NYC Ground Zero Mosque

[Richard]

How would you feel if a museum about the Japanese Military was being built at...say...Pearl Harbor?

There is one - I've been there and have taken my sons to see it - we built it with an impetus from the Japanese military and it's at Ford Island - the USS Arizona Memorial and the USS Missouri represent the Alpha and the Omega of our involvement with the Japanese military in WW2 - here's a few pictures to put it in perspective.

Richard's $.02

[Utah Bob]

Originally Posted by Saoirse

If a fellow Christian went out and perpetrated the crimes and horror that muslims have against Christians...I would want his/her butt punished to the fullest and would speak out against them.

Actually, in another time and another place, Christians have.

[akv]

Originally Posted by sf11b_p

In those visiting Japanese view, it's their history of Japanese victory of the attack on Pearl. It's their memorial of Japanese heroes of that attack.

I wonder how anyone could know this, or pragmatically why the Japanese who are often polite to the point of saying no with a yes, would suddenly in moment of extreme western candor reveal their actual inner thoughts to an American veteran, they just met at Pearl Harbor, while visiting Hawaii?

On the other hand, I don't know what's more troubling the fact Nanking is omitted from their history textbooks, or that American kids don't read ours?

[Paslode]

Ahhhhh.....building a Mosque on or adjacent to Ground Zero i.e. what was symbolic of the Great Satan in the West. 7 times a day insult will be added to injury for NY'ers as the pray call bellows and the Muslims will praise Allah for the initial blow to the Great Satan.

In time it will likely run a close second to Mecca in holiness.

[Gypsy]

Originally Posted by Richard

There is one - I've been there and have taken my sons to see it - we built it with an impetus from the Japanese military and it's at Ford Island - the USS Arizona Memorial and the USS Missouri represent the Alpha and the Omega of our involvement with the Japanese military in WW2 - here's a few pictures to put it in perspective.

Richard's $.02

Thanks for the pictures, Richard, at least the museum isn't within a block or two of such a hallowed area.

My perspective hasn't changed. The proposal to build a mosque so close to Ground Zero is disgusting and wrong.

At least Ford Island doesn't have to listen to any Japanese "call to prayer" 5 times per day.

[akv]

I wonder if this is how a DA feels when a murderer walks on a technicality...

NEW YORK AUGUST 3, 2010, 6:24 P.M. ET
Bloomberg on Mosque Vote

Here is the full text of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's speech following a vote that clears most major hurdles for the construction of a planned mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero:

Michael Bloomberg

"We have come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam, and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted. We've come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that, more than 250 years later, would greet millions of immigrants in the harbor, and we come here to state as strongly as ever – this is the freest City in the world. That's what makes New York special and different and strong.

"Our doors are open to everyone – everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immigrants, and it is sustained by immigrants – by people from more than a hundred different countries speaking more than two hundred different languages and professing every faith. And whether your parents were born here, or you came yesterday, you are a New Yorker.

"We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That's life and it's part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11.

"On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn't want us to enjoy the freedom to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams and to live our own lives.

"Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that, even here in a City that is rooted in Dutch tolerance, was hard-won over many years. In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in Lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue – and they were turned down.

"In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal, political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies – and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.

"In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion – and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780's – St. Peter's on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.

"This morning, the City's Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted not to extend landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building. The simple fact is this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship.

"The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right – and if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question – should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions, or favor one over another.

"The World Trade Center Site will forever hold a special place in our City, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves – and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans – if we said 'no' to a mosque in Lower Manhattan.

"Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies' hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.

"For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime – as important a test – and it is critically important that we get it right.

"On September 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked 'What God do you pray to?' 'What beliefs do you hold?'

"The attack was an act of war – and our first responders defended not only our City but also our country and our Constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights – and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.

"Of course, it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the situation – and in fact, their plan envisions reaching beyond their walls and building an interfaith community. By doing so, it is my hope that the mosque will help to bring our City even closer together and help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 were in any way consistent with Islam. Muslims are as much a part of our City and our country as the people of any faith and they are as welcome to worship in Lower Manhattan as any other group. In fact, they have been worshipping at the site for the better part of a year, as is their right.

"The local community board in Lower Manhattan voted overwhelming to support the proposal and if it moves forward, I expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire City.

"Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure – and there is no neighborhood in this City that is off limits to God's love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us today can attest."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000..._wsj#printMode

[Peregrino]

$100,000,000.00 buys a lot of "tolerance".

[Paslode]

Originally Posted by Peregrino

$100,000,000.00 buys a lot of "tolerance".

