Protest & March to Support Islamic Cultural Center

At the invitation of Miriam R., one of my former fiction students, I joined her and a friend of hers at the rally, at City Hall Park yesterday, on behalf of the Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center, which originally had merited little commentary or negative reponses, until blogger Pamela Geller, disgraced former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, fanatical talkshow host Sean Hannity, and others demagogued the issue, mischaracterizing both the center (which is not a mosque, or masjid) and its location (not at Ground Zero, the former World Trade Center site, under which I passed at least 2-3 days every week this summer on my way to the 4, 5 or 6 trains and thus the New York Public Library's Research Branch at Bryant Park, but two blocks away on Park Place), thereby provoking a racist, anti-Muslim furor that has not yet fully waned. Believing strongly in the principles of religious freedom, free speech, and separation of church and state, I decided to commemorate 9/11 by attending the rally, which was only a block north of the memorial for the victims but several blocks away from the anti-Islamic Center protests, and am posting a few of the photos from it and from my post-rally gambol around the area with Miriam below.


The Park 51 site

A 9/11 truther, just outside Ground Zero

At the rally, before the march

A veteran, supporting the Islamic Cultural Center

People raising placards and signs as an anti-Islamic van drove by

A reporter waiting to deliver her remarks

Reporters from a Japanese news crew

Marching

A fashion-forward photographer

Young man being told by cops he must take a different route

The media

Some people after the march, gathering on the State Court House steps, at Foley Square

A friendly young Christianist we encountered after the march

A Christianist with hateful sign

It's Spelled M-O-S-Q-U-E

Here's a fun little site I learned about today. It's called Openbook. It sort of allows you to have a gander around Facebook by searching for any particular word(s) that you'd like. Granted, it is only able to search those Facebook profiles where the people have not set their privacy settings in a way that would not able their profile to be searched. And folks that don't care about their privacy settings really don't care about their privacy. That means that they'll post just about whatever. And whatever do they post.

I read somewhere on the Internets that getting a glimmer of how people on Facebook feel about the mosque that may be built by Ground Zero is an amusing way to pass some time. Simply type "mosk" into the search box on Openbook and read the results that come up. So I did. I also searched for variations on that them. That is, the misspelling of mosque. Let's look at the results, shall we? You're probably going to have to click on the images to make them bigger. Blogger has it's limits and apparently making screen captures from Openbook able to be read is one of them.

Let's see...Oh, from Alexis. "Obama isn't Muslim. Even if he was, that shouldn't matter anyway. The rednecks need to get over themselves. And btw, I'm for the mosk near Ground Zero. The Muslims didn't do crap to WTC families, it was the Taliban. Get your facts straight!"

Well, she's close. Taliban...al Qaeda...close enough. She is right, however, that President Barry is not a Muslim. She's also right that folks should get their facts straight. See the Taliban reference. Moving on, to Brad's words of wisdom. "OK, this whole moske thing and yes I know I spelled it wrong but I dont care. Yes they do have every legal righ to build it on ground zero but its quite unethical to do it. You wouldnt see us building a church on heroshema or auswitz. And I am sick of hearing about it."

You tell 'em, Brad! Good points bringing up heroshema and auswitz, too! Hard to argue with that (but that's only because I don't know what the heck he's talking about). Next up is Landis who says: "Ground zero might be at risk cuz they want to build a mossque thats a memerial for those who died if u care about those ppl who lost there lives respost this".

She's awfully confused in several aspects. Spelling and punctuation being only a couple of them. How is Ground Zero at risk if the mossque gets built? Does that mean that the World Trade Center buildings will magically reappear? I don't think that's what it means. Then again, I don't know that she is really all that sure what it means either. (The scary part was that it sounded like she was actually trying to explain it to people) But maybe Nancy knows what she means. Let's see...hmm...it reads: "jonmanncnn jonathan mann developing story from irak war their legancy is islam and the builing of moske on ground zero. Anna coren reporting".

Then again, maybe she doesn't. Really? We've been in Iraq for years now. You still don't know how to spell it? And what in the world is a legancy? Never mind. I don't want to know. Kind of in the same way I don't want to know much more about Peggy's point of view, expressed as "their building a mosk for arabs over ground 0...ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!!?!?"

I'd like to know why she had all of the time for the abundance of exclamation points and question marks, but couldn't find the time to type out the word zero. I wonder if she would express the same disbelief if someone told her that it's they're, mosque and Arabs. Perhaps. Actually, I'm guessing she would. But she's not alone in thinking that the mosque would go right on top of Ground Zero. Russ thinks the same thing and says, "I vote to kick our current president out of office solely on the basis of him wanting to put a moske right where the twin towers used to be.! I mean... WHAT AN IGNORAMIS!!!"

Yes. What an ignoramus, indeed. Speaking of those who might be an ignoramus, Stephen enlightens all of us with this nugget of knowledge: "Oh, you Angelenos with your Emmys and your Glees, what about the MOSK?"

