Podcasts about park51

Amy Waldman, a former reporter for The New York Times, discusses her bestselling novel The Submission, which tells the fictional tale of Mohammad “Mo” Khan, a secular Muslim who wins a competition to design a memorial honoring the victims of a terrorist attack similar to 9/11. When the jury members discover who've they've selected, some try to change the result. But the decision is leaked to the press, resulting in outrage not over the selection of Khan, but over his entry, which includes a garden some think is an Islamic design to honor martyrs. The outcry is reminiscent of the 2010 controversy over Park51, a planned Islamic community center in New York City near the former Twin Towers. But Waldman had finished the first draft of her book before that story erupted. Don't forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter. Originally Aired: 10/12/2012 The interview is part of Dialogue's series “Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference” and was taped at the 2012 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world's most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

Amy Waldman, a former reporter for The New York Times, discusses her bestselling novel The Submission, which tells the fictional tale of Mohammad “Mo” Khan, a secular Muslim who wins a competition to design a memorial honoring the victims of a terrorist attack similar to 9/11. When the jury members discover who’ve they’ve selected, some try to change the result. But the decision is leaked to the press, resulting in outrage not over the selection of Khan, but over his entry, which includes a garden some think is an Islamic design to honor martyrs. The outcry is reminiscent of the 2010 controversy over Park51, a planned Islamic community center in New York City near the former Twin Towers. But Waldman had finished the first draft of her book before that story erupted. Don’t forget to subscribe, and visit the Dialogue website for more conversations that matter. Originally Aired: 10/12/2012 The interview is part of Dialogue’s series “Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference” and was taped at the 2012 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world’s most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.

Should the U.S. ban Muslims from entering the country? Is radical Islam bent on taking over America?  Ten or fifteen years ago, questions like these were largely relegated to the political fringes. Now, they help define the campaigns of the two leading Republican candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who are competing in the New York primary on April 19. The candidates are voicing ideas that come from a deliberate and well-funded campaign to convince the country that even regular, law-abiding Muslims represent a threat to national security. The campaign kicked into high gear in 2010 in New York, with the opposition to Park51, also known as the 'ground zero mosque.' While some protesters saw the project as an affront to the memory of those who died on 9/11, others took it a step further, arguing that it was a 'victory mosque' meant to celebrate the attacks. Despite the considerable misinformation spread about the project and the people behind it, the controversy helped ignite a wave of opposition to mosques across America: in places like Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Temecula, California and Murfreesboro, Tennessee. At the same time, state legislators started passing laws to ban Sharia law (usually couched as a ban on foreign law), often in states with relatively few Muslims.  One of the principal players in this movement is Frank Gaffney, a former official in the Reagan administration who runs the Center for Security Policy, in Washington. He's now a foreign policy advisor for Ted Cruz. Gaffney's security think tank funded the website run by Pam Geller, a leader of the opposition to the ground zero mosque. He also helped stoke right-wing suspicions that President Obama is Muslim, has accused a variety of both liberal and conservative public figures of doing the bidding of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that mainstream Muslim-American organizations are actually fronts for foreign jihadi networks. The theory of 'civilizational' or 'stealth jihad' argues "that Muslims are going to immigrate to the United States and gain access to various levers of control, especially in Washington," said Nathan Lean, author of The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims. "And will ultimately engage in the grand destruction of the United States and the usurpation of the Constitution." This theory flies in the face of the research: the conservative Manhattan Institute has documented that Muslim immigrants in America are extremely well-assimilated. But Gaffney and others within the Islamophobia network, as critics have dubbed it, have seen their influence grow, and penetrate into the mainstream. While he was still running for president, Ben Carson repeated a central claim of the network, that Islam encourages believers to lie in order to achieve their goals. The network is well-funded: according to the Center for American Progress, it draws upon tens of millions of dollars in foundation funds. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (a frequent target of anti-Muslim activists) has estimated that between 2008 and 2013, private donations brought the figure closer to $200 million. Sometimes the attention has backfired. Last year, after the deadly Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism went on Fox News and claimed that Europe was filled with 'no-go zones,' each of which function as a "country within a country" and is allegedly off-limits to the police. The claim was made repeatedly on the network before an international backlash prompted Fox News to issue a retraction and apologize. "American Islam bashers talk about the alleged no-go zones in Europe as 'our future,'" said Mark Potok, a Senior Fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center and a leading expert on extremism and hate. "And, in fact, a number of them have even made the claim that there are no-go zones in Dearborn, Michigan, which is, of course, the largest concentration of Muslims in the United States." Even though it's "utterly false,"  Potok said, the rhetoric comes against a backdrop of actual terrorism, in Brussels, San Bernardino, Istanbul and other cities. He worries about the effect Cruz and Trump are having at a precarious moment. "The fact is, there are millions and millions of people who are frightened. And this kind of talk frightens them more. And frightened people often do very dangerous, and bad things." 

