Let (Some Of) Us Pray

I’m a New Yorker. It is the very first thing I tell people about myself. My story usually unfolds in this order: I’m a New Yorker, I have a sensational wife and I love the Vikings.

I feel this city in my bones, find comfort that there are millions of stories intersecting on public transportation, and won’t even entertain the notion that any other city matters more than New York City. Two miles wide, fourteen miles long. That’s it—a finger of land, surrounded by a lumpy mass of well-meaning outer boroughs, where many of my friends live.

I’ve been watching the hullabaloo surrounding the proposed building of a mosque near ground zero and, naturally, a bunch of people have waded into the dispute, none of whom live here, or actually even like the city.

That’s not to say that they don’t have the right to an opinion. They sure do. Many claim how disrespectful they find the announcement that Muslim-Americans are looking to open a mosque and rec center in the financial district. I respect their views.

But when they start saying that it is an insult to those of us who lived through the events of September 11^th, 2001, I feel the need to interject. Only people who endured it can know just how much the wound continues to throb and only those people should be able to speak about what it means within the context of our own psyche.

New Yorkers don’t depend upon politicians to tell us anything, really. We took the shot and we’re still standing. They need to go worry about someone else, and try not to screw over our early responders any further, like they did just last week, denying them a lifetime of health insurance.

The pain of that day is exacerbated by the gaping hole that the site still is. That’s what really bothers me: NYU has built 19 dorms and Duane Reade has put up 247 of their haphazardly crummy stores, in the time it took WTC developers to discover the hull of an 18^th century boat, as they did a few weeks ago.

With all of that said,  I need a bunch of politicians from nearby states like Alaska, Nevada and Arizona telling me how I feel like I need a gaping hole in my own head.

The problem with Islam is the same with any religion: it can be twisted and warped to justify actions that seem contrary to common sense and human decency. Like blowing up abortion clinics, or displacing generations of families and alternately attributing it to ancient texts and the spoils of war and, obviously, murdering thousands of innocent people in some office buildings, all in the name of a deity.

I was watching Fox News, the dunce cup of American “news” outlets, because I wanted to see how simplistically they would package this into an indictment of anyone who disagrees with them. Rather than reporting on the story—which they actually never do—they stoked the outrage, showed some older stock footage of angry people with flags, and let dying-wife deserter Newt Gingrich compare Muslims to Nazis, being appeased by a bunch of namby-pamby Neville Chamberlains. I think he may have been referring to folks like me, although I have always thought of myself as more like Zhuge Liang. Only taller.

As with many New Yorkers, I know people of Islamic faith. And I come into contact with Muslims on a daily basis, along with Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and all manner of Christians,  atheists and agnostics. I find everyone occasionally infuriating, irrespective of who he or she worships.

And I don’t tie morality to faith, either. Anyone who needs to be told to be good really isn’t. You’re born with a moral compass. Either it works, or it doesn’t. There are a billion-and-a-half Muslims worldwide and only 775 of them passed through the gates of Guantanamo Bay. That’s the math that shouldn’t escape this conversation.

But this isn’t about religion; it’s about that pesky old U.S. Constitution that always seems to get in the way, whenever we decide what “they” get to do or say. People have the right to worship, even if they hold the same religious belief as the 9-11 hijackers. The location of their mosque is not an affront to me, and if it were, I would still afford them the same rights. Why? Because I’m not afraid of a house of worship. Or Muslims. I’m afraid of rats, roaches and bedbugs. Not people.

Is a mile far enough away? Two miles? How about five? Once we begin to chip away at our own liberties, we lose. Once we let fear dictate how we treat other people, we lose. Once we project intolerance to the world, the way Bush the younger did, so perfectly fitting the narrative of Americans as angry, mistrustful imperialists, we lose.

We did so much losing for a decade. The irony of religious intolerance rearing its head in a country that was founded to escape just that is not lost on either of us, I’m guessing. Can’t we all just take a deep breath and think about this rationally…except for those people who think the Earth is 6,000 years old?

So I read a poll today that said that a full two-thirds of Americans are against the building of that aforementioned mosque near ground zero. I wonder: how many of them are against Catholic churches being built next to elementary schools?

Calm down, I was just asking a question.