I don’t understand this attitude, you clearly find Saudi suppression of freedom of religion unacceptable, so you want to get back at them by replicating their behavior in the US?
Basically, it is just more xenophobia.
The Cordoba Initiative is a fairly large, multi-national organization that solicits funds from many sources, (Muslim and non-Muslim), just as any other NGO or charitable institution. Despite various misquotes and quotes-out-of-context attributed to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, he has been working on Muslim-Western relations for the better part of thirty years and was actually called upon by the Federal government as a consultant to provide ways to keep the lines of communication open between the Muslim community and Federal security agencies following the WTC/Pentagon attacks.
Attacking this group IF they had Saudi connections would be a bit like the U.K. putting barriers against a U.S. group from existing in the U.K. because “Americans” supported the IRA.
It does not have to make sense as long as “we” feel that we are getting something over on “them.”
Xenophobia is a fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign. Rejecting a national culture that is openly hostile to women and other religions is not xenophobia.
Again, it depends who is financing them. I would protest a 100 million dollar Fred Phelps community center. More-so if it was located 2 blocks from a massacre of thousands of gay people. Whether or not this community center is funded by by such people I don’t know. I think the question should be addressed.
None of this changes the idea that people see the WTC as sacred ground because of those who were murdered.
It’s pretty clear from the things going on at the moment:
[ul]
[li]the “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” protest, which was meant to be about censorship of cartoons (based on threats from one stupid spoiled white suburban kid turned wahabbist) and turned into an anti-Islam free for all[/li][li]the continued labeling of Cordoba House/Park51 as the “Ground Zero mosque” which is the language of opponents put into common use[/li][li]demonstrations at the site of a proposed California mosque which protesters were told to bring dogs to, because “Muslims hate dogs”[/li][li]the “international burn a Quran day” being held on September 11 by a church in Tallahassee[/li][li]crackpot theories (largely relating to the census) being advanced to tie the ongoing anti-14th amendment movement on the right to not only children born of illegal Latin@ immigrants but those born to legal immigrants who happen to be Muslim[/li][/ul]
That for the most vocal opponents of this mosque, there is no acceptable location for it, anywhere. This isn’t about the sanctity of Ground Zero, this is about purely xenophobic anti-Muslim sentiment.
Sorry, none of that makes any sense. Firstly, if you have some evidence that a terrorist group of some sort is financing the proposed mosque, please present it. Secondly, the WTC site is not a place of worship and is not a central shrine of any religion, except maybe Mammon. Even if it was, the proposed mosque will not be built on the WTC site. Meanwhile, since when do Saudi policies that may or may not exist regarding the location of Christian churches trump US laws protecting freedom of religion?
You do at least agree that the First Amendment protects the right of the group in question to build a mosque anywhere they could buy property and follow zoning requirements, right?
Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s a few blocks south of the WTC site.
In terms of Islamic facilities in lower Manhattan, the horse is already out of the barn. These guys are four blocks from the site and they’ve been praying and doing other things since 1980. And I think other Muslim groups were in the same facility or another one nearby for several decades before that.
Actually, obsessing over one mm up or down in one’s daughter’s cleavage seems rather unhealthy to me.
Meanwhile, it’s really not that hard of a question. Here, I’ll re-arrange it so there is a clear, unambiguous answer:
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two blocks or less, OK or not?
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more than five blocks, OK or not?
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anywhere outside lower Manhattan, OK or not?
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anywhere outside of Manhattan, OK or not?
I wish they just would have rebuilt the towers, exactly the same except for better support beams.
And without all that damn thermite.
There is no “national culture” involved in this discussion except as it is brought up as camouflage for more general anti-Muslim hysteria. Demonizing one sixth of the world’s population because some segment of that population includes bad ideas is just exactly the sort of silliness in which that minority of the larger group engages. If we allow that minority group to get us to think the same way that they do, then we really will be able to declare that “the terrorists have won.”
Which remains a straw man argument, given that the proposed community center is two blocks away and separated by two buildings that are both large enough that the WTC site and the community center will not even be visible to each other. I will grant that the WTC site can be considered sacred ground, (and those arguing that there is no explicit religious connection are missing the point), but the community center is not being proposed on the site or even within sight of the site. It is just a way for unthinking people to lump together a lot of different people and hate them based on a rather tenuous connection regarding a very broad religious association (i.e. xenophobia).
I don’t think there was anything wrong with the WTC design. It was innovative and allowed for large open floor space and more flexibility for the tenants. Nobody could have forseen that large planes with virtually full tanks of fuel would be deliberately crashed into them. If that was a design parameter back when it was designed, sure they may have built it differently.
The objection to the Islamic center isn’t based on its proximity to the WTC site. It’s just anti-Muslim bigotry and xenophobia. Surely Murfreesboro, TN is far enough away from Ground Zero to not raise objection, yet the opposition there was vigorous. The Holocaust was perpetrated by people that were nominally Christians, does that make every Christian church in Israel insensitive? Given the pedophilia in the Catholic Church’s past, would a new Catholic seminary two blocks away from a day care center be insensitive? I doubt those arguments would be raised. Time to get over it. Sure, the WTC site was the scene of mass murder. But we can’t turn it into the Altar of Perpetual Victimhood.
Which is why we don’t allow Japanese people in Hawaii to this day.
Is it not the case that there’s a mosque actually *within *the Pentagon?
How do people like **Magiver **reconcile acceptance of a mosque within one of the buliding directly affected by 9/11 with opposition to another mosque several blocks *away *from another affected building? 
(Maybe “mosque” is too specific? There’s certainly a muslim chaplain who operates at the Pentagon, and presumably there’s a space set aside for his work).
I read one article about it and I’m guessing it’s more like a prayer space. And that’s what the 51Park/Cordoba building will have, too. Not to speak for Magiver, but the fact that the Pentagon is a military installation and is required to provide religious services may make it different.
It would be 2 blocks away. It is a 19 story building and a lot more than just a mosque. They should be pleased that some commerce is going on in NYC.
I sure hope everyone protesting that Ground Zero is sacred ground not to be built on will come out and help protest Wal-Mart and Disney buying up Civil War battlefields. Man, we could use an injection of new volunteers.
That makes no sense. Nobody is suggesting anything of the sort (unlike the Saudi Arabia where Christians are banned from the city of Mecca). A better analogy would be a Japanese war memorial next to the Arizona.
I have a torch with Walmart’s name on it ready to go for the protests.
Can you think of a better way of showing the superioty of liberal democracy to theocracy? Of showing that our way is better?
Of course, I’d combine showing tolerance for Islam domestically by going after the backers of 9/11 with the full force of law, rather than letting them sit in Saudi happy as clams, but that’s clearly not part of the right-wing agenda.
Why do you bring up what the Saudis allow in Mecca? Is your solution for us to become as intolerant as they are?
No, it would not be a better analogy. A better analogy would be a Shinto or Buddhist shrine in the general area.
You seem to have difficulty with the concept that not all Muslims are accountable for 9/11 any more than all Christians are accountable for the Holocaust.