The Mosque Debate.

Recently the nation has been in an uproar about the proposed Mosque/community center that is scheduled to be built in the neighborhood of the site of the 9/11 attacks. To start off NYC is a religiously as well as culturally diverse place. I can’t drop statistics on people because I cannot find a pair that agree, which is another story altogether. What I have found to be true is that there are more than 100 mosques in the city, plus an unknown number of small mosques that worshipers set up in their apartments or places that are not visible from the street. There are an estimated million Muslims in New York City. (Some sources claim 1.4 million; the New York City Community Affairs Bureau states the figure as 800 000.) With that being said, these citizens are protected under our Bill of Rights, as much as anyone else is. If you are an American, you cannot disagree with the following statement.

"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."

It is the first amendment. The reason we fought for our independence from Britain. If we as a nation wanted to dictate what, where, when, why, and how people worship, why is this first natural right that we as Americans claim? How can you tell one citizen that they do not have the rights that others do, based on their religious preference, without seeing the obvious hypocrisy .

How can our children give their lives for these freedoms, only to have them revoked by the same crotchety old men that sent them there in the first place to liberate a country just enough to take all of the rebuilding contracts and give them to our own company. Basically we have been building up this resentment towards foreigners since they made us change our names at Ellis Island. Now we forget our roots, we forget the reasons we had for claiming independence from Britain. We even forget the heritage that we may have left behind in order to assimilate into this amalgamation culture. Now we are Americans, we’ve been here long enough that we don’t want strangers coming in and changing everything, taking jobs we don’t want, wearing clothes we don’t like, and building community centers that offend our vaguest connection to the devastation that was the attack on the Twin Towers. The community in which the attack was felt the greatest has given their approval of the project, yet people who live hundreds to thousands of miles away think that they should weigh in, and that their opinion should be heard; “because damn it, I’m an American and if I am offended by a Mosque that is being built in a neighborhood that I will never visit, then it shouldn’t be built. We will have to alter the inalienable rights to; life, liberty and the pursuit of Justice, and… never getting your feelings hurt.” If we knock out this pillar of our foundation as a nation, the rest is sure to come crashing down.