Discuss this.

I think people need to realise that the perpetrators of 9/11 don't have anything to do with the people that would use the Mosque for worship.

Anyway, I hardly understand any of this and this is miles above my head so I'll shut up. XD

The world is rife with double standards, it's incredibly annoying, but sometimes you just have to ignore it, especially when it's the Americans.

Even with my liberal views, I think it's in very bad taste to open a mosque there.. Not cool.

It is in sort of poor taste, I think.

But the comic is true.

I think it's only fair that it be pointed out that the people with Bibles that began the killing of Injuns were Puritans. Hardly representative of Christianity as a whole. Much like radical Muslim extremists are hardly representative of Islam as a whole.

Personally, I think the mosque ought to be allowed. It isn't gonna be just a mosque, either. It's gonna be kinda like a YMCA (YMMA?). I kinda doubt that the teachings there are gonna remotely resemble the radical anti-Western rhetoric that al Qaeda espouses, anyway.

I'll leave you with this thought: during the Crusades, men advancing the cause of the Pope in the name of Christ committed an unnumbered amount of atrocities against innocent Jews and Muslims in what they called the Holy Lands. In an area that is jointly held by Jews and Muslims today, many Christian churches have stood for centuries, and those Jews and Muslims haven't contested their existence on/near the site of the deaths of their ancestors.

This paragraph basically sums up my thoughts on the matter. I have no problem with there being a mosque by Ground Zero. In fact, I think it shows the extremists that we won't be divided and goaded into hating ALL Muslims for the acts of a minority.

^Damn straight. Putting that mosque there would be just as great a blow for our side in the War on Terror as any military action would, probably more so, actually.

Me, I'd prefer it if the Muslim community went "Okay, look, regardless of who did what on this spot, the fact remains that what happened here was one of the worst atrocities in modern history, and to be honest, leaving it alone and just having it as a rememberance ground would be the most honourable thing to do.".

I'm not against the building of a mosque there. I'm against the building of ANYTHING there, other than a memorial.

The building of churches in the middle east by Christians during their brutal slaughter of millions is slightly different to a mosque at ground zero. The Christians were basically stamping their authority, their own little "fuck you, this land be ours now" markers. The mosque is nothing like that, but just like places like Dachau and Auschwitz haven't been turned into Synagogues or other shit, ground zero should be left alone, for EVERYONE.

This, in a nutshell.

Couple points of order:

1) The mosque won't actually be at Ground Zero, it's close to it.
2) Many of those churches, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, were built well before the Crusades. The Turks, and the Arabs before them, allowed Christian pilgrims to come to their holy sites and worship in those churches before the Crusades began.

But I do agree that building anything at Ground Zero would be highly improper.

It's two blocks away, if I remember correctly, you can't see either location from one or the other.

also, fun fact, there's at least one "Gentleman's Club" closer to the Ground Zero site than the proposed YMMA thing.

Another fun fact: there were no "escorts" among the bunch that flew planes into buildings.

And some educated conjecture: it was probably there before 9/11.

1. Oh, fair enough then.
2. So what you're saying is that the Christians asked for permission, and the land owners said "Sure thing"? That, my son, is a whole lot more different than either building something on top of holy/sacred/hallowed/sensitive ground, and even more different than stamping your authority all over places you take over.

Actually, what I'm saying is that the Christians didn't ask anyone jack, 'cause when the churches were built, the Roman empire had already declared its official religion to be Christianity, and since basically anything touching the Mediterranean was part of Rome, pretty much all that was needed was "Hey, I'm gonna be a good Roman citizen and build this here church next to where Jesus sat for a day or two". No authority-stamping involved, and all the Muslims did was allow Christians to continue to frequent the churches and other holy sites that had already been there.