Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Mosque at Ground Zero

What do y'all think of this? Yes, I know this could be a controversial subject, however, I am curious to know how other Americans feel about this - or even non-Americans.

Mosque at Ground Zero

Personally, I think it's a slap in the face.

I'm not happy about it.

While the proposed mosque is not literally at Ground Zero, it is within a few minutes' walk of it. Since the men who took control of the aircraft and flew them into the towers were all Muslim extremists, and since very few high-ranking Muslim leaders from anywhere in the world have repudiated their actions, it feels to me as if some Muslims are trying to move in and take over a place they've already torched. While there are many Muslims in the US who heartily disapprove of the events of 9/11, for the most part they are not influential leaders in the American Muslim community.

I remember seeing video footage of Muslims dancing in the streets in Palestine and Jordan and Pakistan and other Muslim-dominated cities when news of the collapse of the Towers got out. This does not help me to believe that the man who is the public face of this effort is truly a man who is interested in peace.

This is not original with me, but I do wonder if there should be a synagogue built in Mecca?

I wasn't paying that much attention, but...wasn't this debunked years ago? I understood that the footage didn't hold up to anything like close scrutiny - it was night at the time it was supposed to be taken, in that part of the world, and the footage is in daylight, for example? I seem to recall Fox eventually admitted it had taken footage of Palestinians celebrating a wedding or something....?

LabRat

I saw some of this footage on CNN, not just FOX. And if it has been debunked, I've not heard of it. If you can find some link somewhere debunking this, Labby, I'd be thrilled to learn the truth.

Seems like the debunk got debunked.
Snopes

Speaking of "wedding celebrations": Palestinian mothers celebrate sons\' Shahada death

The most positive spin I can place on the choice of location for the mosque is that it is in breathtakingly poor taste and shows a complete lack of sensitivity to and a callous disregard for the feelings of the friends and families of those who died at ground zero.

And that is the most positive spin I can come up with.

Joy,
Lynn

The footage was real, but to assume a significant percentage of Muslims in America hate the US or celebrated the attacks just because some Muslims in the Middle East did, doesn't make sense. I know plenty of Muslim Americans who are outstanding, patriotic citizens (some of whom are currently fighting to defend our country) and to tell them that a Muslim house of worship is offensive and "a slap in the face" does little more than provide evidence to support Osama Bin Laden's crazy, psychotic opinion that the United States is at war against Islam.

Some people argue that Ground Zero is different and they don't understand why Muslims would want a community center there - first of all, if Ground Zero is different, where are the fair minded Americans who should be denouncing attempts to prevent mosques from being built in other communities in the US? A credible Republican candidate for congress in Tennessee's sixth congressional district is running on a platform including opposing the building of a mosque in her district because it was and "Islamic training center" and part of "a political movement designed to fracture the moral and political foundation of Middle Tennessee." There is no evidence whatsoever the mosque is anything of the sort. If she'd said the same thing about a Catholic church or a synagogue, she'd be rightly driven out of politics for her xenophobic positions. In Texas, a mosque was desecrated and its playground burned down last week. I didn't hear anyone denouncing this.

In my parents' own city in southern California, (a place where the city council tried to limit access to local public parks because there were "too many Hispanic looking people using them" - the members who voted for the resolution were all re-elected, btw), the city rezoned a part of town with a Catholic church, a Jewish Community Center, a Presbyterian church, an evangelical mega-church campus, and a Mormon temple to avoid having to allow a mosque to be built there. Nobody came to the defense of the Muslims to have the same sort of community center and center of worship.

The reason the group wants to build the Islamic center in lower Manhattan is because there's been a mosque and community center in that neighborhood for sometime and they're looking for larger space to accommodate a larger community center. It's not like some brand new invasion of the Muslims into the financial district. Something I didn't know until recently was that that particular area of downtown was the heart of the city's first Muslim communities. In the early part of the 20th century, a sizable part of lower Manhattan was referred to as "Little Syria," as it was the home of the Arab immigrant community from the Ottoman Empire. Since that time, there has been a substantial Muslim community in lower Manhattan.

I've lived most of my life in New York, and I'm now in the Middle East on a government assignment. I'm often surprised by how woefully ignorant people here are of what America is like. I'm equally surprised by how ignorant Americans are about the Middle East and Islam. These are two civilizations that just don't talk to each other enough to have anything resembling an understanding of one another. What I am certain of, though, is that we shouldn't abandon the idea that government has no business telling people where to build their churches or synagogues, or mosques. So long as it doesn't violate neutral, non-discriminatory zoning laws, I don't see a problem with it. And if the mosque and community center does decide to preach and disseminate anti-American views, when I can come home, I'll be out there with a bunch of other New Yorkers, countering their hate speech with better speech.

