Cognitive Dissonance Of Newt Gingrich

Aliens sifting through the wreckage of planet Earth will see that we chose our leaders for their physical gifts, like twisting their heads to envelope two opposing thoughts and ability to sustain massive weight loss.

jpg via Syracuse.com

Either the former Speaker of the House doesn't understand what he's saying, or he doesn't care. Ignorance or dissembling, there can't be much middle ground.

"I have two grandchildren -- Maggie is 11, Robert is 9. I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

Despite him thinking that two tiny demographic groups (atheists at 2%-9%, muslims at 1-2% and that's ignoring Newt's adjectives which would make the numbers smaller) will in two generations  control the country -- he seems to confuse how diametrically opposite secular atheism is from radical Islam. People keep saying how smart he is, so this can only be attributed to him either lying and presuming his audience doesn't know any better, or, he's been spending too long on his I'm-Running-For-President-Soon whistlestop tour and has accidentally conflated his buzzwords.
SOURCE: on CBSnews.com's Political Hotsheet by Brian Montopoli

Why This Man Is Scary To Islamophobes

... because he's not frightening. He's an American-born Orthodox Muslim cleric whose AlMaghrib Institute has classes, seminars and video presentations.

He is confident to a fault, often trailing a sentence with “God protect me from arrogance.” In class, he can be staid and professorial, with flashes of frivolity. He once implored students to “make love, not jihad.” 

... 

Qadhi said he fell down a slippery slope where criticism of Israel gave way to attacks on Jews. Beneath the vitriol, he said, was a sense of victimization — that non-Muslims were to blame for the afflictions of the Muslim world. “When you’re young and naïve, it’s easier to fall prey to such things,” said Qadhi, who publicly recanted years later. Last August, he joined a delegation of American imams and rabbis on a visit to the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps, which he said left him “sick” and more embarrassed by his Hitler remarks.

....

In August 2006, at a meeting for Muslim leaders in Houston, he walked up to Daniel W. Sutherland, a Homeland Security official. “Hi, I’m a pacifist Salafi,” Qadhi said to him. Looking stunned, Sutherland sat and talked with Qadhi for more than an hour.

....

Qadhi rose before a crowd of thousands in Elizabeth, N.J., to finally speak about Awlaki. “I am against this preacher when he tells our youth to become militant against this country while being citizens to this country,” 

....

While he unequivocally denounces violence against civilians, he believes Muslims have the right to defend themselves from attack. But he says “offensive jihad”— the spread of the Islamic state by force — is permissible only when ordered by a legitimate caliph, or global Muslim ruler, which is nonexistent in today’s world.

Yasir Qadhi's blog: MuslimMatters.org; his site on issues of jihad: The JWord.org
SOURCE: By Andrea Elliot in the NYTimes Magazine; see her Pulitzer Prize-winning 3-part series from 2006

Burn, Bury or Bestow

It may seem that only people who love a book are allowed to burn it. It's hard to argue against that presumption.


How to dispose of a Bible, with specifics for Catholics, Lutherans and Jews.

Christians treat the Bible with respect and ask that non-Christians do the same. The basic guideline for handling a Bible is reverence. For example, don't leave it on the floor. If you follow the same principle when you dispose of a Bible, you will cause no offense.

SOURCE: eHow.com, the compendium of how-to everything except how-to dispose of a Q'uran.