Yes it does, especially from political whores and profiteers. But buyers remorse will sit in sooner or later and when it does it will be a very rude awakening.

[TOMAHAWK9521]

I really wanted to visit the Arizona during my one trip to Hawaii back in '95 but was denied because Slick Willy shut down our national parks. Dammit!

As for the mosque disgrace, looks like I'll have to hot-foot it over to Ground Zero before the desecration begins.

Here's a silly idea: IOT build this mosque, the WTC must be rebuilt before any work on the mosque can begin. Let's see how tolerant the muslim world is with that decision.

[mark46th]

That mosque is akin to a dog pissing on a tree to mark it's turf. Islam is marking America and laughing about it, right in our faces....

[T-Rock]

As you know, we are front and center in this challenge. We represent Tim Brown, a decorated NYC firefighter - a first responder who survived the 9-11 attacks but watched 100 friends perish. At the same time, we are representing thousands of you who have signed on to our Committee to Stop the Ground Zero Mosque.

The actions taken by the city clearly represent a blatant disregard for the city's own procedures, while ignoring the fact that this is a historic and hallowed site that should not be destroyed to build an Islamic mosque.

It has been clear from the beginning that the city has engaged in a rush to push this project through - ignoring proper procedure and ignoring a growing number of New Yorkers and Americans who don't believe this site is the place to build a mosque. We're poised to file legal action on behalf of our client to challenge this flawed decision and put a stop to this project.

> http://www.aclj.org/TrialNotebook/Read.aspx?ID=982

The petition > https://www.aclj.org/Petition/Default.aspx?sc=3612&ac=1

[Thomas Paine]

OPINION
AUGUST 4, 2010
Liberal Piety and the Memory of 9/11
The enlightened class can't understand why the public is uneasy about the Ground Zero mosque.
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

Americans may have lacked for much in the course of their history, but never instruction in social values. The question today is whether Americans of any era have ever confronted the bombardment of hectoring and sermonizing now directed at those whose views are deemed insufficiently enlightened—an offense regularly followed by accusations that the offenders have violated the most sacred principles of our democracy.

It doesn't take a lot to become the target of such a charge. There is no mistaking the beliefs on display in these accusations, most recently in regard to the mosque about to be erected 600 feet from Ground Zero. Which is that without the civilizing dictates of their superiors in government, ordinary Americans are lost to reason and decency. They are the kind of people who—as a recent presidential candidate put it—cling to their guns and their religion.

There is no better exemplar of that faith than New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, though in this he is hardly alone. Compared with the Obama White House, Mr. Bloomberg is a piker in the preachments and zealotry department. Still, no voice brings home more unforgettably the attitudes that speak for today's enlightened and progressive class.

When a car bomb was discovered in Times Square in May, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested every possible motivation but the obvious and correct one: Islamist terror.

Immediately after the suspect in the attempted car bombing near Times Square was revealed to be Faisal Shahzad, of Pakistani origin, Mayor Bloomberg addressed the public. In admonishing tones—a Bloomberg trademark invariably suggestive of a school principal who knows exactly what to expect of the incorrigibles it is his unhappy fate to oversee—the mayor delivered a warning. There would be no toleration of "any bias or backlash against Pakistani or Muslim New Yorkers."

That there has been a conspicuous lack of any such behavior on the part of New Yorkers or Americans elsewhere from the 9/11 attacks to the present seems not to have impressed Mr. Bloomberg. Nor has it caused any moderation in the unvarying note of indignation the mayor brings to these warnings. It's reasonable to raise a proper caution. It's quite something else to do it as though addressing a suspect rabble.

It's hard to know the sort of rabble the mayor had in mind when he told a television interviewer, prior to Shahzad's identification, that it "could be anything," someone mentally disturbed, or "somebody with a political agenda who doesn't like the health-care bill." Nowhere in the range of colorful possibilities the mayor raised was there any mention of the most likely explanation—another terrorist attempt by a soldier of radical Islam, the one that occurred to virtually every American who had heard the reports.

The citizens were, of course, right. Those leaders bent on dissuading them from their grasp of the probable cause of this near disaster were left with their red herrings hanging—but remembered. Mr. Bloomberg's "someone who doesn't like the health-care bill" would be inscribed in the golden book of howlers these events have yielded, along with Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano's brisk assurance there was no evidence this was anything but "a one-off."

The notion that it is for the greater good that the people be led to suspect virtually any cause but the one they had the most reason to fear reflects a contempt for the citizenry that's of longstanding, but never so blatant as today. It is in the interest of higher values, Americans understand—higher, that is, than theirs—that they are now expected to accept official efforts to becloud reality.

