After presidential candidates, elected officials and influential pundits spent the past several weeks questioning the motives and threatening the free worship of Muslims in Manhattan and across the country, I have been asking myself: how far is too far for those harsh, often ugly critics? Is there no level of anti-Muslim rhetoric or action that they would unequivically condemn?
I seem to finally have found my answer in the form of Gainesville Pastor Terry Jones, who is bent on leading his congregation of less than 50 in a Qu-ran-burning protest on the lawn of their church this weekend. Both Sarah Palin and President Obama have now joined countless others on both sides of the aisle in calling on Jones to abandon these plans, for the good of troops and US travelers abroad, and out of some sense of common decency. If you can get both Palin and Obama on the same side of an issue this close to an election, I say you've darn near got a nationwide consensus. Or, as film critic and Twitterer-extraordinaire put it, Jones' foolish plans just may have "united America."
If so, that's great, and could actually be a turning point in this sad decline that has opened cultural and religious rifts, and has far too many in this country essentially calling on First Amendment religious freedom protections to be selectively enforced, or abandoned altogether.
Still, I agree with Josh Marshall's point. This extremist pastor's hateful plan – and the ridiculous amount of media attention it has gotten – is a direct result of the anti-Muslim frenzy we have been hearing the last 2 weeks, much of it from some of the same folks that now claim burning the holy book of Islam is going too far. How can you argue so loudly that Muslims are a threat to America, and that they don't deserve the constitutional protections the rest of us enjoy, and not expect true believers to pivot from that onto more violent expressions?
