Some commenters in this post (and over at Little Green Footballs) are (unaccountably, to me) skeptical about Laura Mansfield’s tale of the mosque. I emailed her to ask if she wanted to respond, and she wrote:
I did not provide details as to the location of the mosque or the date of the visit simply for safety reasons. They do not have my full name. However if I provide the date and the name/location of the mosque I might as well walk back in, hand the imam a copy of the article, and wait for the backlash.
I do not have the weight of a governmental agency behind me; I have had to redact certain information for security purposes.
Let me also add that the sessions were audiotaped – not broadcast quality but certainly understandable.
I suspected that was the situation, as I noted in previous comments. People will, of course, continue to believe (and disbelieve) as they choose.
Perhaps we should extend National Self-Defense Day to make it a two-day holiday. April 20th is the anniversary of the killer rabbit incident. The poor defenseless president had nothing but a canoe paddle.
I don’t know if they read this or not, but Virgin Galactic appears to be taking money.
I got the following link in an email confirmed for all to see here.
Go quick. $20,000 refundable deposit only costs about $1200 in interest costs at today’s money market rates. No word if the deposits are transferrable.
It occurs to me that, since April 19th is fraught with so much history with respect to the right to bear arms, and the consequences of losing that right, perhaps the NRA (or better yet, Congress) should declare it National Self Defense Day.
A rabbi and a Nazi duked it out at the Kansas City Airport.
[Update at 3:40 PM]
Maybe this was just a little replay of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which today is also the anniversary of (sixty two years ago). An interesting coincidence that we have two anniversaries today demonstrating that gun confiscation is a flawed policy. Well, three, actually, if you count Waco.
In addition to being the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Oklahoma City bombing, it’s also the twelth anniversary of Waco (which was probably one of the precipitating events for Oklahoma City).
Khaled and three of his companions had gone to New York for several days in January. He told of how uncomfortable his trip up to NYC had been. He felt like he was being watched, and thought he was the victim of racial profiling.
Khaled and his friends were pretty unhappy about it, and while in New York, they came up with a plan to “teach a lesson” to the passengers and crew. You can imagine the story Khaled told. He described how he and his friends whispered to each other on the flight, made simultaneous visits to the restroom, and generally tried to “spook” the other passengers. He laughed when he described how several women were in tears, and one man sitting near him was praying.
The others in the room thought the story was quite amusing, judging from the laughter. The imam stood up and told the group that this was a kind of peaceful civil disobedience that should be encouraged, and commended Khaled and his friends for their efforts.
This part of the meeting was all spoken in Arabic.
In Israel, Yasser Arafat was well known (at least to the non-naive) for making conciliatory speeches in English and inflammatory ones in Arabic. Apparently, he’s not alone in this practice.