N.Y. mosque is a given, but Islam must gain trust
My conservative friends first sent me emails about it. They say, “How dare Muslims wipe the faces of Americans further in the tragedy of 9/11 by erecting a new 13-story mosque and community center a stone’s throw from Ground Zero in New York City!”
A very angry and pointed video arrived in my email that was venom-packed. Its point was that the Muslims demonstrated the height of insensitivity and arrogance by encroaching on hallowed American turf and such affront should be rejected.
Did the survivors and people around the site where the World Trade Center once stood deserve to have another reminder that it was a team of 19 crazed Muslims that caused the deaths of 2,595 of the 2,985 casualities in the attacks that day, including the 266 killed on four planes.
Was the mosque plan all calculated to antagonize further or was it a sincere overture to be part of the faith witness around Ground Zero? After all, innocent Muslims were also victims in the mass murder.
The mosque plan immediately conjured my own decades of writing about religions in the newspaper — always seeking to give first priority to rights of people to practice their religions. As the mosque plan moved through the New York City building approvial process, we learned something about inclusivity and the Big Apple’s long practice of accommodation. That the world’s second largest religion should be margnalized and told to find a tract of land elsewhere wasn’t part of the official discussion. We observe a lesson here as a broad spectrum of faiths stepped forward and said, “Let the Muslims have their center. We’re bigger than real estate and the symbolism of it.”
President Obama now is catching flak for his comments. At a White House dinner to mark Ramadan, he said Muslims, like all other religious faiths in American, have the right to build places of worship anywhere in the U.S. as long as they meet all zoning, permit, building rules. Later he said he would not talk about the “wisdom” of Muslims carrying out the project. Some are interpreting that comment as him saying just because someone can do something does not mean they should do it. We indeed live in a world where we wished we could have our druthers.
We live in a country where we have found that most religious faiths recognize the grand beauty that they are afforded broad freedoms, but with it comes the responsibilities to be part of the fabric of community. Renegade religions operate on the margins, and they carry out practices that most of society finds scary, troubling, unacceptable and strange. They lack for influence because of that. We are ever wary of them and what they might do.
The case can be made that if Muslims indeed wish to win respectability and acceptance across a broader part of American society, they should avoid flash points like this. Did they not anticipate the fallout? Or didn’t they care. The cynic will say it was a calcuated ploy to impart new pain. Apologists for the Muslims’ action say that six houses of worship of various beliefs are within a few blocks of Ground Zero.
Islam is a religion without faces. Beyond the local imams, it is hard to look at the religion like we look at the Catholic, Mormon or mainline churches who have leaders who communicate or who can be the direct targets for scrutiny or comment. Most of us sees Islam as an amorphous religion that both coexists in some countries or has morphed into the extremists of the Taliban or the Islam of Saudi Arabia where inhuman practices include stoning people to death, horrific treatment of women and the implementation of Sharia law that is permeated with rules that don’t fit into 21st century life anywhere.
Great numbers of Americans aren’t ready to trust Islam because of what they see in country after country where it dominates. Male-controlled, governed by disturbingly harsh law, intolerable to other religions and just dangerous, as a people, we don’t want it replicated here. Across Europe, nations are reluctant about accommodation of Islamic folkways for fear it gives an opening for Sharia law and unacceptable practices allowed in Islamic nations, including ill-treatment and subjugation of women and things like allowing female genital mutilation.
Muslims themselves will not gain a place of trust in places like the U.S. until there is stronger evidence of their commitment for non-violent change, social justice for all and an embrace of American laws, all of which are still in need of reform and improvement.
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This “Mosque” is a crock, since the original proposal was supposed to be for a Islamic Cultural and Social Center. Now, they are screaming they are ‘entitled’ to build another MOSQUE. No problem, except there is already a MOSQUE just a few blocks away, which has been there for many years.
Here is an idea…..let THEM show some sensitivity, stop demanding their ‘rights’ while doing an in-your-face dance.
Of course, our accommodating President could also suggest they use some land in a cornfield in PA or within that part of the Pentagon that was hit by another aircraft.