Furthermore, I don't think the comparisons to Saudi Arabia are appropriate. We shouldn't base our standards of decency and respect for others on a country that denies women, racial, and religious minorities the most basic, fundamental human rights. We need to encourage them to come up to our level. Not lower ourselves to theirs.

Finally, my husband and I are deploying to a war zone in less than a year. We're going because we love our country. We're going because we believe we can do good work there. We're going because we were asked to serve. The easiest thing people in the US can do to put us and the tens of thousands of other Americans who will be serving there with us in greater danger is to feed the repulsive, false, poisonous narrative that America is at war with Islam by showing that Americans are intolerant of Muslims (like the pastor in Florida hosting a Quran burning).

I know that people's feelings on this issue are charged because of 9/11, but the Mosque isn't going to be at Ground Zero, it's going to be blocks away. Within the same distance of ground zero as about a hundred Starbucks's, a discount department store, a half dozen investment banks that helped almost blowup the world financial system, and a bunch of other things that don't really signify a hallowed and sacred space. That's just the nature of New York City. I agree, putting any house of worship physically on the site of ground zero would be a bad idea, but you can't turn the blocks around ground zero into an Islam-free zone just because 19 psychopaths and their supporters decided to try to create a clash of civilizations. The best way to fight them is by proving them wrong. America doesn't have a problem with Islam. The radical, violent extremists are the ones who have a problem with everyone (Muslim or not) who doesn't agree with them.

I have to add one more thing. I'm fluent in two extremely difficult Middle Eastern languages. I know the culture and I understand the religion. I have these skills because of the people who trained me. For every person like me, out there in front, there are the half dozen or so patriotic Arab and Iranian Americans who trained us, most of whom are Muslims. We can do our job because they did theirs. They're not asking for recognition or your thanks. But they do deserve your respect.

Sticking to my principles, I think it should definitely be legal for them to build a mosque there, or anywhere else that's zoned appropriately. But emotionally, it's adding insult to injury, and will only worsen Americans' perceptions of the Islamic world -- not only did Muslims kill people in 2001, but they were also obnoxious jerks in 2010. :rolleyes:

Plus, I'm uncomfortable with the name "Cordoba House" -- the original Cordoba was the capital of Muslim-conquered Spain (al-Andalus). It gives it a kind of "victory over the infidels" flavor which I resent.

Rac, thank you for your service. And your perspective. It's valuable. Let me run this by you:

One argument I've heard lately is that, when you think about it, Islam is really an ideology, not a religion. The ideology has religious components, true, but it also governs criminal and civil law and all sorts of aspects of society. (Including which hand is clean and which is unclean. Which was probably a big sanitary improvement at the time, but still...) In Islam, in the Koran, there is no separation of church and state. The church is the state is the church, and all is subject to Allah.

I know that there are many, many Muslims who just kind of ignore that part (just as there are many Christians who ignore the "God hates divorce" part of the Bible, for instance). But the Muslims who *do* believe it are, shall we say, deadly serious about it.

PJ

Chaos, thanks for that Snopes link. Fascinating (if depressing) reading. The page includes eye-witness testimony from an Italian journalist in Beirut that day.

And the whole "debunking" thing was from one student in Brazil, going on the verbal word of a teacher from a nearby university, supposedly. The student investigated further, and officially took it back a little bit later, but I guess a lie really can get halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on. Especially when so many people want to believe it.

PJ

Okay, I really need to go do some housework, but one more thing:

I get what you're saying, really I do. Moral high road, etc. But then there's such a thing as reciprocity. For instance, North Carolina and Missouri will let pharmacists licensed in one state practice in the other, because that's the deal that's been worked out. Many, if not all, states have similar arrangements with each other, because pharmacists licenses are handled on a state level. If North Carolina changes the rules and requires pharmacists from Missouri to be re-licensed in NC before practicing, then I don't see what would be wrong with Missouri implementing the same sort of arrangement re: NC-licensed pharmacists.

Plus, we get back to the "obnoxious jerk" factor. Seems like tolerance is demanded of us, but foreign to them. There's an inequality there, which can be seen as the moral high road, but which also could be seen as weakness and submission. Morality aside, the practical consequences of showing weakness are not good, in my view.

