Recently, a friend’s joke made me laugh, and not laugh: Developers sought city council approval to build a huge edifice covering most of a city block. With turrets at all corners and blaring outside entertainment systems, it would also provide parking for several hundred cars. After the council’s denial, the developers reapplied, identified the building as a mosque, and received immediate permission to build.
The proposed Ground Zero Mosque is no laughing matter, nor is Sharia Law, which encourages violence against so-called infidels. Knowledgeable observers warn that such a mosque, within a stone’s throw of a hallowed site where, just nine years ago, radical Jihadists murdered thousands of innocent Americans, will be a stronghold for terrorism’s promulgation, and an insult to nearly seventy percent of this country’s citizens who are outraged that state and federal leaders would even consider its construction.
While reading about this issue, I discovered that there is a radical movement within Islam to implement Sharia Law as the world’s legal system. One investigator claimed, “Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the founder of the proposed Mosque, helps to prepare a Sharia Index that rates countries on their degree of compliance with Sharia Law. In the United Kingdom, many courts have recognized Sharia as the governing law on matters between two Muslims.”
How law-abiding followers of Islam feel about the Ground Zero Mosque is not the issue. No doubt, most of them living in this country are grateful that they can worship as they please in accordance with the rights set forth in the Constitution. The real issue has to do with granting religious freedom to radical extremists who do not tolerate religious freedom.
I cannot accept the opinion of fellow Christians with whom I’ve discussed this issue, who feel that our faith should lead by example, that Christians should rise above visceral, reactionary attitudes, and demonstrate that we are tolerant toward all, even those whose objectives are known to be malicious.
How can people with any sense of justice — with any sense of what is right, more so than “rights” — be tolerant toward violence-prone Sharia extremists who adhere to draconian laws that subjugate females to chattel status, who condone stoning women to death, forcing them into marriages before reaching adulthood, disallowing them any voice in divorce matters, and permitting husbands to abuse them without fear of punitive consequences?
Some of this country’s leaders are quick to point out that the American way is to treat everyone the same, in keeping with laws that apply equally to all. What hypocrisy! Many illegal immigrants swarming into this country every day thumb their noses at laws that apparently don’t apply equally to all, while being afforded the same benefits and services as legal citizens.
I am outraged that Sharia advocates denigrate me as an infidel, and I believe that the Ground Zero Mosque will allow them to establish a beachhead for their ongoing war against freedom.
If it is built, I will not be among those guilty of tolerating the intolerable.
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