Sorry, but Islam is unlike other religions in that it is actually a political ideology that claims divine backing, and the political goals of erecting Sharia can’t be divorced from it without danger. The 9/11 attack was a political statement by Muslims, not just those who did it, but millions throughout the world who openly cheered the mass murder of American infidels. The Ground Zero Mosque is also a political statement, and claiming it won’t house a mosque is extremely ignorant, since Muslims must pray 5 times a day and where are they going to do it if not there? Is the debate now about prohibiting the Ground Zero “Muslim Community Center” from housing a mosque? That some Muslims died on 9/11 is irrelevant to the issue, because the Islamic ideology as expressed in Quran 9:111 promises all Muslims who “kill and are killed” for Islam paradise in a neverending fairyland free of non-Muslims.
Why do Americans insist on claiming that the ideology of Islam is no threat to our Constitution and way of life while remaining ignorant of 1400 years of track record showing that it is? Why do liberal Americans want to be so tolerant of Muslims, when Muslims themselves aren’t tolerant and can never be and still follow the Quran? Unless Islam itself changes as evidenced by Muslim nations dethroning Islam as the official religion, opening their territory to the building of houses of worship of other faiths, and permitting proselytizing and conversions without threats of executions and Muslim mobs not stopped by the police, why even consider Muslims worthy immigration? As things now stand, each and every Muslim in America, and their descendants, are potential enemy combatants in a war to destroy the Constitution and erect Sharia, the Muslim law code that makes Muslims superior to non-Muslims in every way and requires all new laws to be certified by a Muslim religious authority. The U.S. can never permit this, as it would be tantamount to suicide, so statements like “Islam must gain trust” only reveal the writer as having the word D— stamped on their forehead. Islam is a religion of peace, but on what terms? The answer is Sharia. Only when that has been enacted will the Quran permit Muslims to stop their ceaseless war, as shown by 9/11 and now the GZ Mosque war. Being tolerant with the intolerant is not smart, sorry.
Take a few months of your spare time out to go to school online with the Historyscoper and absorb all the key facts about Islam’s history, ideology and terminology back to the 7th cent., savory and unsavory, then do your pontificating about Islam’s innocuousness. To get started click http://go.to/islamhistory
Thank you, Historyscoper, for the relevant information. I can’t find anything in the Constitution that states a political ideology, billing itself as a religion, whose stated objective is the destruction of all other religions and of the U.S. Constitution and U.S. Laws is entitled to the freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution.
As for Obama, Bloomberg and liberal New Yorkers who put the Cordoba Mosque on the fast track, what happened to the religious freedom of the Greek Orthodox Church that was already at the twin towers site, but hasn’t been allowed to rebuild their damaged church? I guess, in your view, only Islam is now entitled to Constitutional freedom. Please stop lying about ensuring Islam’s religious freedom when you are so clearly restricting religious freedom for the Greek Orthodox Church.
I don’t see why people should be against Muslims building their mosque or cultural center if indeed they acquire the land through the rightful means.If actually and truly America is democratic as we claim it is and abide by the constitution, then freedom of religious practice must be ensured and therefore the Muslims must be allowed to enjoy that constitutional right as well as any other religious practitioners.Not withstanding the fact that other bad nuts amongst them may have questionable characters but it cuts across all religious sects in the world now.The advice i have is that the security should be alert in case there is going be any plans of attack not only by the Islamic sect but any person devoid of religious inclination.After all the fact brought forward are still contested by some people not to have enough evidence like the Iranian president said. I think the security should sit up and stop people from preventing others from enjoying their constitutional right.We need to come together and make the world a peaceful place to live and stop pissing up others just due to their religious background .Lets be realistic and look out to things that will bring cordiality among the various religion
The reason we don’t want the mosque is because every country that gets infested with muslims, eventually has problems with sick terrorists. Your religion is sick and disgusting toward human life. Where in the world can people travel without fear of some stupid muslim trying to kill innocent people?
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