Questions

1. If imam Rauf was a fire and brimstone type Islamic preacher, spouting off about how Islam is the way and that the infidels should submit, and how Shariah is the right way for America, would he still be able to build a 15 story mosque in the debris field of GZ? Would Bloomberg still hold onto the First Amendment, or is it really subjective?

2. Will Obama come out and defend the First Amendment rights of the fundie Christian preacher in FLA who wants to burn Qurans? Isn't his right to freedom of expression a bedrock of our system of government, regardless of the 'wisdom' of it?

3. Will anyone ask Mr. Rauf what he meant when he said we were an accessory to 9/11 due to the starving of Iraqi children due to Maddy Albright, or that we created bin Laden and therefore have more blood on our hands then does he?

4. How can people in the administration call the FLA preacher's act "un-American", when it's as American as apple pie in that he's got the constitutional right? Yes, it's an ugly, provocative act and nothing Jesus would likely do, but calling it "un-American" is dangerous and disturbing. Right?

4. CNN is playing it fair and balanced:

But Imam Feisal is not the first person in history this has happened to. Mahatma Gandhi was called seditious, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela branded dangerous communists.

Each of them, in the spirit of their respective religions, forgave their tormenters and achieved their dream.

Yet this same writer once wrote:

The video displays the Van Jones I know, not the one caricatured on cable talk shows. He speaks of skilled machinists in Detroit, out of work and down on their luck. "I know there's a future out there for them," Van says. "Let them make the wind turbines and the smart batteries and the solar panels to repower this country." He talks about a woman in Appalachia, at risk of losing her land. "Let her put those wind turbines up, let her grow an energy crop ... let's get everyone involved in repowering America."

And then he invokes a Biblical image in the national interest: "For a country that beautiful, that prosperous, that innovative, that united, I am willing to walk through fire and brimstone."

Classic Van, I thought to myself. Van wasn't hit by an accidental house fire, he was a victim of arson, and yet there was no whiff of 'woe is me' in that speech at all. Other people would have used that stage to vindicate themselves, even attack their attackers. But Van was doing what he'd always done - use the platform he was given to lift other people up.

Except when he's calling Republicans 'assholes'.

So, which to believe? And figuring out whom to believe is where this breaks down for many people. It's difficult to know who's telling the truth when our enemy is generally making a point to blend in with society, ala Mohammad Atta, Major Hasan, Feisel the Times Square would-be bomber, etc. Yet anyone who expresses this concern is immediately labeled an anti-American bigot, etc. We are fighting an army overseas who are not shy at all about why they fight--it's for Allah. No bones about it.

Deep down we know that all Muslims cannot be lumped into the terrorist pot. But when it's so hard to determine the players doesn't that call for an internal struggle to change things? Rauf has said he doesn't think Islam needs a reformation, well maybe he really does and this is his secret way of accomplishing it--without them realizing it. After all, he above all knows there are people who don't react kindly to certain accusations. Surely when he appears on Bill O'Reilly the answers will come.