Mosque my words.

So...

I'm beyond sick of hearing about this so called Ground Zero Mosque, which isn't even a Ground Zero Mosque. It's actually a Cultural Center that has a prayer room, and it's not located at Ground Zero. Rather, i's more than 2 blocks away. Yes, that's damn close to Ground Zero, but it's NOT Ground Zero.

Even though I'm tired of hearing politicians and pundits discussing this Manhattan Islamic Cultural Center, I'm going to chime in with my take on the debate. On one side we have the anti crowd, who opposes the building of the cultural center, which they call a Mosque (probably because it sounds scarier). Many of these naysayers, after all, are the ones who started all this furor by releasing fear-tactic blog posts and self-made videos such as this one (I've decided to retract the link to not give it the hits it doesn't deserve) in which it seems like a giant Mosque is going to overtake Manhattan and terrorists are just going to start flooding into America via some kind of magic Mosque portal. Of course, many, many Republicans jumped on this and are using it to add fuel to their fire for the upcoming elections. It's shameful that they would use 9/11 to campaign off of. But I guess that's nothing new. Heck, we even went to war in Iraq on the ashes of the World Trade Center. But to take a local issue and turn it into a national debate scares me because it opens up the discourse in other areas on whether Mosques should be "allowed" to be built there. Just look at the news, in Rutherford Country, Tennessee there was a recent meeting at the Courthouse about validity of building a Mosque in town.

The biggest reason I'm tired of hearing about this Cultural Center is because there are so many more important issues to discuss right now in America, from the economy, to the wars, to Immigration that this is a distraction. In the same way that Freedom Fries and Senior Death Panels were. It's essentially a Witch Hunt and I'm worried that Muslims are going to become bogeymen, dragged out by the Right-Wingers to scare us and keep us distracted from the bigger issues.

I'm also concerned that if the Cultural Center were to be moved, it would open up the floodgates. If Muslims can't build here, then maybe next year they can't build there. And, let's say, they do move the Cultural Center. Where should they move it? Manhattan is only so big. This argument could easily turn into a "no Mosque in Manhattan" one or maybe even a "no new Mosque in New York" rally. Maybe that's a bit extreme, but then again that's how it always starts: with something small.

I'm not insensitive to the feelings of the 9/11 victims' families. But it's an overstatement by politicians who say that all 9/11 victims' families are against the construction of the Cultural Center, as so many have done. It bugs me in the same way that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell continually say they represent "the American people" or "the American people are opposed to" XYZ. With all due respect, if you knew what the American people wanted, your party wouldn't have gotten your asses kicked in the 2008 elections. Point of fact, many 9/11 victims' families are for the Cultural Center, as they see it as a way to bridge the divide; the Cultural Center is intended as a place to reflect on the devastation of 9/11 and how destructive radical Islam is.

This whole Cultural Center debate should have been a local issue, but you know we're screwed when Newt Gingrich chimes in with comments like, and I'm paraphrasing, "we shouldn't have Mosques in America until they have Churches and Synagogues in Saudi Arabia." Hello, Newt, we're better than Saudi Arabia. But, sadly, it is a national issue now, egged on by misinformation and Right-wingers inflaming their base, which has spilled over into mainstream America. Newt also claims that it is wrong that the Islamic community demands Religious intolerance from us, but in Muslim countries they ask for submission. He isn't entirely off there, but, again, we are not a Christian or Jewish nation. And these are American citizens attending these Mosques. Do I wish other countries were as fair to other religious as we are. Yes! But punishing American-Muslims and Islam is the wrong way to go. We should take it up with the countries and their leadership, not through religion.

With so many so divided the best and fairest thing would be to revert back to Constitutional law, which essentially states that this Cultural Center has the right to be built there. In my opinion, there's a really good opportunity here for Islamic leadership in New York to say "even though the law is on our side, our intention was not to create this controversy and so we are moving the Cultural Center elsewhere." But then, to where? And, for that matter, what then? If they bow to pressure here, maybe they will next time, too? It's a slippery slope.

The Ironic thing, of course, is that their defiant attitude is a very American one.