@cicerone imposter,
Quote:firefly, They are not "harming their cause" in any way; only bigots and those ignorant of our Constitution see this as an issue.
I'm not so sure about that that. If presenting Islam in a better light is part of their "mission", I think they are harming their cause, because I am starting to think they have proposed a deliberately provocative type of project. For one thing, it's not just a mosque, it's a large multi-facility structure, designed to stand out in a striking way in that particular location. For another thing, one of the backers of this proposal is a Muslim leader who refuses to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization. That's why the Anti-Defamation League misguidedly jumped on the opposition bandwagon.
If they are just interested in having a mosque in that area, why don't they just help the Masjid Manhattan Mosque, which has been near the WTC site since 1970, raise the money they need to build a new mosque for an already existing, very large congregation?
I am beginning to think that there are motives, besides religious, that are influencing the people proposing this new cultural center/mosque. They could not have been stupid enough not to realize they would be throwing red meat to the Islamophobes and bigots with this idea. Could it even be they wanted to generate this controversy, to show how much Islam is hated and disrespected here--to drum up even more converts for radical Islamic causes? Propaganda production is dominating all sides of this controversy, with very little that is not disingenuous, so I'm inclined to believe almost anything.
I'm not sure that this controversy really has very much to do with freedom of religion at all.
This issue is just a political football. And no one should be duped into believing it is any more than that. The Republicans, particularly the conservative right wing, and the Tea Partiers, play the terrorist card whenever they need to rev up an electorate and get out the vote. Notice how the noise about this issue has grown louder as we swing into the primaries, which just began, and in anticipation of the November elections. 9/11 is an issue of national importance, so all this flap gets national media attention. That's why Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich threw their two cents in. And the Republican candidate for governor of N.Y. just picked up the Conservative party endorsement, and his opposition to the building of this mosque appears to be virtually his main issue.
This is about drumming up terrorist fears to get out anti-Democrat votes, not just this year, but in the next presidential election. The major group providing organized opposition to this cultural center/mosque is a political action group aligned with the Tea Party. They are going to blitz NYC subways and buses with posters which visually connect images of the burning WTC towers with Islam. They aren't connecting 9/11 to Al Qaeda, which was behind the terrorist attack, they are deliberately posting propaganda to connect 9/11 to all of Islam, to all of the Muslim world.
This is part of a political agenda that sees Obama as selling the U.S. out to the Muslim world, and catering to Muslims, and thereby undermining the security of the United States. Ironically, they also see Obama as undermining the constitution, forgetting, of course, that by opposing a mosque, they are interfering with other people's constitutional rights. These are not NYers who are truly offended by a mega mosque being constructed near Ground Zero. These political organizers don't want mosques built anywhere. These people hate Muslims, all Muslims. They also hate Obama and the Democrats, and those Republicans who won't cave in to support their issues. That's how they get a Newt Gingrich to weigh in on their side. This is all about politics and upcoming elections. This is about the Tea Party flexing its muscles.
Any sane, sensible person would realize that the 9/11 terrorists were motivated by political issues, and not religion. The attack was payback for U.S. actions against their group, and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. They weren't trying to promote Islam with that attack, they were striking back for their own grievances against the U.S.. That they happened to be Muslims, who thought that their religion somehow justified their being murderers, is almost beside the point. Their grievances, and their motivations, really were not religious.
And any sane, sensible person, realizes that a radical group of terrorists does not speak for the entire Muslim world, let alone represent the views of Muslim Americans.
But, gullible people can be led to believe that all of Islam, and not just radically motivated terrorists, is our enemy. They can also be led to believe that Obama is a Muslim, or that he is not really a citizen of the United States. When people have fears, these fears can be manipulated to get them to believe all sorts of things. And a great deal of that sort of thing is going on with the opposition to the mosque, and it is being done by an organized group like the Freedom Defense Initiative, which is tied in to the Tea Party movement. This is all about building their political base to influence upcoming elections.
These people couldn't care less about the sacred nature of Ground Zero, or the memories of the victims. If they really did, they'd be yelling about the fact that the victims' actual pulverized remains are still dumped on top of a landfill in Staten Island, rather then being interred in a cemetery or a more appropriate location. And they'd be yelling about the fact that medical benefits are still being denied to those who worked to clear the WTC site and became ill due to the toxic substances in the air. And they'd certainly be yelling about the fact that nothing is being built at Ground Zero because everyone fights over every proposal made.
The religious hook, and the memory of 9/11, are just handy ways to excite people's emotions, and convert them to the "cause". And the cause is decidedly political in terms of the organized opposition. And it may well be political factors which are motivating those who want to built the mosque as well.
The more reading I do about this situation, and I've been doing quite a bit of background reading, the less savory this whole controversy seems.
