The day after Channel 5 finished running their disgusting “Is this small Muslim community actually a TERRORIST TRAINING CAMP?!?!?!?!” stories (turns out, nope, they weren’t, but Channel 5 kept that little tidbit for last, after two days of stories about how they might be), the small Somali mosque on Nolensville road was vandalized.
TIRRC has more information, and photos. The cross is a Jerusalem Cross, the symbol of the First Crusade. It seems nearly impossible to believe that the vandals didn’t deliberately choose that. It’s a pretty obscure symbol otherwise. I sent the photo to my dad, who, as you know, is a minister, to see if it might have some broader Christian symbolism, but he didn’t recognize it. NM is the one who identified it for me.
So, basically, Christian extremists terrorize a small religious minority in our city. They leave a symbol that seems like it might be a death threat–it’s at least a call-out to a situation in which Christians killed Muslims. And Channel 5 seems to have instigated it.
It makes me almost feel dizzy, to know that people are doing this kind of stuff in the name of Christianity, and there seems to be little other Christians and the rest of us can do to put the breaks on this. I feel like every pastor needs to denounce this on Sunday.
But you know, even if they do, since these cowards operate in secret, they can always just convince themselves that others secretly agree with them, but just can’t say so.
I feel great despair about this. And I’m very afraid someone’s going to end up dead.
Tiny Cat Pants 
I saw this on the way home. Channel 2 was onsite for a live remote.
And I’ve been thinking that someone was going to wind up dead ever since 9/11. I recall a gang of local morons marching on the Sadhana Ashram in protest (is there such a thing as a radical Hindu?).
There are radicals (including violent ones) of all religions (and without religion). But the violent radicalism of the strong, attacking the weak, is particularly distressing.
This breaks my heart. Channel 5 should do a series of reports on our Somali REFUGEES who call Nashville home. These people have come here for a better life as part of church and government resettlement programs, and this is the welcome they get.
Nashvillians should be ashamed of themselves.
(is there such a thing as a radical Hindu?)
Yes there is, but not anything we in America need to worry about.
Wherever there is an ideology, be it religious or otherwise, there will be radicalism, just as there will be agnostics and everything in between.
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The Jerusalem cross is still a very popular symbol in the Catholic community. While I was attending a local Catholic high school, most of the girls received a Jerusalem Cross at a popular youth retreat (called Kairos) and wore it all year long. There was a rosary-type tradition of beads with a Jerusalem cross that focused on the Jesus prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” which I believe they also learned at the retreat. I never went, and the girls were very secretive about what went on there, so I can’t say for certain, but one of my classmates introduced me to the “Jesus beads” later on and I assumed it came out of the same retreat because of the Jerusalem cross. The symbol was also on the cover of the New Jerusalem Bible, since the way the symbol is divided into four quadrants it is representative of the four Gospels.
I point this out because the symbol has positive meaning, and I don’t want people associating it with xenophobia when that’s not the full story. Frankly, when I first saw the pictures of the symbol on the mosque, my first thought was that the perpetuators must be Catholic because that’s the only context I’ve ever seen it in. I was relieved to read that wiki article and discover the symbol was actually used in the Crusades. I’m much more comfortable that they’re invoking holy war instead of the Gospels to justify their actions, even if I wish they’d keep the crazy to themselves.
My question is this. how does some yahoo who is dumb enough to think that an act of vandalism is a correct act and idiotic letters saying that they are “friends of satan” would have the historical knowledge to know of this rare and little known cross? The two things clash a little in the story in my view.
Gunner, maybe they’re not as ‘dumb’ as you want to think they are.
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along the lines of the Imam who said the Ft Hood shooting wasn’t Jihadist ir Islamist Terrorism, bud free access to guns, perhaps this Mosque vandalism wasn’t due to Moslem hatred or racism but due to free access to spray paint! ha!
MUSLIMS HATE AMERICA. THEY ARE IN UNITED STATES BECAUSE THEY WANT TO CONQUER THIS COUNTRY. THEY HAVE MORE KIDS BECAUSE THEY WANT TO BECOME MAJORITY AND DESTROY OUR SOCIETY WITHIN. ISLAM IS NOT RELIGION OF PEACE. “DHIMMI” ARE THE MINORITIES OF THEIR COUNTRIES, AND THERE ARE DISCRIMINATION AND DEATH. LEARN ABOUT “SHARIA LAW”, IT’S VERY IMPORTANT. GOD BLESS UNITED STATES!
I would delete this, but then you’d all miss the funny part, which is that Andrew’s last name, at least as deduced from his email, marks him as a member of another group we regularly are told is going to conquer the country by having more kids than the rest of us.
Which just goes to show you that being the victim of assholes does not inoculate you from being an asshole yourself.