I've never told this story. I don't mean publicly, I mean "never." Not to anyone. I just figured it was something for the moment, and that the moment would pass. Unfortunately, it's now clear, that the moment didn't pass.
Immediately after 9/11, there was a growing hate by some in America towards all Muslims. Never mind that they were Americans, too, never mind that they were as angered at the carnage, never mind that they also may have lost love ones. If you practiced the Muslim faith, if you simply wore a burka, if you even "looked" Middle Eastern, it was a frightening and dangerous time in America because your personal religion was the same as some radical terrorists.
Yet America has always been a nation that supports those in need. On the Statue of Liberty, Americans burst with pride at the words, "Give me your tired, your poor." Send your homeless to us, it sings. Send them. It's who we are.
That's why a few days later I found a mosque and asked would they mind if I sat in on one of their services. Americans living by their constitutional right of religious freedom - why America was founded - should know that there were non-Muslims who didn't hate them for merely having a different faith.
There was time to return home and change clothes since I was in shorts, inappropriate for a religious service. No, no, no, she insisted, you can come like that. I got the sense she didn't want me to leave, unsure if I'd come back.
The service was a memorial for someone who had died on 9/11. The words weren't in my language, yet it was painfully clear that everyone in that room was distraught that radical zealots had attacked the U.S., had killed 3,000 people and that one of their own had died. Distraught even more, I suspect, because these zealots had shamed the name of their own faith. As the service ended, cake and juice were passed around the seats - to me, as well. And when people mingled afterwards to mourn, I was included, too. All day, though they were under attack by others, I was warmly embraced.
I tell this story for only one reason - because I shouldn't have to. Nine years later, hatred towards anything connected to the Muslim faith - including Americans - is a shameful stain on what America is about.
Most Americans will tell you they believe in freedom of speech, that it's the heart of how they view being American. Freedom of religion, too. But it can be a tricky thing: saying what you believe and acting that way are two different things.
Backing things you agree with, after all, that's easy. Defending people's right to say what makes your skin crawl, however, that's when you show whether you actually support freedom of speech. Accepting someone's right to follow their personal faith no matter how gallingly wrong you think it is, that's freedom of religion. Anything less is not freedom.
Anything less is intolerance. Anything less is going against the core American tenets of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. You must allow others their constitutional right, no matter how much it aggrieves you. Must. There's no wiggle room.
Putting a Muslim community center two blocks from Ground Zero is understandably painful to many. Yet to many others, it's an important sign of the very freedom and greatness that America stands for, which has always been our most powerful beacon to the world.
Nonetheless, all that is secondary. You see, since this controversy is over something that is not a mosque, that can't be seen from Ground Zero, that has another center already there, it goes to demonstrate that this is all and only about intolerance, fear, hatred and bigotry. Not "sensitivity."
Make no mistake, this hatred towards Muslims is nothing new. It is a cycle that goes on and on by the small-minded. There have long been vocal minorities of the United States who gain strength by demonizing those who are different, who they fear.
Black people were less-than human and enslaved. And lynched.
Japanese-Americans couldn't be trusted and were put in internment camps.
Hispanics might be illegal and should be deported.
Muslims are terrorists and must be banned.
On and on it goes. By the small segment of the intolerant, the fearful, the hate-filled, the bigots.
(And amidst this hatred of others who are different and can't be trusted, Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, Joseph Stack flew a plane into the Austin IRS, and James von Brunn shot up the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Yet not one of them was Black, Japanese-American, Hispanic or Muslim.)
Of course, time was when Irish immigrants were disdained. And Italians off the boat, too. And Puerto Ricans, Jews, Poles and Chinese. Their ancestors all remember. Drunks, gangsters, dirty, greedy, stupid, Yellow Peril immigrants. Who couldn't be trusted. Who each threatened Our Way of Life.
What is most notable is that this unrelenting, intolerant hatred of others who are different is not only so profoundly against the core of America, but so deeply against the best of the nation's interests.
In his famous biography, Theodore Rex, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edmund Morris quotes a letter that President Theodore Roosevelt wrote over 100 years ago, in 1905, after Japan had defeated Russia in an expansionist war in the Far East. Roosevelt was concerned about protecting U.S. defenses in Hawaii.
"If we show that we regard the Japanese as an inferior and alien race," Roosevelt wrote, "and try to treat them as we have treated the Chinese, and if at the same time we fail to keep our navy at the highest point of efficiency and size - then we shall invite disaster."
And so, unheeded, that disaster happened. Because 36 years later, Japan attacked the exact defensive location Roosevelt warned of: Pearl Harbor.
