On the morning of Tuesday, September 11th 2001 I had newly become a sixth grader. By that afternoon, my world had been rocked. I spent my entire childhood living in a Battery Park City apartment not even two blocks away from the Twin Towers. My home was destroyed that day and my sense of security in this city and frankly in this world was absolutely shattered. My family was fortunate enough to survive that day and to have started our lives over again but the hurt of the day will never leave me.
With that said, someone might assume that I would harbor prejudice against all Muslim people because the people responsible for the attacks were also Muslim. But I don't. Even though a huge part of my world was ruined on that day, I don't make the inexcusable mistake of associating all Muslim people with those who created terror that September morning. That's why I've been so shocked by the extremely negative response to the proposed Mosque that could be built 2 blocks away from Ground Zero. The other thing that gets me, which my mother articulated very well to me when we spoke of this, is that the title "Ground Zero Mosque" sounds just like a headline constructed by advertising executives sitting around a table, figuring out how to "brand" this story. The mosque will be at Park Place which is not on top of Ground Zero nor directly next to it. It's two blocks away. In New York real estate, we don't even go two blocks without multiple Starbucks' and Duane Reades.' 2 blocks in Manhattan terms means a WORLD of difference.
Leaving real estate aside, let's take a quick glance at the Constitution of the United States. You know, the principles that make us uniquely American. The rules we're all supposed to live by. The undeniable standards which we're supposed to hold ourselves to. Now if you don't like reading too much and it gives you a headache to go too deeply into it, then let's just look at the first one. The very first one says the following: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." What most people take this to mean is that you have the freedom to practice religion regardless of where you choose to worship. This means that all the people in downtown Manhattan and anywhere who are rejecting the plan to build a mosque near the site of the September 11th attacks are actually suggesting that the builders forego the first principle of the United States Constitution to make an exception...where there absolutely shouldn't be one.
While I believe that this very basic legal reason should suffice and should end all public discussion about whether this building should be built, there is clearly something deeper here. These protestors are asking for the prohibition of this building because it would be an official indication that the U.S. has declared Islam an un-American religion. The problems with this are limitless but here are a few key points that stick out in my mind: 1) how dare we declare anyone's religion unfit or unworthy when our good ol' American principles of liberty and freedom directly state otherwise?; 2) calling ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave is rendered entirely useless when we try to place bans on people simply because they share the same religion or ethnicity as those directly linked to terrorist attacks; and 3) I'm so surprised that after years of trying to be PC and hide racism towards, oh I don't know, every minority race that exists in this country, people haven't figured out how to conceal their Islamophobia.
From another angle, let's think about this: after Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 (the largest terror attack prior to 9/11), no one said that all blond males in Oklahoma City should be banned from living in the area. The only time people are willing to blame an entire class of people for the actions of a few is when the criminal or criminals belong to a minority group.
In the times when I've watched the news long enough to sit through the stories about these protestors, I've watched people make comments like "this mosque is un-American" and "they can have a mosque wherever they want but just not here" and, my personal favorite, "we don't know which ones are the good ones and which ones are the bad ones." Now if the rules that define our nation allow us to practice religion freely, then no one religion can be persecuted as being "un-American". Furthermore, the second statement suggests that you can be free everywhere except for right here. Reminds me of when blacks were free to live however they wanted in their homes and go to school anywhere BUT with little white children. The people foaming at the mouth with signs of how their sons and daughters and cousins and fathers died that day have let their emotions, and not their knowledge of the rules of this society, get the better of them. Whether you personally feel comfortable with a religion or not, or use all Muslims as scapegoats in your own mind, you really shouldn't claim that you want to protect the rights and freedoms of the United States and enter a public sphere saying that some people just don't deserve that.
And the final statement about the "good ones" and the "bad ones" is the best because it illuminates the struggle that minorities continue to deal with in this country. When people start seeing bad apples in one group and using those examples to generalize about everyone who even remotely looks like those criminals, we've lost it all as a nation. I'm pretty damn sure that the potential mosque goers at this site will be no more like the terrorists that day than I am like any black criminal on Death Row.
We can't just bend the rules because this was a massive volume of people who died or because it shook up the nation or because it is "insensitive." A mosque and Islam have little connection to the terrorists who flew into the towers. It's not only embarrassingly racist and prejudiced to hold these beliefs but it's really shameful and inconceivable. Whether you feel personally comfortable with Islam or any religion for that matter, it is certain that it would be illegal not to build this house of worship on the grounds of religion alone. If the mosque isn't built, and didn't join the other mosques and churches that are already in the area, it should be because of zoning issues and financial reasons alone. I mean are we really gonna say a certain group of people should be less free to practice religion because people who looked like them once did something horrifically destructive? What the hell is up with that?
