No, let’s get this straight: it is a 13-story Muslim community center, modeled after the 92nd Street Y, with a restaurant, pool, basketball court, child-care center, bookstore, culinary school, art studio, and 500-seat performing arts center… and also with a prayer space.

Park51 never was a “Ground Zero” “Mosque”. Not only was it not a mosque, it’s not on Ground Zero, nor across the street from Ground Zero, nor in sight of Ground Zero, but a couple blocks away, down a side street, on the “hallowed ground” of an old Burlington Coat Factory.

I think the form of martial arts you’re referring to is AKIDO.

Is it wise to moderate ‘anti-Islamic’ hyberbolic language because so many people prefer a peaceful life and are ‘Islamic’ by accident of birth wanting nothing to do with the violents aspects of that religion?

After all look at Jewish teachings– I won’t list them all but the Old Testament has some seriously harsh responses for various categories of misdoing not practiced today though still ‘on the books’ as it were.

I just wonder whether we create opponents that would prefer not to be radicalized, that would prefer not to be opponents at all. We create them because they fear being targeted for being ‘guilty’ of nothing more than being born into a religion they really are not too excited about, particularly the violent aspects.

Maybe that’s what’s informing the ‘liberal’ take on this matter, we lose the center voice owing to many ‘televised left wingers’ who go too far to attempt to deny the religious text’s actually violent content. So those of us who react to these texts might generate undue fear of reprisal against those whose essential nature and preference is not violent at all.

“Porn damages the soul, but that damage reaches much farther than just the individual.”

I’ve never reacted to pornography with disgust but rather with sadness: it promises everything but provides nothing. It’s a really poor substitute for the type of love and intimacy found even between friends. In fact, it only increases one’s sense of isolation from others as it treats others as commodities to be utilized and requires no personal sacrifice. To object to pornography isn’t about prudishness, as some might suggest.

I appreciate the dialogue between Father Jacobse and yourself. Father makes a great point in that the laity has “dropped the ball” as well as clergy and American society as a whole. It is true that we have to begin with ourselves and take personal responsibility for our faults – that we have to be “self-aware.” It always begins within ourselves, and that is why it is absolutely essential as followers of the One True Risen Lord that we have daily quiet times with Him. A daily self-introspection is a given in order for us to achieve Theosis. Consistent humility, metanoia, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and Bible study are the prescriptions for the centuries-old human afflictions. The Monks of New Skete have written a book called “In the Spirit of Happiness.” It is a gem of a weapon that should be in our daily spiritual arsenals. Check it out. And my gratitude to Father Jacobse for his recommended above article.

The article raises the point about “soft porn and consumerism” and then Father Jacobse pointed this out as well. Both the article and Father are right; and I do remember Father Jacobse speaking about this in his radio interview about the Mosque a month or so back. The US is the #1 exporter of pornography to the world. But (and many may disagree with me) the US is also following a form of international military policy that is not what our Founding Father’s envisioned- meaning our military escapades haven’t been Constitutional by any stretch of the of word. I think when you couple what we shoot out into the world “porn and our military industrial complex” i.e. fallen defense and fallen sex then perhaps there is a mustard seed’s truth to us being infidels, especially if we’re looking all of this through the Cross and not at what some imam is saying from across the pond. And personally, if women are given a choice as to how they dress (and I believe they should have a choice, not through Sharia Law but Constitutional law) I have more respect for the woman who chooses the Burqa over how some of our young ladies dress in Hollywood (or even college campuses). This is not to say that porn and war began with us, or that there aren’t much deeper issues with Islam that are a greater cause to the problem.

What the heck am I talking about? Well it goes back to deflecting the aggressive blow and how to deal with Islam. If we can admit that YES we are part of the equation with our exportation of porn and by our own breaking of our Constitution (declaring war without the Congress, the Patriot Act, Torture Prisons, Street Cameras on every corner), then PERHAPS we can suck these people of their energy, and along wit them our own secularists, and progressives along the way? Besides, I think secularism is WORSE than Islam.

BUT, and this is a BIG BUT, certain people have been talking like this in the political scene, yet haven’t been doing it incorrectly. These people, for instance, the Imam in NY, our President, NPR, and even Ron Paul for heaven’s sake have contributed to the threat of Islam from the other end of the pendulum. I don’t believe I’ll ever get over Ron Paul calling people Islamophobes because they don’t like the location of the Mosque. He lost some points with me. (But I’ll still be voting for him if he runs because of his staunch Constitutional and Christian Values.)

By saying we are part of this equation of imperfection and falleness, it doesn’t mean we hate America (or say/act like we do), or that we bow down to aggression when it is posed, or that we institute Sharia Law, or a Mosque where a Mosque shouldn’t be, or call those who stand up to bad deeds “Islamophobes,” “racists,” “hate talkers,” or that we break our Constitution (once again) to appease aggressive people.

I just think there was/is a lot more wisdom to our Founding Father’s ideals of a nation with smaller federal government, with a non-interventionist/non-nation building/non-preventive war foreign policy, and with the understanding that only a society with the pillars of Natural Law and morals can survive in the long haul. Here, even those of us “in the Right” have fallen a little short.
Perhaps these ideas would help?

Very very well said Father. We have a serious problem on our hands. I, too agree that it begins with “spending our time wisely.” I needed to hear this and take it to heart.

I, too agree that we need to do a much better job in our churches giving people the “why” when they’ve lost their way. (I mentioned above the quote that, so often “when people have lost there way, it’s because they’ve lost their why.”

