapped out on the pages of their respective holy book.

So, a fundamental Christian is one who sees those who don't live like they do as participating in aberrant behaviour. This means that fundamentalist Christians think that Muslims and Jews are "wrong." They probably think they should convert to Christianity. That sort of thing. I can't imagine what they think of atheists and those of the Eastern religions.

Sometimes they walk up to me and tell me what they think. It's always an interesting experience.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel (Post 2821529)

Sometimes they walk up to me and tell me what they think. It's always an interesting experience.

Those would be the disliked fundamentalists.

Baraka explained it well. A fundamentalist is also someone who doesn't accept any opinions different from his own. A fundamentalist is blind to reality, has selective hearing, and has a closed mind about everything.

A fundamentalist is very bad, no matter what they believe in.

I want to hear more about how liberals hate Christians

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414 (Post 2821153)

MSD,

Just for my own personal understanding, what is the difference between a "Christian Fundamentalist" and a "Christian"?

Fundamentalists are those who claim that the bible is the literal word of God. The problem I referred to is the idea that any biblical ideal should be codified in law when it contradicts overwhelming empirical evidence (teaching Intelligent Design, for example) or modern social attitudes of tolerance and acceptance (opposing equal rights for all people.)

A fundamentalist is the same thing as a fanatic: someone that will never change their mind and never change the subject. EVERYTHING revolves around their obsession, regardless of how desperate the connection seems. To a christian fundy everything bad everywhere ever is because people dont follow their exact idea of what it means to follow the bible. And they will NEVER change their minds or change the subject.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel (Post 2821521)

Burning someone else's holy book would be a prime example of this, but lesser things like creationism (trying to scientifically explain the supernatural by bastardizing science while flatly denying the demonstrable) also qualify.

Creationism may be wrong, but it never struck me as something unhealthy. At least not for the individual believer.

I guess I'm just skeptical that you're actually limiting your concept of 'unhealthy' fundamentalism to those who actually have something like a mental illness in their Christian lifestyle. It seems too subjective, too easily extended to healthy people who annoy you.

i think that there's a sociological definition of christian fundamentalism--like msd said, literal interpretation of the bible is, if i remember correctly, one of the main features, as is a social conservatism. this lets you include movements like the pentacostalism which doesn't stick to traditional denominational boundaries. i'm not an expert of the sociology of religion in the united states by any means, so am not sure what similarities there are in practice between, say, southern baptists and charismatic groups inside of roman catholicism. but it intiutively makes sense--coupling a literal interpretation of the bible with rituals that emphasize immediate contact between the community of believers and the various manifestations of the trinity that they take to be hanging around their door(s).

there are likely other aspects of doctrine that define christian fundamentalism, but i'm not sure what they'd be.

within that, though, is alot of room for different kinds of relations with the social identity "charismatic" or "southern baptist"--because it's not obvious that "fundamentalist" is a category used evenly inside these groups to as a self-characterization. so you could easily have people who's affiliations and practices would position them as fundamentalist but whose personal comportments would not so much, if you attribute a weight to the other main way in which the term is defined in this thread. That one, the subjective one, the one which denotes attitudes or relations taken on by individuals. It seems to me really loose, not much more than a shorthand for referring to "a type of christian i don't like."

this to maybe help clarify the divergent senses given the term in the thread.

Its not the traditional Christian fundamentalists that should be of concern as much as the Christian extremists, like the Christian Identify Movement (the US government is under the control of ZOG - Zionist Occupied Government) and the racists militia groups like Aryan Nation that identify with the Movement for some sort of religious cover.

These guys look at The Turner Diaries, the fictional account of the Day of Judgement that calls for violent revolution,the overthrow of the federal government and the extermination of all Jews and non-Whites, as their inspiration.

---------- Post added at 07:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:13 PM ----------

Granted, movements like the above are a very small percentage of Christians.

Just as the extremists Muslims who have hijacked their religion in a similar manner represent a very small percentage of the 1+ billion Muslims in the world.

as denominations, xtian identity is a pretty tiny operation. it is explicitly racist and if memory serves is among the anglo-israelites, which is one of the more zany american protestant derivatives. the founder built the 900 ft jesus outside of hot springs arkansas. shows the depth of roots of this particular combo. war and the other explicit racist organizations are also quite small.

what i think is more a problem is the continued efficacy of the christian coalition period mobilization across the whole spectrum of southern baptist and other evangelical churches along with a general drift into dangerously reactionary territory of the tea partiers (brought to you by koch brothers inc.)

this particular situation, the fantasy of the "ground zero mosque" the repellent usage of this fiction as a mobilizing tool for the ultra-right---i think this shows the problems that are raised by the above. i still think that across this there's an institutional conflict playing out for control over the conservative movement. what's interesting about it is the degree to which this conflict is masked by populist rightwing politics--i wonder sometimes about faux news in particular, which seems to be playing all sides of the conflict probably figuring that's the only way to protect their bidness model (that really should be illegal, but that's another matter)

so i think the danger here is the migration of a neo-fascist populist ideology into the center of conservative politics, supported by a well-funded media apparatus, that borrows heavily from the languages and paranoias of fundamentalist christianity as an aspect of an ongoing articulation of an identity politics. the other danger follows from a "free press" that remains in the main on its knees before the right to the extent that they increasingly whacked out political memes are covered as if they were legitimate. the "ground zero mosque" is a creation of this press-specific dynamic.

it's depressing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoolThemAll (Post 2821861)

Creationism is as rational as declaring that the periodic table is a lie and that the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water are the only true elements and anyone who does not believe this is a heretic and an enemy. Believing in something unprovable over accepting established facts based on evidence is harmful. How can it be harmless for large segments of the population to believe that reality is not real?

