Muslims

How Not To Promote Tolerance and Understanding of Muslim Culture

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Here is how it works: When a Muslim couple sets up television station specifically for the purpose of advancing understanding and tolerance of Muslims in America, the couple also creates a duty to further that goal by  their own personal behavior. It would be more damaging for the proprietors of a station with such an important goal to be implicated in a terror plot, for example.  Muslims doing so while claiming to be devoted to bridging the chasm of distrust between America and Islam would make the chasm deeper, perhaps deeper than the usual, garden variety Radical Islamic terrorist plot.

Another no-no for such a couple, I’d say: the husband stabbing the wife to death and cutting off her head. Continue reading →

Jesus, Ants, Art, and Republican Abuse of Power

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The Republicans haven’t even taken over the House of Representatives yet, and they are already emulating Islamic extremists—and I’m not exaggerating. Continue reading →

Joy and Whoopi’s Unethical Bully Tactic

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

To have seen it live, you have to watch The View, which is not good for your brain or digestion, and be willing to watch Bill O’Reilly, which requires a tolerance for arrogant certitude that is only present in certain genetically gifted individuals. But on the video clip, you can see O’Reilly explaining why about 70% of Americans think that the Muslim center being planned for construction near the site of the September 11 terrorist is “inappropriate,”  saying “Muslims killed us on 9/11.” The View’s co-host Whoopi Goldberg took violent offense at the statement, exclaiming, “No! Not, oh, my god. That is such bullshit!” [Note: It is not “bullshit.” Muslims indeed performed the attack, in the name of Muhammad no less. ] O’Reilly, understandably confused, said, “Muslims didn’t kill us on 9/11? Is that what you’re saying?” Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: “The American Muslim’s” American and Canadian Muslims

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

On the website The American Muslim, a statement has been posted that condemns the threatening and violent acts by Muslim extremists. Signed by approximately 200 Muslims so far, many of them distingusihed leaders and intellectuals in the Muslim community, it is welcome, helpful, and courageous.

Entitled “A DEFENSE OF FREE SPEECH BY AMERICAN AND CANADIAN MUSLIMS,” it reads: Continue reading →

On Idiots, Book-Burnings, and Journalistic Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Let’s keep this post as abstract as possible, as the less publicity the renegade Gainesville book-burners get for their idiotic stunt, the better.

Why is a dim-witted “protest”by a fifty member church that we were all blissfully unaware of until recently a national, international, or even local news story? I am pretty sure I could gather a group of fifty friends in the parking lot across from my house on Arbor Day and burn an effigy of ultra-prolific junk novelist James Patterson to protest the many trees that have died to bring his books to Barnes and Noble. Would that be newsworthy—a few wackos doing something just to get attention? Does the public have a right to know about a trivial and pointless event that is only occurring so that the media will make it news?

Let us now assume that there is a powerful James Patterson cult, funded by an eccentric billionaire fan, and that it has acquired nuclear weapons. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Presents “The Mosquies”…the Best and Worst of the “Ground Zero Mosque” Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

As I previously noted, the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy is an epic “ethics train wreck” that has spread its destruction far and wide, across regional, ideological and national borders, leaving confusion, misunderstanding and bad feelings in its wake. Now is as good a time as any to take stock of the situation, and to recognize those who have distinguished themselves during the carnage, for good or ill. To this end, Ethics Alarms presents its first annual  (and hopefully last ever) awards for outstanding ethical and unethical conduct during the whole mess, “The Mosquies.”

The envelope, please… Continue reading →

Politics, Ethics, and the Idiot Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Kim Lehman, who is one of Iowa’s two national Republican Committee members, responded to Politico’s report last week about the large and, oddly, increasing number of Americans who believe that President Obama is a Muslim, with this tweet:

“@politico You’re funny. They must pay you a lot to protect Obama. BTW, he personally told the muslims that he is a muslim. Read his lips.”

When Lehman was asked by the Des Moines Register what speech she was referring to, she cited an Obama speech in Cairo last summer in which he reached out to Muslims “to seek a new beginning.” In that speech, Obama made no comment about being Muslim. In fact, he said he was a  a Christian, saying,

“…Now part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I’m a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith. As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam.”

Never mind that, Lehman said; the speech still “just had the appearance that he was aligning himself with the Muslims.” Continue reading →

Thank You, Glenn Beck…

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

…for manufacturing your own violation of The Second Niggardly Principle, clarifying what is wrong about the Ground Zero Mosque.

Beck has announced that he will hold a Tea Party rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, which just happens to be the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s iconic “I have a dream” speech, delivered at the same spot.

Does Beck have a right to hold his rally there?

Yes. Continue reading →

When the President Agrees With Me, He’s Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Let’s see if I can make this both coherent and succinct.

President Obama was ethical, responsible, and brave to weigh in on the Ground Zero Mosque (more accurately called “The Two-Blocks From Ground Zero Mosque”), and reaffirm America’s commitment to freedom of religion for all faiths by declaring that the Islamic group has the right to build its planned Islamic center.

After being roundly (and predictably) slammed by conservative talking heads, blogging bigots, and ranting reactionaries for stating the obvious, however, the President (or his advisors; the advisors are the ones who thought this was a dandy time to send Michelle and the kids on a luxury vacation in Spain, and can be identified by the large dunce caps on their heads…) decided to come back and clarify his remarks, lest anyone think he was actually endorsing the idea of an Islamic monument so near the spot where thousands of innocent Americans perished at the hands of Islamic extremists.

“I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there,” Obama told reporters in Panama City, Fla.  “I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.” This statement isn’t quite “I didn’t inhale” or “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is,” but it is still a solid candidate for the Presidential Weasel Words Hall of Fame. By saying he would not comment, President Obama was commenting, and implying, by saying what he would not comment about, that if he did comment, it would be that the mosque was probably not such a hot idea, since fairly or not, it was bound to be misunderstood as an insult to the victims of 9-11.

It was inappropriate and wrong for Obama to suggest this, in weasel words or otherwise. (It would be more honest and forthright to eschew the weasel word method, however.) Continue reading →

The Ground Zero Mosque and “The Niggardly Principles”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Fine, reasonable, ethical commentators, not to mention Mayor Bloomberg, have argued that the moderate Muslim group seeking to build an Islamic center and mosque within a hand grenade’s throw of Ground Zero is blameless, persecuted, and as pure as the driven snow in its ethics.

They are ignoring the Second Niggardly Principle, which is understandable since I just formulated the Niggardly Principles One and Two today, after carefully reflecting upon what it could be about this matter that has led so many wise people astray.

Several years ago, a white Washington D.C. government worker, the Shirley Sherrod of his time, was fired for using the word “niggardly” in the work place, which was found to be racially insensitive to those whose vocabulary was so limited they didn’t know that the word had nothing to do with race. This incident embarrassed the D.C. government, which is used to being embarrassed, and inflamed pedants. Eventually the worker was reinstated, and the First Niggardly Principle was born, which is as follows: Continue reading →