Rikki-tikki-tavi endorses this message

[mrissa]

So I was reading Slacktivist today, and I found out that the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins was telling people that some parts of Minneapolis are no-go zones for non-Muslims. I just wanted to reassure you: stand down, friends and family! We are fine here!

(I was going to say “there’s nowhere in this city you can’t go on the basis of

Comments

[ckd]

Similarly, trying to convince me that the entire city of Birmingham is a no-go area for non-Muslim residents of the UK is going to fail terribly, because even if they are no longer my cousins-in-law I am pretty sure that the people I know who live there would have mentioned such a thing.

[mrissa]

See, and for us, that's totally true. We are people who know people. When there was a shopping mall shooting in Kenya, it was a mall two of my college friends had taken their kids to recently, because it's near one of their families. But I think that for a great many listeners to pundits like Tony Perkins, Birmingham, England, is a great deal safer to lie about than Birmingham, Alabama.

They still shouldn't do it! I do not endorse it! It's just that I get extra annoyed at shoddy workmanship when it comes to making things up, because then it's not just my moral sense that's outraged, it's also my sense of professionalism.

[ckd]

Also, Dearborn? DEARBORN? I've been to Dearborn. In fact, the only time I've heard of any part of Dearborn was a no-go zone was when Muslim-Americans (and ThinkProgress) were removed from part of it at the request of Pamela Geller. Um.

[mrissa]

But if you drive past Dearborn you can see a mosque spire. I know because I have done. I've never stopped in Dearborn, and neither has anyone who thinks it's free of non-Muslims. But for Tony Perkins, that's all it takes: you can see the spire of a mosque.

Sigh.

[adrian_turtle]

I've wondered about this since I first heard about state legislators trying to ban any use of sharia law in their state, or in some cases, any use of religious law. The distinction between halal meat and non-halal meat is defined by sharia law. (Just as the distinction between kosher and treyf food is defined by talmudic law.) So if somebody labels the food as halal, and it isn't, would it still be possible to sue the butcher for fraud in civil court?

[mrissa]

This is an excellent question.

[timprov]

Hey, we've gotten a lot of mileage from having Perkins in our metro. Sure we don't eat there much any more, but I'm not ready to get rid of them.

[mrissa]

I don't think this guy sells peach muffins.

[redbird]

If Perkins announced that 2+2=4, I would check it closely.

[sprrwhwk]

"Going out and looking" is not a... particularly central value of the authoritarian worldview. It might be the exact opposite of a central value, in fact, whatever that is.