Cordoba House
There’s a-spittin’ and a-fightin’ going on!
A new building is going up in lower Manhattan. It could be called a mosque, or an Islamic community center, depending on your predilections. It’s gonna be modeled after a YMCA, and city zoners and the mayor’s office have given their approval.
Howeva. There has been plenty of opposition to the project. The center (there’s my predilection right there) — called Cordoba House after the 10th-century Spanish caliphate recognized for its religious tolerance and cultural activity — would go up two blocks from World Trade Center site. Critics contend that this is too close, that the wounds are too raw, that a house of worship devoted to the religion that the 9/11 terrorists claimed is an affront to the victims of the worst terror attack in American history. It has drawn the ire of many conservative pundits, and national figures like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. In a surprising move, the Anti-Defamation League said the center would “be counterproductive to the healing process.”
yes …
I can’t sit this one out. I can’t. When I read about it, I get a tight feeling in my chest. I start seeing colors more brightly, like they’re suddenly deeper. I can feel the weather is turning. It’s only dropped down into the eighties, but I swear I can see the fall is coming. And I just, I can’t. I spent the above paragraph doing my best to use nice language — workplace appropriate language — without all the cussin’ and the swearin’ and the hot-blooded temper tantrums that would define the Map of old.
But this is exactly the kind of thing that made my blood boil as a college freshman. I used to read Ann Coulter columns while listening to Crass on the reg, just to get grist for the mill. It was always bullshit like this, a conservative pundit saying something ridiculous and offensive, finding a stupid argument and poking it until it’s raw as a means of shifting the debate from what really matters: The economy. And the war in Afghanistan that no one really fucking cares about (or, as this guy points out, not enough to raise the taxes to pay for it).
A mosque too close to Ground Zero? Oh my. This begs a whole bevy of questions. So if you disagree with me, please answer, you dickhead, if you dare:
- How close is too close?
- How many Muslims live in New York City? A guesstimate will work; that’s cool. Don’t go crazy or anything.
- What’s the nearest mosque to the site already?
- Is that too close as well?
- If it is, should it be moved?
- Would you mind laying out a time frame for when something like this won’t be too close?
- Do you have any figures on how many Muslims also died in the September 11 attacks?
- Do you think it’s fair to let 19 assholes with a completely warped view of a major religion to represent 1.5 billion Muslims?
- If you agree with the ADL in that survivors are entitled to “irrational” emotion, do you think that policy should be based on that?
- Do you think it’s possible that cynical Republican politicians — some that don’t actually live in New York City — are beating the drums about this as a way to drum up votes?
- And, finally, did your parents raise you to be this fucking stupid?
- Or did you learn it at school?
