There is hubbub brewing over the building of a Mosque at Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center tragedy. Should the very enemies who killed thousands of Americans be allowed to erect a religious shrine at the very place of this terrorist attack?
First, it’s not a mosque, but a large (13 story) community center that will include, among other religious places, a Muslim Worship space. Second, it’s two blocks from Ground Zero.
But flagrant lies aside, God has granted us a learnable moment, and now calls us to the possibility to rise above emotion and, yes!, racism, and a step closer to peace.
It is, after all, the extreme intolerance of Jihadism that made 9/11. It was the very notion that some religions, different religions, other religions, are enemies and therefore unworthy that led human beings to fly jet airplanes full of other human beings into buildings to kill many other human beings. It is exactly the delegitimizing of someone else’s beliefs that makes it possible for terrorists to kill others, not soldiers but innocent bystanders, women and children.
How does becoming more like the terrorists overcome their acts?
Is our intolerance not cut from the same cloth? Do we pretend that it will do anything less than continue, perhaps even increase, the worldwide hatred and violence which engulfs our planet like a deepwater oil spill?
Or can we dare the harder way, to make peace?
I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven … Matthew 5:44
There is another way, a way based not on fear but on hope, a path not of devastation but of creation. It is possible to live together as human beings, to allow space for others who are different but still neighbors.
We could build a Mosque at Ground Zero and ask our Muslim brothers and sisters to share our aspiration that what happend there once never happen anywhere again.
Let us be warned of the consequences of our words and acts. If we fail to make a space for moderate Muslims, if we fail to empower and lift up and support “peaceful Muslims,” if we desecrate and demean a whole people based on the acts of a few radicals, then we empower those very elements who would rather destroy us than exist with us. If we cannot be for a peaceful relationship with Islam, then we will surely be locked into a neverending dance of death with it.
No, I think that there must be a Mosque at Ground Zero, if there is to be any hope for the future. I believe that it is our best way forward.
This is one of those rare opportunities where we can be better than we were so our future can be more than our past. Here is a chance to grow a new world for the sake of our children and our grandchildren, one not ruled by our smallness but by the limitless grace that is our gift through our faith in Jesus Christ. This is our time to “refudiate” our hate and fear and be bigger than we really are.
I am sure that the Jesus who called us to love our enemies would lay the first stone for a new Mosque in New York.
What will you do?
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The people who flew those buildings into the world trade center were going against their Muslim faith. From what I hear the Sunni's and Shiite's are quite peaceful people and were ashamed to be connected with the people of the bombings. I realize there is great hatred from these cultures towards the U.S. (which is one of the largest representatives of the christian faith), but there were people in the world trade center who were American citizens and considered themselves Muslim. I don't think Muslims are our enemies. I believe it's ourselves. It's ourselves, the U.S. consumers, who whole-heartedly chase after the "American dream" and buy fancy cars and houses and become engulfed in debt but appear to shimmer with wealth. Those people who cried out in shock when our country was attacked; how dare them! It's our over-consumption and greed that has caused the hate. Many of us call ourselves Christians and yet flaunt our wealth and still complain we don't have enough. I'm not sure Jesus would be on our side when laying that first brick. We have a long way to go before Jesus would be willing to be on our side.
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