Murfreesboro Shows Its Support For Mosque

[DeSwiss]

Source: The Tennessean

Murfreesboro Shows Its Support For Mosque

Bob Smietana • The Tennessean • August 30, 2010

Mark West believes in freedom of religion. That belief brought West out Monday night to a candlelight vigil in support of local Muslims in front of the Rutherford County Courthouse. It also inspired the lifelong Baptist to make a donation to the building fund for a new mosque in Murfreesboro. “I’m going down to Islamic Center of Nashville tomorrow and make a $100 donation,” West said Monday night. “One hundred bucks is hard to come by these days, but it’s a statement.”

West was among about 150 people to attend Monday’s night’s vigil, organized in response to the recent fire at the construction site for the new mosque. Many in the crowd held candles or signs proclaiming such messages as “We’re all in this together” and “My God is not a bigot.” They also joined in singing “We Shall Overcome.”

The gathering came two days after a fire of suspicious origin damaged construction equipment at the site of a planned mosque near Murfreesboro. Federal investigators are still looking into the cause of the fire. Organizers said the vigil was intended to encourage supporters and opponents of the mosque to demonstrate for a community free of violence, arson or other such activity.

On the outskirts a small but vocal group of mosque opponents made their presence known. Collier Hopson drove his pickup to the vigil. In the back was a plywood sign bearing the spray-painted words “No Mosque.”

Read more: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20100830/NEWS01/100830079/Murfreesboro+shows+its+support+for+mosque

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Much better Murfreesboro, much better.....
==============================================================================
DeSwiss






"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." ~ Plato

[jberryhill]

1. Wow

It's got to be tough on the good people of Murfreesboro to have their town become a symbol of hate.

[DeSwiss]

16. It's basically a placid rural small town.

Well, at least they were.

[Tsiyu]

41. Actually

Murfreesboro is just South of Nash Vegas, home of MTSU and lots of stores, Stones River Mall and all the Big Box stores, apartments, many subdivisions.

It's not exactly a "small rural town," more like a bedroom community of Nash Vegas.

Wish I had known about the vigil, I might have driven up there with a few friends to show support.

Thanks for posting this...so we in TN don't all look like clowns....

[awoke_in_2003]

60. you guys make good BBQ...

you can't all be bad :hi:

[recoveringdittohed]

43. Murfreesboro used to be a small town

When I went to MTSU in 1969-1972 Murfreesboro was a small town. Now it has a population of 101,000 and is in some ways part of the Greater Nashville metro area.

The Murfreesboro newspaper coverage of this incident reveals through the reader's comments a less hopeful picture than the Tennesseean article.

http://www.dnj.com/article/20100828/NEWS01/100828009/1002/UPDATED++Arson+at+future+Islamic+Center+site++takes+it+to+a+whole+new+level+

[Uncle Joe]

46. I wonder if the arsonist was burned during the act?

Carmie Ayash, spokeswoman for the ICM, told The DNJ Islamic Center officials were contacted by the sheriff’s department around 1:30 a.m. Saturday in reference to the damaged equipment. It appeared gasoline had been poured on several pieces of equipment at the site and one was lit afire. Ayash said it appeared the responsible arsonist was spooked during the act and fled the scene before other equipment could be set on fire.

[blue sky at night]

2. HEY thanks!

this is the best news I have heard in Weeks...it is about time they had some support from area churches. K and R!

[DeSwiss]

17. You're welcome.

And you're right. Good news is hard to come by these days......

[Douglas Carpenter]

3. kick and recommend!! that was truly fantastic!!!

[Phil The Cat]

4. I thought Christians were awful bigots

Who have murdered millions and hate everyone!

:sarcasm:

Glad to see many people have good hearts, despite belonging to a religion so reviled by the coolest of the cool!

May we ALL take this lesson to heart!

[uppityperson]

7. Ah.

Another one who can't separate the extremists from the others.

[jberryhill]

9. Give him a break

His ride home left in the pickup truck.

