Obama backs plans for a mosque to be built

Sister Rose

A little older, wiser
just a few blocks from ground zero. I personally find that disrespectful. I like Obama but after this I've lost respect for the guy.

http://www.rttnews.com/Content/BreakingNews.aspx?Id=1393628

I remember watching the 9/11 attacks live on tv here in England. It was chilling and horrific and I think that it is a very poor decision on Obamas part. Shame on you Sir!

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I see that footage and to build a mosque near where that happened just seems wrong.

I don't know how anyone else feels about this subject??
 
I don't know that Obama actually "backed" the plans for the mosque. You have to pay close attention to his words. In his first statement, he seemed to just be emphasizing the obvious point that they have the right to build it. In his second statement, he seemed to be saying that while they have every right to build it, that doesn't mean they are right to do so. I suppose he could be attacked for once again trying to vote "present", but I have empathy for him on this one.

Check his second statement....

Obama:
"I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding."

What Obama likes to do is say things in such a way where as many people as possible can read into his words what they want to hear.

I think Obama probably shouldn't have spoken on this issue at all, and stuck with the position that it's a local matter. But, now that he has chimed in, he's kinda taking my position. I think, anyway. He's always such a politician, it's hard to tell. I don't wanna be one of these people who runs around all offended over this plan, because I think that would make me comparable to the Muslims who are always trying to whip each other into a frenzy over this or that (Danish cartoons of Muhammad, for example). However, while I won't get whipped up over this, I do question the motives and sensitivities of the people behind it. Just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean you are right to be doing it.

I think my man Christopher Hitchens makes the best point (and I pray he does not die from the cancer he's been hit with):

The dispute over the construction of an Islamic center at "Ground Zero" in Lower Manhattan has now sunk to a level of stupidity that really does shame the memory and the victims of that terrible day in September 2001. One might think that a mosque or madrassa was being proposed in the place of the fallen towers themselves or atop the atomized ingredients of what was once a mass grave. (In point of fact, the best we have been able to do with the actual site, after almost a decade, is to create a huge, noisy, and dirty pit with almost no visible architectural progress. Perhaps resentment at the relative speed of the proposed Cordoba House is a subconscious by-product of embarrassment at this local and national disgrace.)
link

For some years now I have felt New York City has disgraced America by not having yet built a proper memorial to 9/11 and not having rebuilt the Twin Towers. I thought they should have quickly built a new Twin Towers, bigger and better than they were before. Apparently the plan is for some Freedom Tower, instead, but where is it? It's been nearly a decade.....
 
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Yeah lets pull down all the churches in Bosnia then.
 
Does anyone realize that there's an Amish Market on Park Place, just two blocks from Ground Zero? I don't like the looks of that. Their so-called "peaceful", "pre-modern" society smacks of socialism to me. I think we should keep close watch on them.

Also on the street: Emigrant Savings. My God, that sounds distinctly un-American. Foreigners and stuff. Surveillance time!

Bengal Curry? Hello? There's only one thing on the menu in a place called Bengal Curry-- Insurgents! Help me out, my British cousins!

Bits Bites and Baguettes? "Baguettes"? I don't know if you know this, but I read on the webs that "baguette" is a secret French resistance term for phony French peacenick commie appeasers. Talk about insensitivity to the victims of 9/11. We need to burn that place to the ground and replace it with a Freedom Fries Shack! f*** yeah!

New York Academy of Sciences? New York Academy of Darwin's Damned Lies, more like it!

Barnes & Noble? Books? Books? Got. To. Go. Fetch the kerosene, mother, it's gonna be a hot one tonight.

Century 21? Well, okay, I like discount boots and defective underwear for cheap.

Burger King? Good enough. We can have the CIA and FBI hole up in there to keep watch on the 17 one-star pizza joints around Ground Zero. Fascism's cradle? Italy.

I guess, on balance, we should just raze the whole neighborhood and start again. Too many questionable tenants around Ground Zero. Where is our sense of respect, anyway, when Burger King is just a stone's throw from a damn mosque?