The history and danger of intolerance goes deeper. Author Morris writes that what prompted Roosevelt's 1905 letter was "anger and embarrassment over an upsurge of anti-Japanese prejudice in California. Members of the state legislature had officially declared all immigrants from Japan to be 'immoral, intemperate, [and] quarrelsome.'"
And 37 later, in perhaps America's greatest shame, nearly 120,000 Japanese-American citizens out of fear and ignorant hatred were imprisoned in internment camps.
Be very clear: this empty outage against Muslim Americans is not about Americans who believe in the Muslim faith. It is about the people with their empty outrage. Because they are the people who are intolerant, or fearful, or hate-filled or bigots who always show up throughout history and weaken America by their small-minded actions. Time and time and time again.
This manufactured controversy is not about whether a community center or mosque or anything is built anywhere in America, or if it's insensitive or should be located elsewhere, because such outraged people are never satisfied until their own intolerance, fear, hate or bigotry is satisfied. But such things are rarely satisfied, because they feed on themselves.
That's what this is about. Them. The small people. But America is bigger than that. That's why America, in the end, has always supported, embraced, protected and sat with those very people who need it.
When we accept differences, no matter how awkward or even painful they may seem, not only does that always, in the end, help us, but -
That is who America is.
As an American/Australian, now living in Melbourne, I find my interest in American politics has declined by about 75% since this unfortunate state of affairs. There's still Rachel & Keith & the Huffington Post, but geez - it really is slipping away!
Good luck - you're going to need it!
We live in a society where if we include the maximum # of people in it and work together we can do much more than if we emphasize our differences and compete or fight against each other.
Look how Yugoslavia was the economic powerhouse of communism but became a slaughter ground when they stopped working together and let ethnic and religious hatred to come to the fore.
For 'poltical', read political. For 'chalpioning' read championing, for 'better-iff' read better-off. Sorry for posting the errors.
Make no mistake, the fear of the Other lurks in many souls all the time. It's one of the things the Founders knew when they protected us from the tyranny of the majority with the Bill of Rights. It just needs the right primer. So we will not get far by blaming the small-minded, for they are always with us. Who is to blame for this is those who have the most to gain - politicians, religious leaders, pundits. Follow the money and power. Always.
On 9/11, I hoped America would put on its best garments and stop to think, "What would make someone hate the anonymous America so much that they would do this, destroying their own lives in the process?" We never asked that question of ourselves; we just grabbed our guns. In the answer to that question lies the answer to what we should do when provoked, or when we face a choice between wealth and human rights.
Now, a new generation of young Muslim men, already facing a struggle of discrimination endured by all immigrants, more so those with brown skin and different beliefs, are learning what it really means to be American and how hollow the writing is at Liberty's feet.
Shame on us. We reap what we sow.
One hate-filled bigot showed-up in the 7th century and proclaimed himself, "final prophet." Here's Allahs commitment to ecumenicsm.
Qur'an 008.012
YUSUFALI: Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): "I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them."
PICKTHAL: When thy Lord inspired the angels, (saying): I am with you. So make those who believe stand firm. I will throw fear into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Then smite the necks and smite of them each finger.
SHAKIR: When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/””
Japanese-Americans couldn't be trusted and were put in internment camps.
Hispanics might be illegal and should be deported.
Muslims are terrorists and must be banned.
On and on it goes. By the small segment of the intolerant, the fearful, the hate-filled, the bigots."
This conclusion though attractive, is far-fetched.
Black people were, for much of our history, sincerely believed by the majority here to be unequal to whites and incapable of devloping themselves to a condition of equality, as they were thought to be existentially inferior, and competently capable of no work beyond manual labor.
At the beginning of WWII, the majority of Americans did not trust Japanese-Americans, and felt that putting them in camps was prudent and necessary to public safety. Hence, no loud public outcry when they were interned.
During the Depression, Mexican-Americans were deported by the thousands back to their country of origin. Mexican-Americans who were here legally. The majority here made no loud noises of protest over this act.
Now we fear Muslims, because of the terrorist acts of a pitiful few who so self-identify. You may believe those who fear them and would 'ban' them, or at least their places of worship, are a loud minority. I believe the majority here would prefer that there were none among us, and no mosques. And I believe history and precedent are on my side of the argument.
When people get scared, they do stupid things. America has been no exception, from the Salem witch trials on. Our continuing failure as a people is an inability to look the past in the eye and claim the blame that belongs rightfully to us.
DenverJJ
The conflating of Christianity with "Capitalism"...it's called "neo conservatism".