They really can't live without each other.
Taliban officials know it’s sacrilegious to hope a mosque will not be built, but that’s exactly what they’re wishing for: the success of the fiery campaign to block the proposed Islamic cultural center and prayer room near the site of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan. “By preventing this mosque from being built, America is doing us a big favor,” Taliban operative Zabihullah tells NEWSWEEK. (Like many Afghans, he uses a single name.) “It’s providing us with more recruits, donations, and popular support.”
What a coincidence! The hysterical campaign against the Burlington Coat Factory Community Center is proving a great recruiting and fundraising tool for the American Taliban as well!
You have two similar movements built upon demonizing the other, pushing an extremist brand of theological ideology, and then forcing it on an unwilling public. They've got Mullahs and Ayatollahs, we've got Glenn Beck:
The bedrock of the day was a total reliance on and thankfulness to God. This is not—as liberals love to say—“wearing your religion on your sleeve.” This is living one’s faith from one’s mind and heart. Above all, the crowd was there to honor God. And they did.
Despite the pre-rally discussions of Beck’s Mormonism, the rally’s litany of evangelical speakers gave it the Jesus-centeredness of a Billy Graham Crusade. All theological references were clearly evangelical and biblically based.
Well, that's all fine and dandy if you're going to church, but our nation is bigger than any one church. Yes -- that's a sacrilegious thought to members of any Talibans, be they foreign or domestic, but America bows to no single church, no single denomination, no single interpretation of God, whether it come from Glenn Beck, or the developers of Park 51.
We've seen what Islamic fundamentalists have done in the Middle East and other parts of the world, and it ain't pretty. That's exactly what our homegrown fundamentalists seek in America. And they'll use the same tactics, and even the same controversies, to build their ranks and fill their coffers.
That's great for their own recruitment efforts, but terrible for America.