Ground Zero Mosque?

The question of a mosque being built within the shadow of New York’s “Ground Zero” seems to have stirred up a real hornets nest around the country, and I ‘spect I might as well weigh-in on the subject as well. First off, our war on terrorism is not a war against Islam, or at least it’s not supposed to be. If we tried to make it so, all we would accomplish would be to make just about every Muslim in the world a potential terrorist, quickly presenting us with a couple of billion vengeful enemies! Besides, the “War on Islam” has been going on for the last fifteen hundred years, with Islam pitting itself against just about everybody else in the world. Still, New York’s Muslims, as do all Americans, enjoy freedom of religion in this country, and have the right to build a mosque just about anyplace they desire. That is a right guaranteed to us all by our Constitution, and is not something we can make conditional. Having said that, I also think the folks wishing to put another mosque in lower Manhattan, along with the authorities trying to allow it, are out of their ever lovin’ minds! Plain and simple, this new Mosque does not belong anywhere near Ground Zero. We can’t deny American Muslims their right to build a house of worship, but we do have the right to ask that it be moved to another area.

For decades the term “Ground Zero” has been used to conjure up images of the atomic bomb devastation in Japan following WW II. After Sept. 11 it became synonymous with the World Trade Center site left by the attacks, with body parts and airplane debris scattered on area rooftops, or the office papers that flew to Brooklyn and New Jersey. You don't have to be prejudiced against Islam to believe, as do many Americans, that the area around Ground Zero is a sacred place, or, as the Mother of a firefighter killed in the collapse called it, “a cemetery”. The 16-acre site is part of a neighborhood filled with restaurants, hotels, and apartment buildings. The World Financial Center, a Burger King, discount clothing outlet, a firehouse, two Mosques, and a Catholic church are all located in the immediate area. It once housed the two towers hit by hijacked jetliners, as well as four other buildings in the complex, including a Marriott hotel. 7 World Trade Center, a part of the complex that collapsed on Sept. 11, was rebuilt four years ago. It’s across the street from the building where the Islamic community center is planned. The Mosque itself is two blocks north of the fence. Today, construction cranes rise over the entire site, along with an office tower over 30 stories high, a Sept. 11 memorial, and a NY transit hub currently under construction. And yet nobody seems to have noticed that there are already two mosques in the neighborhood… one is only four blocks away.

New Jersey Governor Christie said that while he understood the pain and sorrow of family members who lost loved ones on 9/11, “we cannot paint all of Islam with that brush.” Then he charged Mr. Obama with trying to turn the issue into a political football. But it was already a political football when Mr. Obama made his speech, and Mr. Obama did was fumbled it with his flip-flopping when the following day he retracted parts of his statement? One leftist commentator claims that “we should not miss this golden opportunity to reach the hearts and minds of the Islamic world by wholeheartedly endorsing the mosque. This is no time for equivocation. We need to show our moral strength as a nation and not be deterred by opinion polls and hypocritical Christians". He then goes on with “Jesus would surely have endorsed the building of this house of worship meant to honor the God of the Book common to Christian, Jew, and Muslim.” Somehow I just can’t see our “moral strength as a nation” being endangered by Christians any more that I can see Jesus endorsing a Mosque. Our national moral strength came from our Christian forefathers after all, and as for Jesus’ part in this play on words, he was Jewish, and because of that little fact had the Moslems been around two thousand years ago they’d have happily killed him (and everybody else in town) when he was an infant!

Now we get into the “fishy part” of the whole proposal. Sharif El-Gamal, 37, the owner of the building at the center of the storm, recently told one interviewer about “all the money” he expected to make out of the deal, which totaled nearly twenty million dollars. It’s also come to light that El-Gamal has a long history of legal and tax problems in both New York and Florida. The controversial imam at the center of the debate, Fiesal Abdul Rauf, has his own problems, one of which was getting caught trying to circumvent New York’s tax laws. The Imam is currently on a taxpayer-funded State Department trip to the Mideast, serving as a representative of the United States government! Adding to the brouhaha, Greek Orthodox leaders trying to rebuild the only church destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks were recently shocked to learn that government officials had killed a deal to relocate and rebuild St. Nicholas Church, which was destroyed by one of the falling WTC towers. Nobody from the church was hurt, but for the past eight years the congregation has been trying to rebuild its house of worship at a location about 100 yards from the original site. Now, amid debate over whether a proposed Islamic community center should go forward near Ground Zero, government officials threw cold water on the prospect of rebuilding. “The question was whether public money would be spent to build a much larger church at a separate location on the site and ensuring that construction wouldn't delay the World Trade Center further," spokesman Stephen Sigmund said. Yet those same officials are offering the Mosque developers $70 million in tax free city development bonds!

This is not simply a black and white issue. Certainly Muslims have the right to practice their religion. The issue is where they're doing it. I for one think it's insensitive to put the mosque so close to Ground Zero, being somewhat akin to putting a Nazi memorial next to Auschwitz! They’re within their legal rights to do so, but it’s still pretty insensitive. The stated purpose of the mosque was to help heal the wounds of 9/11. Obviously it’s not having that effect. Along with most Americans, a large majority of New Yorkers oppose it, and that is the community it is meant to serve. The developers should recognize that they are causing considerable pain to the people they insist they're trying to help - and reconsider the location of their mosque.

Whatever the outcome, New York’s Muslims might consider dedicating their new Mosque, wherever it’s built, to the memory of the 9 health care workers in Afghanistan, murdered by Taliban Muslims.