The footage was real, but to assume a significant percentage of Muslims in America hate the US or celebrated the attacks just because some Muslims in the Middle East did, doesn't make sense. I know plenty of Muslim Americans who are outstanding, patriotic citizens (some of whom are currently fighting to defend our country) and to tell them that a Muslim house of worship is offensive and "a slap in the face" does little more than provide evidence to support Osama Bin Laden's crazy, psychotic opinion that the United States is at war against Islam.
Some people argue that Ground Zero is different and they don't understand why Muslims would want a community center there - first of all, if Ground Zero is different, where are the fair minded Americans who should be denouncing attempts to prevent mosques from being built in other communities in the US? A credible Republican candidate for congress in Tennessee's sixth congressional district is running on a platform including opposing the building of a mosque in her district because it was and "Islamic training center" and part of "a political movement designed to fracture the moral and political foundation of Middle Tennessee." There is no evidence whatsoever the mosque is anything of the sort. If she'd said the same thing about a Catholic church or a synagogue, she'd be rightly driven out of politics for her xenophobic positions. In Texas, a mosque was desecrated and its playground burned down last week. I didn't hear anyone denouncing this.
In my parents' own city in southern California, (a place where the city council tried to limit access to local public parks because there were "too many Hispanic looking people using them" - the members who voted for the resolution were all re-elected, btw), the city rezoned a part of town with a Catholic church, a Jewish Community Center, a Presbyterian church, an evangelical mega-church campus, and a Mormon temple to avoid having to allow a mosque to be built there. Nobody came to the defense of the Muslims to have the same sort of community center and center of worship.
The reason the group wants to build the Islamic center in lower Manhattan is because there's been a mosque and community center in that neighborhood for sometime and they're looking for larger space to accommodate a larger community center. It's not like some brand new invasion of the Muslims into the financial district. Something I didn't know until recently was that that particular area of downtown was the heart of the city's first Muslim communities. In the early part of the 20th century, a sizable part of lower Manhattan was referred to as "Little Syria," as it was the home of the Arab immigrant community from the Ottoman Empire. Since that time, there has been a substantial Muslim community in lower Manhattan.
I've lived most of my life in New York, and I'm now in the Middle East on a government assignment. I'm often surprised by how woefully ignorant people here are of what America is like. I'm equally surprised by how ignorant Americans are about the Middle East and Islam. These are two civilizations that just don't talk to each other enough to have anything resembling an understanding of one another. What I am certain of, though, is that we shouldn't abandon the idea that government has no business telling people where to build their churches or synagogues, or mosques. So long as it doesn't violate neutral, non-discriminatory zoning laws, I don't see a problem with it. And if the mosque and community center does decide to preach and disseminate anti-American views, when I can come home, I'll be out there with a bunch of other New Yorkers, countering their hate speech with better speech.
Furthermore, I don't think the comparisons to Saudi Arabia are appropriate. We shouldn't base our standards of decency and respect for others on a country that denies women, racial, and religious minorities the most basic, fundamental human rights. We need to encourage them to come up to our level. Not lower ourselves to theirs.
Finally, my husband and I are deploying to a war zone in less than a year. We're going because we love our country. We're going because we believe we can do good work there. We're going because we were asked to serve. The easiest thing people in the US can do to put us and the tens of thousands of other Americans who will be serving there with us in greater danger is to feed the repulsive, false, poisonous narrative that America is at war with Islam by showing that Americans are intolerant of Muslims (like the pastor in Florida hosting a Quran burning).
I know that people's feelings on this issue are charged because of 9/11, but the Mosque isn't going to be at Ground Zero, it's going to be blocks away. Within the same distance of ground zero as about a hundred Starbucks's, a discount department store, a half dozen investment banks that helped almost blowup the world financial system, and a bunch of other things that don't really signify a hallowed and sacred space. That's just the nature of New York City. I agree, putting any house of worship physically on the site of ground zero would be a bad idea, but you can't turn the blocks around ground zero into an Islam-free zone just because 19 psychopaths and their supporters decided to try to create a clash of civilizations. The best way to fight them is by proving them wrong. America doesn't have a problem with Islam. The radical, violent extremists are the ones who have a problem with everyone (Muslim or not) who doesn't agree with them.
