The context is the recent endorsement of a community centre and Mosque a few blocks away from Ground Zero.
The comments show that some people really do religiously believe the loon version of Islam despite the evidence in the article. (That's for you MCL )
No religious basis for 9/11
The New York City community board endorsed the Cordoba House, a community center and mosque planned for construction near Ground Zero. Significant opposition has emerged against the project. Sarah Palin even weighed in this weekend, tweeting, "Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing."
Should there be a mosque near Ground Zero?
While opposition to the opening of an Islamic center at Ground Zero is certainly not surprising, it reflects a dismal level of intolerance, bigotry and ignorance that continues to plague our country. To characterize the existence of a place of worship for God-loving, law-abiding Muslim citizens as a 'stab in the heart' to Americans is to presume that 9/11 was a religious attack that exclusively targeted non-Muslims.
I'm sorry Sarah Palin, but 9/11 was an attack against all Americans - including Muslim Americans. Muslim firefighters, lawyers, restaurant waiters, and dozens of other Muslims who worked at the World Trade Center lost their lives on that day. Hundreds of Muslims lost loved ones and millions of Muslims across the country grieved with everyone else on that day and continue to grieve every day that lives are unjustly taken. Sept. 11 was not a religious attack that exclusively targeted one religion, race or ethnicity, but one that stabbed all of our hearts. The victims of 9/11 spanned countless ethnicities, races and religions.
Perhaps the intensity of the opposition to the Islamic center at Ground Zero also reflects the shortcomings of the Muslim American community - our failure to reach out to Americans of other faiths, to educate others about Islam, and to rectify stereotypes and misunderstandings. But this vehement opposition also demonstrates why many Muslim Americans feel intimidated to reach out to others, to speak up on behalf of their faith, and to represent the true nature of Islam. When Muslim Americans are struck with an endless barrage of criticism on the air waves, editorial pages and in the public space, when they are constantly asked to denounce and explain acts of violence that occurred in foreign countries that they can't even point out on a map, when they are constantly asked to justify whether Islam is a peaceful religion that is worthy of equal respect and accommodation, do we really expect Muslim Americans to stand up, represent their faith and reach out to others?
In fact, what I have witnessed is the complete opposite. After 9/11, many Muslims felt the impulse to retreat rather than come out of their enclaves. I have met one too many Muslims who would rather their colleagues not know that they are Muslim. They'd rather give their kids Anglo-Saxon nicknames in public than call out their real, Muslim-sounding names; they would rather go pray in their cars during prayer time than ask for a decent corner at work to pray in for 5 minutes, they would rather take a long lunch break on Fridays than dare request for time to attend the congregational Friday prayer for 30 minutes at noon. These are just simple examples, but they reflect the fact that our post 9/11 environment has not exactly encouraged Muslims to 'come out of the closet' and share their faith with others. Those who have done so seem to be the courageous minority in every community.
Again, while this fierce opposition to the new Islamic center in Ground Zero reflects the shortcomings of our own community, the Muslim American community, it also bases itself on a very flawed and dangerous premise. It espouses the same belief of the terrorists - that there is a religious basis for the attacks of 9/11. While Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri would like us to believe that their actions are divinely sanctioned and religiously ordained, there is no question to anyone who has studied Islam that there is absolutely no basis in Islam for their acts of terror. If one were to search through Islam's primary sources - the Quran and prophetic tradition (hadith) - and all the classical legal texts of Islamic jurists, one could only come to one conclusion: that 9/11 and all acts of terror that inflict violence on innocent people are a violation of Islam.
This is not something that Muslims are contriving to make Islam 'look good.' This is a basic fact known to anyone with any real training in Islamic law, which is why, as one scholar recently pointed out, you never find graduates of Islamic seminaries like al-Azhar or Deoband becoming suicide bombers or terrorists. This is not just a coincidence, but based on the fact that there is no religious justification for acts of violence against civilians.
Bin Laden's war, or the wars of those fighting America in Afghanistan, northern Pakistan or Iraq, cannot be explained by searching the Quran. Those wars can only be analyzed and explained through the lens of political, historic and geographic factors. As political scientist Robert Pape explained in Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terror, military occupation rather than ideology is the primary cause of suicide terrorism, whether it is employed by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka (the perpetrator of the largest number of suicide attacks), secular Palestinian groups in the West Bank or al-Qaeda in Iraq, Afghanistan or Western states. Pape bases his conclusion on empirical evidence he compiles on every single suicide attack or campaign around the world from 1980 to 2003 (Pape, Robert. Interview with The American Conservative. "The Logic of Suicide Terror." 18 July 2005. http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/jul/18/00017/).
These findings are consistent with Bin Laden's own articulations, who has repeatedly stated in online statements, video broadcasts and media interviews with journalists from all religious backgrounds that his war against the West is driven by what he perceives as the West's aggression, violence and injustice against Muslim lands - Chechnya, Afghanistan, Palestine, etc. The use of religious rhetoric by Bin Laden and others who share his ideology does not change the fact that their underlying motivation is political, not religious.
When pressed by al-Jazeera journalist Taysir al-Alluni on how he could justify the attacks of 9/11 despite Prophet Muhammad's prohibitions against killing civilians, Bin Laden ceased to invoke religious evidence and instead, invoked a politics of reciprocity based on his own logic and ideology. He stated, "It wasn't a children's school! Neither was it a residence...We treat others like they treat us. Those who kill our women and our innocent, we will kill their women and innocent, until they stop doing so" (Lawrence, Bruce. Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden. Trans. James Howarth. London: Verso, 2005, 119).
The Islamic cultural and community center envisioned by Imam Faisal Abdul-Rauf and the organizers in NY will be one step towards reclaiming Islam's true spirit, fostering reconciliation and bridging gaps that
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfa ... r_911.html