Mosque At Ground Zero
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010If you don’t understand why religious leaders should be allowed to build the Muslim mosque at ground zero near the site of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, then you don’t understand the first amendment, which articulates perhaps the most basic of our rights as Americans: freedom of expression. You don’t really understand why so many people over the past 234 years have died, fighting for American ideals.
American muslims should be free to express themselves no matter what they believe, so long as they’re causing no demonstrable harm to others. This proposed mosque at ground zero, in and of itself is benign. In fact, the Muslims building it probably had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.
In America, a religious organization’s freedom is not to be based on how popular it is. This is what differentiates The West from places in the east that do repress free expression. America is great because ideally, we tolerate all beliefs (or at least, we’re supposed to), and we don’t condemn an entire group of people because of the actions of a very small few. Again, at least, we’re not supposed to, and again, let’s cool this racial and religious hatred.
You may not be able to control your feelings on this directly or quickly. But you can expand your views over time by reading some good classic books, like:
- The Grapes of Wrath,
- Up From Slavery,
- To Kill A Mockingbird,
- Best African American Essays: 2009, and
- The US Constitution.
One point that emerges from these works is that it’s likely never right to direct retributions against an entire group when only a small few committed the heinous crimes of 9/11, the oppression of Jews, … History is full of this sort of “dumb bomb” prejudice, that targets the many for the actions of a small few, and sometimes, the none. Perhaps at one time, limited technology and our primitive social development prevented us from employing a more “smart bomb” sort of targeting to exactly get at the guilty parties. So we were stuck with hammering the group who looked like the guilty parties, but was not guilty itself. But nowadays, we’ve evolved enough to realize that “one bad apple [does not] spoil the whole bunch..!”
So let’s say that I’ve parented a little boy. Then tragically, a strange woman kills him in the first degree because she hates me. Now a few years later, another lady who doesn’t even know the murderer, wishes to build a house near mine and live there. Would it not be absurd of me to go to city council and fight against her house project because the builder is a woman and it was after all, a woman who killed my son? Unfortunately, this is the same sort of ridiculous fight that opponents of the mosque are waging against the Muslim community.
Actually, since we’re talking about 9/11, Al Qaeda comprises a very small part of the entire world Muslim population. Number of Muslims in the world: Between 1.3 and 1.8 billion according to Wikipedia. So even if Al Qaeda had a hundred thousand members (which it by no means does), at most it would occupy less than one percent of the entire Muslim population. In a barrel of a hundred apples, only one (at most) would be bad if we applied this good-to-bad ratio of one percent to the apples; a very small number indeed. Now are we to throw away the entire barrel just because of that one bad apple? IMHO: I think not. Let’s not punish an entire group by denying Muslims the freedom to build their mosque at ground zero, for the wanton acts of but a few. This would show the world that we bear no grudge against Islam as a whole, and that we’re only interested in punishing the people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks; their religions notwithstanding. If we truly believe in American freedom of religion ideals, then we should stop fighting this mosque at ground zero.
For more on why American Muslime should be allowed to build their mosque at ground zero, see my Muslim American Rights and Support Muslim Mosques Anywhere In America pieces.
Related Posts
- Majority Oppose Muslim Mosque Near Ground Zero
- Muslim American Rights
- Support Muslim Mosques Anywhere In America
- Thoughts on Bigotry
- Two Weak Arguments Against Mosque At Ground Zero