Who should break it to him that Glee isn't an award? Or that Emmy isn't a show? I just know that I can't do it. Nor can I take much more of this. One more. Let's hit 'er, home, William! "Well I agree with the Presadent, Musslems shude be alwoed to build a Mossk near ground zero. To denie them that constitunel right, would make us no beter then the people who attaked us in the first place. besides last time I checked it was alkida that attacked us not Islam".

Typing that out made my head hurt. I'm going to look into who this alkida person is. Sounds like one of Superman's enemies. Alkida from the planet Mossk. Keep your eye out for 'em. And keep your eye out for these folks, too. They're clearly not well.

The Mosque Mess

I'm going to try my best to delve into this whole "should they build a mosque at Ground Zero" debate that seems to be going on. I'm not so sure how well I'm going to do with this, as it doesn't seem to be that difficult of a concept to wrap my head around. When something is that easy for me to understand, I always feel like I must be missing something. Yet, folks are all up in arms about it, and understandably so. Let's see what all the hubbub is about, shall we?

According to the Boston Herald, "A controversial mosque and Islamic center to be built some 600 feet from Ground Zero cleared its last legal hurdle this week, winning approval from New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission." That's right. A group of folks headed by a one Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (pronounce any of those however you'd like) want to build a mosque a couple of blocks from where the World Trade Center used to stand and where almost three thousand people were killed as the result of "...the actions of a group of Islamic radicals.". As you can imagine, that idea isn't setting very well with folks.

People are upset. People want to prevent them from building a mosque there, saying that it's disrespectful, it's awful, etc. And they're right. It would appear to be all of those things and a whole hell of a lot more. But here's the thing: No matter how much we don't like it, there isn't anything we can do about it to prevent it from being built.

That whole First Amendment, you know, the one that makes this country freaking awesome? Yeah, that thing is exactly why nothing can be done and it's probably why nothing should be done. The First Amendment, for those who might be a little fuzzy on the text, reads "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." You can't just ignore that.

I wish that, instead of focusing on how much people dislike and abhor this idea, people would focus more on things like why in the world is it being built there of all freaking places? Yeah, yeah, I know that they have the land and that land in Manhattan is rather difficult to come by. I get that. That doesn't make it any more palatable. And it certainly doesn't make it any more justifiable.

Apparently, this project has a web site that the Boston Herald inexplicably does not link to. Oh, that's right. The media sucks. I forgot. But they do say "The Web site for the $100 million project says all the right things about its aims at bringing people of different faiths together and about honoring the memory of 9/11 victims." Hmm. Tell you what, mosque guys. How about you let us decide when we'd like to be brought together, OK? How about you help us honor the memory of the 09/11 victims by not building a mosque a couple of blocks away? How about that? I can't see how something this disrespectful is going to do anything other than strain relations between folks of different faiths. (And by "between folks of different faiths" I mean the mosque-goers and the non-mosque goers.)

I'm guessing because it doesn't have anything to do with any of that flowery crap that he was spouting. See, "He has repeatedly refused to disclose who is putting up the money for the project, although he told an Arab-language newspaper that such funding would come from the Middle East." Why wouldn't you disclose that, dude? Why the secrets? You expect people to be perfectly OK with this and not ask you questions? You expect people are going to be perfectly OK with this when you refuse to answer their questions about funding? This can't be good.

Obviously, this is just a kick in the head of the American people. They could build this thing anywhere they wanted to, but they're not. And I think that they're not because it's their way of letting us know that they're here and they're not going away. And as the United States, we have to allow that, as that is what our Constitution guides us to do. Now, I keep hearing the argument or the point or whatever they want to call it about Pearl Harbor. Basically, would we have let the Japanese build some sort of Shinto shrine or temple next to the USS Arizona? It kind of sounds valid, but I don't think that it really is when the context of how it's being argued is used.

See, the Japanese would not have built a temple next to the USS Arizona. You know why not? Because we kicked their ass, that is correct. We not only kicked their ass, we obliterated it. Twice. We haven't kicked anyone's ass in retaliation for 09/11. Oh, sure. We invaded a country that had nothing to do with it and deposed of their dictator who was eventually executed. We've been traipsing around the God-forsaken rocks of Afghanistan for a while without a lot of success. (But that's only because success hasn't been defined yet. As soon as it's defined, I'm sure that we'll have fallen incredibly short. But until then, we'll just stay vague about the degree of success which we may or may not have achieved.)

If someone's ass had been kicked over 09/11, you can bet that there wouldn't be any mosque building going on that close to Ground Zero. They're doing it simply because they can and, more importantly, because they want to. They want to appear the martyr in this situation. They want to have rationale for all of their twisted logic under Islamic law and Sharia law. And since we operate under our Constitution, we have to allow them to do so.

I don't know what would be better; to civilly protest this thing or to stay quiet about this thing. Legally, nothing can be done and nothing should be done. Legal action for something like this would point the country in a direction that I'm not so sure you really want it to go in. In fact, I'm positive you don't. But would a lack of attention be better in this case? I don't know. I just know that people need to take their emotions out of the issue. I realize that is damn near impossible for some. But we can't go around making decisions based on feelings. (Look at California's freaking financial situation. The state is swimming in expensive "feel good" programs. It doesn't work to legislate with feelings.) That just doesn't work.