Quote:

Originally Posted by MSD (Post 2821938)

How can it be harmless for large segments of the population to believe that reality is not real?

Because for most, it's just not going to have much of a practical consequence to daily life. It surely could have far-reaching effects once you get into local school boards, ect., but to the individual it's not going to be terribly unlike an ignorance in the Korean War when you're a construction worker or a pro-abortion stance when you're a gay priest.

I'm not saying it's harmless, I'm merely saying that I don't see what qualifies it as 'unhealthy'. On an individual basis, it's just not going to matter much.

i was against this until i heard the facts and heard the other sides POV...

first of all every stinkin email i got about people in a uproar about this failed to mention that the mosque / community center was 2 blocks away from ground zero...i imagined that it was being built right there....

and the iman seems to be a really good representative of the muslim religion....heck from what i understand the us govt even sent him around kinda as a good will ambassador....

It's more than that, the whole thing was a non-issue for like 6 months. They were even interviewed on the O'Reilly factor and so forth and were given encouragement and support. This "issue" didn't exist until it was made a pet project by an extremist who believes that Malcolm X is Obama's secret muslim father and Sarah Palin got onboard with her "pls refudiate" tweet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadowex3 (Post 2826536)

This "issue" didn't exist until it was made a pet project by an extremist who believes that Malcolm X is Obama's secret muslim father

I am NOT Obama's father. And No i will not take a paternity test

sorry for the thread jack..carry on

Great, now folks will be claiming Obama was born in Oz and thus not a "real" American. Thanks a lot dish.

Normally I don't venture into politics, but I came across this article in the NYTimes today and thought it was germane:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/nyregion/08zero.html

Quote:

200-Year-Old Echoes in Muslim Center Uproar
By PAUL VITELLO

Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles.

Concerned residents staged demonstrations, some of which turned bitter.

But cooler heads eventually prevailed; the project proceeded to completion. And this week, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church in Lower Manhattan — the locus of all that controversy two centuries ago and now the oldest Catholic church in New York State — is celebrating the 225th anniversary of the laying of its cornerstone.

The Rev. Kevin V. Madigan, who is the pastor of St. Peter’s, said that when he began reading about the history of his church early this year in preparation for the Oct. 5 anniversary, he was not initially struck by the parallels between the opposition it had faced and what present-day Muslims have encountered in proposing a community center and mosque near ground zero.

“There was no controversy when they first proposed it, and we were just pleased to have a new neighbor,” said Father Madigan, whose church, at Barclay and Church Streets, sits two blocks from 51 Park Place, the site of the proposed Islamic center. Both are roughly equidistant from the construction zone at ground zero.

But as an uproar enveloped the Islamic project over the summer, the priest said he was startled by how closely the arguments and parries of the project’s opponents mirrored those brought against St. Peter’s in 1785.

Father Madigan detailed those similarities in a letter to parishioners over the summer, in two sermons he delivered at an interfaith gathering last month and at a special Mass last Sunday marking the church’s anniversary.

For starters, he said, there was the effort to move the church project somewhere else.

City officials in 18th-century New York urged project organizers to change the church’s initial location, on Broad Street, in what was then the heart of the city, to a site outside the city limits, at Barclay and Church. Unlike the organizers of Park51, who have resisted suggestions they move the project to avoid having a mosque so close to the killing field of ground zero, the Catholics complied.

Then there were fears about nefarious foreign backers. Just as some opponents of Park51 have said that the $100 million-plus project will be financed by the same Saudi sheiks who bankroll terrorists, many early-American Protestants saw the pope as the sworn enemy of democracy, and feared that his followers’ little church would be the bridgehead of a papal assault on the new United States government.

The Park51 organizers say they will not accept any foreign backing. But with about only 200 Catholics in New York in the late 1700s, most of them poor, St. Peter’s Church would not have been built without a handsome gift from a foreigner — and a papist at that — $1,000 from King Charles III of Spain.

The angry eruptions at some of the demonstrations this summer against the proposed Muslim center — with signs and slogans attacking Islam — were not as vehement as those staged against St. Peter’s, Father Madigan said.

On Christmas Eve 1806, two decades after the church was built, the building was surrounded by Protestants incensed at a celebration going on inside — a religious observance then viewed in the United States as an exercise in “popish superstition,” more commonly referred to as Christmas. Protesters tried to disrupt the service. In the melee that ensued, dozens of people were injured and a policeman was killed.

“We were treated as second-class citizens; we were viewed with suspicion,” Father Madigan wrote in his letter to parishioners, adding, “Many of the charges being leveled at Muslim-Americans today are the same as those once leveled at our forebears.”

The pastor said that Park51’s organizers would have to “make clear that they are in no way sympathetic to or supported by any ideology antithetical to our American ideals, which I am sure they can do.” But he said Catholic New Yorkers have a special obligation to fulfill.

The discrimination suffered by the first Catholics in America, he said, “ought to be an incentive for us to ensure that similar indignities not be inflicted on more recent arrivals.”