"Building the Ground Zero mosque is not an issue of religious freedom, but of resisting an effort to insult the victims of 9/11 and to establish a beachhead for political Islam and Islamic supremacism in New York," the group "Stop the Islamicization of America" says on its website."
""We feel it would be more appropriate maybe to build a center dedicated to expunging the Quranic texts of the violent ideology that inspired jihad, or perhaps a center to the victims of hundreds of millions of years of jihadi wars, land enslavements, cultural annihilations and mass slaughter," Geller said."
These show the disintrest that some conservative people have in learning about other religions in order to know that they aren't all about what the news says they are, violence.
"There is a lot of ignorance about who Muslims are. A center like this will be dedicated to removing that ignoranceand it will also counter the extremists because moderate Muslims need a voice," she told CNN. "Their voices need to be amplified."
I think that a mosque at Ground Zero is an excellent idea- it can help educate New Yorkers and Americans that Islam is not all about violence and killing and hating America and Americans.
14 years ago
Thanks for posting this! I saw this on the news a few months ago, and I felt, at first, that it was a bad idea to develop the mosque. However, I now understand the importance of creating something that would educate New Yorkers and Americans. I agree with what Marvin Bethea states regarding the mosque, ""I lost 16 friends down there. But Muslims also got killed on 9/11. It would be a good sign of faith that we're not condemning all Muslims and that the Muslims who did this happened to be extremists". Furthermore, I have read that it would provide a number of benefits for the community. One of the benefits would be the 150 full time jobs and 500 part time jobs.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/25/community-board-votes-support-plans-mosque-cultural-center-near-nycs-ground/
I don't like this. I realize this is a contentious point to take. In the politically correct climate of my hometown, New York, it is hard to be against this without being labeled a xenophobe... And I might be splitting hairs in my reasoning here but hear me out:
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing wrong with having a Islamic Cultural Center close to Ground Zero. In fact the one they got on Allen Street is really no more than an old LES tenement building, an improvement from the center currently serving Muslims in lower New York City is long overdue(although I am in no position to pass educated judgment on what the Muslim community in New York desires; you'd have to ask them).
What upsets me is using an Islamic Cultural Center to provide a teachable moment to the rest of the world on how multicultural of a society we are by linking it to 9/11, both geographically and politically. The grounds of 9/11 should be hallowed and remembered for what happened without political/social interference, no matter how righteous. Would anyone be in favor of building a Muslim Educational Center next to the Soldier Readiness Center (sight of Nidal Hasan's shooting spree)on Fort Hood?
As a coda it doesn't appear the Center will be built close enough to Ground Zero to warrant the controversy that has developed, at least to me. Once again, I'm not opposed to an Islamic Cultural Center- just a political environment that co-ops actual tragedies to provide lessons on conceptual tolerance.