Imagine a world where there is a huge muslim middle class in

[applegrove]

the west. These people are moderates.

They have money like the middle class does. They also have a mosque near ground zero. Jihadists around the world will have to compete with this reality as they try to groom a new generation of jihadists. Who wins? I say the moderates. People around the world will be in contact with each other through the internet. The reality of the great muslim situation in the USA and other western countries will be well known. It is the only way to win this war on terrorism in the end.

Build that mosque near ground zero right now!!

[Ken Burch]

1. Good God....somebody actually UNREC'D this?

n/t.

[EFerrari]

3. At least two. n/t

[madinmaryland]

11. Yes, Ken, I did unrec.

I did it because I think that any religious group that builds a large center across from the WTC is taking advantage of a bad situation, even if they have the best of intentions. And I mean ANY religion. Maybe I am wrong. I don't know how this country can ever heal its divides. Anything that any "minority" group does seems to be just pouring gasoline on a fire.

I worked in the World Financial Center across the street from the World Trade Center and was there on that day. It is a day that I will never forget. I did not lose anyone that I personally knew that day, but I did over the next couple of years.

[Ken Burch]

16. I'm sincerely sorry for your losses as a result of that day

But here's the thing:

The center would be built by Sufis, a sect of Islam that has never been associated with violence and had nothing to do with 9/11.

And it's wrong, simply wrong, to imply in any way that Muslims AS A GROUP bear shame from that horrible event. Only the tiny group of wackjobs that flew the planes was to blame for that.

I do respect, however, your willingness to explain your unrec.

[madinmaryland]

24. Thank you for your thoughts, Ken...

My point is, and maybe I did not make it clear enough, is that I would be upset if ANY religious group was building near "ground zero". I would be just as upset is a subset of the Southern Baptists, Methodist, or Mel Gibson's so-called subset of Catholicism decided to build something there.

I am disillusioned altogether by what religion has wrought. Not against any ONE religion.

[Ken Burch]

27. Well...there is reasonable grounds to be disillusioned about what religions have done.

n/t.

[snagglepuss]

32. It is disingenuous to claim it is built by Sufis because there are many

unanswered questions as to who is funding this project. The claim that this is wholly a Sufi undertaking is, at this time, simply spin.

[jobycom]

33. The way to heal religious divisions is to never allow religion as a basis for discrimination.

Don't allow this building and this battle to be defined in terms of religion. Don't allow 9-11 to be defined in terms of religion. Don't allow religion to be a tool others can use to divide us.

I wasn't there. I can't even pretend to imagine what it was like. I have nothing to compare it to. So it's easy for me to say that. I studied Islamic history in grad school in the early 90s. I had friends from Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Most were pretty secular--we were all students more than we were anything else. But some of them went back to Iraq. I knew them during the first Gulf War, and it was painful to see how people treated them. One was a professor, and he was treated as an enemy, as a suspected traitor, by some. By way too many. He was a very good man, and a decent friend, and did nothing to deserve it, and I had no idea how to stop it. It came between us, because it made our differences too obvious, even if he knew I wasn't part of the people that hated him. Some of the people I knew went back home, and some would have had young children. I didn't keep up with anyone, so I don't know. But we bombed civilians in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and who knows where else we killed people, just because of their religion. How do I know who lived or died? The beautiful woman with the open smile? Is she alive? Is her heart shattered and that smile gone forever because a bomb fell on her child? The playful Yemeni who always lamented he couldn't eat fig newtons because of the lard? Did he have a family? Did he lose the playfulness. I don't know. I'll never know.

None of them would have been in danger if it weren't for the hatred in this country towards anything different, and the intense desire to destroy anything we don't identify with.

