It's August...so let the fear mongering commence!

So there seems to be a fair amount of focused fear and anger towards a particular building 2 blocks away from Ground Zero.  The building is an old Burlington Coat Factory which is being used right now as a mosque for Muslim worshipers.  The problem that most of America has with this building, is that there's a group called The Cordoba Initiative that currently owns the building and wants to make it an interfaith center.  (By the way, the group's intentions are to spread religious tolerance between Islam and the West.  Pretty courageous if you ask me...seeing that Al Qaeda consistently attacks people who do this). The center would still house the mosque on a couple of floors, but an interfaith library and recreational center for the rest of the building.  Sounds reasonable, right?  But here's the problem, it's an election year; and the closer you get to election time in November, the more vitriol and fear mongering consumes the airwaves and print media.

A little history about American politics first...
Currently, Democrats own Congress and the White House.  And as always during mid-term elections, the party that won control 2 years ago (the incumbent party) is on the defensive in order to maintain control.  The usual suspects when it comes to fear based campaigns are of course the "conservative" parties; which will stop at nothing to fabricate stories that don't need to be true as long as it sits in the back of the collective minds while in the voting booths.  Remember "death panels" and "Obama's a socialist, Muslim, not born in the U.S., etc"?  And while the so called "progressive agendas" are barraged with negative attacks and fear laden propaganda; it's those who put their media eggs in one basket who suffer the ignorance of not being well informed.  People that only watch MSNBC or Fox News and get their news from biased sources can never be well informed from both sides of the argument, so they go on the offensive with these cheap stories stating that it will be the decline of all humankind if the incumbents are re-elected.  Here's how it usually goes, "I was watching Fox News today and they said that X will happen if Y is re-elected.  It may or may not  be true...but I'm going to be on the safe side and make sure that Y is not re-elected and spread the word".  But the problem with Fox News is another rant for another time.

Enter the uproar over the "Mosque at Ground Zero".  I can already see the bold red letters on the news channels like is this is actually breaking news.  Why not a headline like: "Idiots Fall For Yet Another Scheme to De-legitimize Brown People"?  But I digress...

Here's what I think about this made up fear.  No one, and I mean no one will be able to find a legal reason this religious center shouldn't be built.  It's constitutionally protected.  Remember those amendments everyone talks about?  Well, it's the first one.  Yes, the first thing that the Founding Fathers thought of when writing the Bill of Rights of this country was..."man that state run religion in England sure did suck...we should make sure that doesn't happen here.  So lets ensure that everyone in this new country has the freedom to practice any religion anywhere they want".  So then what's all the hubbub about?  Here's the argument against the mosque:  'It is insensitive to put a monument to Islam next to Ground Zero since Muslims attacked us'.  Now, I can't begin to tell you how many things are wrong with that statement.  It just amazes me that anyone would think like that, but they do.

If you are one of those people who think that statement is valid, then I have one thing to tell you.  You'd better be ready to tear down every single Catholic church that's in a 2 block radius from a playground.  As much as I disdain religion, or any group that doesn't use evidence as a basis for understanding; the religion itself didn’t rape those children, people did.  All of Islam didn't attack the U.S. on 9/11/01, people did.  I’m smart enough to know that not everyone will break the law if given the chance.  So let the Muslims have their mosque, especially since those who want to build it are enemies of Al Qaeda.  How better to 'stick it' to Bin Laden than embrace his enemies?  You didn't know that the Imam who is trying to build this center is an enemy of Al Qaeda?  Hmm...Fox News didn't mention that?

Freedom is freedom, no matter how uncomfortable it may seem to you.  These are the struggles you have to overcome to be a unified society.