Or we could leave everything as it is, respecting the will of the city's development office and its mayor. Heck, who knows, after a year or two we might even forget Cordoba House is there considering it may as well be f***ing invisible given the layout of lower Manhattan.
 
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I don't know how anyone else feels about this subject??

i was born in Manhattan. I am a fiercely partisan native of this island.

My husband worked at World Trade Center #7; he was late for work on September 11th, or he would have been one of those ash-covered survivors. Hell, he called me from the train that morning to tell me that he saw smoke coming from one of the towers, but that he was going in anyway. As it turned out he was on the first commuter train to be held one stop before Manhattan. I watched the towers fall, and I didn't know that his train had been stopped. There was no cell phone communication at that point - for all I knew he was right in the middle of it.

So, I'm not a survivor, nor am I related to one, but my life and the life of my family was changed that day, and I can categorically state that I don't care about Cordoba House - it is a non-issue. My husband, who would have been right there if only he'd gotten to work on time that day doesn't care, either.

For those of you unfamiliar with lower Manhattan, the buildings are very, very tall, and two blocks might as well be two miles. It is a very densely packed neighborhood (and there are Mosques that have been here for decades). Cordoba House is not "at" Ground Zero. People should just stop trying to "defend" New York - we can take it, we all live side by side here and we like it that way. The crocodile tears that the rest of the country pours out over "Sodom By The Sea" these days is for the most part a sham; most self-identified "real" Americans hate us pinko/commie/homo/tree-hugging heretics until it's time to beat their chests over Ground Zero. Then and only then is New York a sacred place.

No one I know is upset about this - it's not even a mosque, it's a community center with a prayer room; Feisal Abdul Rauf is a fairly moderate Imam who has spent many years trying to foster good relations between the Muslim and the Western world (and he's not doing a particularly good job these days). FYI Cordoba is a city in Spain that for many centuries was at the crossroads of civilization - it is a place where Christians, Muslims and Jews lived peacefully together, and for that reason it was one of the most significant cultural centers of the ancient world.

Obama is absolutely right - this is America, and no one has the right to tell anyone that they cannot build a house of worship anywhere they damn well please (as long as it's legally zoned). The Imam could have been a bit more sensitive to the ramifications of the situation, but all this hysteria is completely unwarranted. This is still a free country, and every American who wants to stop the YMMA from being erected in that neighborhood needs a civics lesson. I respect the opinions of the families of the dead who are uncomfortable with this, but there is nothing that any politician has to say in opposition to Cordoba House that is anything short of absurd, self-serving, divisive, cynical, wrong-headed and ultimately un-American.

Jesus/Allah/Jehova/ wept.
 
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Everyone's life was changed that day.

Nobody's life changed. We just had our eyes forcefully prised open. It's a relevant distinction, and one that we've completely failed to learn from. It's all, "Hey! My f***ing eyelids!" and no, "Oh my god, I never knew...."

Actually, you're both right - everything changed, but nothing changed.

In my case, my husband's Ground Zero employer relocated and reorganized, and his life (our life) really did materially change as a result of the attacks.

Most people watched it on TV. Some (like me and my family) spent a few hours in shock and panic because we had family who worked there, and we didn't know if they were alive, injured or dead. Some experienced the attacks first hand and lived to tell about it, and some didn't live at all.

All the hand-wringing by people who want to make this a political issue is disgusting. The resurrection of a holy war is politicking at its very worst. People getting a lather up because a cultural center is moving into a building in lower Manhattan is ridiculous, and the only people whose objections I have any respect for are the people who lost family that day. Not all of them object, but the ones who do have a legitimate emotional grievance.

The op asked how people feel about this subject, and this is how I feel: disgusted by all the demogoging, hate-mongering drama queens who don't know what the hell they're talking about, and proud of the people who are showing common sense in the face of this media-driven stupidity.
 
Actually, I have to hand it to Jon Stewart, who so rightly pointed out that Cordoba House is to be housed on the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory.

For those of you who don't know, the Burlington Coat Factory is a discount outlet for designer outerwear; it's the place where you could score a Burberry raincoat for $99.00

Why do the Muslims hate our Everyday Low Prices?
 
