You'd think there was nothing else going on in the world but a bunch of religious intolerance! This is all I've heard about on the radio for days now. No Palestine/Israel problem, no Iran, no winless wars. Heck, you barely hear how Obama's screwed up the country anymore.
Still, the topic of religious intolerance is both global and critical, so I'll go with it.
Yes, that's right folks: Americans are being (yet again) a bunch of bigoted, self-righteous Christians that would turn Jesus' stomach. Don't agree with me? Put it this way: if someone planned to build a church at or near ground zero, would anyone care? Would it have even made the news cycle? I bet even a synagogue wouldn't have raised eyebrows.
"But we're a Christian nation," I can hear you say. Wrong. YOU might be Christian, and a large percentage of the US citizenry may consider themselves Christian, but that does not a State religion make. (and that's a topic for another blog)
What we are is a nation of immature and insecure children. "A savage, childlike race," I believe it was phrased once. If someone is too different (ie, brown), we have to keep him out. If someone espouses ideas too different from ours (ie, Muslim, socialist, rational and educated....), we have to silence him. The problem with this (aside from basic bigotry) is that it never allows us any exposure to other ideas and hence retards our growth as a society.
The issue about the non-mosque that is not at ground zero is fueled by the anti-Muslim sentiment that proliferated after 9/11. I will even go so far as to say that, after that incident, some of that feeling was understandable. But it's nine years later, people. We've had the chance to calm down and realize that it was just a bunch of crazies who did it, not the entire religion. It's time to stop being fearful and ignorant. Muslims have lived among us all along. They are our neighbors. They mourned 9/11 and were outraged just like you did.
The biggest issue is that people are labeling an entire religion for the actions of its fundamentalist and crazy sect. I heard a great analogy on the radio today: if you are going to condemn Islam as a whole for 9/11, then are you going to condemn Christianity for the Oklahoma City bombing? How about for the Crusades? Or maybe for colluding with the Nazis to exterminate those Jesus-killing Jews? Or the Fundamentalist Mormons, who marry off teenage girls to 80 year old men? All these things were/are done in the name of Christianity.
Religious tolerance has never been our strong suit. Look at the freakin' Pilgrims. They came to America because no one else could stand them and their strict, intolerant ways. But it's the 21st Century; can't we move beyond this already?
And while this is a vital issue, it is not the only one at hand. There are other First Amendment rights in play. Such as: the (non-ground zero) location of this (non) mosque is private property. Since when did we have the right to tell someone what he can do on his own property? Isn't that freedom one of the key tenets of the very people who are fighting this center? How about self-determination? We are a nation of rugged individualists, right? So why is it so wrong for a community to decide, on a local level, that this center is ok? Who the hell are we to tell Manhattan what it can/can't do with one of its buildings?
(Hey Tea Baggers: remember this point next time you want to bitch about "city slickers" telling you what you can/can't do with the Public Lands in your area).
From what I can tell, the local government overwhelmingly approved this YMCA-like center. It's a privately owned building, which used to be a Burlington Coat Factory. There is a mosque nearby (which predates the Twin Towers, by the way), and a large enough Muslim community to support and benefit from this. So, opponents really don't have a leg to stand on. It is against the Constitution to protest this center. Of course, the Baggers and friends like to trash the Constitution whenever it proves an inconvenient truth.....(again, another blog).
The bottom line is this: it's private property and they can do whatever the hell they want with it. And, if people would shut off Dancing with the Stars and read an actual book, they might realize that we do, in fact, have freedom of religion in this country AND that Islam is closely related to Christianity.
Let them build their Islamic community center, and let's move on.
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