Note: I wrote this about a month ago, but just never got around to posting it until now.
Yeah, so this whole “Ground Zero Mosque” thing has gotten out of hand, as so much seems to do these days.
Spurred on by xenophobic knuckleheads (as documented in this Salon story), Fox News and the general stupidity that's blanketed our nation since our exposure to teabaggers, what would normally be nothing more than a snooze of a construction project has suddenly become the latest shiny thing flashing insignificantly in the corner of the national eye.
First, a few facts:
- There is no “mosque.” What you have here is Park 51, a community center. It’s a Muslim version of a YMCA, only without a song they sing at wedding receptions. In this community center are classrooms, basketball courts, a pool, and, oh yeah, a prayer room. As author Charlie Pierce noted on The Stephanie Miller Show, having a prayer room no more makes this community center a mosque than having a chapel makes Boston’s Logan Airport a cathedral.
- Ground Zero, where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood, is not “sacred ground.” If it was, then a mall would be the last thing you would build there. You do not locate a Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Hot Topix or Sbarro on sacred ground, which, in what should be our eternal embarrassment, is exactly what is being built at the WTC site.
- The community center is not located at Ground Zero. It is located two blocks away, which in lower Manhattan means that no one at Park 51 can see Ground Zero, and no one at Ground Zero can see Park 51. The community center is also surrounded by sacred enterprises such as bars, fast food joints, off-track betting parlors, two strip clubs — the New York Dolls Gentleman’s Club and the Pussycat Lounge, just in case you're in the neighborhood — and Thunder Lingerie and More, a sex shop with a peep show.
Yes, indeed. Nothing says sacred like a peep show.
But the most important fact being forgotten here is this: the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not come with conditions. When it says that we are free to practice our religion without interference from the government, it means all religions. The visceral anti-Islamic behavior we’re witnessing is more than misplaced. It was not Islam that slammed two planes into the World Trade Center. It was two nuts cases and some of their nut case friends. These men no more represented Islam than Timothy McVeigh represented Christianity.
But let’s face it, those protesting Park 51 have already succeed in one very significant way. By willfully abdicating the rights granted to all of us by the U.S. Constitution, they have handed Osama Bin Laden and his followers a bigger victory than even they had hoped for on Sept. 11, 2001.
