I'm sure everyone has heard recently that there is the possibility of a mosque being built in NYC. Actually, it is a community center, which will include a mosque. The community center will be built two blocks from ground zero (not AT ground zero as many seem to think). This mosque (one of 100+ in the city for 1 MILLION Muslim worshippers) has garnered so much attention, and people are just crawling all over each other to fan the flames of what has turned into a very ugly debate....what IS and ISN'T "American". It's absurd. Someone please explain to me how it is "unamerican" to build a mosque in NEW YORK CITY. There's a mosque in the Pentagon! Please tell me how a community center will be "assisting terrorism" only because of it's location in proximity to ground zero?? St. Peters Church and the Museum of Jewish Heritage are actually closer to ground zero. If being defined as an American means punishing (and I don't mean that not building the mosque will be punishment, I mean the spewing of all of this hate that is currently happening) blameless Muslims for 9/11....then count me out. How can we justify being so blatantly discriminatory? Isn't that, in itself, unamerican? There is certainly NO shortage of religious extremists, but surely we can see them for what they are...deluded individuals, and not representative of the whole.
I would like to think that being American means acceptance (or at least tolerance!) of individual differences, and that everyone here who goes to school with us, works with, serves with us....is also an American, and equally entitled to their personal freedoms. The thing is, that doesn't seem to be the way that it works. I'm ashamed of the media for pegging this as the "ground zero mosque". I'm ashamed of the masses of uneducated, self appointed experts that spout off fallacies and perpetuate hate (hellooo Glen)....are these the true "Americans"?