PJ

Pam, I take your point regarding the sensitivity of the issue, but again, I come back to not painting everyone with the same brush. I don't think it's at all fair to blame all Orthodox Christians for the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. That was done by the Bosnian Serb Army. Not all Orthodox Christians. Nor do I think you can single out Catholics and hold them responsible for the perpetration of genocide by several priests and nuns in Rwanda. Those were the acts of individuals, who should be held accountable as such.

Is Islam an ideology instead of a religion? Only if you think Judaism is an ideology and not a religion. Islam and Judaism are almost identical in their treatment of the role of religion in law. In Christianity, there was a series of long and bloody wars that finally led to the separation of church and state, but for most of the history of Christendom, between Byzantium and the Germanic State, there has been something called "The Holy Roman Empire." Don't get me wrong, I think the separation of church and state is one of the best ideas anyone's ever had, but at one point, the Pope had the power to put Galileo under house arrest for life for having the impertinent idea that the Earth revolved around the sun.

There is in fact secular law in almost all majority Muslim societies. Even in a self proclaimed theocracy, that great pillar of secularism Ayatollah Khomeini (I'm kidding, folks) once said, "God does not care about the price of watermelons," when asked about the Islamic position on agricultural subsidies. Many Muslim countries have a civil code and in countries like Tunisia, Turkey, and Morocco, these laws are pretty progressive by regional standards.

As for the name Cordoba, I think they are trying to hearken back to a period when Islam was known for scientific advancement, enlightenment, and tolerance (it was way better, after all, to be a Jew in Cordoba than in Russia or France during the Moorish rule over Spain).

Pam, I don't really think reciprocity applies here - we're not talking about the same people, after all. If the Saudis don't respect the rights of women, Jews, Shi'a, everyone who isn't Saudi, etc, that might justify us saying we don't recognize the rights of those Saudi wahhabists who propagate and enforce these ignoble and degrading opinions. However, I don't see what the bad behavior of the Saudi government has to do with the Lebanese American guy who owns a halal truck (man, those guys have tasty shwarmas), or the Egyptian who delivers pizzas, or the Sudanese taxi driver, or the Syrian banker whose family has been in America for a hundred years, or the Jordanian American translator/analyst on New York's counter terrorism task force. These people and their families are the ones who will actually worship at the mosque and community center. Not the Taliban. Not al Qaeda. Not the radical Saudi fundamentalists. When we fail to make that distinction, we concede Osama bin Laden's key point - that America is at war against Islam.

-- General Colin Powell

The quote was given in the context of claims that then candidate Obama was a "secret Muslim," but I think the point is still valid here - Muslims, like Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Atheists were all killed by terrorists on 9/11. And members of all of these faiths (and no faith in particular) have all fought and bled and died for our country. None of them are more American than others. None should feel obligated to apologize for their heritage or faith. They're Americans. Full stop.

You Tube Video

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Good discussion

I'm all about treating individuals as individuals. But people who build "Islamic community centers" are kind of seen as speaking for a group. I believe they've claimed to want to be seen as speaking for the group. It's a perception issue. It might not be fair, but the stereotype of Islam involves terrorism. The Koran, the five pillars, sharia law -- most people don't know much about those things. But they have heard of terrorism in relation to Islam. These Cordoba characters are not doing *anything* to improve that.

Judiasm was certainly meant as a theocracy, so I'll concede that point. Jews have never been big on prostelytizing, though, and they haven't really conquered much of anything since 5000 BC so there doesn't seem to be as much of a threat there.

Jesus, however, said things like "my kingdom is not of this world" and "render under Ceaser the things that are Ceasar's". The epistles talk about obeying the civil authorities (at a time when the civil authorities were brutalizing Christians, btw). Has that been followed consistently? Hell no. Human beings generally screw things up, if given time. The early church was good but when they started converting Roman Emperors (real Rome, not the HRE) then church and state got way too close, for a long time. That was bad for both church and state, but it was *not* Christian doctrine

The thing about religion vs. science, btw, is a myth invented during the Enlightenment.

Anyway, point is, the concept of separation of church and state is explicitly in the New Testament, but explicitly not in the Koran. Their respective adherents may or (more likely) may not follow their scriptures, but that's the foundation. One's based on love, the other on a sword.

Speaking as an American, I do not *want* to be at war with Islam. Considering how American forces were used in the Balkans, in Kuwait, and in Iraq, to the overall benefit of Muslims, I don't think a rational case can be made that we are at war with Islam. But that's western logic, and it's not even all that popular in the west right now.

And it's hard to escape the notion that at least parts of Islam are at war against America.

I don't hate Islam or Muslims. But there are undoubtedly some Muslims that hate me, for specifically religious reasons. That fact is going to color my emotions. Like I said, I think they have the right to build this mosque, in accordance with our law. But I really really don't like the idea. It is seen as a thumb in the eye by many people who are not going to improve their opinion of Islam over this.

