re: #99 Dark_Falcon

Iceweasel posted some results of that urging. In brief one of the two GOP Colorado state senators (Kevin Grantham) quoted said that mosques are not churches like we would think of churches. They think of mosques more as a foothold into a society, as a foothold into a community, more in the cultural and in the nationalistic sense. The other state sen., also with the personal name of Kevin but with the surname of Lundberg, had a rather different reply: “We’re a free society, and there are risks with freedom. In my mind, we need to give every citizen the opportunity to succeed or fail on their merits, and there are limits we have to put in place for certain public safety issues, but I am much more a stronger defender of the First Amendment than I am of immediately restricting people because of a perceived concern. (bolding in original in both cases)

So there you have it: One Kevin is sane and the other has been seduced by Gellerism.

There are a bunch of mosques in the area I work in, parts of SF, etc. I have no idea what’s going on inside (roll the tapes from Pam’s brain for details), but the impact on the community has been minimal and benign. It’s like these people can’t stop seeing Tariq ibn Ziyad, with his army arrayed behind him, and actually focus on the small business owners and IT guys who attend these places.

All that aside, there’s simply no way in U.S. law to decide that one religion gets less freedom to practice than another religion. It can’t be done, without doing worse damage to our customs and way and of life than any number of jihadi corner store owners could possibly ever do.