The 'Ground Zero' Mosque

I can’t speak to what it must feel like to have lost someone in the 9/11 attacks, and I don’t mean to imply that the folks who did lose family members or close associates nine years ago and who oppose the Cordoba cultural center and mosque in Lower Manhattan are wrong to feel strongly about it - I'd be surprised if they didn't have strong opinions one way or the other.

If you ask me, they're the only ones - not broadcasters, not politicians - who are entitled to expressing concern, disappointment or even anger at the thought of this moving forward.  But I disagree with them, and with the rest of the folks who think such a project shouldn’t even be considered.

• Some say they could build it somewhere else in the area, but where? How far away is far enough away?

• Some say that it won’t be long before there’s a ‘monument to the attackers’ in the mosque, but there’s no indication that’s ever going to happen.

• Some say that it’s disrespectful of Muslims to even think of praying near the former site of the WTC, but at the same time, Muslims worship daily at the Pentagon chapel, as do folks of other faiths – is that not also ‘sacred ground’?

• Some say that its disrespectful to put anything on the ‘hallowed ground’ of the WTC, but we had a competition, for heaven’s sake, to decide who gets to rebuild there, and as currently planned the former WTC area will include millions of square feet of office space, as well as parking, shopping, broadcast facilities, and so on, all folded into the tallest building in the US, a 1776 foot tower (oh the symbolism!). Is the Cordoba project in the neighborhood really more offensive than folks going shopping for a pair of Jimmy Choos or a Gucci bag where the WTC Complex was?

• The site will also include the 9/11 memorial, with the names of the victims displayed. I’m assuming (hoping?) we’re not going to edit that list to exclude the many Muslims who were employed at the WTC, passengers on the plane(s), or first responders who lost their lives alongside the other victims. Because all Muslims are bad/terrorists/anti-American. Right?

There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, over 20% of the world’s population – second only to Christianity, with around 33%. There are around 1000 members of Al Qaeda (some estimate only a few hundred), and that’s who attacked us on 9/11.

To me, fighting intolerance with intolerance lessens what we stand for, and equates us with those we wish most to be unlike. Even George W. Bush, not one of my favorites, realized back in 2001 that “the face of terror is not the real face of Islam.”

We should build the Cordoba Center.