lookin' like a goldfish

In Murphreesboro, TN, there is a storm brewing.  You see, there is a faith community in town and the community has outgrown their old worship site so they have bought property and filed paperwork to have a new one built.  This is horrible and the end of the world because the worship site is, in fact, a terror-drome, training fanatics to overthrow the government of God-fearing americans and impose religious dictates upon the masses.  No, they're not Opus Dei, they're a moderate muslim community who have been worshiping in town since the 1980's.

What flags this saddening display of intolerance and ignorance worth annoying enough electrons to write about it is not the arson (according to the ATF) at the construction site nor the fact that the lawsuit is based upon the construction of a cemetery.  No, the trouble comes from the most recent talking point from the opponents to this construction.

"Are you aware that's all the plaintiffs have wanted from day one is to know whether this is a religious institution?...Did you do anything to determine this was a religious meeting place?...Sounds like you don't know what a mosque is."

Islam is, by most estimations, the second largest organized faith system in the world.  To intimate, let alone openly question if is a religion at all boggles the mind.  I cannot recall ever reading, even in the most intolerant language of the 'bad old days', where the 'muhammodans' (or, for that matter, protestants, catholics or jews) didn't follow a religion.  That they're following the wrong religion, doing X or failing to do Y (which, we all know, is an anathema), or somehow disrespect the [insert name of Divine you follow here]...sure, they all say that, but never that it isn't a religion at all.

So, yeah.  I'm sitting here reading this, shaking my head slowly and looking like a goldfish, mouth agape, due to the sheer incredulity of it all.  Even assuming that those 'god-fearin murikans' are right (which I don't) and Islam is an enemy of Christianity and/or the United States (which I don't believe it is)...

"But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that."

 Damned hippies.