Cameron McWhirter of the Wall Street Journal whitewashes Murfreesboro mosque, Hamas-linked CAIR

In the nature of things bridges are just that: narrow passageways connecting two areas that are otherwise similar but separate.
I prefer the analogy of a border crossing: traffic both ways is easily controlled by the more paranoid society whose border guards are turned inwards.

One can only marvel at incredibly presumptous demands that religions should be enjoined to caparciously revise some of their most central normative teachings in order to bear full conformity to a flawed, ever-vacillating, Americanist human political document and its attendant jurisprudence, forged out of any number of questionable influences, as though said document embodied the most perfect, comprehensive expression of the nature of mankind and his teleological-oriented natural and supernatural purposes and ends, when it, of course, is nothing of the sort.

Better that we consider some of what Matt Abbott wrote in a recent book review:

We ought to call Liberty a god (as many of its early followers literally did) because, like any idol that man sets up for himself, its claims are deemed to surpass those of the God who made him and presented Himself to His own creatures as the Word Incarnate. Whereas Christ declared that His apostles were to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost" and teaching them "to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you," Liberty declared, on the contrary, that the age-old baptism of nations was to be annulled and the Christian commonwealth abolished. Whereas Christ taught that political authority descends to man from God (even in the case of the procurator who unjustly sentenced Him to death), Liberty decreed that political authority ascends from the "sovereign will" of the people, so that even God's law could be subjected to popular repeal. Whereas Christ taught that His truth will make men free, Liberty insisted upon a previously unknown conception of social freedom: the mere absence of restraint on human action, save for that necessary to prevent violence and to protect the ownership, use and enjoyment of private property in the pursuit of whatever each individual deems to constitute happiness. Without the conformity of human law to divine law, the term "violence" inevitably contracted while the terms "property" and "happiness" expanded in proportion to what unrestrained human weakness and popular consensus demanded. Hence today human life in utero may, at the option of its "owner," be destroyed and disposed of as waste, or extracted and inventoried at the embryonic stage for sale as a consumer good. And not even the Christian opponents of these crimes against humanity are willing to oppose them on any ground but appeals to the same "sovereign" popular will that put Liberty on its pedestal and maintains it there by the religious devotion of its followers, Christians included....

That these principles would destroy the foundations of our civilization was always self-evident. Only forty years after Leo, Pope Pius XI observed that "With God and Jesus Christ, excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation."

But perhaps not even Leo and Pius could have imagined the full extent of the civilizational debacle Liberty has wrought: not only the abortion holocaust, but an epidemic of divorce, the universal practice of contraception, the depopulation of Western nations, the relentless advance of homosexualism, the destruction of the family, the spread of orgiastic consumerism in a morally unbound "free" market, the debasement of art, literature, music, architecture and Western culture as a whole, and finally the emergence of a veritable neo-pagan social order in which resistant Christians increasingly face persecution for heresies against the orthodoxy of Liberty and not even the stoic virtues of the pagans of Greco-Roman antiquity are evident....

A bridge to Islam is truly a "bridge to nowhere". Nobody in their right mind would want to go there, nor would they want them to come here.
________________

And as for the bit about "they only wish to practice their faith in peace.":
translated, that means they want to be able to mutilate, beat, and even kill their wives and daughters without interference from the kuffars; and to be able to marry 10-year-old girls and to have several wives; and to be given privileged treatment in the workplace, schools, and all public facilities; and to be free of any and all criticism or accountability because it "offends" them.
"Practicing their faith in peace" means we give th4em whatever they want, with no questions asked.

"Mosque leaders in Murfreesboro say they only wish to practice their faith in peace."

Yes they do and according to islamic scriptures, there will be no peace until the entire world is under Islamic rule.
Dar Islam and Dar al Harb, the land of Islam and the land of non-Islam. The war will continue until the entire world is Dar Islam.

Kepha,

Liberty, rightly understood, is a gift from God; I don't see any quarrel there.

What constitutes rightful liberty is the question. And, sorry, but it does not entail separation of church and state any more than the soul can be separated from the body, and the body will somehow remain incorrupt.

Your hypothesis of the divine use of Muslims for our chastisement is intriguing, and kudos for you to suggest it here, of all places. It may be true, though one should always be cautious with such supernatural theories.

Let us be ever mindful that we've had in Colorado and Wisconsin what amounts to two Western secular liberal terrorist attacks in the US. Amazing how we seem to have a never-ending stream of Western secular liberals who keep misunderstanding the supposed, purported, alleged, moral, pure, pristine, sublime principles of Western secular liberality.

