Bryan Fischer is a Dolt (9/11 For Me But Not For Thee Edition)

Bryan, ¿Que pasa? It’s been an age (or nearly three weeks) since I last called you out as a dolt. I was beginning to wonder if you’d lost that old Bryan Fischer zaniness …

But, with the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 coming up, I should have known you’d soon be on the War-on-Terror-Path.  And since I don’t think you’ve been able to link that terror attack on Teh Gayz, Mormons, Native Americans, or Illegal Mexicans, it’s inevitable that you’ll be gunning for Those Evil Muslims instead.

And here we go.

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has rightly come under withering criticism for banning all clergy and all prayer at this year’s 9/11 commemoration ceremony.

Withering. Or, at least, loud from a certain segment of the studio audience.  To wit, you and your wacky conservative Christian element.

It is inexcusable for the mayor to ban prayer at a solemn event of this magnitude, a tragedy that deeply affected all Americans.

Yes. All Americans.  Of every race, color, and creed.

And, actually, it affected a lot of folks from overseas, too, 372 foreign nationals from 70 other countries. Let’s not forget that 12% of the casualty list.

Of course, Bloomberg isn’t doing anything all that weird here, let alone “inexcusable.”  He’s not banning prayer — which, of course, he cannot do.  What he’s doing is, for the city’s official Ground Zero ceremony, simply not inviting any specific clergy or prayerful invocations to the event.  Which is in keeping with what the city has done in previous years, and seems entirely appropriate.

“The ceremony was designed in coordination with 9/11 families with a mixture of readings that are spiritual, historical and personal in nature,” Evelyn Erskine, a spokeswoman for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said in an e-mail to CNN.

“It has been widely supported for the past 10 years and rather than have disagreements over which religious leaders participate we would like to keep the focus of our commemoration ceremony on the family members of those who died.”

[…] There have been 10 ceremonies at ground zero in New York to pause and remember the events of 9/11, one six months after the attack and on September 11 each following year. Spirituality and religion have been reserved for the moments of silence in those events. In past ceremonies, four moments of silence were observed to mark when each tower was struck and when each tower fell. For this year’s ceremony, organizers added two additional moments of silence to recognize the strike on the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

“This year’s six moments of silence allow every individual a time for personal and religious introspection,” Erskine said.

As they see fit. And it’s not like there won’t  be prayerful goings-on in New York City around the anniversary.

Throughout the city there will be other prayer events leading up to September 11. In particular, the New York Police Department will be hosting its own ceremony, which will include prayers, at Lincoln Center on September 8. The event is scheduled to include Rabbi Alvin Kass, the chief of chaplains for the NYPD; Cardinal Edward Egan, the Archbishop emeritus of New York; and the mayor.

But silent prayer or reflection isn’t enough, right, Bryan?  If you’re not out there on the street corner praying up a storm, you’re just not doing it right, right, Bryan?

The faith of millions of Americans in God sustained them on that day and the days that followed, and churches were packed the Sunday following 9/11 with people looking to their pastors for spiritual comfort and guidance.

As were the synogogues.  And the Muslim temples.  I suspect Buddhists and Hindus were looking for spiritual comfort and guidance, too.

Of course, let’s not overstate things.  It’s not like those Americans without a belief in God were committing suicide out of despair.  And it’s not like those who do have a faith, but don’t look to a specific pastoral authority figure to tell them what it’s all about, were jumping off of bridges.

But I digress …

So why would Mayor Bloomberg stick his thumb in the eye of every believing American?

Really?  I’m a believer, Bryan.  I don’t feel like the mayor is attacking me.

His ban contravenes all of American history, in which political leaders have persistently turned to prayer in moments of crisis, beginning with the first session of the Continental Congress that gave us the Declaration of Independence. His ban on prayer is both misguided and politically stupid. Why would he do it?

Maybe because he hasn’t done so in the past, and because he doesn’t feel the need to do so now. Remarkably enough, Bryan, a lot of folks don’t feel compelled to invoke Jesus at every public ceremony.

But that’s not what really gets your goat here, Bryan, is it?

Here’s my suggestion. Multiculturalism has so infected Mayor Bloomberg’s view of America that if he allowed anybody to pray he would feel compelled to include a Muslim imam on the platform, praying a Muslim prayer and invoking the Muslim god at whose direction the 9/11 hijackers killed 3000 Americans in cold blood.

Here’s a stunning, startling factoid for you, Bryan. There were Muslims who died on 9/11.  And I’m not talking about the terrorists.  There were Muslims who were visiting this country.  And American Muslims, too.

