Some time between Friday night and 6am Saturday morning, vandals tagged the Islamic Center of Springfield, in Missouri, with lovely outside artwork like a penis near the women’s entrance; word puzzles touting “gay insurrection” and “gay is ok”; a claim that Allah is gay; and, “You bash us in Pakistan we bash here.” On Sunday, the center was struck again, breaking an outdoor water faucet before running off after being spotted. Says the center’s representative Joseph Pollpeter, who calls the attack a hate crime: “I don’t know if the people happened to be gay or bisexual or not, or if they were just using terms to be insulting. There is no one we have our fingers pointed at. We are on good terms with all our neighbors.”
VagrantMan
What ever happened to being a better person?
OK, so it sounds like this Mosque wasn’t really doing anything to ignite violence against homosexuals. Yeah sure, Islam condemns homosexuality but that doesn’t mean it’s OK (or even “cute”) that this was done on private property. Shame on whoever did this.
Jaroslaw
Until hard evidence is available, there is no need for any indepth analysis. Some kids/adults with nothing to do, better educated than most, decided to vandalize a mosque. End of story, as unusual as it may be.
Simon
I’m so happy that in my evil catholic country there’s only 5 places where Muslims can gather. They wanted 6th recently, but we said loudly: one Mosque in Poland = one church (with full tower) in Saudi Arabia. It’s not a lack of tolerance, it’s more like rightful trading. If they want tolerance, they should also give tolerance.
BTW. I’m Atheist. So I shouldn’t give a shit, but fighting with Christians is a lot of easier than talking with medieval Muslims.
Cam
“Says the center’s representative Joseph Pollpeter, who calls the attack a hate crime: “I don’t know if the people happened to be gay or bisexual or not, or if they were just using terms to be insulting.”
___________________________
Did he mean that any use of terms like “Gay” is insulting? If so I would say that it does not seem like a friendly place.
Then again, I would be willing to bet that three are several protestant churches in that city with exactly the same mindset.
McMike
How is America invading another country somehow “You bash us in Pakistan we bash here.”? That’s odd because I could’ve sworn we were technically bashing them over there or are they not suppose to defend their homeland?
Jeff K.
@McMike: Hint: We /= Americans.
We = gays.
Jaroslaw
Simon are you for real? The people who immigrate must follow the laws of the country they move to. EVERY single group that has ever moved, even people who are refugees suffering under horrible conditions, entertain some romantic notion of the country they left behind. So there will always be some ‘negative’ stuff like sending money/supporting the old country, at least in the first generation. But in practical terms, they are only required to obey the laws of the country they moved to. The immigrant group does not control the laws of the country they left. How in the world do you want to enforce your idea? If Poland or any other country chooses not to let in Arabs or any other group, I suppose that is their choice. Probably forfeit membership in EU…but whatever. Choices are choices.
Omar S.
I’ve been studying the vandals that hit the Mosque, and I believe it’s a group called “Bash Back” that hit the mosque. I mean, they did the same on a Christian church, why not a Muslim mosque?
Mike Smith
‘Lovely outside artwork like a penis.’ Charming queerty, you really have no journalistic integrity.
Vandalism of a religious place of worship, regardless of which faith, is no different to vandalism of any other property, such as a GLBTQI youth centre. It shouldn’t happen. Just because someone is of a certain faith does not mean they subscribe to 100% of that faith. Believe it or not there are gay friendly Christians, Muslimes, Jews etc. who are no extremist or Orthodox. Shocking, I know.
Oh, and do any of you see the irony about the argument of immigrants following the laws of the country that they live in when only recently your “land of the free, home of the brave” had DADT and banned HIV+ tourists? Those in glass houses….
Simon
@Jaroslaw
yes, I will try to explain in easiest way I know… we have few ‘types’ of Muslims: Asians (from Pakistan, India, Indonesia, etc.), Africans, Middle East with Turkey
the ‘easiest type’ is Africans – most of them comes to Europe for living in peace, education… but they always find ‘exotic’ wives (Poles just love how they behave and look) – they don’t have problem with living in Christian society
the bigger problems are Muslims from ME – they don’t mix with natives, they prefer to live with people like them, in ghettos, using our social privileges to earn easy money, hating our culture, demanding tolerance, but calling us filthy pigs-eaters
people of Turkey (most of them live in east Germany) – simple -> they cheating ‘infidels’, don’t work, just making babies for money from other’s people taxes
most of Muslims in EU are known as lazy people, who travel to Europe just to have easy life, problem is that they don’t accept our culture and our love to human rights
PS. There’s about 25 thousands of Muslims living in Poland nowadays, most of them are successors of Cossacks living in southern Poland since 14th century
Red Meat
It sounds like gay Muslims did it, and I’m glad they did it. If any religion is worst to us than Christianity, it would be Islam.
merkin
Maybe it was some rednecks or Tea Party nuts who wanted to pin the blame on gays?
TTime
Pretty farfetched idea, Merkin.