'Ground Zero mosque'

We aren't fighting the Japapnese anymore. And it's been a while since we did.

Times have change. Japs winned best animated picture nao.

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Do American Citizens of Muslim faith that pay taxes not contribute towards these types of endowments?

I don't get it. There are Catholic Churches within blocks of middle schools all over the country. Where is the outrage?

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Nobody likes Pedophile priests and the Catholic Church's habit for many years of protecting them, but if you can't understand how people would be more outraged by the worst terrorist act ever committed in the United States, I can't explain it t you.

A handful of years after the attack, it sure would have been.

How many of them were built with public money very shortly after a charge of pedophilia had been leveled? Because if you want to use these analogies, that'd be the equivalent one.

I don't think there would have been a problem with Japanese shops near Pearl Harbor after the war. They surrendered unconditionally and were utterly defeated. But during the war? I guarantee you there wouldn't have been one. We are still fighting Al Queda. I think people would be less upset about a mosque there if the threat of Al Quaeda and their allies were completely eradicated.

Are these Japanese shops or Japanese American shops? Just curious. I would hope that after the way Japanese Americans were treated during the war there wouldn't be a problem with them having shops there even immediately after the war. They didn't bomb us.

I guess this is kind of an oblique point, but in the same way I don't think we're at war with Muslim Americans, or even all non-American Muslims.

At what point would a mosque there be okay, if ever? This is just a general question and I'm not trying to judge anyone's answers, just get a feel for what the problem here is. My sense, which could be completely mistaken, is that most mofo's wouldn't have a problem with mosques in other parts of America, but near the wtc is too close to home.

I'm curious what people think that area is like and/or should be like. I've only been there a few times and never for very long but my impression is that it's never really been a cultural hub for the city even in spite of it's strong iconic status in the minds of most Americans.

Not sure if this is adding anything to the discussion at this point. I haven't been following the story at all outside of peeking at the controversy here every now and then.

[edit] this post was written while will posted his above comment, so it's less in response to that comment than to the ones preceding it.

10 years isn't a handful.

The USA isn't at war with islam.

Yoda you are a man of God, I find it incredible that you would be against this.

Can Taxpayer money be used only on Christian based community centres?

I was reading today that of the 8 million American Citizens of the muslim faith, 1 million live in New York City.

For reference sake, Canada has a million muslims total.

I'm sure this has been pointed out somewhere in the thread, but in case it hasn't the community centre (with prayer rooms) is 2 blocks from the footprint of the Twin Towers. Anybody who has ever walked in NYC knows how big their "blocks" are compared to most urban centres.



http://didyouknow.org/number-of-chur...new-york-city/

Will what does fighting Al Quaeda have to do with Muslims praying ?

Just about everything.

Seriously. The amount of damage the U.S. and allies did to Japan during WWII even without accounting for the two atom bombs is... staggering. I saw this video once where it showed all the leveled Japanese cities and compared to U.S. cities of similar size. Not to downplay Pearl Harbor any but... yeah, I'm pretty much downplaying Pearl Harbor right now!

You don't have to be in a military war to be in a cultural war. I honestly do not see the cultural divide ever going away without a massive reformation of either religion's discourse of tolerance.

I could imagine a phenomenological qualification like "when enough time has passed to where the majority of Americans only know about 9/11 through reading about it".

Personally I don't care where they build their mosque. But it is understandable many people, particularly who live in NYC would be upset. The nutjobs who turned the trade center into rubble and killed thousands of innocent people did it in the name of their religion and many Muslim terrorists were recruited in mosques. Do I think the majority of Muslims are sympathetic to these whackos? No. But I wonder if the person responsible for this project has a hidden agenda.

I wonder the same thing every time a Catholic Church is built in a school zone.

Please don't confuse your ideas of what should be with what is.

In terms of war, I think it is, yeah.

Didn't say they were.

Define "against." I think they probably have the legal right (again, depending on the approval process), but that doesn't mean I have to think it's a good idea.

No. Who said anything like that? Why am I suddenly arguing with these things that nobody seems to be saying?

Well, I've walked in NYC a few times, and because of that I also know that some blocks are a lot bigger than others. These blocks aren't that big, from what I understand.

It's really close to Ground Zero any way you slice it. I haven't been able to find out exactly how close, and whether or not you can hear one place from the other (which seems pertinent), but it's pretty flippin' close.

