Dearborn Heights, Michigan has gotten just what it needs: a massive, sixteen-million-dollar new mosque. A celebration in proportion to the importance of this milestone has duly been held, stretching over two days and featuring such luminaries as Dearborn Heights Mayor Mo Baydoun; Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud; U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Ramallah); far-left Muslim Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed; the Iraqi Consul General in Detroit, Mohammed Hassan Saeed Mohammed; Imam Fadhel Al-Sahlani, who was representing Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani in North America; and Imam Mohammad Mardini, founder of the American Muslim Center in Michigan. Joining them in the festivities was Edward J. Weisenburger, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Detroit.
Arab American News reported Friday that Weisenburger, in hailing the opening of the new Imam Al-Hasanain Mosque, was positively bubbling over with fraternal feeling. “There is no place where I feel more respect, fraternity and kindness,” Weisenburger said. “From the moment I entered this beautiful site, I felt a profound divine presence.” Weisenburger also “described the mosque as a sacred place that would help strengthen relationships among people of different faiths and deepen their connection to God.”
Yes. Mosques are famous for strengthening relationships among people of different faiths.
Edward J. Weisenburger, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Detroit, means well. In fact, he almost certainly feels a certain moral superiority, and even a temptation to smugness, when comparing himself to those grubby, greasy little people who, in his view, preach "hate" and "division." Edward J. Weisenburger, Archbishop of Detroit, is above all that. He is just what this age calls for. He is an apostle of love, a missionary of mutual understanding, a dealer in dialogue. While lesser men waste their time sounding warnings about a civilizational threat and the looming prospect of subjugation and dhimmitude, Edward J. Weisenburger, Archbishop of Detroit, knows better, and does all he can to ensure that those warnings go unheeded.
For Edward J. Weisenburger — please, call him Ed — knows that the idea of a subversion of Western civilization from within is absurd. He knows that any idea that any group, aside from the far right, would want to destroy the existing society and establish its own authoritarian hegemony over what remains, is simply "racist," "bigoted," and "Islamophobe." He knows that Sayed Hassan Qazwini and the people of the Imam Al-Hasanain Mosque are the salt of the earth, unjustly placed under suspicion and long-suffering, due to the malign influence of those racist "Islamophobes." He knows that the Imam Al-Hasanain Mosque preaches peace, love, and tolerance.
What Edward J. Weinburger almost certainly doesn't know is that the Qur'an, the holy book that his friends at the mosque revere, teaches that "hate" and "division" that he abhors. It teaches that he, as a Christian, is "the most vile of created beings" (98:6), while the Muslims are the "best of people" (3:110). It teaches that those who say that Jesus is divine are unbelievers (5:17, 5:72) and that those who say that Jesus is the Son of God are under the curse of Allah (9:30). It says that Jesus was not crucified (4:171), and that Muslims should be merciful to one another but ruthless to unbelievers (48:29). It says that Muslims should "strike the necks" of the unbelievers (47:4) and "kill them wherever you find them" (2:191, 4:89, 4:91, 9:5). It says that Muslims should fight against Christians until they pay a special tax and submit to Islamic hegemony (9:29).
Ed — please! Let's not stand on ceremony — almost certainly neither knows nor cares that such passages and others like them exist. If he does know they exist, he dismisses them by likening them to the violent passages in the Old Testament, and ignores the fact that the Old Testament passages describe acts of violence but do not call upon believers of all times to engage in them. He doesn't know (again, almost certainly) about the Islamic interpretative traditions and the classic tafasir (commentaries on the Qur'an) that teach that the violent passages are valid for all time, while more tolerant passages are not. He also assumes that his Muslim friends don't consider these passages to have any validity in the modern world. And hey, remember, they're the salt of the earth.
Related: Muslim Leader Crows That ‘America Is Being Divided’ — and Names the Culprits
And so, overjoyed at his own generosity of spirit, he said at the mosque: “There is no place where I feel more respect, fraternity and kindness. From the moment I entered this beautiful site, I felt a profound divine presence.”
He didn't think once about the Christians in Nigeria and elsewhere who suffer from jihad violence on a near-daily basis. If they did cross his mind, he reminded himself that jihad terrorists have hijacked the beautiful religion of peace. He never thought that praising the "divine presence" he claims to have felt in this mosque might demoralize his fellow Christians who are suffering persecution from Muslims. He never thought that his experience of the divine in the mosque might confuse his fellow Christians in Detroit and elsewhere who are being told about an Islam that is quite different from the one they experience from arrogant, supremacist, aggressive adherents of the religion, or might lead seekers to convert to Islam. The fact that so many converts to Islam have become jihad terrorists is likely yet another thing that he doesn't know. He is an apostle of kindness. He is a force for the good. Go back to sleep.
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