Such values were the rationale for the official will to ignore the highly suspicious behavior of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who went on to murder 13 Americans at Fort Hood. A silence maintained despite all his commanders and colleagues knew about his raging hostility to the U.S. military and his strident advocacy on behalf of political Islam.

Those who knew—and they were many—chose silence out of fear of seeming insensitive to a Muslim. As one who had said nothing in the interest of this higher good later explained, Maj. Hasan was, after all, one of the few top-ranking Muslim officers the army had.

In the plan for an Islamic center and mosque some 15 stories high to be built near Ground Zero, the full force of politically correct piety is on display along with the usual unyielding assault on all dissenters. The project has aroused intense opposition from New Yorkers and Americans across the country. It has also elicited remarkable streams of oratory from New York's political leaders, including Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

"What are we all about if not religious freedom?" a fiery Mr. Cuomo asked early in this drama. Mr. Cuomo, running for governor, has since had less to say.

The same cannot be said for Mr. Bloomberg, who has gone on to deliver regular meditations on the need to support the mosque, and on the iniquity of its opponents. In the course of a speech at Dartmouth on July 16 he raised the matter unasked, and held forth on his contempt for those who opposed the project and even wanted to investigate the funding: "I just think it's the most outrageous thing anybody could suggest." Ground Zero is a "very appropriate place'' for a mosque, the mayor announced, because it "tells the world" that in America, we have freedom of religion for everybody.

Here was an idea we have been hearing more and more of lately—the need to show the world America's devotion to democracy and justice, also cited by the administration as a reason to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City. Who is it, we can only wonder, that requires these proofs? What occasions these regular brayings on the need to show the world the United States is a free nation?

It's unlikely that the preachments now directed at opponents of the project by Mayor Bloomberg and others will persuade that opposition. Those fighting the building recognize full well the deliberate obtuseness of Mr. Bloomberg's exhortations, and those of Mr. Cuomo and others: the resort to pious battle cries, the claim that antagonists of the plan stand against religious freedom. They note, especially, the refusal to confront the obvious question posed by this proposed center towering over the ruins of 9/11.

It is a question most ordinary Americans, as usual, have no trouble defining. Namely, how is it that the planners, who have presented this effort as a grand design for the advancement of healing and interfaith understanding, have refused all consideration of the impact such a center will have near Ground Zero? Why have they insisted, despite intense resistance, on making the center an assertive presence in this place of haunted memory? It is an insistence that calls to mind the Flying Imams, whose ostentatious prayers—apparently designed to call attention to themselves on a U.S. Airways flight to Phoenix in November 2006—ended in a lawsuit. The imams sued. The airlines paid.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser—devout Muslim, physician, former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy—says there is every reason to investigate the center's funding under the circumstances. Of the mosque so near the site of the 9/11 attacks, he notes "It will certainly be seen as a victory for political Islam."

The center may be built where planned. But it will not go easy or without consequence to the politicians intent on jamming the project down the public throat, in the name of principle. Liberal piety may have met its match in the raw memory of 9/11, and in citizens who have come to know pure demagoguery when they hear it. They have had, of late, plenty of practice.

Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

LINK:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...266158170.html

[Guy]

Originally Posted by Peregrino

$100,000,000.00 buys a lot of "tolerance".

The cost will be substantially higher than $100mil....

Stay safe.

[Richard]

If a fellow Christian went out and perpetrated the crimes and horror that muslims have against Christians...I would want his/her butt punished to the fullest and would speak out against them.

Actually, in another time and another place, Christians have.

History can be a rather disquieting voice if one takes the time to listen to it. Religious conflict with Christianity hasn't just been with Islam - take early Christianity vs Mithraism*, for example.

An angry crowd had burst into a building that many other Romans venerated as a sacred place of worship; wielding axes, the invaders hacked gaping holes in wall paintings, smashed sculptured images, and covered the floors with piles of garbage. Now, having desecrated the building, they began to wreck it, leaving it in rubble behind them.

