By Gina Dalfonzo|Published Date: September 25, 2009
Thousands of Muslims are gathering to pray in Washington, D.C., today, in an event called "Islam on Capitol Hill." The event's website proclaims, "The objective of this gathering is to invite the Muslim Communities and friends of Islam to express and illustrate the wonderful diversity of Islam." However, a closer look at some of the leaders of the movement suggests that that may not be all there is to it. Human Events reports:
According to a transcript provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), [Sheikh Ahmed Dewidar] recalled that “in 1995, I heard some sermons, saying that Muslims should march on the White House from some of the mosques.” He recounted that “one cleric said in his sermon: ‘We are going to the White House, so that Islam will be victorious, Allah willing, and the White House will become…the Muslim house.’”
Dewidar explained that this cleric meant that “through the domination of Islam and its ideas, the White House will change.” He said that this wouldn’t happen, however, “unless the Muslims abandon their slogans and become a role model.” He criticized Muslim spokesmen who engage in “patronizing, condescending rhetoric that ‘Islam is coming, and it will change the face of the earth,’ while at the same time he cannot even change the face of the Islamic capitals, which overflow with garbage.”
At first glance this seems like a sober call for responsibility, but note well that Dewidar did not take any issue with the idea that the White House would become the “Muslim House” through the “domination of Islam.”
Dewidar has also claimed, "The Zionist community numbers only 3 million, but they control the government, the politics, the economy, and the media in the U.S."
Read more here about the organizers of the march, and some Christians' reactions to it.
Many are working to bring the disparity in sentencing between cocaine and crack to an end. Pharmacologically they are almost the exact same substance. Personally, I think the disparity should be reduced a bit, but I also think that community-based treatment for non-violent offenders should be used on a much larger scale.
William Saletan of Slate observes that we're in a "war between the worlds": the world of reality and the world of virtual reality. The frightening thing is that some of the casualties in this war are not virtual casualties. They're real ones.
The compromise [Uganda] had accepted, which the president [Yoweri Museveni] presented as reconciliation, was actually something more complex and less sturdy. It was as if, having found themselves unable to forgive, his people had concentrated on forgetting, and when they’d failed at forgetting, they’d chosen to believe what they wanted to believe. So long as nothing disturbed their conception of the past or exposed them to scrutiny, the nation could continue its halting procession along Museveni’s chosen path. To the president’s way of thinking, therefore, justice was a threat to progress, not because it promised verdicts and punishments, but because it forced people to remember.