And let's retire this asinine notion that Nazism and Bolshevism somehow come from Islam. Rather, their genetic pedigree pinpoints them as yet another set of exotic embodied manifestations of the Western secular liberal swamp.

There's that term again - "bridge building." I wonder who loves it more - the Islamists who use it or the dhimminis who accept it?

Wall Street Journal, more and more, is cited by left-leaning (even Obama-supporting) folks who make the case that conservative media folks "get it." I mean how much further right can you get than the Wall Street Journal?

Apropos of nothing:

Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek promotes pro-Sharia Ground Zero mosque imam as a "moderate"

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/08/about-newsweeks-surrender-to-the.html

"A cottage industry of scaremongering has flourished in the West -- especially in the United States -- since 9/11. Experts extrapolate every trend they don't like, forging any serious study of the data. Many conservative commentators have written about the impending Islamization of Europe (Eurabia, they call it, to make you even more uncomfortable)....The ideological watchdogs have spent so much time with the documents of jihad that they have lost sight of the actual Muslim societies. Where they to step back, they would see a frustration with the fundamentalists, a desire for modernity (with some dignity and cultural pride for sure), and a search for practical solutions -- not a mass quest for immortality through death...."

(The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria)

Too bad the late Daniel Pearl (who, BTW, worked for WSJ and was murdered in Pakistan by Al-Qaeda) isn't around to personally kick Cameron McWhirter's ass.

Mr. Spencer wrote to Cameron McWhirter, who ignored the information:

"…. 80% of U.S. mosques were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians. U.S. officials continue to ignore this and to fail to call upon U.S. Muslim leaders to reform and teach against the elements of Islam that are incompatible with Constitutional values and freedoms."

But what elements of Islam are compatible with Constitutional values and freedoms? The earlier verses of the Koran, the ones that were abrogated by the later? What would an imam preach to his congregation? "Allah told Mohammad that he shouldn’t go looking behind rocks for Jews to slay. Allah told Mohammad that he shouldn’t slay infidels wherever he finds them. Allah told Mohammad he shouldn’t butcher infidel men and divvy up their women among his warriors. Allah told Mohammad that he shouldn’t lie to Jews and infidels about his 'peaceful' intentions, and then turn to his friends with a wink and say, sotto voce, 'Suckers!'"

What exactly would be left in Islam to preach in any mosque, mega-sized or storefront? Aristotelian thought? A philosophy of reason, such as Objectivism? Perhaps the tenets of another religion. Hinduism? Scientology? Jeremiah Wright's brand of Christianity? Or Louis Farrakhan's brand of Islam? Critical Race Theory? It beggars the imagination what there is in Islam that isn't hostile to the Constitution and freedom.

Perhaps in your email to McWhirter you should have reminded him of what Omar Ahmad, the founder of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in 1998 said in a controversial interview:

"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other religions, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."

That shouldn't be so shocking, because we also have Supreme Court justices who don’t think the Constitution is the highest authority in America, either (re Obamacare), not to mention Barack Obama.

But those "bridges to non-Muslims," insofar as Islamic doctrine is concerned, are merely avenues of invasion. Islam shouldn't be cut any slack, if one concedes it is an ideology compelling its followers to seek domination and the obliteration of individualism and freedom. From top to bottom, it is as evil and totalitarian as Nazism and Communism. And as debilitating and irrational as any other religion.

I am surprised that this article appeared in the Wall Street Journal. I wouldn't have been surprised to see it in the New York Times. See Tom Gross's excellent article on the lack of objectivitiy in the news columns of the New York Times. http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/NewYorkTimes.htm

Kepha: Appreciate your general pious outlook on things, though I believe a confessional state is of great potential value and importance.

Darmanad: Yes, this is about politics, humans rights, freedom, and justice. And an immediate issue on this thread pertaining to those is Robert's call that the US government should intervene to call for religious believers to start shredding their foundational beliefs in order to have no conceptual conflict with whatever the prevailing liberal, post-modern strains of thought of the day might be, as mediated and espoused by Americanist constitutional jurisprudence. Perhaps prior to 1865, all religionists would have been required to uphold African chattle slavery as a blessed good, if Jihad Watch were to have its way.

You also fail to grasp that considerations pertaining to politics, human rights, freedom, and justice are integrally rooted in the nature of man's existence, and, therefore, religion.

Buraq: Thank you.

What's critically absent, and I repeat your critique;
"As far as the doubling in the number of mosques, four separate studies conducted in 1998, 2004, 2007 and 2011 all found that 80% of U.S. mosques were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians."
And, there's the rub!

As a loyal reader of JW, I am very much in agreement with
darmanad. I too wish to reprimand both RX and Kepha for their long, tidious and irrelevant comments on this [JW]
site.