On the Cordoba Center controversy

Or as it’s better known these days thanks to the latest media meme, the “ground zero” mosque. Here’s the plain facts as simply put as I can get them down — the group behind the Cordoba Center has every Constitutional right to put the center right where it is planned to be as it has met New York’s zoning, and other, requirements. Proponents, and (more likely) opponents of the center have every Constitutional right to debate, discuss, cajole and otherwise use their free speech rights to influence the general public and the group behind the center. Whether placing the Cordoba Center that close to ground zero of the New York 9/11 attacks is a good or bad thing is subject for debate, but whether it can, or cannot, be placed there is not.

Which leads to this incredibly wrong-headed post by Andy McCarthy at the Corner.

From the link:

A friend poses the following: Imagine that there really were these fundamentalist Christian terror cells all over the United States, as the Department of Homeland Security imagines. Let’s say a group of five of these terrorists hijacked a plane, flew it to Mecca, and plowed it into the Kaaba.

Now let’s say a group of well-meaning, well-funded Christians — Christians whose full-time job was missionary work — decided that the best way to promote healing would be to pressure the Saudi government to drop its prohibition against permitting non-Muslims into Mecca so that these well-meaning, well-funded Christian missionaries could build a $100 million dollar church and community center a stone’s throw from where the Kaaba used to be — you know, as a bridge-building gesture of interfaith understanding.

McCarthy goes on to pose a series of hypothetical questions on the reaction from the Saudis, the Obama administration, Christian leaders and more. It’s very clear he’s getting at the point if his friend’s imagined situation had come to pass (I’ll just ignore the insinuation right-wing Christian extremist groups don’t exist in the United States) the conversation would be quite different.

In that he would be very correct, but unless he’s arguing the United States should become more like Saudi Arabia — a freakish mix of monarchical and theocratic power — the entire premise of his point means nothing. Of course if the situation were reversed the entire discussion would be radically different. Because the Cordoba Center discussion is playing out the way it is here is testament to the strength of the United States Constitution, and an example of what makes our nation great — truly the land of the free and the home of the brave.

It’s too bad some actors in this late-summer mini-drama want neither freedom, nor see bravery, in America. Some of those commenting on the center want the power to bulldoze the Constitution and to see fear in the America people.

The Green Revolution continues in Iran

The despotic regime in Iran must be feeling the heat. At every opportunity since the stolen election in June unrest has been breaking out across the nation. Today was an expected protest day, coinciding with a holiday honoring the holiest martyr of Shiite Islam and made even more potent after the death of Grand Ayatollah Ali Hossein Montazeri last week. The one-week day of mourning for Montazeri — a major player in the 1979 revolution and open critic of the recent regime crack-down against the Green Revolution protests — fell on this day adding fuel and emotion to the protest fire.

Here’s a link to the New York Times’ protest coverage, and breaking update’s from the NYT blog, the Lede.

From the second link:

Update | 2:49 p.m. My colleague Nazila Fathi has spoken with a doctor working at Najmieh hospital on  Jomhouri street in central Tehran, close to the site of violent clashes on Sunday. The doctor said that the hospital has have treated more than 60 people who were seriously injured and performed 17 operations on people with gunshot wounds. Three of the patients are in critical condition. The doctor also said that members of the security forces have filled the hospital.

Andrew Sullivan has done as much as any blogger in terms of getting the news of protest in Iran out there from the very beginning this summer. Here’s a very salient point on today’s activities:

This has to be seen now as a crippling blow to the coup regime. This vivid demonstration that they simply cannot command the assent of the Iranian people except by brutal, raw, thuggish violence, and that resistance to the regime is clearly stronger, more impassioned and angrier than ever before is their death knell. They have lost any shred of legitimacy – and the Green Revolution is outlasting them in conviction and energy and might.

The significance of this day, Ashura, the day Khomeini regarded as the turning point against the Shah, cannot be under-estimated. Its symbolic power in Shia Islam, its themes of resistance to tyranny to the last drop of blood, its fusion of religious mourning and political revolt: this makes it lethal to the fascist thugs who dropped any pretense of ruling by even tacit consent last June.

Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis”

This autobiographical animated film from 2007 is an excellent view into the Iran of the last thirty years. It opens with the Iranian Revolution and the high hopes of all Iranians looking to get out from under the Shah only to find out the Islamacists ended up as bad or worse.

The film is informative, happy, wistful and more, and it was very interesting for me to watch after this year’s ongoing green wave in Iran against the hard line Islamic leadership and the election by the ruling despots.

Hit this link to find Persepolis on DVD at Amazon.

Want a reason to wean the US from OPEC?

How about bringers of democracy being “cursed” by a Saudi prince this week.

The link goes to MEMRI, an excellent resource into Mideast media — a resource I don’t tap into near often enough. Long ago I used to read through MEMRI’s offerings on a regular basis, but it’s been out of my usual rotation for a while and ought to get back in there.

From the first link, the intro:

In an op-ed in the Saudi daily Al-Watan, Saudi Prince Saud bin Mansour bin Saud bin ‘Abd Al-‘Aziz  took on Saudi and Arab liberals and reformists and the Western ideal of democracy. Without naming names, he said that these people were promoting Western democracy despite all its flaws and despite the fact that Islam is vastly superior. Calling democracy “demo-khratiyya” (i.e. “demo-mendacity”), the prince said that writers who criticized Saudi Arabia needed an “ideological bloodletting” to purge them of their corrupt ideas.

And here’s some of the prince’s rabbit pellets:

“Those who hasten to endorse the Western ‘openness’ – whose arrows appear gentle but [carry] a fatal load – have they forgotten our principles and our clarity? Have [these people] not noticed that the West is always marketing democracy as a secular and civil system, not a religious [system]? [Struck by] waves of political Alzheimer’s, they keep telling us that Islam is not democratic.

“A curse on anyone who wants to enforce this demo-khratiyya on all political and constitutional issues. A curse on all those dictatorships that masquerade as demo–khratiyya in order to destroy what they define as third-world countries!

“It should be remembered that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the Custodian of the Two Holy Places, and that the sons or residents of the homeland have never been denied their rights. Our country’s structure is perfect [thanks to] Islam, which has established the [concept of] shura [i.e consultation] and the protection of rights, freedom, justice and anything [else] of value, as laid down by this generous religion.”