[Axle_techie]

14. I'm pretty sure they were being sarcastic

hence the sarcasm tag

[Phil The Cat]

27. Isn't that what I was doing?

I guess I have to be even more clear and concise!

I don't believe in the supernatural part of Christianity, but I like the charity towards the poor, the recognition of human frailty and error, and the universal need for forgiveness!

I've even met fundies who were, at the core, good people! They didn't think being gay was OK, but they didn't attack me either physically or verbally!

I apologize if I offended in what I thought was clear sarcasm!

[SocialistLez]

37. Another one who cannot recognize sarcasm...in spite of a sarcasm tag.

NT

[RainDog]

66. some of them are... like Land, from the SBC, who is mentioned in this article

from the article:

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said he was sickened and revolted by news of the suspected arson at the mosque site. He called it un-American.

“It time for this nonsense to end,” Land said in a phone interview.

“The First Amendment guarantees people the right to worship where they live,” he said. “I am calling for all people of faith and good will to stand up for the rights of our Muslim fellow citizens.”

Land has criticized plans to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center in New York City, saying it was too close to the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“This is different,” he said. “There’s no Ground Zero in Murfreesboro.”

Maybe Land recognized his hateful vitriol marked him as part of the problem. The SBC finally stopped being racists once desegration was a fact of life, too.

However, Land's refusal to acknowledge his stupidity in his earlier remarks is more indicative of the mindset of the hierarchy of the SBC. In truth, the area for the community center is an area with an existing Muslim population and with a mosque that was in place for forty years.

I will give him credit, however, for deciding to step back from his hatred. It's too bad the SBC cannot get past its refusal to accept that science debunks one of the central tenets of its beliefs - that the bible is literally true. Maybe that would help to dispel some of the hatred and make it possible for social conservatives to recognize the lies they are fed on a daily basis by the SBC.

With a sixty year record of support for bigotry and racism, it's nice to see them come down on the right side of justice for a change.

[SeattleGirl]

5. Great reaction to such an ugly action!

Brava!

[DeSwiss]

18. Yes it is.

And I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised by it as well. :)

[SeattleGirl]

20. As am I

So very glad to see a good response to the hatred there in Murphreesboro

It's kind of a personal thing for me.

[EFerrari]

6. Good going!

:kick:

[uppityperson]

8. k&r with thanks

[MrScorpio]

10. Good people making a stand

That's exactly what it takes

[DeSwiss]

19. Word. n/t

[pinboy3niner]

11. K&R

[Papa Boule]

12. Wonderful, refreshing thing to see. K&R!

[Axle_techie]

13. Yes

I love it

[jaxx]

15. Good for them.

When the nuts start the violence people realize that isn't going to solve anything.

[DeSwiss]

21. Sometimes they do, but usually not nearly enough.

Booze, rage and justice in the participation age

It is now clear to me that the people's rage is a tool in the hands of the new electronic and digital corporate state. Its various channels, eddies and pools, regardless of type, can be directed toward all sorts of mischief and profit. Left or right, the angry throngs on both sides can be managed and directed. They can be sent chasing various injustices, denouncing evil characters on Wall Street, Times Square bombers, BP executives, or whatever, worked up into slobbering outrage over Sarah Palin, and thus kept divided and working against each other for the benefit of last gasp capitalism.

Once outside the furious drek of American political and economic life, and having finished the last book I will ever write, I found myself asking: "Why did the good in the American people not triumph? How can it be that so many progressive, justice-loving citizens failed? Their positions were well reasoned. The facts were indisputably on their side. Obviously, there was, and is, more going on than merely losing battles to demagoguery and meanness. Why do we lose the important fights so consistently? What has kept us from establishing a more just kingdom? Something is missing.

I think it is, in a word, the spiritual. The stuff that sustained Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and gave them the kind of calm deliberate guts we are not seeing today. I am not talking about religion, but the spirit in each of us, that solitary non-material essence, none the less shared by all humans because we are human. When we let our capitalist overlords cast everything in a purely material light -- as material gain or loss for one group or another -- we played the oppressor's game.

