Preacher George’s most ardent parishioners in Houston continue to live down to his fine example:
A plan to build a mosque in this Houston suburb has triggered a neighborhood dispute, with community members warning the place will become a terrorist hotbed and one man threatening to hold pig races on Fridays just to offend the Muslims.
Many neighborhood residents claim they have nothing against Muslims and are more concerned about property values, drainage and traffic. (editorial aside: oh, THAT old dodge!)
But one resident has set up an anti-Islamic Web site with an odometer-like counter that keeps track of terrorist attacks since Sept. 11. A committee has formed to buy another property and offer to trade it for the Muslims’ land. And next-door neighbor Craig Baker has threatened to race pigs on the edge of the property on the Muslim holy day. Muslims consider pigs unclean and do not eat pork.
Yup, nothing says “love your neighbor” like engaging in some good old-fashioned American bigotry! Makes you really feel the spirit of the season, for which the “Prince of Peace” is supposedly the reason. I’m sure He’d just LOVE the pig races!
Mr. Fatouh, a member of the Muslim community that wants to open the center, is apparently bemused by Mr. Baker’s crude attempt to offend:
Baker’s attempt to offend missed its mark, according to Fotouh. Muslims do not hate pigs, he said; they just don’t eat them.
Of course, actually knowing anything about the filthy outsiders that rile any red-blooded angry white man up is not at all necessary. After all, who wants to know anything about anybody different? That just gets in the way of getting a good bigoted hate on. Some of Mr. Baker’s neighbors are every bit at stupid as he is:
Cynthia Blackman wrote Radack that the center was a security risk: “Would you and your family safely and comfortably live next to this 11-acre Muslim mosque and facilities?”
Mr. Baker is determined to go on with his demonstration:
Though he now concedes the Muslims are probably not after his land, Baker said he is obligated to go through with the pig races, probably within the next few weeks, because “I would be like a total idiot if I didn’t. I’d be the laughingstock now because I’ve gone too far.”
Well, you’re a laughingstock NOW, you idiot, but why not commit to your proud moronic course and go all the way?
However, Mr. Fatouh does relate a story that demonstrates that not all Americans, not even in Texas, are blinkered brutes:
The reaction has not been all negative. Fotouh said one man came to the mosque on a Friday afternoon and apologized for his neighbors. “He moved me, really,” Fotouh said. “The sense of fairness, the sense of standing by the underdog.”
I like to think more of us are like that man who visited Mr. Fotouh. I really wish that those welcoming and decent weren’t drowned out by the likes of the easily frightened, cowardly and prejudiced people like Mr. Baker and Ms. Blackman. Hell, I’m nervous about the kinds of idiots who go to far-right churches, who attack women going into clinics for reproductive healthcare, who threaten and shoot OBGYNs, who set off bombs outside of gay nightclubs to the encouraging cheers of their fellow “Christians”. In America most terrorists come from the racist, misogynist, homophobic right, and many of them label themselves as “Christian”.
Sadly, this kind of thinking is all too prominent in this country, and has been getting worse in the general public, the media and in law enforcement since 911.
