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As I do understand that could be a sensitive topic for many, rejecting people of their religion many of who had nothing to do with the terrorist acts is extreme, especially when this country has freedom of religion.
I agree with you. It is a very sensitive topic for many, and most people don't understand that terrorism has nothing to do with the Islam religion itself. Terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda twist the religion to their advantage and it has nothing to do with the religion itself.
However, since this is a big deal, especially to all the victims and the families, I think we should listen to them first. It shouldn't be about promoting a good image to Islam, which is their main intention. It should be about comforting the victims of those who were affected on that horrible day and if most people are so against it, then have them build the mosque somewhere else.
1) First amendment guarantees freedom of religion. If you'd be willing to park a church or YMCA there, you should be willing to accept a mosque or Islamic community center. If for no other reason than that it sets a dangerous precedent that perhaps somewhere, someone will get it in their head to stop you from building a church or a synagogue.
2) Most of our governmental system guarantees private property rights. Once the property is owned by Cordoba, they can make it into whatever they want. I don't see how the concerns of others, including 9-11 families over what they would do with the property here are any more valid than the people who protest when a new Wal-Mart is built somewhere. It's their property and their business, not ours to dictate what they should do with it. Besides, some of those victims were Muslim after all. Not everyone who lives in this country is a WASP.
3) Provided, as I am confident will be the case, that they are peaceful and law-abiding owners (such as anyone can be in the modern legal environment) , I don't see what should be done by government to stop this or any other similar project from moving forward. Much less what could be done.
If we allow an Islamic Mosque at the 9/11 site, then we should be able to allow a Shinto Shrine in Pearl Harbor.
It is my not so humble opinion that we should not honor the religion – regardless of how phony that religion may be – anywhere near a site where followers of that religion caused so many innocent people to die.
Honoring the memory of those fallen should be the only consideration in this matter.
That's just it Sun Tzu, Wal-Marts are not allowed in New York. It's the only state that doesn't allow it.
If the people of New York don't want it to happen, it won't happen.
Exactly. Even if these terrorists are not Islam, they use the same bible or whatever as evidence to brainwash their puppets. This act should not be near a horrible event like that of 9/11. It's not a wise decision especially when it comes to the behavior of New Yorkers.
I also don't see how good it would be for them to do this, because New York is known to be a state where the people take matters into their own hands. A lot of riots and protests would occur for a very long time. I don't see what good it would do.
According to the news this evening, NYC officials have already "unanimously" approved the construction of the Mosque.
If that is the case, then what you have in NYC is just another case of politicians doing whatever they feel like doing and with total disregard to what the voting public wants.
If you are right, Jared, then we shall see just what kind of mettle New Yorkers are actually made out of . . .
They will either placidly accept it, or the fecal matter is about to hit the fan . . . .
The only thing that should be on the World Trade Center site is a very very large building…. which many of us have been waiting for, for a very very long time. If there wasn't a mosque there before it's because there wasn't room for one. There's a relatively simple fact why, it's a BUSINESS district not a residential one. Almost no-one lives in Battery Park. And you can bet that what few people do are probably not practicing much religion between all the selling pork-bellies and buying gold!
http://www.priceviewer.com/walmart_locations/NY.h…
Really? I'm sure the people of Albany would like to hear that they could be rid of their hideous blight upon their domain then…
Hmm. So explain why Columbia University was able to bully a bunch of people out of land around its property?
I apologize. New York City.
Probably because it's not a touchy issue to them. When it comes to September 11, 2001, we're talking about a tragedy that's still ongoing. The train stations are still being re-built. The memorial hasn't even gone up yet.
The Columbia thing is just your average fight.
Fecal matter haha good one. This will not go done without a fight, I guarantee. If you are from New york you see 9/11 from a totally different perspecitve and it is really sad.
There are a few million people north and west of you that still can call themselves New Yorkers.
And not zoning a commercial business is a little different than denying permission for a religious institution to be built. As in, the second has very little, if any, legal standing to be denied simply because the local population (supposedly) does not approve of it. Popular sovereignty does not apply to basic civil liberties.
Which is to the good… because a lot of them would be removed if it was up to the general public, much less the government, to control which civil liberties we should be free to retain. Fortunately private property rights are at least something a few people get testy over if freedom of conscience is not.
Columbia U is eminent domain abuse (as is the Nets stadium in Brooklyn), which is a Constitutional issue and is hardly "your average fight". Perhaps that's the status quo in NYC, but if that's so, then I'd say it's less of a problem what happens with the mosque then too. I did not suggest that it was a bigger deal. But the point is that there are lots of things that will happen regardless of what the people of NYC claim to want through government takings. I'm therefore questioning what exactly people think the government (at the local/state/federal level) should do in this case, and why they think the government should have that power in the first place. The general public can voice its objections, but they are effectively voicing objections to private property ownership and the 1st amendment's guarantees of freedom of religion by doing so.
Which to me is absolutely idiotic.
9-11 was almost a decade ago. I agree I'd like to see something built there to be a memorial, or to replace the buildings, but I fail to see what that has to do with people building a quasi-religious structure a few blocks away.
Put this another way.
The (vast) majority of people around the world killed by Muslim terrorists have been… other Muslims.