It was always a game with no vision. Just good guys, bad guys, pissed off people, or apathetic disenfranchised ones, amid one helluva lot of money changing hands. Mostly the wrong hands. That game drives us to the petty larcenies we perform against one another in the name employment, and the atrocities abroad to which none of us lay our rightful claim as beneficiaries of the empire's pillage. Our purposeful blindness to such things necessarily eliminates any universal vision. All the best ones are universal.

Yet down inside human beings is a love of justice. Honestly. The psyche seeks balance, and therefore seeks justice. Regardless of the perversion of its definition, and therefore the laws, by those who own nearly all of our country and damned well intend to own the rest, we know.

~ http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/07/waltzing.html">Joe Bageant, "Blogging toward the Kingdom"

[jaxx]

22. What was that all about?

[DeSwiss]

26. Just an opinion. That's all. n/t

[secondwind]

23. Maybe the FBI can start with Collier Hopson and his pickup truck.

[JDPriestly]

24. More tolerance -- worldwide -- not less. We have to start here at home.

We need more interfaith meetings, breaking bread together, praying together. That is what we need. If you feel wary of Muslims or Jews or Christians, invite someone of that faith to a dinner. This would be a good time for liberal Christian, Unitarian, Friends congregations to invite Muslim communities for pot lucks. Sharing food brings people together. The more get to know people we think are so different from us, the more we discover the many things that we have in common.

[Hekate]

25. A toast to Mark West and the 150 others at the vigil. They're doing us proud.

:toast: :patriot: :toast:

[onestepforward]

28. Much better, indeed!

Truly heartwarming!

[wial]

29. finally some good news

in the blizzard of manufactured hate that is a typical GOP run up to an election.

[Frisbee]

30. What's that I see?

Could it be a ray of hope?

[polmaven]

31. BRAVO!!

Kudos to each and every one of these fine human beings.

[TNDemo]

32. There are so many good, liberal folks in the south

that get marginalized with that frequent DU brushstroke of "all southerners are bigoted rednecks." The local news showed the rally and said there were hundreds there and it looked like it.

[wookie72]

33. There's a few people in NYC who could learn from this.

Just saying...

[madmom]

34. Kudos to these fine people.

[keith the dem]

35. This is what makes America great!

I lived through this in my own corner of America.

The good, truly spiritual people came through.

A documentary that was shown on PBS told the story:

http://www.upf.tv/films-menu/talking-through-walls.html

[SocialistLez]

36. I love the Coexist sign. =]

I used to subscribe to the Tennesseean. Decent paper.

[ThatsMyBarack]

38. I stoled teh photo for Desktop!

;)

[onehandle]

39. Next on Fox News: 'Dirty Fucking Hippies rally for terrorist rights.' nt

[wookie72]

40. Hebrews 13:2

"Don't forget to show hospitality to strangers, for in doing so, some have entertained angels without knowing it. "

Okay, it doesn't quite apply here, but it's a good idea.

[wryter2000]

48. Cool

We happened to have had that exact message in our sermon this past Sunday. :hi:

[wookie72]

53. Very cool

You know, that Bible actually has some good stuff in it if you know where to look.

[Hekate]

63. The injunction goes much further back: Jesus got it from Torah -- Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers...

There is a nice treatise on the subject from the Mennonites that I got by googling "Torah teachings + taking care of the stranger in your midst." I knew there were applicable teachings about treating "the stranger in your midst" justly, but as usual with the Torah, it goes much further and is quite comprehensive. The first 6 pages are where I take the following quotations from. It's in pdf format, so I couldn't copy/paste -- therefore any typos are my own.

Mayor Bloomberg, in speaking in support of the community center/mosque, is speaking not only as an American, not only as a Jew who remembers anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, but as Jew who is aware of these injunctions.

Hekate

http://www.mcswichita.net/Sermons/Sermon-180-Jan-17-2010-WelcomingStranger.pdf

The Hebrew word, ger, can be translated "alien," "resident alien," "stranger," "sojourner," and is equivalent to our modern term, "immigrant."