Actually, I have to hand it to Jon Stewart, who so rightly pointed out that Cordoba House is to be housed on the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory.

For those of you who don't know, the Burlington Coat Factory is a discount outlet for designer outerwear; it's the place where you could score a Burberry raincoat for $99.00

Why do the Muslims hate our Everyday Low Prices?

This one is quite funny:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-august-10-2010/municipal-land-use-hearing-update
 
i was born in Manhattan. I am a fiercely partisan native of this island.

My husband worked at World Trade Center #7; he was late for work on September 11th, or he would have been one of those ash-covered survivors. Hell, he called me from the train that morning to tell me that he saw smoke coming from one of the towers, but that he was going in anyway. As it turned out he was on the first commuter train to be held one stop before Manhattan. I watched the towers fall, and I didn't know that his train had been stopped. There was no cell phone communication at that point - for all I knew he was right in the middle of it.

So, I'm not a survivor, nor am I related to one, but my life and the life of my family was changed that day, and I can categorically state that I don't care about Cordoba House - it is a non-issue. My husband, who would have been right there if only he'd gotten to work on time that day doesn't care, either.

For those of you unfamiliar with lower Manhattan, the buildings are very, very tall, and two blocks might as well be two miles. It is a very densely packed neighborhood (and there are Mosques that have been here for decades). Cordoba House is not "at" Ground Zero. People should just stop trying to "defend" New York - we can take it, we all live side by side here and we like it that way. The crocodile tears that the rest of the country pours out over "Sodom By The Sea" these days is for the most part a sham; most self-identified "real" Americans hate us pinko/commie/homo/tree-hugging heretics until it's time to beat their chests over Ground Zero. Then and only then is New York a sacred place.

No one I know is upset about this - it's not even a mosque, it's a community center with a prayer room; Feisal Abdul Rauf is a fairly moderate Imam who has spent many years trying to foster good relations between the Muslim and the Western world (and he's not doing a particularly good job these days). FYI Cordoba is a city in Spain that for many centuries was at the crossroads of civilization - it is a place where Christians, Muslims and Jews lived peacefully together, and for that reason it was one of the most significant cultural centers of the ancient world.

Obama is absolutely right - this is America, and no one has the right to tell anyone that they cannot build a house of worship anywhere they damn well please (as long as it's legally zoned). The Imam could have been a bit more sensitive to the ramifications of the situation, but all this hysteria is completely unwarranted. This is still a free country, and every American who wants to stop the YMMA from being erected in that neighborhood needs a civics lesson. I respect the opinions of the families of the dead who are uncomfortable with this, but there is nothing that any politician has to say in opposition to Cordoba House that is anything short of absurd, self-serving, divisive, cynical, wrong-headed and ultimately un-American.

Jesus/Allah/Jehova/ wept.

Great post.

When debunking the hateful misinformation, it's worth mentioning-- again-- that before we even discuss the neighborhood of lower Manhattan, the owners of the Cordoba House, its mission, etc, it needs to be reaffirmed that there is nothing offensive about a mosque to begin with. How f***ed up our current situation looks when you consider that one of the most eloquent defenses of Islam came from...George W. Bush in 2001! :eek:

That said, I would love for Jon Stewart or some other halfway sane person in the media to conduct interviews with tourists from around the nation who have visited Ground Zero since 9/11. I'd like to know how many of them could name any of the other places they saw on streets surrounding the WTC site. I'll bet 99% of the visitors never even laid eyes on the Burlington Coat Factory, let alone remembered it when they went back to their homes. More relevant to the question of churches, synagogues and mosques, I wonder how many remember seeing St. Peter's on Church and Barclay?
 
Oops. As a follow-up to my last post, I just came across this New York Times article from Friday, which I missed.

Quote:

But what the two mosques have in common — besides the sense of celebration and camaraderie that comes at the beginning of Ramadan, the holiest month of the Islamic calendar, in which Muslims fast from sunup to sundown, give alms and focus on self-improvement — is that both have existed for decades, largely unnoticed, blocks from the World Trade Center site.​

This ought to settle matter, though it won't.
 
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