Commentary by Poor Richard
Can Muslims build a mosque in New York City? Yes.
Should they (or anyone else) build a mosque on this particular site? A site Americans today regard as sacred as Pearl Harbor? Absolutely not.
Just because someone can do a thing, does not mean they should do a thing.
Such an idea is so distasteful to Americans that no one even thought to buy the property to protect it from such a public humiliation. Now we have Muslims whose goal seems only to be to rub our noses in this for perpetuity.
Muslims’ own insistence that they should be able to build this structure wherever they want to flies in the face of the majority opinion of Americans who are adamantly opposed to the idea. It is wholly disrespectful to Americans and they know, or should know it. It would be like the Japanese insisting they should be allowed to build a Shinto shrine and temple honoring their own war dead killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, in a temple built right over the USS Arizona! The difference is the Japanese know about respect, politeness, humiliation, shame and dishonor. They would show the good sense to be abhorred by the idea.
Not the Muslims. Their insensitivity to our nation as a whole in preference for their own selfish desires and agenda betrays a hostile intent. This is a selfish plan designed to insult every American, and everyone knows it. People are too afraid these days to call something bad when it’s obvious to everyone that it is. Everyone is afraid of “offending” someone. Well guess what? We’re all offended. How about some equal time?
You demand respect? Respect isn’t demanded as Middle-Easterners seem to believe, it is earned. Building this mosque in such a sensitive place certainly won’t do that for you. Wouldn’t you consider that a colossal mistake then? No? Then I’d guess your own desires are more important to you than those of the community you “serve”, aren’t they?
Now, let’s add further insult to injury, they want us pay for it, too??? I tell you our government has gone absolutely stark, raving mad. They no longer have any sense of up or down, liquid or bankrupt, moral or corrupt, right or wrong. They have truly lost their way.
Can you imagine the wartime FDR (not the peacetime FDR) building a monument to the U-boat crews who were lost at sea torpedoing our own ships and men off our coast?
Or Truman, building an obelisk to honor the dead among the 200,000 Chinese troops that suddenly poured across the Yalu River in Korea, killing hundreds of Marines at the Chosin Reservoir?
Or John F. Kennedy simply allowing those Soviet missiles to remain in Cuba?
These Democrats would say, “No, a thousand times, no!”
Where are those patriotic Democrats? Where have they gone? Today’s liberal Democrats have hijacked your party. They don’t know your own Party history, much less America’s. They don’t respect anyone or anything but power — and that my friends, is the entire problem in a nutshell. It is time to re-examine what you believe and why. It is time to demand a return to Constitutional government an true representation. If you have had enough of being spit upon, if you have had enough of irresponsible government and unresponsiveness to the cries of thpeoplele, remember this… early voting begins on October 18th. I”ll be there when the polls open. Join me.
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” — George Santayana
Remember in November.
Ground Zero Muslim center may get public financing
Fri Aug 27, 3:54 pm ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Muslim center planned near the site of the World Trade Center attack could qualify for tax-free financing, a spokesman for City Comptroller John Liu said on Friday, and Liu is willing to consider approving the public subsidy.
The Democratic comptroller’s spokesman, Scott Sieber, said Liu supported the project. The center has sparked an intense debate over U.S. religious freedoms and the sanctity of the Trade Center site, where nearly 3,000 perished in the September 11, 2001 attack.
“If it turns out to be financially feasible and if they can demonstrate an ability to pay off the bonds and comply with the laws concerning tax-exempt financing, we’d certainly consider it,” Sieber told Reuters.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Listen to me. The outrage of this situation is not that political AND religious leaders in New York are supporting the building of a mosque near (not on as this article implied) the site of the tragic 9/11 bombing, but that it is being debated whether or not they should. That Jewish community leaders, heads of a culture that has lost far more to radical Muslims than middle class Americans, are allowing this speaks mountains. That, in the face of their history, they would choose love and forgiveness over hate and bigotry shows who really understands the golden commandments. America was not built on a platform of preference to some citizens, but respect for all, REGARDLESS of their religious points of view. So if some historically tolerant (don’t dare say that Feisal Rauf is not a paragon of tolerance) Muslims are going to sponsor a community center near the sacred site in order as a pillar for the neighborhood that is currently suffering from sickness due to the dust in their lungs from the collapse of the towers (sickness that Republicans recently refused to allocate funds to provide treatment for) than there is really no reasonable grounds to say they can’t/shouldn’t/are-being-bigots-by-trying-to. The real bigotry is shown in the statement “Not the Muslims. Their insensitivity to our nation as a whole in preference for their own selfish desires and agenda betrays a hostile intent.” Right. Because Muslim Pakistanis huddled in tents beside a raging natural disaster AT THIS MOMENT are really interested in what happens in New York. They aren’t, because they are just people too. People trying to survive in this world in the face of situations that lash out against them and a superpower that is more and more turning against them, not for anything they have done, but because radicals on the other end of the spectrum decided that they have a hostile agenda to the United States. I’m not angry. Just sad. Sad that this article was written, that someone really feels this much animosity towards a billion other children of God. Sad that Hate really is winning in our country.