Indeed, among the many victims of 9/11 were several dozen innocent Muslims, ranging in age from their late 60s to a couple’s unborn child. Six of these victims were Muslim women, including one who was 7 months pregnant. Many were stockbrokers or restaurant workers, earning a living to care for their families. There were converts and immigrants, hailing from over a dozen different countries and the U.S. There were heroes: a NYPD cadet and a Marriott hotel worker, who sacrificed their lives attempting to rescue others. The Muslim victims were parents to over 30 children, who were left orphaned without one or both of their parents.

You can find more about some of the Muslim victims of 9/11 here.

Yeah, I know — the whole idea of Muslims being Americans, or Americans being Muslims, is enough to make your head explode, Bryan.  But they’re real.  They, and their families, suffered. Indeed, a reasonable person might argue that their families’ suffering was three-fold: the deaths of their loved ones … the idea that the crime was perpetrated by those who claimed to be of the same religion as they … and that dolts like you, Bryan, paint them with the same Islamicist brush as you paint the terrorists who did this deed.

So, yes, Bryan, it would be fitting for a Muslim imam to say a prayer at 9/11, if you were trying to make sure that all the victims were represented.

He knows the American people would never stand for that. But if he held the ceremony and allowed only Christian pastors and Jewish rabbis to pray, he’d get hammered by secular fundamentalists, muliticulturalists and Muslim advocates for playing favorites. Better, he thought, to outrage the vast majority of Christians who believe in Jesus than to offend his tiny, fringe-dwelling winger-left fan club. So his bottom line apparently is this: If Muslims can’t pray, nobody gets to pray.

There’s a glimmer of truth here, Bryan.  Just a glimmer.

Yes, there were many faiths among those who died.  Probably (self-labeled) Christians were in the majority.  And Jews. But the 41 dead from India … the 24 with Japan … the 3 from China … the 28 from South Korea … they probably weren’t all Christian and Jewish.  Do they not get some sort of religious representation in your proposed Jesus-fest?

(The Jews are in a funny position here, since you call them out specifically, Bryan, but then talk about the outrage of Christians only … which calls to mind how your own organization, the AFA, just mentioned how Jews don’t worship the same deity as Christians.)

Indeed, if we assume the American nationals who perished in 9/11 were made up of the same proportion of religious traditions as the general population, then of the 2,669 Americans who died … … 2,095 were of various Christian denominations (assuming you’re willing to consider Catholics and Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses as Christian … which I never assume, Bryan), 45 were Jewish, 19 were Buddhist, 11 were Hindu, and 483 were unaffiliated, of other faiths, or declined to identify themselves.

So all of those would be properly represented by some Christian (and, perforce, Jewish) religious leaders?  Really?

So, yes … if you have respect for the faith of the victims, and their families, then if the Muslims (and Buddhists, and Hindus, and everyone else) don’t get a chance to express their faith, then nobody should.  Or, through several moments of silence and contemplation, everyone does get that opportunity.

Or let me put it another way, Bryan.  Let’s say that there’s a horrible terrorist attack on one of those fancy uber-tall buildings in Qatar or Bahrain or Saudi.  And 3,000-odd people die.  And, of those, let’s say that 32 were Christians — foreign workers, visiting executives, even a few native Christians. How would you feel about the Saudi government sponsoring a memorial event in which only the nation’s Muslim imams said prayers, consecrating this holy event to the peace of Allah, praying that Allah would look with kindness on the souls of those who had perished, and would greet them with joy and peace?

I suspect you’d be pretty outraged.

I also suspect you don’t see the irony here, Bryan.

As an aside, the mayor’s bloviation about the government not playing favorites when it comes to religion is just bilge. He’s clearly playing favorites, and his favoritism is heavily stacked toward Muslims.

Right. Because, as a politician, he’d certainly be seeking to favor a 1-odd percent of the electoral public.

He is vigorously defending the building of the offensive Ground Zero mosque while his administration at the same time is doing everything in its power to keep the Orthodox church that was destroyed on 9/11 from being rebuilt.

Oh, Christ, this, again?

A mosque and social center blocks away and out of sight of Ground Zero is somehow some sort of offensive “Victory Mosque,” according to your own twisted paranoia about Islam.

Meanwhile, the Orthodox church of St Nicholas — which Bloomberg has supported — remains tied up in negotiations between the church and the Port Authority about whether to swap the old site (under which some sort of bomb-checking facility is to be built) with a new site, and with what sort of subsidy.  Nobody at the Evil Victory Mosque, at least, is asking for a taxpayer subsidy for their rebuilding a much larger facility than they had before.

In other words, there’s no Nefarious Plot against Christianity here, Bryan.  Really.  Sit down and take a few deep breaths.

But there is no cultural, historical or constitutional reason why clergy participation on 9/11 should not be reserved for Christians and Jews.