PJ

No argument here. One of the things I love about America is that people can start out anywhere in the world and then become Americans. That's awesome, when you think about it.

PJ

That's one of my favorite things about America.

Rac

Pam, I agree that Christianity has a concept of separating civil and religious authority baked right into its foundation and Islam and Judaism do not. I think, however, this should be considered in its historical context - Judaism and Islam were introduced to peoples who weren't subject to pre-existing civil authority. They are very much religions of tribes who needed rules to govern themselves in the first place.

Personally, while I find sharia law to be almost uniformly repugnant (the exception that provides there will be no punishment for stealing food to feed yourself or your family in a time of famine does seem like a concession to mercy and compassion) it is an improvement on what existed prior to its introduction:

If, a man from another tribe kills someone from my tribe, we:

go to war with them.

If, a man from another tribe steals a camel, sheep, or horse from my tribe, we:

go to war with them.

If, a man from another tribe has sex with my daughter, we:

go to war with them.

In terms of your point regarding why we should be tolerant when many Muslims seem intolerant of other religions (or even other sects of Islam), the only good answer I can give is that North Americans have a long history of religious pluralism so we understand its value. In many Middle Eastern countries outside the Levant, the number of religious minorities is so small that people have little to no interaction with non-Muslims. They have a tradition of tolerating other religions, but not on having them on equal footing with Islam. I'm not saying this is an excuse for having a double standard for religious tolerance, but it does explain their cognitive dissonance.

When people ask me about religion in America, they often believe it is impossible or illegal for Muslims to proselytize in America. They also have the utterly contradictory view that a huge percentage of Americans are Muslim and that America will be a Muslim majority state very shortly. They're usually crestfallen when I tell them that Muslims can proselytize freely, but the growth in their faith comes generally from births and immigration, not conversion. I tell them that Muslims may make up 2% of the US population, roughly on par with Jews, and that I know plenty of people who have either converted away from Islam, or don't practice it in any meaningful sense, but only personally know one individual who converted to Islam. Plenty of Muslims I meet have no idea that there are twice as many Christians as Muslims in the world. Or that, given the populations of China, Japan, and India, that atheists and polytheists also dramatically outnumber Muslims. They often won't believe these things until I show them the U.N. Population Fund's statistics on them.

Of course, to them, Muslims being a tiny minority in America that is unlikely to ever even match the number of nonbelievers in the US, doesn't stop them from thinking their religion should be treated as at least equal to Christianity. Why? Because they're absolutely sure their faith is the correct one. When I ask them if they think Christians believe their own faith to be wrong, they generally don't have an answer.

They also often believe completely erroneous things like the notion that Mohammed's coming is foretold in the Bible. I assure people that I've read the Bible cover to cover in various versions, and I'm positive Mohammed's not in it. Their only answer is to claim that Christians must have written him out of the Bible. Following up on that point, many Muslims believe the Bible has so many translations because Christians are constantly editing and changing the word of God, and that's why Christianity is wrong. When I explain to them the Bible has been translated in order to take it out of dead languages (old Hebrew, ancient Greek, Aramaic) into languages that people actually speak, they seem to understand, but they're suspicious of why Christians don't just learn the dead languages so they can understand the true word of God. In truth, many Muslims have no idea what the Quran says because they don't understand classical Arabic. Many have to rely on religious leaders to tell them what God's will is.

I am trying to dispel misunderstandings about western religions over here, really, I am. But trust me, it's hard when you're doing it in your second and third languages, and in countries where it is a serious offense to say anything that in any way, shape or form, 'disrespects' Islam. You really don't want to make even the smallest error in word choice.

I know that many Muslims I interact with personally find me baffling. My family is from a majority Muslim country, but is not Muslim. They just cannot wrap their minds around the fact that I've been exposed to Islam, I've read the Quran several times and I still choose not to be a Muslim. To most people this is just an oddity, and they're all very happy to help me convert, once I see the error in my ways. But trust me, Pam, the sorts of Muslims who hate you, hate me, too.

But when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson claimed that liberals, feminists, and the ACLU (along with gays, lesbians, and pagans) helped cause 9/11 to happen, I realized there are some Christians out there who hate me, too.

Rac

In an interesting coincidence of timing, there's this story in today's New York Times:
Across Nation, Mosque Projects Meet Opposition

It's good to see that in most of these cases, the calls to stop the building of mosques have been answered by inter-faith groups supporting the rights of their fellow Americans to worship freely.

Rac