The way you eliminate those religious differences is by respecting them, not by hating them. By allowing people to value that which they value most, to be proud of what they most love about themselves--whether that is religion, sexual orientation, gender, nationality--you take away the power of that difference to be used to divide, to become a weapon. Build the Center. Let it become a symbol of our national pride, of our multicultural origins, of our devotion to freedom and tolerance. That would be a greater tribute than any of the bullshit memorials they are trying to build on the actual site. Make the Center mean what America means, and let the whole world see. Some fucked up psychopaths try to knock us down? We cry, then we rebuild, and we show the world that we love our ideals more than we hate our enemies. That's really how you win. We've done it all wrong. We should start doing it right. Or else we've lost the real war, the one that some madmen tried to bring to us. If we allow his act to divide us, to turn citizens against each other and against what this nation is about, then he didn't fail. Then he really did destroy us.

[madinmaryland]

35. joby, you make a lot of good points. I went to an engineering school

in the midwest starting in 79 and we had a large contingent of students in the civil engineering program from the middle east. For the four years I was there, they were there to get an education. I have no idea what ever became of them.

Yes, the jingoism and nationalism of the americans was obnoxious, but more or less expected. I wish we could move past that and build a real multi-cultural society. I doubt whether I will ever see something like that in my life time.

[jobycom]

36. It starts with the first brick.

Really, it starts when opposition to the first brick disappears.

[applegrove]

42. I loved your last paragraph. It brings almost a tear to my eye.

[Blue_In_AK]

13. Several, it would appear.

[madinmaryland]

2. I'm sorry, but any religion building a hugh worship center near there

is disgusting to me. Most churches/synagogues in that area are very small and just fit in where-ever they can. There was a small greek orthodox church across the street from the WTC that I think they were able to save.

If any religious group decided to build a hugh complex with a couple of blocks of the WTC I would be concerned and upset.

[U4ikLefty]

4. The billding is hugh!!111!!

[applegrove]

18. Did I spell huge wrong?

[U4ikLefty]

23. No you didn't. See #2. n/t

[madinmaryland]

25. Sorry. I've been at DU too long and tend to make hugh foe pas!

:D

[applegrove]

31. LOL!

[jobycom]

15. Wasn't the original a hugh worship center for the cult of money?

:)

[applegrove]

19. Did I spell huge wrong?

[Ken Burch]

28. Well, this whole area is not far from NBC stufios

Which at one point was a center of worship for the cult of Hugh Downs:

[applegrove]

22. Do you really think the GOP would have gotten on this horse if it was anyone but muslims?

I really doubt they would be protesting the building of a small baptist church there. Or a synagogue. The thing I worry about is playing into the hands of the jihadists by ignoring the american constitution. That is exactly what bin Laden wants us to do. They'll get fodder out of these actions for a generation. And when you think of it it really is an interference with the right of people...americans in this case...to practice their own religion how they see fit as long as they are not hurting anybody. And they are not. That WTC footprint must be huge (hugh), maybe 10 blocks big. Do you really think it is okay to bar a religion in such a large area?

[Hannah Bell]

39. they're hardly "very small". within a few blocks, we have:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/2367002387/





besides that, there's (per google maps):

YMCA (1-2 blocks)
True Buddhist Diamond Temple (3 blocks)
Beth din Zedek american din (1 block)
- (The Beth Din of America is a Beth Din Court of Jewish Law which serves Jews throughout the United States of America - orthodox judaism)
Wall St. synagogue (4 blocks)
Jewish community services (4 blocks)
National council of young israel (5 blocks)

[ibegurpard]

5. imagine a world where there is a huge MIDDLE CLASS

[Johonny]

7. +1

[applegrove]

8. Touché!

[madinmaryland]

12. There will never be a "hugh" middle class as long as we are divided by religion. nt

[jobycom]

17. You'll have to explain that to me...

I'm as atheist as the next atheist, probably more so, but I don't follow...

[madinmaryland]

21. ...

I think your comment just explained what I was saying...

:hi:

[Scurrilous]

6. K & R

:thumbsup:

[malaise]

9. K & R

Fugg the Unrec'rs

[Blue_In_AK]

10. The right is busily trying to prove Bin Laden, Al Qaeda,

the Taliban and other extremist groups correct. Those groups have always said that America persecutes Muslims, and indeed it seems to be true, even here in our own country with our, quote unquote, "freedom of religion."