The incident was neither unique nor even rare in late 4th Century Rome because violence in such places was becoming common at that time - but what might surprise many here today was that the angry mob consisted of followers of the Prince of Peace. They were early Christians, and savagery of the kind they had displayed seemed to them necessary because this temple on Rome’s Aventine Hill posed a real threat to their faith. The building had been a Mithraeum – the Latin name for a place where devotees worshiped the god Mithras. Mithraism was only one of several religions that rivaled early Christianity in the centuries when Rome’s old gods were losing ground, but it was the most powerful of the rivals and the early Christians felt that they had good cause to loathe it. Dating from around the 15th Century BCE, Mithraism emerged in ancient Persia (present day Iran). Mihr (the Persian form of Mithras) was the word not only for the sun but also for a friend; and that seems to be how this pagan god was originally worshiped – as both supreme sun god and god of love. There was, however, a slow shift in emphasis from a belief in the spiritual power of the god to a reliance on his physical power. By the beginning of thee 3rd Century BCE, the militaristic rulers in western outposts of what had been the Persian empire were venerating Mithras as a divine warrior, no longer a loving sun god but the unconquerable god of soldiers and friend of power. The kings of Pontus in Asia Minor even assumed the name Mithridates (the god’s ‘chosen ones’), claiming that Mithras had cast his divine light upon them.

It is thought that it was troops of one such chosen Mithridate who brought this form of Mithraism into Europe sometime early in the 1st Century BCE. By the start of the 2nd Century CE the faith was spreading all through the Roman empire, and it had a special appeal for a number of social groups and peoples. Soldiers, sailors, merchants, slaves – men uprooted from their homes and kin – found comfort in a belief that offered them the protection of a god of power, whose sanctuaries were often located in caves to symbolize his closeness to the earth, yet whose mysterious rites also identified him with the known elements of fire and water. The sun-worshiping Celts of Gaul and Britain latched on readily to worship of this new sun god. Warlike barbarians and proud Romans alike flocked to a god who promised, above all else, victory in battle. Accordingly, caves and temples were dedicated to his worship everywhere along the guarded outposts of the Roman Empire. Near the end of the 2nd Century CE, several Roman emperors actively encouraged the worship of Mithras - but this was not merely a matter of religious conviction for Rome’s emperors as they quickly realized that it was in their interest as it preached discipline, loyalty, bravery, and self-sacrifice – the very qualities that made and kept the imperial Roman army so effective a military force for so long.

Backed by imperial approval, the faith became so widespread that a number of historians believe that – without the rise of Christianity – it would have become the Western world’s religion. So it is hardly surprising that the early Christians felt they had no choice but to fight it with every weapon at their command.

Yet there were some striking similarities between the beliefs and rituals of the rival faiths. Like Christians, the Mithraists believed that their savior had descended from heaven to Earth; had shared a last supper with 12 followers; had redeemed mankind from sin by shedding blood; and had risen from the dead. They even baptized their converts to wash away past sins. So there was a strong conviction among believers in Christianity that Mithras was the Antichrist, a demon who had visited Earth before Christ to discredit him at his coming.

For refusing to venerate the emperor as a god, early Christians were treated as second-rate citizens within the Roman empire, persecuted at the whim of hostile mobs and emperors. Then, quite suddenly, the tables were turned when Constantine accepted Christianity and it became the official religion of the empire in the 4th Century CE. Thereafter, the altars of the pagan god were destroyed and all traces of the rival religion obliterated.

What we know about Mithraism today comes from archaeological findings and casual references in ancient writings, such as those of the Persians who worshiped Mithras in one form or another until the rise of Islam some 12 centuries ago. Archaeologists have also discovered that after the Aventine Hill Mithraeum was destroyed, the Christians built a basilica upon the site (Santa Prisca http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Prisca - and yet another was the Basilica San Clemente http://www.basilicasanclemente.com/). Sound familiar? Anybody ever attended a service at another former Mithraeum - the Pantheon?

Has anyone ever wondered how Christmas came about? That one is another Christianity vs Mithraism fight for theological dominance as recorded in History...and which the Christians won...for the time being.

However - converting an existing structure to a Mosque so near the site of the former WTC is in extremely poor taste IMO, and, much like the Carmelite convent located at KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, shows how little sound judgment and cultural sensitivity to such matters can be found amongst most any culture.

And so it goes...

Richard

* Jane Polley, ed. Quest for the Past, pp.172-174.

[Saoirse]

Bob and Sir Richard,

with all due respect I was speaking of the hear and now when I made that comment regarding a fellow Christian. If Christians were burning down mosques, murdering muslims in coldblood, stealing from them, taxing them, treating them like slaves...I would speak out against it. However, as we know, that is not the case in the here and now. When a Christian murders an abortion doctor (I am anti-abortion), that man is a POS and should be tried and punished!

I am fully aware of a lot of the atrocities committed by Christians. It saddens me that we have such a history but I am not afraid to speak out against it and condemn it.
Have a super day!
Saoirse