By Thank you all for the warm welcome. I had two ideas for posts to start off, one a bit less controversial than the other; I decided to go with the easier one first.
There have been many words aired over the proposed Cordoba Center in Manhattan, presumably because of its proximity to the World Trade Center site. With the attention paid to this particular mosque, a person might be easily led into thinking that the controversy is simply over a site with historical and emotional value, and that by-and-large the sentiment of religious freedom prevails in the rest of the United States.
Unfortunately, that impression would be wrong. From the New York Times:
At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their backyards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise — the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue. But now the gloves are off.
In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law.
These local skirmishes make clear that there is now widespread debate about whether the best way to uphold America’s democratic values is to allow Muslims the same religious freedom enjoyed by other Americans, or to pull away the welcome mat from a faith seen as a singular threat.
“What’s different is the heat, the volume, the level of hostility,” said Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky. “It’s one thing to oppose a mosque because traffic might increase, but it’s different when you say these mosques are going to be nurturing terrorist bombers, that Islam is invading, that civilization is being undermined by Muslims.”
The article details four other recent cases of community protests in reaction to a proposed mosque or Muslim community center. What unites these protests with the Cordoba Center controversy is the focus, which has shifted onto Islam itself being the problem identified by protesters rather than the more mundane civil complaints one would expect when any new large gathering place is proposed. One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers opines that this basic anti-Islamic sentiment has always been there and the Cordoba Center has merely provided a convenient pretext to stop hiding it, with cover being provided by prominent national political leaders.
I find the general thrust of the argument plausible, and if it is, has many worrying historical parallels with American antisemitism and anti-Catholicism. Those borderline conspiracy theories generally asserted that people of these groups had secret intentions to subvert the values and structures of the host society, and ultimately replace them with incompatible values. Such popular assertions led large groups and even entire political parties to form in opposition to these supposed subversive elements and promote arguments and legislation to combat the phantom threat, invariably oppressing them and placing their members at risk of harm.
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Gwenny: Absolutely not! The world has plenty of people having kids. A child consumes HUGE amounts of resources, which from both a... 
Siberia: Or maybe they know they have neither patience nor inclination to deal with the fruit of their loins and thus, rather than be... 
DDM: Repubs and Dems. He’s saying they only take first impressions and... 
CM: Good point, most religions encourage having a lot of children. From an evolutionary standpoint you sort of owe it to your... 
Jasowah: “They don’t go beyond those emotions, and that’s the... 
DarkMatter: And funny that most of them are huge in size in the vid. 
