Who has not heard all the controversy about building a Mosque within a few blocks of ‘Ground Zero’, the site of the World Trade Center attacks. Even the President has gotten himself in hot water over this issue, and the media is full of opinions both pro and con.
In this unsavory stew of huffing and puffing politicians, pundits opining, and media reporting about how ‘het up’ people have become emotionally about this issue, there are a few facts that are worth considering.
To begin, the proposed Mosque would be built two city blocks away from the WTC property line, and over five blocks away from the site of the North Tower, which was the closer of the two towers to the proposed mosque site. If the former WTC site is to be treated as ‘hallowed ground’, then what is the area a few blocks around the site, but not on the site itself to be treated as? ‘Semi-hallowed’ ground? Hallowed ground ‘buffer zone? ‘zone of respect’ for the hallowed ground? Or what?
How far away does this almost-but-not-quite-hallowed-ground zone extend? Two blocks? Five blocks? How far? Who is going to decide that question and how are they going to decide it? Is their decision going to be enforced in zoning laws, which is normally how these things are done?
There are many, many other buildings in this zone besides this one (we are talking about Manhattan here). So in creating this ‘good taste no one gets offended’ buffer zone, what else is going to be excluded from being there? Would a synagogue be OK? How about an Episcopal church? How about a Baptist Church? How about a Bahá'í temple? Is this to be a 'religion free zone' (hmm, I'm pretty sure that's not legal) or just a 'Moslem free' zone (pretty sure that isn't legal either)?
Two more things. At the site of the proposed new mosque, located and 45-51 Park Place, there is currently a building formerly occupied by a Burlington Coat Factory retail store that is—and has been for some time—now being used as a house of worship by Muslim. The reason they are using that facility is because their main house of worship, the al-Farah mosque is sometimes too crowded and so they use the old Burlington Coat Factory store as spillover space.
The al-Farah mosque is located at 245 West Broadway, around twelve blocks from the Ground Zero property. Coincidentally, there is also another mosque, the Manhattan Mosque that is located only five blocks away from Ground Zero.
What do Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Rick Scott, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity and the rest who are fulminating and foaming at the mouth about the project to build this new mosque want to do about this really, besides cynically cater to the xenophobic persons among their ‘base’?
I mean, seriously, practically, and respecting the United States constitution and having some semblance of staying within the law : what do they want to do exactly? What about the mosques and Muslims that are already there and were there even before 9/11?
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