I live on Lispenard Street just south of Canal Street in Lower Manhattan, 14 blocks north of Ground Zero. My daily life on this street and this neighborhood gives me an insight into aspects of Muslim worship in Lower Manhattan people outside of New York City may not be aware of.
From my corner I saw with my own eyes the second plane hit the South Tower. I lived downtown through the scary nights and the many rough months after September 11, and I am here to say that my whole street is a mosque. Several times a day, small groups of Muslims -- mainly African street vendors who peddle carvings or fake Vuitton bags and Rolex watches on Canal Street -- pull out prayers mats, often just rolls of cardboard they store in the nooks and crannies of the buildings around, take their shoes off in all weather, wash their feet with water from bottles, kneel towards the east and pray, 14 blocks from Ground Zero, on ground they've spontaneously "hallowed." And the only thing one can say, in the words of my late Holocaust-refugee Polish-Jewish mother, is "Only in America."
Or at least, only in New York, where these outdoors rituals take place on the street surrounded by crowds of Chinese vendors, NYPD cops, business men, rich men's children and their nannies, and busloads of women tourists from the American South who have come to buy those fake Vuitton bags from those vendors (nice Christian ladies who have no problem breaking New York City's tax laws by buying fake label merchandise). Every day I pass these men praying across the narrow street from my front door and on corners throughout Lower Manhattan. It is an example of the religious freedom and tolerance that has made this country a beacon of freedom around the world.
And so the notion of keeping a mosque from the Ground Zero area is absurd: the streets all around it are already provisional mosques, because these men need to pray somewhere. Out of necessity they put the most private religious worship into the most public and the most humble of spaces. Along with the many who perished on September 11, they too bring to mind President Abraham Lincoln's words in the Gettysburg Address that "in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract." Ground can be hallowed many different ways. This is one that I witness every day.
Politicians like President Obama should be wrapping themselves in the American Flag, waving the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights and hollering about Freedom of Religion, the Mayflower, the Founding Fathers, Ellis Island, the Land of the Free, at the top of their lungs, throwing every righteous trope in the rhetorical book of the myth of America at those who would destroy "the better angels of our nature," not getting all wimpy and conciliatory in the face of people who pander hatred and bigotry and who are cynically manipulating the strong emotions of some Ground Zero Families and using the "hallowed ground" of Lower Manhattan as this week's battering ram against America's true greatness.
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Dr. David P. Gushee: 'Ground Zero Mosque' Controversy: America's Dreyfus Affair?
Youth Radio -- Youth Media International: Ground Zero Mosque Divides Generations
Secondly since when are Constitutional rights suspended out of respect of the victims of a tragedy? So only students at Virginia Tech, or the families of the victims who died there should have a say in gun control? Perhaps only descendants of slaves should have a say in affirmative action and civil rights?
However, I also don't buy the "xenophobia" (fear of the unfamiliar, the exotic, or the other) label supporters slap on all opponents.
Many if not most Muslims in many ways hold themselves apart from the rest of American society, privately and sometimes publicly. Muslims are infamous for regarding the rest of us with disdain and disgust. We even have a Muslim label---infidel. That puts us roughly in the same category with non-human creatures. Which is not a compliment. Often (charitable term) Muslim women dress in a very different manner than other Americans. And there are other ways Muslims hold themselves apart.
So in America, it's all fine and good and legal to be so different, so apart, so cloistered from all the others....but then don't complain about being the target of xenophobia.
Can't have it both ways.
Imam Rauf seems to be interested in the same thing.
But what about Mosque and State?!
See...didn't think of that!
Nothing about church here.
Destroy the Mosque
Destroy the Temple
Destroy whatever you want,
But Do Not Destroy the Human Heart
For God lives in the Heart.
I am tired of reading holy books,
Fed up with prostrations good.
God is not in mosques or temples.
He who finds Him is enlightened!
Love springs eternal! Come!
Burn the prayer mat, break the beaker!
Quit the rosary, chuck the staff!
Lovers shout at the top of their voices:
Break all rules that tie you down!
Love springs eternal! Come!
" Dr. Muhammad al Alkhuli, a popular Islamic scholar, says: "Islam is a religion, but not in the western meaning of religion. The western connotation of the term "religion" is something between the believer and God. Islam as a religion organizes all aspects of life on both the individual and national levels. Islam organizes your relations with God, with yourself, with your children, with your relatives, with your neighbor, with your guest, and with other brethren. Islam clearly establishes your duties and rights in all those relationships. Islam establishes a clear system of worship, civil rights, laws of marriage and divorce, laws of inheritance, code of behavior, what not to drink, what to wear, and what not to wear, how to worship God, how to govern, the laws of war and peace, when to go to war, when to make peace, the law of economics, and the laws of buying and selling. Islam is a complete code of life."
It is a socio political complete system and it should not be treated like Christianity or Hinduism, where there is a clear separation of religion and state. It is a question whether it can claim first amendment?
i foolishly believed it might be open to some interpetation....
and i'm glad to see we agree that the gop cult theocracy should be outlawed
for its sick corporate statist belief system.
In a reent discussion about this issue, a friend pointed out to me that, "As Camus so forcefully wrote, the space where what we like and dislike about the world meets with the world as it presents itself to us in utter disregard to our desires, is a space that defines the absurd. It is people who must make the absurd meaningful by adapting to it. The only alternative is to remove oneself from the world."
This points to the way, in a city like New York, it is the daily necessity to adapt or at least witness difference of every kind, religious, ethnic, and economic, on the street, in the subway, that produces a complex view of the world. Somehow the city lives and lets live. Comfort and perfect agreement are not always part of the adaptation. It’s the ability to witness, disagree, and co-exist that makes it interesting. Like travel it enriches and complicates what might otherwise be the kind of simplifications that allow organizations like FOX News to thrive unchecked and prey on people’s fears.
What about the multitude of other countries of the world that practice free speech?
While I am not doubting that New York may be different than the rest of the country, I am annoyed by the amount of people that pretend like religious freedom or democracy are American phenomena. As a European, I find this very annoying, naive and condescending.
But like I said, why let facts get in the way of a good lie, right?
So, when I go to the hospital and need a spiritual moment to reflect for my sick loved one, I go to a room with pews, an altar, religious statues, candles and, possibly a priest or minister. But while it has all the trappings of a church, it is called a chapel.
I'm in the airport on sunday waiting for a flight and the PA announcer says mass will be held in Terminal B in the......chapel!
There is a legal and religious definition of what is a church, and just because a place has the accuturements of a church doesn't mean it is a church.
I'm not muslim, but i'm sure the same holds true for a mosque.
That's odd - clicked your link and it reads "The Community Center at Park 51." Yes, it contains a mosque, but it is not a mosque exclusively. Apparently, you were so busy pointing out that you felt someone else was delusional, you didn't pay attention, or are you "living in denial?"