We Are All Muslims

Posted on | September 3, 2010 | 2 Comments

Fair warning: controversial views ahead (but when has that ever stopped me before?).

Oh, I tried. Lord knows I tried. I’ve made my feelings pretty clear on Twitter (here, here and here), but I wasn’t really planning on writing anything on this blog. And yet, now I am. Why? Because it’s the story that just won’t die, the campaign of misinformation that won’t go away, no matter how much logic and knowledge is thrown at it.

We’re a week away from the ninth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks and we’re still fighting over Ground Zero. So let’s just clear up a couple of things: the “Ground Zero mosque” isn’t a mosque and it isn’t at Ground Zero.

(And, for the record, even it the Park 51 community center did somehow manage to move a few blocks and miraculously show at Ground Zero proper, at least then something would be there, instead of a barren hole that politicians have been fighting over nearly a decade. It’s been far too long – something needs to be built there.)

But my issue isn’t with the Park 51 community center or even the lack of any progress at Ground Zero itself. No, my issue is with the community center opponents, who have deliberately engaged in spreading false information, willfully ignored facts, and stoked the flames of fear with their frightening ability to justify their own actions, while condemning the actions of others – even when there’s very little difference between the two.

Terrorism breeds on fear and ignorance: fear of the unknown, of the “other;” ignorance of the fact that we’re more alike than we are different. Throughout history, wars were successful because some people were good at whipping the people into a frenzy and getting them to turn on each other. Opponents of Park 51 think they’re doing the country a favor, when all they’re really doing is making it easier for others to tear us apart.

It is so frustrating to me to hear people – otherwise reasonable, intelligent people – fall for the tricks and gimmicks of Glen Beck or Sarah Palin. I think there was a part of me that thought we were honestly past all of the fear-mongering of the Bush-Cheney-Rove trifecta. Instead, it’s just the same message coming from someone else’s mouth.

Imagine my surprise to find out that one of the bright spots in this debate – one of the few people willing to speak up – is New York’s Mayor Bloomberg. All things considered, I’m not wild about some of his politics, but on this issue, he has been spot-on. At an annual Ramadan dinner last week in NYC, he gave a speech in which he echoed the words of Iman Rauf, one of the men sponsoring the Park 51 development:

At an interfaith memorial service for the martyred journalist Daniel Pearl, Imam Rauf said, quote, If to be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind, and soul: Shma Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu Adonai Ehad; Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one.

He then continued to say, If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one.

Mayor Bloomberg concluded his speech with a reminder that we are all more alike that maybe we realize and we all have the right to worship how and where we choose. If we continue to let fear and ignorance rule our lives, if we let our differences divide us to an irrevocable point, then the terrorists really needn’t bother with us – we seem perfectly capable of destroying ourselves if we’re not careful.

The Park 51 community center needs to be built – not because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s not really a mosque or not really at Ground Zero, but because making a decision based on fear and ignorance will only breed more fear and ignorance and will ultimately only end up hurting the very people we’re trying to help.

“Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” – Yoda (don’t laugh – he may be a 900-year-old green alien, but he knew what he was talking about)

[Photo Credit: Google Image Search]

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