Elijah, I’m sure you sincerely believe what you’ve written, but you really are either naive or intolerant, bigoted, and lacking in self-respect.
The Islamic center is to be called the Cordoba House, in honor of Islamic conquest of Europe. That a building named such would be placed within a muazzin’s call of Ground Zero makes their intent unmistakable. How can you possibly not understand the statement of dominance and conquest this is intended to make? If its not naivety on your part, then perhaps its a lack of self respect
Yes, I say your Feisal Rauf is a hateful soldier of Islam, and not a man of tolerance. We’d see this in the sources of funding for the mosque, which he’s already said he will not make public.
Your complete refusal to acknowledge the sensitivity of Americans to hostility by Muslims and Islam, and the slap in the face the mosque represents, exhibits your lack of self-respect, or at least a lack of respect for the feeling of your fellow Americans, most of whom are disgusted by the proposed location of the mosque.
If a strip club or XXX film store were built next to any mosque, in full compliance with city ordinances, you’d be among those calling it insensitive to the Muslims. That you’ve failed to extend similar concern for the sensitivities of Americans shows you to be bigoted against your neighbors. Why do you hold the sensitivities of foreigners and recent immigrant groups higher than the sensitivities of Americans? You might consider looking inward to see why you hate your follow citizens and empathize with a foreign culture intent on making such a hateful statement with a symbol of dominance. Counseling might help.
Finally, your intolerance is on display when you call people who disagree with you hateful and bigots. The location of the mosque is offensive to us, and your hateful accusations only make us madder.
Poor Richard is wrong on one point. The Muslims are not insensitive. They are well aware that they are being insulting and disrespectful to Americans. It is their goal to insult and disrespect and inflict pain on America and on Americans any and every way they possibly can.
“The real bigotry is shown in the statement “Not the Muslims. Their insensitivity to our nation as a whole in preference for their own selfish desires and agenda betrays a hostile intent.”
If you decide to generalize and call someone a bigot, (especially someone you don’t even know), you’d better bring more than a half-baked argument to the fight and cite something more than one out of context line to back it up.
I have listened to you and found your argument faulty at it’s core.
Strike One: Opposition to building the mosque at Ground Zero is not equivalent to opposing the building of a mosque.
Strike Two: You conveniently ignored my statement that NO ONE should build a religious structure there, although I would think a universal non-denominational temple might well appeal to some. My statement is inclusive and does not prefer one religion over another as you would have others believe.
Strike Three: They can still build a mosque anywhere else in New York City, but yet they insist on building it on sacred ground in the face of overwhelming opposition.
You support the preferences of muslims over the wishes and desires of the victims and families who are at the center of this condition. One must ask why you would disregard their wishes and the wishes of 70% of all Americans so callously? Is it so much easier for you to cast dispersions on others and assume so many are prejudiced than it is to consider we have a valid point?
There was a time when religions considered the appropriateness and appearance of their actions as well as the actions themselves.
Doctors, lawyers, accountants and many other professions has long been held to ethical standards that insist their members avoid “the appearance of impropriety”.
My point is simple. The Muslims who are pushing this project with the backing of the liberals are not morally centered. They are not concerened about the sensitivities of the victims and families who were most directly affected by the attack on the twin towers.
On the contrary, they are decidedly IN-sensitive and have no such concerns. Your ignoring this basic fact translates your “bigotry” argument to the population of America as a whole. The 70% who oppose the building of the mosque, oppose it at THIS SITE, not anywhere else. Why do the wishes of the majority of Americans concern you so much less than the wishes of the Muslims group who wishes to build this building?
I stand by my position that Muslim insistance on this site prefers their own selfish desires over the victims, the families and the opinion of approximately 225 million Americans.
Your clumsy attempt at a personal attack simply illustrates your own ignorance and intolerance for the opinion of the vast majority of Americans.
You should never bring a knife to a gunfight, and frankly, you came unarmed.
@Lucy,
An astute observation and right you are. That is so they can “strike terror” into our hearts and we will feel ourselves subdued – like the Qur’an sez.
“There was a time when religions considered the appropriateness and appearance of their actions as well as the actions themselves. ” Think they’ll build a mosque at the site of the destroyed Buddhist statues in Afghanistan like they built the Cordoba Mosque over a destroyed Christian church?