Karen Armstrong Weighs In on the Ground Zero Mosque Debate

Reli­gious Tol­er­ance is key here, so why is the bur­den placed on the shoul­ders of Amer­i­cans to argue over.

I per­son­al­ly feel that the mosque should be built, but also that this reli­gious leader who sparked the debate be respon­si­ble for stand­ing up some alter­na­tive reli­gious sites in the Mid­dleast as a ges­ture of good will.

We have 1200 Mosques in the US already, all open for busi­ness and tak­ing wor­ship­pers. Will the Imam take his role as a per­son who wants to fos­ter under­stand­ing and build­ing trust to the next lev­el and seek out loca­tions in Iraq, Iran, Pak­istan, Kuwait, Afh­gan­istan and oth­er coun­tries and get approvals from the locals to build a few Syn­a­gogues, Catholic — Bap­tist and Chris­t­ian abroad.

If he’s will­ing to sell the idea as quid pro quo to his peers, it would be inter­est­ing to see what their reac­tions would be.

We can have the UN fund the ren­o­va­tion so noth­ing ius tied direct­ly to the US and we’re not made out to be the bad guy any­more.

Dr. Taw­fik Hamid, a one­time mem­ber of Jemaah Islamiya, an Islamist ter­ror­ist group, is a med­ical doc­tor and Mus­lim reformer liv­ing in the West, said in an April, 2007 WSJ arti­cle:

“It is vital to grasp that tra­di­tion­al and even main­stream Islam­ic teach­ing accepts and pro­motes vio­lence. Shari­ah, for exam­ple, allows apos­tates to be killed, per­mits beat­ing women to dis­ci­pline them, seeks to sub­ju­gate non-Mus­lims to Islam as dhim­mis and jus­ti­fies declar­ing war to do so. It exhorts good Mus­lims to exter­mi­nate the Jews before the “end of days.” The near deaf­en­ing silence of the Mus­lim major­i­ty against these bar­bar­ic prac­tices is evi­dence enough that there is some­thing fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong.

“The grave predica­ment we face in the Islam­ic world is the vir­tu­al lack of approved, the­o­log­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous inter­pre­ta­tions of Islam that clear­ly chal­lenge the abu­sive aspects of Shari­ah. Unlike Salafism, more lib­er­al branch­es of Islam, such as Sufism, typ­i­cal­ly do not pro­vide the essen­tial the­o­log­i­cal base to nul­li­fy the cru­el procla­ma­tions of their Salafist coun­ter­parts. …

“Well-mean­ing inter­faith dia­logues with Mus­lims have large­ly been fruit­less. Par­tic­i­pants must demand–but so far haven’t–that Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions and schol­ars specif­i­cal­ly and unam­bigu­ous­ly denounce vio­lent Salafi com­po­nents in their mosques and in the media. Mus­lims who do not vocal­ly oppose bru­tal Shari­ah decrees should not be con­sid­ered “mod­er­ates.” …

“Tol­er­ance does not mean tol­er­a­tion of atroc­i­ties under the umbrel­la of rel­a­tivism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the real­i­ty of Salafi Islam or the real­i­ty of rad­i­cal Islam will con­tin­ue to face us.”

http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009890

This is not a demon­stra­tion of reli­gious intol­er­ance; it is a dis­taste for the lack of sen­si­tiv­i­ty to Amer­i­can fam­i­lies who suf­fered tremen­dous loss­es at the hands of Mus­lim fanat­ics who act­ed in the name of Islam. Every­one agrees that the builders of the mosque have a First Amend­ment right to do so; the ques­tion is whether it is appro­pri­ate. Peo­ple of good faith can dif­fer on this ques­tion with­out the need for hurl­ing invec­tive.

Sev­er­al years ago large seg­ments of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty object­ed to nuns estab­lish­ing a place of wor­ship at Auschwitz. Those objec­tions were not based in “reli­gious intol­er­ance”. They were ground­ed in the per­ceived insen­si­tiv­i­ty of sit­u­at­ing a Chris­t­ian insti­tu­tion where so many Jews had been mur­dered at the hands of gen­tiles. Sim­i­lar­ly, to sug­gest that Amer­i­cans — who are his­tor­i­cal­ly among the most reli­gious­ly tol­er­ant peo­ple on the plan­et – are moti­vat­ed by big­otry is, to say the least, unfair.

Equal­ly unfair is the attempt to equate Chris­tians who “com­mit abhor­rent crimes” with Mus­lim ter­ror­ists. Obvi­ous­ly there are Chris­tians who com­mit crimes, but you would be hard pressed to find a hand­ful of exam­ples (if that) in recent mem­o­ry of Chris­tians tar­get­ing thou­sands of civil­ians for death mere­ly because they did not share the per­pe­tra­tors’ Chris­t­ian world­view. And just as impor­tant, if there were such crimes, they would be wide­ly and loud­ly con­demned by the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty and its lead­ers.