Exodus 22:21 You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien for you were aliens in the land of Egypt

Exod 23:9 You shall not oppress a resident alien

Leviticus 19:33-34 When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you.

Lev 19:34 You shall love (or You shall befriend) the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the Land of Egypt

Exod 12:49 There shall be one law for the native and for the alien who resides among you
Numbers 15:16 You and the alien who resides with you shall have the same law and the same ordinance

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Dappleganger]

42. Now that's real LOVE!

Way to go!!!!

[Phoonzang]

44. Where's Dunlap and Jackie? nt

[Uncle Joe]

45. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, DeSwiss.:thumbsup:

[wryter2000]

47. What an awesome picture

I hope some politicians are watching. :applause:

[sabrina 1]

49. That is a great picture. I am so glad they are doing this.

Shows up the haters, todays equivalent of the KKK.

K&R

[Douglas Carpenter]

50. another kick for such a great story!!

[alp227]

51. Thank you, tolerant citizens of an otherwise bigoted town n/t

[wookie72]

54. Unlike enlightened people in the North?

Like I wrote above, there are a few people in NYC who might want to read about this and learn from it.

[alp227]

56. But dontcha think some of the NYC protesters=Tea Party astroturf?

I won't deny that family members of 9/11 victims and other NYC citizens with misplaced sensitivities picketed regularly. But given that the Islamic cultural centre/mosque has become a national issue, I'm sure that some out-of-area fools paid to travel to NYC just to flaunt their ignorance.

[wookie72]

58. Pamela Geller sure sounds like a New Yorker nt

[RainDog]

67. Murfreesboro is the location of MTSU - the bigots are, generally, not part of a Univeristy enviro

this is true across the nation.

in cities with a strong University presence, you find more Americans who are unwilling to buy into the bigotry of religious persecution. this correlates, as noted on DU before, with the fact those with higher levels of education tend to be less religious, even within a culture, like that in middle Tennessee, that is drenched in religious ignorance.

[alp227]

68. "higher levels of education" not counting Bob Jones or Liberty universities right?

You can get PhDs from those uber-religious schools and still turn out to be an ignorant suckup to dogma. Same may go for even Ivy League grads. But I forgot about the MTSU thing...thanks for pointing that out.

[RainDog]

69. those are religious indoctrination centers

that idiot who worked for Gonzales, Monica Goodling, got her JD from "Messiah College" or some such bullshit.

personally, I think that any University that refuses to acknowledge that evolution is a fact should not be accredited because they are not valid institutions of higher learning if they put religious dogma above scientific fact and linguistic scholarship - iow, if you exist to perpetuate doctrine, you are not in the business of education.

No one is claiming that everyone who receives an education ends with the same beliefs - but the reality is that those who are exposed to other povs, to scholarship that indicates the lies of particular religious belief systems - tend to move away from those belief systems.

University of Chicago turned out an extremely nasty social/political movement - the neo-cons. The point is that cities with a more educated populace tend to not fall for the snake-handling end of belief systems - not always, but more often than not.

[activa8tr]

52. I'm glad that there are more decent people in TN than lawless terrorists!

The actions in so many of our cities and towns should wake us up to the damage the media and politicians of a certain persuasion are doing, fanning the flames, and legitimzing hate and violence in the name of the USA.

I wonder how much press and media coverage this in the above article will get.

[BrklynLiberal]

55. THAT is what this country should be all about.....Kudos to all involved.

These are setting the example for what the REAL Americans should be like....

[NoSheep]

57. A good thing to see.

[grantcart]

59. great

[abelenkpe]

61. Nice! :) nt

[awoke_in_2003]

62. K&R...

it is good to see properly spelled signs.

[pinboy3niner]

64. A great example for other communities to emulate

Kicked & Rec'd!

:kick:

[pampango]

65. Exactly. Some people build bridges and connections, repubs build walls and stoke fear. n/t

[usregimechange]

70. large kick

[AnnieBW]

71. Just when you start to lose faith in Americans

folks like these come along.

:toast: