My Take: Ground Zero Mosque

The United States is widely considered of the best, if not the best, countries in the world to live. Immigrants from across the world leave their home countries, where they have resided for generations, to have an opportunity for a fresh start in America. One of the reasons that make America so appealing to everyone around the world is the freedom and liberties that America promises to uphold that are second to none compared to every other country. The founding fathers in 1776, decided that the first amendment to the Constitution was to ensure freedoms of speech, religion, press, and assembly. The Supreme Court and the judicial system was set up entirely to ensure that citizens of the United States received the freedoms and liberties that they were entitled to as a citizen. As time has passed, the foundation of the United States has remained the same but the first amendment freedoms viewpoints have changed.

On September 11, 2001: an Islamic extremist terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, organized a suicide attack on the World Trade Centers in New York City. Fast forward to 2010, where the World Trade Center site, Ground Zero, is still one of the most highly debated places in the United States on how to remember the tragedy of September 11th. The current debate is whether the Cordoba House (an Islamic community center), otherwise known as the Ground Zero Mosque, should be built two blocks away from the attack site. The Cordoba House is a planned $100 million, thirteen story, glass and steel Islamic community center, which will include a mosque, a 500-seat auditorium, a swimming pool, a restaurant, and a bookstore. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder and CEO of the Cordoba Initiative, bought the land for the future Islamic community center close to the Ground Zero site because it, “sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11,” and “we want to push back against the extremists”. It is projected that 1,000-2,000 Muslims would pray at the Mosque every Friday once the Cordoba House is completed.

The American public have expressed opposition to the Cordoba House being built so closely to Ground Zero as a national poll in the New York Times showed that a majority of Americans (54% to 20%) opposed the Cordoba House being built so closely to the Ground Zero site, with about the same percentage of people opposing in the state of New York and New York City. Yet, the Cordoba House became a hot national debate after President Barack Obama said;

“Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."

This is a surprising move, comments New York Daily columnist Joshua Greenman

“There's little political upside for a president already seen by some as soft on terror, a president whom 1 in 10 Americans insanely believe to be a Muslim, to back the right of this house of worship to locate near the site of the 9/11 attacks”.

Although Obama never publicly backed the Cordoba House besides voicing his opinion that they have a right to build it where they would like, critics have expressed disbelief that he could back it. New York Republican senator Peter King released a written statement saying,

"It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero. While the Muslim community has the right to build the mosque, they are abusing that right by needlessly offending so many people who have suffered so much. The right and moral thing for President Obama to have done was to urge Muslim leaders to respect the families of those who died and move their mosque away from ground zero.”

Yesterday I saw King talk live on NBC’s Today Show, where he backed his statements and said that if he was President, he would have openly denied the Cordoba House from being built so closely to Ground Zero. According to a Fox News storyline, Obama made his remarks to please the Muslim Community, “The president has made it a point to reach out to the global Muslim community, and the over 100 guests at Friday's dinner in the State Dining Room included ambassadors and officials from numerous nations where Islam is observed, including Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.” Whatever Obama’s motives may be, the Cordoba House should have the right to be close to Ground Zero after the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously denied landmark status for the building where the proposed Islamic center would stand, allowing the project to move forward. One week ago, Abdul Rauf and other developers declined an offer by New York Gov. David Paterson to relocate the project to a state-owned site. However, Abdul Rauf, founder of the Cordoba Initiative, is not a person that has outlasted controversy. In his books, he has condemned the 9/11 attacks as un-Islamic and called on the U.S. government to reduce the threat of terrorism by altering its Middle Eastern foreign policy. “The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.” Abdul Rauf has placed partial blame on the United States for the devastating 9/11 attacks, which has put in question his real motives for the Cordoba House.

My take on the Cordoba House is that the United States was built on freedoms and liberties. Although a group of nineteen Islamic extremists set off one of the deadliest days in American history, a religion can’t be judged by a group of extremists. Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing didn’t mean that all Americans hated the Federal government or abortion bombings didn’t mean that all Christians were extremists. With Islam becoming one of the fastest growing religions, I fear that America is assessing all Muslims as terrorists, when the real percentage is definitely <0.01%. Although the Cordoba House isn’t in the best neighborhood to be built, I agree with President Obama that they should have the same rights as a Christian church being built next to Ground Zero. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an Independent said,

“Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. The government should never, never be in the business of telling people how they should pray, or where they can pray. We want to make sure that everybody from around the world feels comfortable coming here, living here, and praying the way they want to pray.”

Bloomberg’s opinion expresses the exact way that I feel about the Cordoba House, and although I don’t agree with the Islamic religion, I feel that religious tolerance is one of the strongest values of the United States. However, with most of the American public showing this stance on the mosque,

"The decision to build this mosque so close to ground zero is deeply troubling, as is the president's decision to endorse it. The American people certainly don't support it,"

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a written statement, it could be hit by violent outbursts. An arson fire destroyed a Tennessee Mosque in 2008, where investigators found drawings of swastikas and other graffiti. Although the United States and Muslim population been at odds since 9/11, the Cordoba House would go a long way in fixing that relationship.

Note: I apologize that I have failed to update this blog in awhile because of working up to forty hours and then preparing to return to Bradley this weekend. I should have more updates starting next week once I’m back in school and return to a more regular schedule. Hopefully I’ll have another post up by Thursday either about baseball or college football. Thanks for reading.