Joshua Fouts and Rita King run Dancing Ink Productions and study diplomacy and cultural relations in virtual worlds. We discussed their recent project on understanding Islam in depth as well as the recent Tea Party candidate victories and the organizational […]

In the seventeenth episode, Todd and his panelists left-libertarian/anarchist Scott Ferrie, his girlfriend and left-libertarian/mutualist Melinda Foshat, and Republican Liberty Caucus Treasurer Bill Westmiller discussed the 9th anniversary of 9/11 and the aftermath that followed, Time Magazine wonders whether Al Qaeda threat was overrated, the Ron Paul Revolution allegedly dead, Palin and Beck's 9/11 event drawing controversy, Obama declaring that "combat operations in Iraq are over," the never-ending Park51 (formerly the Cordoba Initiative) continues, Florida pastor who planned to burn a Koran on September 11th cancels it, Obama defending economic initiatives, etc.[Note: Halina Brooke Reed was supposed to call into the show tonight but, according to what she told me on Facebook, her cell was charging and she couldn't call in because it looked like it wasn't charging. My Internet connection during the broadcast was choppy, creating problems for my discussions with me, Scott, and Melinda. Scott and Melinda were having issues staying on the show, but they did a great job with whatever they could. Overall, it was a good show, despite the technical difficulties (if you can hear them).

In the seventeenth episode, Todd and his panelists left-libertarian/anarchist Scott Ferrie, his girlfriend and left-libertarian/mutualist Melinda Foshat, and Republican Liberty Caucus Treasurer Bill Westmiller discussed the 9th anniversary of 9/11 and the aftermath that followed, Time Magazine wonders whether Al Qaeda threat was overrated, the Ron Paul Revolution allegedly dead, Palin and Beck's 9/11 event drawing controversy, Obama declaring that "combat operations in Iraq are over," the never-ending Park51 (formerly the Cordoba Initiative) continues, Florida pastor who planned to burn a Koran on September 11th cancels it, Obama defending economic initiatives, etc.[Note: Halina Brooke Reed was supposed to call into the show tonight but, according to what she told me on Facebook, her cell was charging and she couldn't call in because it looked like it wasn't charging. My Internet connection during the broadcast was choppy, creating problems for my discussions with me, Scott, and Melinda. Scott and Melinda were having issues staying on the show, but they did a great job with whatever they could. Overall, it was a good show, despite the technical difficulties (if you can hear them).

John Hodgman makes his annual pilgrimage from the Internetless Hills, and has a few words for Robert Gibbs.

http://www.FAILocracy.comAmericans are divided on whether or not we should allow the building of the mosque at ground zero, and, of course, by, "mosque at ground zero," I mean, "building that is not a mosque and is also not at ground zero." (It's actually an Islamic community center two blocks away from Ground Zero, and if I can get fired for including work as an artist on South Park on my resume when I really only worked as a graphic designer at a sign company on South Park Street, which shouldn't have happened because I wasn't even technically lying, then there's no way I should get away with calling this a mosque at ground zero.) But here are the details:Now, first, the space was designated with the name, "Cordoba House," which its organizers claim was invokes 8-11th century Cordoba, where Muslims, Christians, and Jews are said to have co-existed peacefully. But critics say the name is in honor of the Muslim conquest over the Christian city in Spain. But the stubborn organizers wouldn't have any of it! They gave a proverbial finger to critics and said, "We're keeping the name whether--" Oh wait, no, they changed it. Organizers changed the name of the space to Park51 to avoid association with conquest while subtly hinting that they're hiding UFOs there.But what is in a name? That which we call a Cordoba House, if by any other name, would it smell as subversive? Newt Gingrich knows what I'm smelling. He said, "It is a test to see if we have the resolve to face down an ideology that aims to destroy religious liberty in America..." Exactly! If we don't act now by taking away religious freedom in this country, then this country might lose its religious freedom.And don't try to argue equality under the law because that's not the issue here. As the constitution says, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Wait a minute, this isn't the constitution. This is George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM!Okay, the Bill of Rights actually says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances," which pretty much means that it would be unconstitutional to legally interfere unless it could be demonstrated conclusively that it's a terrorist group.But as New York Daily News writer S.E. Cupp points out, the argument for the constitutional right is a straw man. She wrote, "No one in serious circles who oppose the mosque at Ground Zero is suggesting it should be made illegal to build a Muslim house of worship near the site of the 9/11 attacks."Exactly. No one is actually suggesting that we actually take legal action to prevent them from building-- oh, okay, well there's that. And that. And, okay a lot of people are. ;But what about the people who recognize the legal right to build the community center, but feel they should voluntarily avoid doing it. The man heading up the project said that he wants the location near ground zero to "push back against the extremists," demonstrating the ability of peaceful Muslims to thrive in a community of mutual tolerance, a spirit opposite of that which was behind the 911 attack.Many prominent Muslims, including Akbar Ahmed and others with names that are even-more difficult to pronounce have publicly opposed the building of the mosque saying that it has the appearance of "fitna," or "mischief-making" that is forbidden by the Koran. Some peaceful Muslims worry that violent extremists would point to it as a symbol of victory despite the intent of those behind the project.For those reasons, I honestly don't know whether the project is a good idea or not. Those of you who have been following FAILocracy for a while may remember when I received death threats a few months ago for criticizing violent Muslims while displaying images of Muhamad created by Persian Muslims. (Of course, I did literally draw a target on my forehead.) The video has been removed from YouTube, not because I was afraid of radical Muslims; I knew what I was getting in to when I drew the target, but because YouTube rejected my revenue-sharing application because of it. It's okay to be a broke martyr, but if I'm going to stay alive, I've got to make some scratch.