Now, suppose that as the next five-year anniversary of Kennedy’s death is marked, there is a concerted effort by some—who believe JFK’s killing was justified because of his foreign policy—to erect a structure or other symbolic manifestation at Arlington Cemetery where the 35th president is buried. Absurd? Insensitive? Certainly!
Of course, some might say, “Well, there is no proof that Islam itself is at fault in what happened in 2001, just a few extremists.” To which I would counter that not everyone is convinced Oswald acted alone—and, at any rate, when you do the math even by conservative standards of estimation, those extremists, people we’d consider to be Islamists, are far from few.
As I have written before, the number of Islamists in the world today (read: Muslims who hate America, and believe that the Sept.11 attacks were a good thing and that we all deserve to die if we don’t convert or submit to a Sharia-driven caliphate) is more than the entire populations of Japan, Germany, and Italy combined in 1939, on the eve of World War II.
This is based on widely held and cited estimates (e.g., Newsweek) that 10-15 percent of Muslims worldwide are radicalized. And here in the U.S., there are likely nearly a million Islamists walking our streets and living in our neighborhoods possessed of supremacist ideas.
So, following this pattern, if 2,000 or so people will eventually pray regularly at the proposed Ground Zero mosque (a figure suggested by the backers of this initiative), then it is likely that 200-300 of them will embrace Islamist ideas. But it’s no big deal, right?
Another thing that interests me about this developing story is the part I’d call “A Tale of Two Mayors.” First, you have Michael Bloomberg, one of the 10 wealthiest people in America (he has spent $250-300 million of his own money to get elected three times). His clear position is that this is all about religious freedom and that, “this building is private property and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship and the government has no right whatsoever to deny that right.”
Really Mike?
Here’s a news flash for Hizzoner—cities, towns, counties, and states routinely deny churches building permits and plans for expansion. In fact, it is a rare case when a Christian church tries to build or buy without it becoming an arduous, expensive, frustrating, and often ineffectually prolonged process. I can hardly wait to quote Mr. Bloomberg’s “expert” opinion on this the next time I go before my county wanting to build something. It’ll be cool to watch the members of the approval board sweat and submit to “the Bloomberg proviso.”
Yeah right.
Lost in the big story on that Sept. 11 nearly nine years ago is the fact that it was actually Election Day in New York City. Mr. Bloomberg, who had recently switched from being a Democrat to a Republican (now he is nothing), was running to replace
Rudolph Guiliani. The night before, Rudy had been reading a biography about Winston Churchill—the very part about the “blitz” in London in 1940—and he seemed to take a page from that book in the way he conducted himself over the next few days.
I am well aware that on many issues, Rudolph Guiliani would not be my politician of choice—but in a crisis of terror and national security, I’d sure rather have him in charge than Mike Bloomberg. Of the proposed mosque Rudy has said: “It not only is exactly the wrong place, at Ground Zero, but it is a mosque supported by an imam who has a record of support for causes that were sympathetic with terrorism.”
In many ways, Michael Bloomberg is playing Neville Chamberlain in this story of ill-advised appeasement— but then again, he’s not the only one, sadly and ominously.
Of course, this is not to say that Mr. Bloomberg would be okay with just anything at or near Ground Zero. Nope. Those who follow him closely just know that he’d work hard to oppose a pro-life crisis pregnancy clinic or a restaurant that used a lot of trans fats.