The controversy over the Park51 mosque is based partly on the idea that the WTC is somehow sacred ground. But it’s not. We had a choice after 9/11, when we could have decided to make the entire site a memorial. Instead, we started rebuilding a commercial tower directly on the site. Conde Nast just announced that they would be relocating to the tower.
By rebuilding commercial property there, we made a choice to make the site a functioning part of the city, not as something to be set apart. And if we can go back to business as usual directly at the WTC site, then certainly we can do so a few blocks away at the Park51 site (especially considering how tightly packed lower Manhattan is).
It’s sort of fun to make a list of other things on the same “holy ground” as the proposed religious center:
McDonalds
A Jamba Juice
A Bar and Grill
The “Pussycat Lounge”
A lebanese Restarurant (we may not let them pray, but we will let them serve us food)
A hookah lounge (and sell us drugs)
Soup Nazi
Buddhist Temple, Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, a synagogue, a tabernacle and of course…
a mosque.
I think we should generalize and say that no government will regulate activities on the basis of sacred status. If a religious or other group considers a site sacred they should apply their efforts to gain control of it through means that the government already regulates such as property ownership. If religious groups regards marriage as sacred then they should be the only ones doing it, and the government should offer civil unions only, to everybody who wants civil law to govern their union, withholding this only on bases that civil law allows. Governments shouldn’t touch anything sacred, because government requires negotiation and sacredness defies negotiation.
I do find it offensive that somebody wants to build a big mosque near the site, but also find references to “God Bless America” offensive. That doesn’t mean authorities should jump in and change them, though.
Quite a few people were equally up in arms at the statue of Robert E Lee in the Virginia Memorial at Gettysburg.
Whatever we decide, let’s get it over with before the politicians and talk radio get too involved.
Glen Beck will be on Hannity yelling that the place is really a secret spy outpost and where they’ll hide the nukes for the next attack.
Hannity will go on Glenn Beck and whine that no government money should go into it.
Of course, no government money was, but Charlie Rangall sees the show anxd decides to call the people who know people and see if they can pay for him to go to Jamaica and study whether there should be some federal funding.
Fox News/Cartoon Channel finds out about the trip and hosts all their shows live from Kingston and theme a whole week of programming to getting the ethics committee to investigate whether Rangall used any federal funds to buy adult beverages. Seven different congressional investigations are started
Finally, in the end, the National Park Service acquires the land at three times it’s market value, and erects on the spot of the actual towers a 1,776 structure christened the
"Mohammad Atta Memorial and a group with ties to Al Sharpton gets the contract run the Visitors Center where if you can show a passport from an arab country you get in free. Jesse Jackson secures the rights to the gift shop and all T Shirt/souvenir sales within 42 nautical miles of the site, 14% of this income is donated to PUSH. The people running that company of course get so rich they become conservatives and the employees are mostly illegal aliens making $1.35 and hour.
All of that is outed by Bill O’Rielly in an appearance promoting his new book. Shortly after this, Jesus Christ himself returns, along with Allah, Hindu and Bhudda and tell the world (in a spot on Oprah) that all the religions are full of crap, and a lot of other new age claptrap. Kieth Oberman that night on his show awards “Worst Person on the Planet” to Jesus, for criticizing religion.
When the Mohammid Atta Memorial is dedicated, Maxine Waters sees that guy giving the speech is black and secretly slips in a rider on a bill about testicular cancer research that doubles the funding.
I’ve said from the start that they should have rebuilt the Twin Towers exactly as they were before, and they should have done it by Spetember 11 2002. The best way to snub terrorists’ noses is to show them they can’t change a thing.
As for the OP, if someone thinks something is “sacred”, you’re not going to reason them out of it. It’s like trying to convince someone they don’t really like their favorite TV show.
The thing that gets me about that line of thinking is… the ^%$# proposed Islamic Center is not even "at the WTC site", it’s on private property a block down one of the cross streets! It was one thing when it was said that the rebuilding would preserve the “footprint” of the towers, that sounded fair; it started to become annoying when it began to look like every proposed idea had to have the approval or nonobjection of every last single possible interested party (and therefore, it’s been 10 years in the going); now every activity at every place within sight or walking distance is also going to subject to that?
I never got the hatred some people had for the towers. To me, their stupendous mass made them transcend the realm of man-made structures; they were not buildings as much as they were Manhattan’s most distinctive topographical feature - like Mt. Fuji is for Tokyo. The fact that they’re being replaced by something *smaller *is incredibly sad.
Thousands of people died in the attack. The location has significance to that event just as Pearl Harbor does. The building’s themselves were a as much a part of the city of New York as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. Denying this is a futile exercise.
The 9/11 attack was directed at the greatest symbols of political, military and economic power of the United States. It was no accident that the WTC was chosen to represent the economic side of this attack Just as the Pentagon and the failed attempt at either the White House or the Capital building are.
None of which is actually relevant to the Park51 (or Cordoba) building.
There has been a Muslim community in Tribeca, (the region in Manhattan where the WTC stood), for 40 years, or so, the organization planning to construct the building has been active for nearly 30 years in the same neighborhood, and the proposed building is not on the site of the WTC. It is two blocks away, centered in the block between Broadway and Church, on the North side of Park. It is proposed to be 13 stories* high, which is several stories shorter than either of the two buildings that already stand between the site and the site of the WTC, so that the two sites are not even visible to each other, (although the roof of the Park51 building will be visible from the higher stories of any WTC replacement).
However meaningful the WTC towers were, the opposition to Park51 is nothing more than xenophobia fueled by ignorance.
Sometimes reported as 15 stories–still shorter than either of the buildings blocking the view to the WTC site.
I’ve asked this question before, but haven’t managed to get an answer yet. It’s clear that for some people (perhaps Magiver), constructing a mosque two blocks away from the WTC site is unacceptable. OK, so how many blocks away would be the minimum acceptable distance for construction of a mosque?
Perhaps once we have that nailed down, we can work out how the anti-mosque types expect to get around that pesky First Amendment clause concerning freedom of religion. Seems as though there would be a bit of a stumbling block there.
What is relevant is the Imam heading the mosque and those who finance it. This is way beyond anything that could be financed by the group representing it.
It depends who is financing it. If it is Saudi money then it should be located the same distance as Christian churches are from the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca.
It’s a question that has no clear answer simply because that’s the nature of the question. How low a cleaavge is it Ok for your 15-year-old daughter’s dress. Whatever the number why not 1mm up or down. How much gravy is OK in your mashed potatoes? Why not 1ml more or less? How much salary? Why not 1 dollar less? 2 less? 5 less?