Your political cartoon of Aug 30 depicted those who object to the "Ground Zero Mosque" as racist and homophobic. Such charges are almost invariably leveled by those who have no real reason for disagreeing with their target and wish to smear them in lieu of. Your cartoon is no exception.
For your information, Islam is not a race, it is a religion. And a phobia is an irrational fear. The 70 per cent of Americans who oppose this mosque (actually it's an Islamic centre) are not acting out of fear, rational or otherwise. They are quite willing for it to be built somewhere else, just not at Ground Zero, where Islamic radicals committed atrocity in the name of Allah. There are plenty of mosques already in New York, and there was no nationwide outcry against them. If this edifice is about promoting tolerance and understanding as Feisal Rauf, the Ground Zero cleric claims, he would understand the feelings of those who object and move it elsewhere. Building the Ground Zero Mosque is somewhat akin to the Germans building a war memorial next to Auschwitz or to permitting a Serbian Orthodox church near the killing fields of Srebrenica where 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered.
Raheel Raza, who sits on the board of the Muslim Canadian Congress, said in an article for the Ottawa Citizen, (Aug. 17) "We Muslims know the idea behind the Ground Zero Mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel. The proposal has been made in bad faith and in Islamic parlance, such an act is referred to as "Fitna," meaning "mischief-making" that is clearly forbidden in the Koran." In a TV interview she also said, "Bleeding heart white liberals don't understand the battles that we moderate Muslims are faced with in terms of confronting radical Islam and islamization and political Islam in North America which has only grown since 9/11 because of political correctness, and people because of their political agendas, not speaking out on issues like this."
The Prince George Citizen would do well to listen to her.
Art Betke
Prince George