This issue is very close to my heart since I have a Muslim son-in-law and, by extension, baby grandson. This sort of bigotry against people I love saddens me and makes me angry. I can't imagine living with so much hate inside. How can you hate this?

[applegrove]

14. What a cute little guy. And Dad's not so bad himself. Yes. The only way

to win against terrorism is to respect the rule of law in all facets of life. And to respect "life" in all of its forms..including muslims.

[madinmaryland]

20. I am tired of ALL religions trying to prove that all others are wrong.

We can spin it any way we want to, but that is what religions do. Look at the various versions of christianity. I came from a religious background (Methodist) and have been shunned by other sects in protestantism within our own family.

[Blue_In_AK]

29. It's not the religion,

it's the practitioners of the religion. There are good people of faith in all of the world's religions -- and there are definitely bad. I think we'd all be better off if people would just be tolerant and let people practice or not practice their religion however and wherever they want. Just don't be pushy with the proselytizing. I don't see a mosque, wherever it's located, as being a proselytizing sort of thing. It's just a building where people go to practice their religion, like any church. It doesn't hurt anything. I've never had a Muslim try to convert me, but I've sure had a lot of Baptists try.

I'm just rambling, but I think you know what I'm saying. I understand your point of view, as well.

[madinmaryland]

34. Yes, it is tolerance that needs to be practiced.

Your comments remind me of when I used to go to church every sunday and during the summer with the windows in the church open (they were open at my mother's funeral last week), and hearing the cars, trucks and motorcycles going by making loud noises. I soon came to realize that maybe, just maybe, they had a slightly different way of worshiping or even not worshiping.

I'm sorry that I did not comment about it earlier, but you have a really cute grandson. That is really what should be the most important thing!

[Blue_In_AK]

37. I was an every-Sunday Methodist, too, growing up,

but I haven't been to church in a long time. I basically stopped going once I moved away from home. I do have fond memories, though, of my church friends when I was a kid, and I think I learned good values there.

[REP]

26. Sufi (Dervish) is a banned sect of Islam in most of the Islamic world

A Sufi center won't do anything for other Islamic sects, many of which consider Sufis to be heretics.

[Withywindle]

30. K & R

I agree with you. You know what fuels radical extremism? Poverty, ostracism, and hate.

I'm not so naive that I think middle-class interfaith handholding is the CURE, but it sure as hell doesn't hurt.

There already are houses of worship very close to the WTC. Trinity Church, been there in some incarnation since (I think) the 1700s. Pretty sure there was already a small mosque within a couple blocks, and I think a synagogue as well. The site in question, first off, would not be a "mosque" per se, it would be a community center open to everyone--and, has already been pointed out, run by moderate Muslims and Sufis, who if anything are even more hated by the Wahhabist radicals than Westerners are. And it's two blocks away from the site? Do any of the people screaming understand how dense Lower Manhattan is? Just how many blocks away from Ground Zero do we have to declare off-limits?

It's this kind of thinking that illustrates why, almost 10 years later, the actual WTC is still a goddamn hole in the ground. That's a bigger disgrace to the memory of the fallen than a combination mosque/shooting range/flight school/abortion clinic/titty bar, IMO. What the terrorists WANTED to do is shut the busy, diverse, closely-knit, prosperous, ambitious, complex life of a great American city down. And for a few blocks for a shameful number of years, they've succeeded.

[Kalyke]

38. That was Detroit, you know.

It's been done... without national attention on any mosque.

It's been done in the research triangle in Raleigh-Durham... without national attention on any mosque.

But... this isn't a mosque. It's a community center with prayer rooms. Anyone can go and pray. I'm bettin' even agnostics can to and reflect. Even better! I bet atheists can go and be arrogant to believers (heh... that last one was a joke, but the atheists on this board are as intolerant as Robert Gibb).

[Overseas]

40. K&R! //nt

[SlipperySlope]

41. I just don't see it.

[DavidDvorkin]

43. I prefer to imagine a world in which religion has disappeared.