The Cor­do­ba peo­ple claim to be bridge builders. That is a good thing. But when they see that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber, if not a major­i­ty, of Amer­i­cans find a mosque at this loca­tion to be dis­turb­ing and insen­si­tive (irre­spec­tive of whether those feel­ings are well-found­ed), and they nev­er­the­less choose to pro­ceed, one has to ques­tion the sin­cer­i­ty of their claims of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Imag­ine how much they could do for own their cause if — just like the Church did at Auschwitz — they pro­claimed that, despite their right to build, they would relo­cate out of respect for the feel­ings of those who dis­agree.

Mike, I like what your try­ing to say but I real­ly think it is unfair and unre­al­is­tic to ask Faisal to con­vince a theoc­ra­cy like Sau­di Ara­bia to put more alter­nate reli­gious sites on their land. If you are refer­ring to most oth­er Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries then there is lit­tle prob­lem for peo­ple of oth­er faiths to prac­tice, even Iran.

I am all for reli­gious tol­er­ance. I am anar­chist and Bud­dhist. All I can under­stand from this sce­nario is that some lead­ers try to take advan­tage of the cur­rent gloomy polit­i­cal cli­mate and the rise of the far right (which is pro­mot­ed in the mass media) in order to cause more divi­sion and sec­tar­i­an­ism. It’s the well known tac­tic of divide and rule that the rul­ing class uses in order to main­tain its inter­ests. Since peo­ple will not be able to under­stand that a God does not reside in walls and our lead­ers are noth­ing more but pawns of some pow­er­ful elites, expect hatred, big­otry and all this sit­u­a­tion to go on and on.

“besides mak­ing an irra­tional emo­tion­al appeal, what pos­si­ble harm could this com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter have on the site, the city, or this coun­try? It is a build­ing that hap­pens to belong to peo­ple of the same reli­gion that these hijack­ers cor­rupt­ed to destroy that build­ing. Peo­ple lost loved ones and are not think­ing with a ratio­nal mind.” What are you, a robot? Or made of stone? With­out this irra­tional emo­tion, we would not be human. You clear­ly don’t know what a sec­ondary assault is, or maybe you do and it has turned you cold. Imag­ine lis­ten­ing to a record­ing of “I’ll be home for Christ­mas” on the emer­gency phone line air­lines tell you to call while try­ing to con­firm your only son and his wife who was sched­uled to be on that flight, you just watched DIE on t.v and pray­ing for a mir­a­cle that some­how they missed their flight and are actu­al­ly safe. You clear­ly don’t know what it feels like to walk by ground zero on your way to work every­day and feel heart wrench­ing pain when your child says “Hel­lo Mom­my & Dad­dy” every time she pass­es by. Excuse me for being irra­tional­ly emo­tion­al­ly, but I have deserved that right.

With that said irra­tional emo­tion­al rant out of the way, I do believe it in the con­sti­tu­tion and the right of the Cor­do­ba to build a mosque because as a fol­low­er of Christ, I have been taught the impor­tance of reli­gious tol­er­ance. Unir­ra­tional­ly emo­tion­al­ly speak­ing, we need to should show it to those who do not show it to us. Why? Because we need to rise ABOVE them and be the bet­ter man. (That does­n’t mean I for­give them, but it is not my duty to for­give, they will have to take that up with God).
It is easy for peo­ple to protest what they do not under­stand (build­ing of Mosques in oth­er states) “Islam is ter­ror” when do you hear POSITIVE things about Islam in the news? That is NOT my fault. I don’t cre­ate the news, I just watch it, read it, lis­ten to it and base my opin­ion on what is pre­sent­ed to me.

In con­clu­sion, Hanoch said it best: “This is not a demon­stra­tion of reli­gious intol­er­ance; it is a dis­taste for the lack of sen­si­tiv­i­ty to Amer­i­can fam­i­lies who suf­fered tremen­dous loss­es at the hands of Mus­lim fanat­ics who act­ed in the name of Islam”

10 years is not enough time to for some to heal. Give the Amer­i­can peo­ple more time. Go build your mosques some­where else, or if you are going to do it there, give us more time. A lot more time.

Just read the Con­sti­tu­tion:

“Con­gress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion, or pro­hibit­ing the free exer­cise there­of; or abridg­ing the free­dom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the peo­ple peace­ably to assem­ble, and to peti­tion the gov­ern­ment for a redress of griev­ances.”

Seems pret­ty straight for­ward to me.

It is sick…the whole thing. Allow peo­ple to grieve with­out mak­ing polit­i­cal statements.…don’t add insult to injury.

I am a Greek Chris­t­ian ortho­dox. I see the whole mat­ter in a dif­fer­ent way.
Instead of argu­ing about build­ing or not a mosque in ground zero, I would pro­pose to encour­age the build­ing of not only a mosque, but tem­ples of oth­er reli­gious too, in this very point. A World Reli­gion Cen­ter.
Ground Zero is a place where we must pray. Every­body in his own lan­guage, and in his own way. Only I wish those tem­ples should be hum­ble and grav­ing, match­ing with the rub­bles. I could not imag­ine a glo­ri­ous mosque or a glo­ri­ous church. And –why not- a cor­ner for the athe­ist. To sit and think.
The impor­tant thing is not what you do, but how you do it.
If I am well informed, much of the place is giv­en back to com­mer­cial use. THIS is most annoy­ing to me. And a cer­tain memo­r­i­al … Very prac­ti­cal. It doesn’t waist much place.