Should they not permit religious sites and structures erected around the sites of major terrorist incidents (some of which were mosques themselves)? If they should not make such restrictions themselves to deal with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people caused by such senseless violence as is brought by terrorism, then why is it that we would suddenly deem it necessary to violate our own sacred protections of freedom of faith in order to satisfy some petty bitterness toward a handful of fanatics who managed to carry out attacks against us?
What have we suffered so grievously that our lives are worth more than theirs and that our freedoms (that in some respects we have in abundance over theirs) are worth less? If we are not willing to fight for them, to represent them even in the face of the adversity and unpleasantness that we may feel in our own grief, then of what use are these principles? Should we simply shred them up as we have done with much of the rest of our rights and liberties over the last decade to give us the illusion, however fleeting it will be, that we are to be rendered safe and immune from harm?
The most essential fight against terrorism is the mastery over this question: what do we want to be? I say we want to be free, and live as Americans should, seeking to uphold our highest principles, not because there was a quick and easy path to them, but because they are hard and exalted standards for us to bear and try to live out as best we may.
If we would sacrifice the capacity of others to worship as they see fit, and to construct such institutions and structures as they may require with their own resources, and to be left unmolested in these designs so long as they are peaceful and well-meaning in their passions for their faith, and all of this upon yet another sacred edifice that they own the property and land upon which they are building and may do with it as they please as private citizens or residents representing their own particular religious fervor, then I don't see how this makes us good and decent Americans worthy of representing ourselves to the world.
It in fact makes us hypocrites and liars to live that way and yet venerate these ideals in public. It does not matter how unwise, useless, or unfeeling such a structure appears to us. They think it important enough to construct.
Just for your information – I do not believe for one iota that Islam is a real religion.
In this day and age, a viable and real religion does NOT advocate that a woman who has been raped be put to death . . . it does NOT advocate that anyone who does not join and adhere to that religion be put to death . . . it does NOT declare that your wife is your personal property to do with as you please . . . it does NOT demand that you wrap your children in explosives and send them into a crowd of innocent people and blow them up along with your child . . . . .
Islam is nothing but a cult born and bred of the devil himself.
There's just no pleasing some people it seems….
So.. by your logic, Christianity for most of its history, perhaps even now, does not constitute a real religion.
Heresy was punishable by death or torture (often the same thing). Wives were effectively personal property through coveture laws drawn up from ancient textual sources (with often strict cultural dress codes applied). Holy wars were waged against… other Christians (just as most Muslims are fighting with… other Muslims), with the rampant slaughter and rape of innocents as a common feature of sieges and conflict.
I do not think this is a road you want to go down proclaiming which major religious institution has more valid beliefs, particularly with billions of people in both of them who do not hold or practice these more ridiculous beliefs. They've both erred rather badly in their histories in the same ways. Ie, authority granted by absolute belief and faith has been misused for nefarious ends rather than the supposed spiritual balance and useful or productive social rules that a religious order may intend to grant when it is founded.
That has less to do with the nature of Islam in particular and more to do with the nature of power.
Go read the Levitical laws sometime.
First Amendment. Read it. It'll rock your world.
Go read about the Gunpowder plot (Guy Fawkes) and the various wars around the peace of Westphalia, or the writings of John Locke. Or the belligerent responses of Americans to the migration of Catholics in the 19th century, which as now with conservatives' impressions of Islam, associated the (supposed) ties of Catholics to the Pope as evidence of that faith as a cult worthy of destruction and defeat and staunch public opposition.
This has never been an issue that was somehow limited and inherent to Islam. It has always been an issue of our fear of the unknown and new and different and the imputed power that a "cult" with over a billion followers in part or principle must present some vast existential threat to our way of life that it must be opposed at all costs and at all steps, without consideration to whether those steps are taken by moderate and secularizing Muslims or taken by violent extremist theocrats. Much like those who conducted the Spanish Inquisition which in part resulted in the demise of the great historical city of Cordoba. Only in reverse. It asks very little of us to learn and to tolerate what we already do and can within our midst while still demanding adamantly that violence and violent coercion is unacceptable and our tolerance for the one shall not be trifled with where those lines are crossed.
Now now everyone…..the mosque that the two people want to have built near the World Trade Center site isnt just for one religion. A couple wanted it to be built for all religions. Its basically saying that not all religions are bad. Its supposed to be something for all people of any religion to go to and see that everyone has differences and everyone has similarities. Yes there will be differenes so mabey we should have it built. PLUS THE STUPID PRESS TWISTED UP THE REASON FOR WANTING THE MOSQUE TO BE BUILT! They said it was to be for the two terrorists that died in the plane crash or something like that…. the press is messed up for saying that.
No!!! HELL NO!!!!!!!
with all respect to the person who asked this question .. i think its an evil question cause its needless and it raises a lot of hate am sorry i don't mean any insult but the way i see it
am a Muslim and i see no need in having a mosque there .. its not like there are mosques all over the united states and we need to have a mosque in that area because there are so many Muslims !!.. having a mosque in that area might provoking to many people
yet again i don't know what harm could having a mosque in that place cause .. its not like people will finish praying and then go to bomb the new world trade center again !! .. living in the united states means you are living in a country of freedom of religion .. and saying no is a message of hate sent to Muslims .. if you cant find it in you to stop hating others then you have no right judging others because they hate you
i really believe that people who hates or judges others because of their religion are the reason for all the wars and international crisis around the world and are the reason why we will never live in peace .. its really ironic that religion causes so much wars and racism when all religions encourages peace and leniency