Josie Maran said:
No, I don't understand the reason behind the "debate". It doesn't matter if you are tolerant of all races, religions, etc or if you're a sheet wearing klansman. It doesn't matter because it is the law. We're talking about one of the fundamental rights we have as Americans. It is unfathomable to me to tell a bunch of New Yorkers that they can't build a church there. Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, it doesn't matter. I'm an atheist who has a serious distaste for all religions, but Islam to me is especially offensive. But I will gladly fight to the death to allow people to have that freedom to worship as they please.
There are tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are Muslim. Aren't they American? There are several mosques in lower Manhattan. Should they be closed?
That's the rub. People who are suggesting that a mosque cannot (or should not) be built within X-blocks or ??? from ground zero are basically saying that either:1. Muslims = Terrorists, or
2. Muslims are NOT Americans, or
3. It's okay that people who have a problem with this equate Muslims to terrorists (just because the terrorists responsible for 9/11 happened to subscribe to a radical, jihadist branch of the Islam faith), by having the rest of us validate and support/reinforce their opinions and concerns...preventing the group or activity they oppose from doing something that is well-within their legal rights under United States law.
News flash: not all Catholic priests are child molesters!
News flash: not all Germans in the 1930s-1940s were Jew-hating Nazis! Heck, how many hundreds of thousands or even millions of Jews would have self-identified as "German" in addition to being Jewish prior to Hitler and his Nazi regime coming into power?
News flash: not every toothless hillbilly in the rural South is married to their sister-aunt.
Okay, okay...just joking on that last one. However, you get the point. You can't talk about tolerance in one breath, then in the next breath be talking about "them" and "they" by lumping millions of people who happen to share the same faith into one homogeneous basket...telling "them" where "they" can and cannot build a place of worship. That's either ignorance, prejudice or racism...or direct/indirect support thereof.
Just calling it like I see it.