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Posted 2010-09-03, 09:38 AM
in reply to D3V's post "Should a Mosque be built near Ground..."
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"If anything makes the United States a superior country to those of the Middle East, it is the freedom guaranteed in our Constitution. Included in this freedom is the ability to worship in the manner and place of one’s choosing. If our own fear or hatred cause us to restrict this freedom, then I would say that the terrorists have won."
From an open letter I read: http://lyingaround.wordpress.com/201...n-open-letter/
Quote:
To every American who opposes the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,”
The Muslims who seek to build a place of worship and community center two blocks away from the former World Trade Center campus bear no relation or resemblance to the fanatical extremist Muslims who took the lives of 3,000 Americans on September 11. Their religions are similar in name and name alone. As a life-long American citizen of Middle Eastern descent (I am not Muslim), this issue has very personal seriousness to me.
If anything makes the United States a superior country to those of the Middle East, it is the freedom guaranteed in our Constitution. Included in this freedom is the ability to worship in the manner and place of one’s choosing. If our own fear or hatred cause us to restrict this freedom, then I would say that the terrorists have won.
The proposed project, entitled the “Cordoba House,” would include a mosque, a community center, and an auditorium, and its stated goal would be to promote interfaith dialogue. The name alone, Cordoba, should tell you everything you need to know: the project is named after Córdoba, Spain, a city which between the 8th and 11th centuries was a model for peaceful coexistence between Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
That these peaceful American Muslims seek to build the Cordoba House two blocks away from the site of the terrorist attacks in order to make a statement is true. But the statement will not be, as Newt Gingrich so hatefully describes it, an “act of triumphalism”, but instead an unequivocal announcement to the world that Muslim-American relations can remain unharmed by the evil actions of nineteen terrorists.
The leader of the Cordoba House project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is actually the kind of moderate, modernist religious leader who exemplifies what Islam should be (and is, in 99% of cases) about: peace, tolerance, and virtue. He has condemned Al-Qaeda as a “death cult” and has written three books and traveled the world in an effort to bridge divides between the Muslim and Western worlds.
If anything, this nation’s opposition to the building of the mosque does nothing but validate and empower the narrative being promoted by extremist groups like Al-Qaeda or the Taliban: that the West loathes everything about Islam and will stop at nothing to destroy it. As we know, this narrative is false.
And the spin can go the other way, too: that Islam loathes the West and will stop at nothing to destroy it. This is likewise untrue.
The current conflict between the West and the Islamic world is being perpetuated by a few extremists on both sides: fellows like Newt Gingrich on our side and, for lack of another universally recognized example, Osama bin Laden on theirs.
Extremists, both American and Muslim, are motivated by political opportunism.
Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and other intolerant public figures see Muslims and Muslim-Americans as easy targets and scapegoats that they can use to boost their own power and popularity, much like radical Muslim leaders in the Middle East see the West, in all its wealth and prosperity, as an easy target to blame for the widespread poverty of their own people. In both cases, instead of actually taking steps to address the issues confronting Americans and Muslims, each side’s respective leaders are trying to blame some intentionally vague “enemy.”
By allowing and embracing the Cordoba House’s construction, the United States will be taking one positive step on the long road to peace.
Respectfully yours,
Taylor
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I'm happy to see you aren't arguing against the "mosque," D3v. I really wasn't looking forward to that debate/wharrgarbl.
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