Renewal of hearts and minds has to start at home. First, in my own life, secondly in my own family, and thirdly in my church family. “Physician, heal thyself”, right? Then we move out into the world and share the Truth … in LOVE. We cannot be strident and arrogant, but we must be courageous and humble.

I’m a little too tired as I write this to say all that is on my mind, but I want you to know that I am grateful for your initiative in this and for your spirit. May our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ continue to lead and direct us, giving us wisdom and discerment.

To Him be the glory,
Gail

Thank you, I will take a look.

Thank you Alexis. You are correct in that far too many of us choose to live in ignorance and arrogance mixed with cowardice as well. But, at some fundamental level, the people have not been given a satifactory answer to the question “So what?”

I heard it said once that, “when people have lost there way, it’s because they’ve lost their why.”

Alexis and others, check out this article I posted on OrthodoxyToday.org a few days ago: Interview: The Closing of the Muslim Mind.

Much of it deals with our loss of confidence as a people, the self-doubt that enters when personal integrity is exchanged for other things, particularly the approval of others, a dynamic that in the end enslaves. Internal tyranny makes one susceptible to a larger tyranny, that in our age disguises itself under the rubrics of tolerance, fairness — all the politically correct thinking anyone with any sense already recognizes. So it begins with a love of freedom that takes root and finds a home in the human heart, the kind of freedom that is only known and experienced in obedience to God. Mother Teresa said the freedom we have is the freedom to obey God. Others have said it is out of this obedience that freedom flows forward into peoples and culture.

One thing Dr. Trifkovic wrote struck me in a strong way, although probably differently than he intended:

In addition, a depraved mass culture and multiculturalist indoctrination in state schools and the mainstream media have already largely neutralized the sense of historical and cultural continuity among young West Europeans and North Americans. By contrast, the blend of soft porn and consumerism that targets every denizen of the Western world has not had the same effect on the Muslim diaspora in the West. The roll-call of Western-born and educated young Muslims supportive of terrorism confirms that failure…

It’s true that young people have been robbed of any sense of historical and cultural continuity. It’s a horrible loss, like being born in a chicken coop and thinking that’s home because that is all you know. The defining narratives of American culture have been supplanted by multicultural blather and cheap psychological tricks intended to foster the confidence that only the security of place and identity can give.

What struck me though was his sentence “the blend of soft porn and consumerism that targets every denizen of the Western world…” This is absolutely true. I’ve listened to probably hundreds of confessions of young men and almost all (I’d say up to 98%) consume pornography. These are our Orthodox kids. They feel guilty, you give them some advice on dealing with it, but you know that most will go right back to it. I’ve always saw it in terms of harming personal character, development, and self-identity, but never considered in any deeper way how it erodes the character of a nation in the terms that Dr. Trifkovic touches on here. Porn damages the soul, but that damage reaches much farther than just the individual.

There is such great need to examine these questions in greater detail, to understand them and shape a response. I’m thinking here of the moral renewal so necessary in our culture, but one that can only start in our Churches. So many of our leaders are asleep at the switch, but so too is much of the laity. If I could find enough funding, I would start it myself.

Anyway, I know you are asking for something more practical but this is as far as I am with it. I wholeheartedly agree with Alexis’ advice above: “Each of us has the decision to daily make the choice to spend our times wisely – cultivating our minds through reading – or vegetating in various forms of narcissistic and infantile claptrap.”

Hi, Gail! Very good question you ask. This is how I feel as well and quite emphatically. As you had so astutely inquired with vigor, “Great! What do we do now?!” I am sure we’ve all heard that slogan, “Knowledge Is Power,” and until many people actually start to read and flee their myspaces, facebooks, reality and talkshow t.v., etc. ad nauseum, then this willful ignorance and arrogance will sadly continue to pervade our culture. Much of this willful ignorance and arrogance, I feel, is aided and abetted with cowardice (masked as “tolerance”) by our variously inordinate Christian pulpits on Sunday mornings. In the movie, “Jesus of Nazareth,” Michael York as John the Baptist vociferously declares, “before kingdoms can change men must change.” Each of us has the decision to daily make the choice to spend our times wisely – cultivating our minds through reading – or vegetating in various forms of narcissistic and infantile claptrap.

Here’s my honest question: Given this understanding, now what? What can we do to stop the spread of this type of Islam, the type that doesn’t want “to assimilate to Western ways while living in the the West” (to quote the commentor above) and wants to destroy the Judeo/Christian values of the West? Especially, what can/should we as Christians do?

After reading a such a well articulated picture of the state of Islam in our day, I want to know what I should do now. What is my responsibility as a grandmother, a godmother, an American citizen, and as a Christian. As an ambassador of Christ to all people, what would God have me do in my sphere of influence? This is a hard question for me. I struggle with a lot of fear when I consider the possible future my grandchildren could inherit.

I keep going back to passages such as “… Faith, hope and love. The greatest of these is love.” “Love the Lord your God … and your neighbor as yourself.” “God is love.” “As far as it depends upon you, be at peace with all men.” “The kindness of God leads one to repentance.” Etc. Should we be agressive with love? Should we, rather than hide from these people, seek them out and love them—one-on-one? Should we see ourselves as “missionaries” to the Muslim community?

From a political standpoint, the loop-holes in our constitution, with regards to “freedom of religion” and tolerance, need to be addressed. I have no desire to enter the political arena and I despise the so-called Christian rhetoric I see put forth in the media. But I do realize that something has to change politically in how we view freedom and tolerance in our society.

So, what can and should we as Christians, and in my case an Orthodox Christian, do now?