Also, I know you keep saying "prayer room," but I don't think that's an accurate description. It's a mosque. The fact that the building isn't only a mosque doesn't mean there's not a mosque in it, and doesn't really change things. It's like saying a chapel isn't really a church.

Neither is the number of mosques already in New York really relevant. That's actually how I know most people are being pretty reasonable about this: because I'm not hearing anything about going back and tearing those down, or forcing them to move, because everyone implicitly understands that that would be ridiculous. It's just the idea of a brand new one, so close to the site, that has people disturbed.

Then I look forward to you asking yourself pointed questions about whether or not you think all Catholic priests are pedophiles, etc.

Anyway, either this is a joke, in which case I don't think it's in the best taste, or it's not, in which case you're answering your own question about why people are uncomfortable with the mosque.

In my original distinction between Japanese and Japanese-American I was thinking about the internment camps. Taking people's (and specifically American Citizens') property and imprisoning them based on ancestry.

I don't necessarily think that's where we're headed now or trying to draw a strong connection between this controversy and a slippery slope to new internment camps, but "culture war" isn't a justification any more than real war for that sort of blanket disenfranchising of a whole group of people. Since it was brought up as a side issue I wanted to know if people were condoning not letting Japanese Americans do business (near Pearl Harbor or anywhere else - at any point that prohibition seems pretty unconscionable to me).

As to the mosque, will answered my question. I mainly wanted to know what the ground zero area means to people here, and if/why that area deserves special status as a "culturally clean" zone. I'm a little confused about whether people just think that the area itself is sensitive and deserves a special status or if it is in fact the "front lines of a broader culture war." (meaning you could extrapolate it to say Muslims aren't welcome in America as a whole in their view.) If the former I wonder how that special status should look. (irreligious? neutral? more in line with mainstream Christianity? other?).

As I think I wrote in my one other (much earlier) post in this thread, I'm also curious how New Yorkers feel about this, but it doesn't really seem like mofo is the best place to find that out.

Let me chime in on a couple of things here...

In terms of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. Yes, they attacked us, to which we returned the favor. I don't know of too many Americans who still hold a grudge against Japan for that. Japan, on the other hand, lost many innocent lives to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings. While I was in Japan, it was clear in the older Japanese, that they still were bitter about that (whenever they saw an American, that is).

There is ill timing for anything, you can't realistically put a deadline for closure/healing to be done. Wounds, no matter how deep they are, take a lot of time to heal.

As for the placing of a mosque in the vicinity of the World Trade Center, I personally don't have a problem with it. It was called the World Trade Center, for a reason. Not just American lives were lost that day. I think that the Muslim-Americans need this center. Why? They need a place to come together, free of hate from those who assume that any Muslim is a terrorist.

What's a Mosque, though? In a sense, it's a place of worship and prayer. What's a Church? It's a place of worship and prayer. In Oklahoma City, on two sides of the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, there are churches. Both are of different denominations. Of course, these were probably there long before the Alfred P. Murrah building had been built, but how many cried foul when the area became a place of mourning?

I don't believe this Mosque to be a "Terrorist Training Camp" or any other type of terroristic meeting place.

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The world is pretty disturbing now, being that the actions of a few can affect so many.
That's why I long for the old west days. What could a cowboy do?

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The internment of the Japanese during WWII was wrong. Their cities getting bombed, well, if you read the reason for it, Truman had no choice because otherwise the war would have dragged on a year or two longer because the Japanese fought to the last (unlike Germans) and the leaders refused to surrender. Even after the bombings if it wasn't for the Emperor, there would have been no surrender and more cities would have been bombed. They were told about the atomic bomb and had a chance to surrender and refused. When you start something, and the Japanese were the aggressor in WWII, not us, you suffer the consequences.

From the little I've read I'll buy that the Japanese were an aggressive threat with a military organization that encouraged sadism and barbarity on anyone of lower status. Japanese soldiers were brutalized by officers and POWs and civilians were treated even worse. I'll buy that it was worth bombing them to win the war. I didn't mean to add to the confusion, it just wasn't (and still isn't) clear to me what people were talking about with regards to "Japanese shops" -- Japanese or Japanese American, it seemed like "Japanese shops" was being used rather vaguely to refer to either or both and the distinction is an important one when you're talking about who should have certain rights during or soon after a war.