Politically Speaking

It's not even 8 am and I am awake and blogging. I'm not what you'd call wide awake... I'm actually writing to fight the urge to go back to bed. I start every day by checking up on the national news. It has been a habit of mine ever since 9/11. As sick as it sounds, I am checking to see if anything was blown up while I was sleeping. Since the 9th anniversary is right around the corner, I a bit more paranoid than usual. Inevitably, there will be protests this year, while New York City tries to figure out what to do about a mosque wanting to pitch their tent just blocks from Ground Zero.

This is a perfect example of why I don't (normally) like to write about politics anymore. I can't figure out what to think, and it seems to me like I should take a side. I can see every angle, and that makes it hard to put my foot down in one direction or another. I can understand why people would be outraged. No matter how we try to kid ourselves, when most Americans hear the word "Islam" they picture six-year-old boys with machine guns, and terrorists with bandanas over their faces, giving their final will and testament on a grainy video tape before blowing up a nightclub. People don't want a reminder of "the religion that caused September 11."

I can understand the fear. It may begin as a place of peace, but a mosque at the site of 9/11... a holy place of mourning for Americans, and a holy place of victory for Islamic extremists... might very well DRAW Islamic Extremists. I get that.

But this is where it all comes back to what you really believe about people. Have you ever met a Muslim who was just your average citizen, not particularly interested in Fatwas and Jihad? I have. I dated a guy in high school whose whole family was Muslim and I promise you, they are not terrorists. Are we going to trust the average Muslim-American to alert us to any extremist activities going on at the mosque? Or do we believe they're all in this together and they want all of us dead?

If a band of crazy Christians committed a terrorist act on American soil, would we throw a fit if somebody wanted to build a church on the site? Or would we stand firm and put our foot down and say that MOST Christians are not terrorists? How are we so different? Do you think there are no Christians slaughtering each other on this planet? How about Christians killing Muslims? Think it doesn't happen? Oh, but it does. Christians are slaughtering Muslims in Nigeria even as we speak.

Do most Christians want peace, or are they thirsty for blood? The question is the same for Muslims. Back when I was a horrible high school student, I had a very kind but eccentric teacher who once side-referenced me this way: "Don't let one bad spoke break the whole wheel." I never thought Mr. G.'s analogy would apply to Islam in my 30s.

If you remove religion from the mix - something many Americans find hard to do - it's a cut-and-dry issue. America is the land of the free. We founded this country on religious tolerance and freedom. While I do believe this nation was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics, I also believe our forefathers intended this country to be a place where anyone could come and have a nice life. A nice, ordinary, Joe Average life... or more, if they worked hard enough. Take the religion out of the mix, and you have a mosque that deserves to be at Ground Zero just as much as any other religious center. Would we protest a synagogue? A Baptist church?

So, you see, I don't know what to think. This mosque shouldn't be forced upon the people of Manhattan, but how can you turn them away? And if God gives us all free will, who are we to push someone aside and declare them not good enough to share our space?

Yes, sometimes what I WANT to believe, and what I actually DO believe clash violently. Politically speaking, I exist in the middle place. Pin It