I think the Americans are being a little oversensitive about this.

Ground Zero mosque defies logic

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/ground-zero-mosque-defies-logic/story-e6frg6so-1225903138096

NOW that Tom Friedman in The New York Times has endorsed the construction of an Islamic centre at Ground Zero, no one can be against it.

But since he has not even made a real argument for it, aside from recounting his experience at a Broadway jamboree in the White House, where the only Muslim name was the President's middle one, which is nothing more than a non sequitur, the column stands alone with neither evidence nor logic.

Still, everybody is for it . . . except Abe Foxman and his Anti-Defamation League who are correct but had better keep quiet lest they bare the stigma of prejudice that comes from being against something whose only justification is that it has no reason.

So what is the real positive excuse for a mosque at Ground Zero? Perhaps to demonstrate that we don't hold anything against the men who did it.

Or to show that we have nothing against the culture from which they came. And nothing against the societies across all Islam that cheered the news of the 3000 dead.

But, of course, these are not accurate assertions of our emotions, then or now. Even as we try to understand them, we despise them. No mosque built on the ground where mothers and fathers, children and grandparents, relatives and friends and lovers were sacrificed will ever console or conciliate.

At best, it will remind of the cool brutality and fierce passion that animated these ghoulish people of faith to murder on a scale so huge almost to daunt the imagination. Ironically it will backfire because it will (rightly) remind visitors of the religious identity of the perpetrators.

And, of course, the imagination was daunted only by the conscientious American decision-makers who deprived the polis of the true images of maimed bodies, broken limbs, desperate souls flying through the air, perhaps to land where the kadhi will intone the principles of the Muslim faith.

Given the absence of a logical explanation for this mosque, the ex cathedra reason is that it is a monument to the American credo of the freedom of religion. But that is surely insincere, at least on the part of the Islamic prayer house sponsors, who are more motivated to slip under the First Amendment protections here than to make them their own anywhere else. Islam in New York would have been just as free 10 blocks away.

In fact, the presence of an Islamic place of prayer at the sight of the human catastrophe of September 11, 2001, will be an insult to the dead. It would be as if Japan were to erect a museum about its delicate treatment of women, and to erect that museum precisely in Nanking, China. Or Germany to establish a series of Goethe Institutes where the Vilna Ghetto and the concentration camp of Maidanek once stood. Or, for that matter, Serbia might be accommodated to construct a monument to its sufferings under the Nazis in Srebrenica where it later murdered 10,000 Bosnians.

I am as much for understanding and reconciliation as the next man. But there are dark places where the only appropriate emotions are anger and grief.

"Americans" still think that 9/11 was all about Muslims killing 3000+ "Americans".  It  was more about the state of the USA SECURITY and those that did the job were "Americans" and many of those who died were Aussies, Poms, Kiwis, "Europeans" and others from a variety of different countries.

It was sad, sure. What has happened since? The War on Terrorism is a farce. Have they found Bin Laden yet? 

It was sad, sure. What has happened since? The War on Terrorism is a farce.


I presume you are joking

Just a few for you

Bali bombings  1 October 2005  & October 12th 2002
Madrid train attack  20 March 2004
London train and bus attacks 21 July 2005
Mumbai attacks 26 November 2008



Since March 2001 there have been 15812 deadly terror attacks
 

Look really, did they expect to erect a mosque at ground zero and  thousands of peoples loved ones, friends, relatives traumatised by the tragedy to feel ok about this impertinent insult?

Before we all get carried away and start thinking this "mosque" is being built on the site where the twin towers once stood; it's not, the planned site is in fact a couple of blocks away.

my cultural insensitivities may arise if a mosque were to arise where my  family were murdered by muslims.

A limited excerpt from a recent "Time" magazine:



- you can't read anymore online, but the article goes on to say:



This IMO, is what we sorely need to hear from Islamic moderates.
I'm damned sure that I ain't gonna hear it from the likes of Abu, but I'm hopeful that there are more moderates willing to take the reins and set an example for modern Islam.

The mosque being so close to ground zero may be a good thing if done correctly, but I personally feel that it would lend itself far too much to encouragement for the extremist dirka dirkas worldwide.

And after all, you could probably find more within the quran which supports the views of extemist muslims than you could for the views of moderates.

Life_goes_on wrote on Aug 11^th, 2010 at 9:14pm:



This most salient point, goes unnoticed, and not commented on, but it is surely crucial to the debate.
Is the mosque being built on what is described, and understood as, "Ground Zero", or is it being built somewhere near Ground Zero?

Personally, I wouldn't build a mosque, synagogue, or christian church, anywhere, but I do not object to others building them, I do balk at the fact that these groups evade tax by the special treatment for religion laws they so depend upon, which provides extra money to build these indulgent palaces of idiocy, but that is another issue.

So we need to make sure that we are not just providing another venue for anti-muslim attitudes, under the guise of concern for the dead, because that just demeans the people who may have legitimate issues with aspects of Islam, whilst not seeking to demonise all muslims as quasi terrorists.