Thursday, March 25, 2004

"Our war on terrorism is not a war against Islam." --Condoleezza Rice, 10/15/01

"This is not a fight against Islam." --Tony Blair, 9/28/01

"I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world.  We respect your faith." --George W. Bush, 9/20/01

Apparently, political affiliates of one of our fine coalition partners still haven't received the memo:

Allies of Premier Silvio Berlusconi are pushing for a law that would require referendums on requests to build mosques in Italy, contending that Islamic culture is "historically antithetical" to Italian culture.

The Northern League, one of the parties in Berlusconi's conservative government coalition, unveiled the legislation being proposed in the Chamber of Deputies at a news conference in Rome Wednesday.

..The presence of "foreign workers on our territory has opened a debate on how to update, or, better, to regulate the presence of communities with cultures historically antithetical to ours," the text of the proposed law says. "The mosque is a political place and is symbolic of a civilization that has run a 1,400-year-long path in antithesis of Western culture." ...


--Dow Jones

"Cultures historically antithetical to ours" -- gee, wasn't some other group of people described that way in various European countries, oh, about 60 or 70 years ago?

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