The debate continues in Walkersville, MD where an Islamic sect is seeking to purchase property for a 200 plus acre religious compound. If you are new to this issue, please check our posts here and here.
Steve Berryman, a spokesman for the Citizens for Walkersville answered charges that he is biased in yesterday’s on-line Frederick County publication, The Tentacle. An attorney for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community had suggested during hearings last week that Mr. Berryman (and I assume by extension his fellow citizens) is biased, citing a blog article written by Mr. Berryman last summer entitled “Deceiving the Infidel”.
The word ‘biased’ as used here is just a more subtle way of calling Mr. Berryman a racist.
Mr. Berryman counters that he is biased —biased toward a “peaceful” community.
It’s maddening and we have written about it on numerous occasions. We saw demonizing demonstrated in Hagerstown when we questioned the refugee program on-going in our county seat. Somehow people who question the whole diversity is beautiful theme and want to live with people of their own culture are automatically labelled as racists, bigots or more politely as biased.
For instance, I have never heard the Somalis called racists when they choose to live in separate enclaves with their own kind in American cities and towns? When have you ever heard anyone refer to the inhabitants of Chinatown as those racist Chinese? Why is it that only white Americans (or white Europeans) are presumed to be racists (bigots or biased) and have no right to live with people like themselves. I am not talking about color here! I am talking about culture!
As for Mr. Berryman’s desire for a peaceful community. He has reason to be concerned. Last week when I researched the Rohingyas in Bangladesh (who may come to America as refugees), the Hudson Institute report entitled, “The Rising Tide of Islamism in Bangladesh” also discussed the Ahmadiyya.
Radical Islamists have also targeted the Ahmadiyya community, a Muslim reformist and revivalist movement founded in Qadyan, India in the nineteenth century.
The implication is that although the Ahmadiyya may not be promoting violent Jihad themselves, the citizens of Walkersville might have a legitimate fear that feuds between factions within Islam could come to their little rural town.
Why do elitists in Washington willy-nilly import the conflicting sects of Islam from the Middle East, Africa and Asia to America and expect they will live happily ever after side by side? Judy tells me that her wise husband says when you can’t figure out why something is happening, turn to just plain stupidity as the cause.
The citizens of Walkersville are not stupid—they want a peaceful community and they have every right to demand one without being called racists, bigoted or biased.