Wednesday - December 15, 2010

Less Than Half The Story

Oh noes, the poor muzzies! The terrible gun/bible clinging rurals don’t trust them, and object to them starting a private cemetery in their backyard!

The cemetery lies beneath a grove of maples on a hill overlooking the farm. On a crisp November day in 2009, it received its first guest _ a 28-year old stonemason killed in a car accident two days earlier.

Somberly, his Sufi Muslim brethren carried his coffin up the hill, their colorful turbans and baggy tunics a striking contrast to the rolling hills all around. Beneath a vibrant green headstone _ the color of the Osmanli Naksibendi Hakkani order, which runs a 50-acre farm and mosque here _ the shrouded body of Amir Celoski was lowered into the ground. Mourners bowed their heads and prayed: May he rest in peace.

But that was not to be.

Instead of peace, Celoski’s burial ignited a war _ one that would erupt nine months later, hurling Sidney into the national spotlight, bitterly dividing some residents while transforming others who say their lives and their town will never be the same.

It all began quietly enough at a sparsely attended meeting of the Board of Supervisors last summer, after a second burial in the cemetery. At the height of a national debate about a mosque near ground zero, town leaders voted unanimously to investigate the Sufi graves on Wheat Hill Road.

The Sufis had followed proper procedures and received burial permits. But that didn’t deter town Supervisor Robert McCarthy from calling the graves illegal and suggesting the bodies might have to be disinterred.

“You can’t just bury Grandma in the backyard under the picnic table,” he said.

This is not the kind of article I expected to read in Townhall. It goes on and on and on about how the little bunch of Sufis have their farm and their beautiful mosque made from a barn and try to live in peace, but the locals don’t trust them or like them. It’s a very one sided piece. That’s a shame. I would rewrite it so that it examines the knee-jerk PC onslaught that immediately erupts whenever anyone speaks or even holds an opinion contrary to pisslam. That is at best an unspoken undercurrent in this essay. No, this McCarthy is righteously damned, thank you; hey, even the local Jews are on the side of the muslims. Right.

On the other hand, if I absolutely had to have a muslim enclave move in next door, I’d prefer it to be a group of Sufis. We’ve all heard of Sunni, we’ve all heard of Shiite. Few of us have heard of Sufi, which is a mystical, almost gnostic branch of the belief system. We know of them by their alternate name, whirling dervishes. But we don’t know beans about them.

Sidney NY is near the southern end of the state’s Big Empty, the heavily forested and thinly populated region that takes up more than a third of the state. Sidney is just 45 minutes north of Hancock, another little NY town down along the Delaware River that has it’s own muslim problem. They’ve got “Islamberg” to deal with, a retreat where many believe that Al Fuqra is training terrorists. Or jihadis. Something. But a something that requires constant weapons training and educes a rather belligerent attitude in it’s members when they have to go into the little village. Are the folks in Sidney concerned that a similar thing is going to grow in their neighborhood? The article, naturally, doesn’t say. It doesn’t even mention Hancock. Nope, it’s all kumbayah, why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along, white-hicks-are-all-racist-haters. All this because of two burials? I think there is a HUGE part of the story missing.

Another thing not mentioned is the local water. Say what? I’m kidding a bit on that, but that general area of central NY has been the birth land of any number of religious experiments over the years, and the whole central western part of the state shares the same 2 drainage basins. This is where the Mormons originated. And the Adventists. And the Millerites. The area that gave spurs to the early Methodists and Baptists. This is where the Second Great Awakening (religious revival) came from if you know your history. This is also where early experiments in communal free love hippie living took place, 170 years ago. Woman’s Suffrage and abolitionists too. And if you draw the map just a bit bigger, it’s also pretty much the birthplace of Socialism in America, with the company towns over in Binghamton and Endicott, and the whole “I owe my soul to the company store” thing in the coal mines just to the south west in Pennsylvania. Maybe there is something in the water. Maybe there are just too damn many trees. People get new ideas up there, some good, some not so good.

Not at all the kind of article I expected to see in a Conservative newsblog like Townhall. What gives?

Posted by Drew458     on 12/15/2010 at 12:33 PM   
Filed Under: • Politically Correct B.S. • RoPMA •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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