Aside from the whole There were people who died who were neither Christian nor Jewish thing. And look, Bryan — you’ve somehow magically gone from “We need clergy to be part of this” to “We need Christian and Jewish clergy to be part of this.” I suppose, at least, until those uppity Jews deny the Messiah another time, right?

This is for one simple reason: this nation was founded on the Judeo-Christian tradition and on faith in the God revealed in the Old and New Testaments. It has always been this God to whom Americans have turned in times of danger, and there is no reason why this God should not be the God to whom prayers are offered on 9/11.

We were also founded on a partial slave economy, a political establishment of property holders, a society dominated by men.  The only people who were, who could be, part of the founding of this nation were white, landed men. So does that mean only white, landed men should be allowed to speak at the memorial?

We’ll put aside your whole zany argument you continue to regurgitate about how the nation was founded as a Judeo-Christian nation, and how the First Amendment is only for Christians (and, if they’re polite, Jews).

Bottom line, if individual Christians want to pray to their God — as they see Him (or Her) — before, during, or after 9/11, they are welcome to do so.  If they want to pray in their church services about 9/11, that’s their right and prerogative.

But that’s not what you want, Bryan.  You want a city affair, paid for by the taxpayers of New York City, to be a big celebration of Jesus and invocation of Jehovah — no matter who the citizenry of NYC actually believe in, individually or collectively.  You think that the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Neo-Pagans, Atheists and unchurched and indifferent ought to pay for — and celebrate in — a Christian (and indifferently Jewish) prayer meeting.

Really?

No.

Muslims, meanwhile, pray to a different god.

As do, according to the AFA — who you are the official spokescritter of, and on whose site you post — the Jews. Yet, for some reason, you allow them to be a part of the Christian memorial to the 9/11 victims.

Their god, they insist, has no son.

The Jews, I believe, concur.

The God of Christians, of course, does have a Son. Paul frequently opens his epistles by making it clear that the God to whom he prays is the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 1:3), to distinguish the God of the Scriptures, the true and living God, from all the Roman gods.

Which sounds like a good, orthodox Christian standpoint.  Not shared by those who aren’t Christian, but since you consider Them second-class citizens, I guess that doesn’t matter.

This God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, is the God to whom the Founders prayed. It is this God who is the source of “the Laws of Nature” and is in fact “Nature’s God.” This God is the “Creator” who is the source of our “unalienable rights.”

Certainly quite a few of the Founders were Christian in a more or less orthodox sense.  Of course, not all of them were.  Thomas Jefferson, who you quote in the last two sentences of that paragraph, was hardly a poster boy for standard, accepted, mainstream, ordinary, orthodox, judgmental, normalizing, Biblical Christianity or belief in the divine nature of Jesus.  Or someone who would  support tax-funded public declarations of Christianity.

They even dated the Declaration of Independence from the year of Christ’s birth, and referred to him in so doing as “our Lord.”

Dude, really?  You’re using the calendar system as a proof of their Christianity?  By that argument, they were also Catholics (in honor of Popes Gregory and Julian, who established the BC/AD system).

So can public officials restrict public prayers to prayers directed to the God of the Founders? Absolutely.

Absolutely … not.

Any more than they can restrict participation just to those Americans who were born in the initial 13 states.

In fact, you can’t get any more American than praying to the same God to which they appealed as the “Supreme Judge of the World.”

As Thomas Jefferson (see above) put it.

It’s a travesty that Mayor Bloomberg is so confused and clueless about America’s history, …

Maybe he’s trying to do what’s right, acceptable, and reality-based for 2011, not 1789.

… and so confused and clueless about the threat Islam poses to the West, …

Because it’s all about The Evil Muslims Out to Conquer Everyone (Unless We Conquer Them First), right?  Because the 9/11 Ground Zero ceremony on its 10th Anniversary isn’t really about the victims, or their families.  It’s about Us vs. Them, right?  Which, ironically enough, was the philosophy of the murderous dolts who committed that heinous crime.

… that he seems to think that if everybody can’t pray, nobody gets to pray.

Because if They pray, then it will disrupt the Magic Spells caused by Us praying. Of course, Christian prayer should (I’d assume you believe) trump any Muslim prayer. Because Allah is either imaginary or a demon, but in either case is no match for Jehovah and Jesus.  So what are you worried about again?

It’s time to get completely over this mindless obsession with diversity and return to the faith of our Founding Fathers. And the time to start is with this year’s 9/11 ceremony.

Because it’s all about you, Brian.  And your particular interpretation of your specific denomination of your religion.  And anyone who’s not part of that … well, they’re obviously Them, not Us.  And that’s the unifying spirit that America, and Jesus, stand for.

Dolt.