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There IS NO "GROUND ZERO MOSQUE!" The FACTS are that the proposed building is a COMMUNITY CENTER, modeled after the Jewish Community Center. Inside will be a gym, swimming pool, theater. lecture hall, etc., and ANYONE will be welcome. Also inside will be a mosque. There will be no domes or anything on the outside.
ALSO, it WON'T BE AT GROUND ZERO! It will be SIX BLOCKS away form ground zero. There are already two actual mosques that are CLOSER than that! And the community center will replace a smaller facility that was DAMAGED in the 9/11 attack.
This is a manufactured issue being used by Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin and the far-right-wing to whip up emotions. Gingrich now says he wants to have the federal government TAKE OVER several hundred square blocks of downtown Manhattan and exercise control over what can be built in that huge zone. Pretty weird for a right winger to call for federal government control of the downtown of our second-largest city!
Let it be built! This dispute is unnecessary, irrelevant and ugly!
Religious tolerance is one of America's greatest examples for the rest of the world. The level of religious tolerance and separation of religion from the state that America enjoys does not exist in many parts of the world. Certainly not here in Europe, not in the Middle East or Southern Asia. The construction of a mosque and Islamic cultural centre near the site of an attack by Islamic extremists is an amazing thing, really, and it's being reported all over the world, including by Al Jazeera, who is not generally in the business of giving America good publicity.
Besides, most of the counter-arguments I've heard, especially from Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Pat Robertson, amount to little more than religious bigotry.
I dont necessarily agree that there is religious bigotry involved in these diessenting views. I can see there argument. If Christian extremists were to attack two ogf the largest builings in Ryadh would Arabs build a Christian temple there 10 years later? No! Because there are no Christian temples in Saudi Arabia. Christianity is not allowed in that country, and disenters face the death penalty! So in a sense, I agree with religionisgood. The biggest slap in the face to these extremists would be to build a ginormous mosque at ground Zero! It really does show the world what America is about.
I have muslim friends who oppose of the idea,i know the difference between Islam and Al Qaida(which means the base in arabic) but Al Qaida's ideology is based on Islamic extremism.Why would Obama want to build a mosque there?First he's a president not a council manager and also of all the places to build a mosque in New York he wants it built there.He could want Americans to forgive extremist muslims but if wants to then he should come out publicly about it.
I think that, America - being the free country it is, needs to allow for religious tolerance and forgiveness. You can't condemn a nation for the actions of a few - it's not just. I think that allowing it will be the first step in moving ahead instead of keeping people rooted in the past.
