September 11

9/11, Barack Obama, El-Gamal, free speech, Ground Zero, Imam Rauf, mosque, Muslims, September 11

‘Orgasmic’ Christ; Where’s the outrage from the Muslim world? (Update: Allah depiction suspected; backlash expected)

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The 9 News link came to me via my Google alert for ‘September 11’. As you will see, the museum also contains a gallery on that subject.

In a city-owned museum in Loveland, Colorado, where school children often make field trips, there is a 12-panel lithograph entitled “The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals” which the artist defends and the city refuses to remove. Not everyone there is amused.

“It depicts clearly a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ engaging in an oral sex act with another person,” says Deacon Ed Armijo of St. John’s The Evangelist Catholic Church. Deacon Armijo and several members of the community went to the gallery to voice their opposition to the exhibit.

The exhibit has raised a question society and the legal system have wrestled with for years: When does art go too far?

“I think people need to come in and see it for themselves. It is hard to take one piece in isolation. It is in the context of an exhibit and this one particular piece is not a stand alone piece,” says Susan Ison, cultural services director for the City of Loveland.

I Googled the work’s title and found it online. It is far sicker and more disgusting than the article describes. The second panel appears to have the cut off head of a soldier in a basket along with other “fruits,” in keeping with the sexual theme. The fourth panel appears to portray a Holy nun in a “maid’s” outfit (some sort of sacrifice is depicted in the background and I’m loathe to speculate what the sub-panels portray). Panels 5 through 7 apparently are of Christ on his road-trip. (The images are a bit small so I am only guessing that is Barack Obama in the sombrero and someone is in a turban. What either has to do with it all is beyond me). The eighth panel has Christ’s head, more accurately his holiness, literally on fire in a bedroom praying to be delivered from the temptation of two “pigs” on the bed. In pane1 12, a cross-dressing transgender Christ is shown having oral sex performed on him/her with the word ‘orgasm’ above them. You need not be Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to recognize the pornography.

It offends me so BE WARNED BEFORE clicking on this link.

Ground Zero mosque developer Sharif El-Gamal told the Today Show’s Matt Laurer on Wednesday, “In order to be a Muslim, you have to be a good Jew and good Christian at the same time.” Sharif El-Gamal was arrested during his mid-20’s for soliciting a prostitute (one of seven arrests in his “youth”) so there is plenty in “The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals” for him to recognize and be offended by. Maybe he will ask Imam Rauf to issue a fatwah, mention during his next State Department funded tour to the Muslim world that perhaps Allah was depicted, and go on Larry King Live to say if Loveland does not take it down, they’ll be another 9/11.

Where’s the outrage? Why aren’t all the “good Christian” Muslims out rioting, killing the innocent, and burning down churches?

Update: Someone pointed out to me the guy kneeling in the eighth panel is also wearing a turbin. So, the artist is surely not depicting Christ. That should earn Imam Rauf some more TV time and tells me this particular piece will soon make an early exit from the museum but it was okay when the artist was only offending Christians and potentially exposing children to smut.

9/11, Cordoba House, Ground Zero, Imam Rauf, Sarah Palin, September 11

Sarah Palin on Facebook about Ground Zero mosque: An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground

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Last night on her Facebook page [see note below], former governor Sarah Palin wrote this:

Earlier today, Mayor Bloomberg responded to my comments about the planned mosque at Ground Zero by suggesting that a decision not to allow the building of a mosque at that sacred place would somehow violate American principles of tolerance and openness.

No one is disputing that America stands for – and should stand for – religious tolerance. It is a foundation of our republic. This is not an issue of religious tolerance but of common moral sense. To build a mosque at Ground Zero is a stab in the heart of the families of the innocent victims of those horrific attacks. Just days after 9/11, the spiritual leader of the organization that wants to build the mosque, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, suggested that blame be placed on the innocents when he stated that the “United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened” and that “in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.” Rauf refuses to recognize that Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of our ally, Israel, and refuses to provide information about the sources of funding for the $100 million mosque. Rauf also plays a key role in a group behind the flotilla designed to provoke Israel in its justifiable blockade of Gaza. These are just a few of the points Americans are realizing as New York considers the proposed mosque just a stone’s throw away from 9/11’s sacred ground.

I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: “This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists. I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened.”

Many Americans, myself included, feel it would be an intolerable and tragic mistake to allow such a project sponsored by such an individual to go forward on such hallowed ground. This is nothing close to “religious intolerance,” it’s just common decency.

We thank Governor Palin.

America was attacked on 9/11, not “merely” Manhattan, some planes, a few big buildings, or Ground Zero.

Yes, we the families of 2,976 people bore the brunt, buried our dead, and memorialized the hundreds and hundreds that to this day have not been found to lay to rest. Yet we had our Nation right there with us as we endured and felt millions and millions of hands helping us to our feet.

We did not choose that day — September 11, 2001.

We will never forget, back down, or stand alone in defense of America’s sacred ground.

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Note — July 22, 2010: Facebook is investigating what may very well turn out to have been a concerted effort to trigger the take-down of Sarah Palin’s original Facebook post. She has re-posted it there and added this note at the end of it:

“The original post of this statement (on July 20, 2010) was somehow unintentionally deleted by mistake or technical glitch.”

Politico reports, “Neither Facebook nor Palin’s camp was immediately sure what happened, but automated systems for reporting abuse have been used effectively in the past to take aim at political speech.”