Anti-Minaret Online Referendum

[derspiess]

Why don't you vote like yourself and stop pretending to be able to read our minds?

Who said I was trying to read your mind?  Minarets are simply not an issue over here.  They are in the Old Country, so I voted as I would if I happened to be a Euro.  Kinda odd that it seems to offend you.

[Grallon]

It's funny, you would be incredibly homophobic if you were straight.

Why do you persist in comparing murderous fanatics with regular people?



G.

[Razgovory]

It's funny, you would be incredibly homophobic if you were straight.

Why do you persist in comparing murderous fanatics with regular people?



G.

Child molesters aren't regular people.

[Iormlund]

Seriously- nah. The FBI needs a place to bug.

Bingo. I'd rather have the places infiltrated and monitored than driven underground. Build them as big as you can. As a plus if Islam has one redeeming quality is that its architecture is beautiful.

[Iormlund]

By the way, at least in the few cases I've heard about, opposition to build a mosque has more to do with their effect on nearby property prices than anything else.

[The Brain]

By the way, at least in the few cases I've heard about, opposition to build a mosque has more to do with their effect on nearby property prices than anything else.

Exactly. This is one reason why only landed males should have the vote.

[Martinus]

Is "political correctness" the new code word for "doing the right thing even if you'd rather not" these days? It seems to be thrown around these days every time someone is told he can't hate fags, blacks, muslims, immigrants and whatnot.

I'm not sure I'm following you Marty...  I don't mind muslims so long as when they move over here they assimilate; i.e. they abandon the ridiculous superstitions/values that make their various sub-cultures inferior to western ones (precedence of religion over rule of law, precedence of tribal mores over human rights, slavery of women, etc).




G.

What does that have to do with building narrow towers with screaming guys on top of them?

[Tamas]

So are minarets so widespread in the US?

I wouldn't mind them.

But others would, wouldn't they? So they did not get built.
Or maybe because you got the muslims who wanted to leave their medieval baggage at home, Europe is just less lucky.

Anyways, I would still vote no on this thing, I am just saying that liberalism should not tolerate open anti-liberalism. That's basic self-defense. Not easy at all to draw the boundaries I know, but still.

It's like when I saw an interesting debate about ban on holocaust-denial in Hungary. Both sides had good arguments: at one hand, you can't really stop these assholes to think what they want. I mean, for 50 years it was outright banned to feel anything less but hate toward anything resembling not just nazism, but the conservative system of pre-WW2 Hungary. Not to mention the communist brainwash attempt at school for a whole generation. Yet, when the system collapsed, the jew-haters were back in business faster than you could say 'kosher'.

On the other hand, when you have a lot of "losers of the system change" ie. uneducated bums, the idea that it is not themselves who are responsible for the grand failure of their lives, but rather some mass conspiracy, can be very popular very fast. So to try at least slow down the spread and limit its reaches could seem like a good idea, and something which at the end, yields a net positive result for a free society.

I don't know which is the good way to go, but Islam is not much different from that problem. It is a medieval tribal ideology which has no place in today's world.

[The Larch]

Why don't you vote like yourself and stop pretending to be able to read our minds?

Who said I was trying to read your mind?  Minarets are simply not an issue over here.  They are in the Old Country, so I voted as I would if I happened to be a Euro.  Kinda odd that it seems to offend you.

Because this is not a question about here or there, it's a question that should be adressed regardless of the setting. And the theme park thingie just grated me.

[Duque de Bragança]

Seriously- nah. The FBI needs a place to bug.

Bingo. I'd rather have the places infiltrated and monitored than driven underground.

That I can agree with
No muezzin calls and no architectural abominations as well...
Saying NO means being on the level of Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.

[The Brain]

Seriously- nah. The FBI needs a place to bug.

Bingo. I'd rather have the places infiltrated and monitored than driven underground.

That I can agree with
No muezzin calls and no architectural abominations as well...
Saying NO means being on the level of Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.

Which one of those did we invade for being behind 9/11? I always forget.

[garbon]

But others would, wouldn't they? So they did not get built.
Or maybe because you got the muslims who wanted to leave their medieval baggage at home, Europe is just less lucky.

So I started looking this up.  I found out that we do have a least one minaret in California.
I then also found a blog of a woman who said that she didn't think Islamic groups in the US should be building minarets as there were better uses for said funds.

So yeah they actually did get built.

*edit: Minarets are more common than I thought. Here's a count by location that I got from one publication:

Michigan: 3
Arizona: 2
DC: 1
Louisiana: 1
Maryland: 1
Arkansas: 1
NJ: 1
NYC: 1
Washington: 1
Massachusetts (at MIT): 2

What's cool about the mosques they belong to is that all of these ones were designed to fit into the context of their surroundings. Here's the link. Look at that New Mexico mosque. Fabulous.

http://www.pbs.org/weta/crossroads/images/content/mosque/MosquesofNorthAmerica.pdf

[garbon]

I did a few more searches and it looks like we have many mosques with at least one minaret. I didn't know that as I typically don't see/ don't notice many mosques. Not such a big deal here.

[Martinus]

Oooooh, some of these mosques are really pretty. I liked the modernist one in New York, especially. Looks like something out of SMAC.

When I was in Playa del Ingles in Gran Canaria, there was a mosque/islamic centre on the outskirts of a big shopping mall featuring maybe 20-30 gay bars, bathhouses and nightclubs. Apparently no incidents. Friday nights were fun. 

[garbon]

Oooooh, some of these mosques are really pretty. I liked the modernist one in New York, especially. Looks like something out of SMAC.

Yeah some of them are quite lovely. Can't see myself freaking out over architecture unless it was something hideous like this: