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See also the recent fp story by BooMan: Wanker of the Day: Dorothy Rabinowitz.
Mayor Bloomberg’s Speech of Hope for New York, the U.S. and Religious Freedom
Official website New York City – VIDEO
Guests and speakers:
Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Father Alexander Karloutsos from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, Rabbi Bob Kaplan from the Jewish Community Council, Reverend Brian Jordan from the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, Rabbi Irwin Kula from the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership-CLAL, Reverend Jim Cooper from Trinity Church, Reverend Les Mullings from the Church of the Nazarene, Imam Shamsi Ali
from the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, Reverend T.K. Nakagaki from the New York City Buddhist Church, Cara Berkowitz from the UJA Federation and Matthew Weiner from the Interfaith Center of New York Join Mayor on Governors Island, Where the Dutch who Founded New Amsterdam – the Earliest Religiously-tolerant Colonial Settlement in America – First Lived.
Geert Wilders invited as speaker at 9/11 Anti-Islam protest in New York
Geert Wilders will be speaking in New York on September 11 at a protest demonstration against the building of a mega mosque near Ground Zero.
The demonstration, organized by SIOA (Stop Islamization Of America), takes place at 2pm at Park Place between Church and West Broadway, near Ground Zero. Other speakers include Newt Gingrich, 9/11 Parents and Families of Firefighters & WTC Victims.
A respected Flushing colonist, Henry Townsend, held a Quaker meeting in his home and was fined and banished. This prompted a protest from Flushing citizens, which is perhaps the earliest demand for freedom of religion made by American colonists to their political superiors. It is dated December 27, 1657, and is drawn up and signed by Edward Hart, the Town Clerk, Tobias Feake, the Schout (sheriff) and twenty-eight other citizens. This document, known as the Flushing Remonstrance, respectfully but firmly argues the cause of religious freedom: “for if God justifye who can condemn; and if God condemn who can justifye… And because our Saviour saith it is impossible but that offenses will come, but woe unto him by whom they cometh, our desire is not to offend one of his little ones, inwhatsoever form, name or title hee appears in, whether Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist or Quakers, but shall be glad to see anything of God in any of them desiring to doe unto all men, as wee desire all men should doe unto us, which is the true law both of church and state.” It goes on to quote the original Flushing Charter, which grants Flushing the right “to have and Enjoy the Liberty of Conscience, according to the Custome and manner of Holland, without molestation or disturbance.” (See Flushing Remonstrance for full text.)
In response, Governor Peter Stuyvesant put the Town Clerk and the Schout in jail. The former was subsequently banished from the colony and the latter excused after making an abject apology. In addition, the Flushing town government was entirely swept away and the governor replaced it with his own appointed organization.
« The Flushing Remonstrance of 1657 was a plea for religious tolerance
In the 21st century, the United States and the Western World awakens to racial hatred and advocacy for bodily harm to minorities in society. It’s camouflage for political gain … and not without success
Pam Geller – Anders Gravers – Geert Wilders join in an Anti-Muslim Hate Group
Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), was created by anti-Muslim bloggers and activists Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. It was born out of its parent organization Stop the Islamization of Europe (SIOE), an organization led by Anders Gravers (also a leader in SIOA), of whom Media Matters wrote.
SIOA’s declared mission is to educate Americans ..
“about the threat that Islamic doctrine and those who support it present to our freedoms, and the future of our democracy and country.” The organizers call themselves “scholar warriors/ideological warriors in the cause of American freedom and Constitutional government,” as well as in “the defense of… our society of liberty, knowledge, and human decency.”
The declared mission gives us a scent of the absurdity that is SIOA, what else can “the threat of Islamic doctrine and those who support it” mean except “Muslims.” In other words the groups mission is to educate Americans about the “threat that Muslims present to freedom.”
Geert Wilders’ Indonesian roots define his politics, says anthropologist
In an article in the left-wing weekly De Groene Amsterdammer Van Leeuwen asks: “Is it possible that the post-colonial and family history have made Wilders what he and his politics are today?” The article is an intellectual attempt to analyse what drives Wilders to say that “all immigration from Islamic countries should be halted” and that “all fundamental problems in the Netherlands are related to immigration”. The conclusion reached by Van Leeuwen is that these statements – plus the fact that he dies his hair peroxide blond – are indeed related to his genealogical link to the largest Islamic country.
The 6-page article reveals that Wilders’ grandmother, Johanna Ording-Meijer, came from an old Jewish-Indonesian family and that Wilders lied about this in his 2008 biography. However, Van Leeuwen, an expert on the position of Indo-Dutch people in the post-colonial age, goes beyond the notion that a politician known for judging others on their ethnic roots can himself be traced to foreign ancestors.
Van Leeuwen went into the national archives to find the sad story of Wilders’ grandfather on his mother’s side. Johan Ording was a regional financial administrator in the Dutch colony who suffered several bankruptcies and was fired while on leave in the Netherlands in 1934. He was reduced to begging when the government refused to give him a pension, but later made it to prison director. Van Leeuwen suggests that Wilders is out to avenge the injustice done to his grandfather.
But more than anything, he was defined by his Indo-roots, she says. Indonesia was a Dutch colony until 1949 and many mixed-race people moved to the Netherlands after the Indonesian independence. Van Leeuwen describes how these people were put in the same ‘cultural minority’ box with labour immigrants from Turkey and Morocco, whom they felt no connection to at all. More so, they had always felt very patriotic about the Netherlands and harboured strong sentiments against Islam, the dominant religion in their motherland.
From shergald’s diary – ADL Comes Out Against Ground Zero Mosque
“Does anybody get the irony in an anti defamation league endorsing religious bigotry?”
ADL Backs Bigots on Ground Zero Mosque
The ADL feels the anti-Islamic movement’s pain. But supporting bigotry because of it is not only reprehensible, it is un-American. It also goes against everything the Anti Defamation League is supposed to represent.
Andrew Sewer:
“I learned a very important lesson in Hebrew School that I have retained my entire life. If they can deny freedom to a single individual because of who they are, they can do it to anyone. Someone at the ADL needs to go back to Hebrew School.”
From a comment “Civil rights for me; but not for thee” by Ramsgate:
:
Imagine, the ADL was created in response to the conviction of Jewish businessman Leo Frank, who was found guilty in the murder of a 13-year-old girl in a case many said was a racially-motivated miscarriage of justice. Frank was kidnapped from prison and lynched by a mob in 1915The group today describes itself as “the nation’s premier civil rights/human relations agency.” The group “fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
