New York City Mosque: My View

September 11th, 2001 was a terrible day in not only the history of New York, but the history of the entire country. That early fall morning, the United States watched in terror as the tallest buildings, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the city were pummeled by planes, consumed by smoke and fire, and finally gave way and collapsed to the ground below, now known as Ground Zero.

It is now August 26th, 2010. It's been nine years since we lost seven buildings, two airplanes, and two-thousand-seventy-nine people in New York to nineteen hijackers, who lost their lives taking them. These hijackers, terrorists, were known to be some of the Muslim extremists from the al-Qaeda, originating from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. These men despised the United States, and gave their lives to make it known in a violent and outright cruel way.

Losing all we lost that day is bad enough, but now a new and even more disgusting effect of the attacks is emerging; cruel and unfair racism. It was blatantly obvious that the United States began harboring something of a distrust for Muslims after the attacks, and it only grew in the years following. Now, just short of a decade later, plans to build a Mosque two blocks from the attack site were put in place.

The public reacted negatively, with a seventy-two percent opposition to the building of the Mosque.
I would never hint at any disrespect for those who died in the attacks; they were innocent travelers, civilians and office workers, as well brave firemen and policemen. Their deaths were unwarranted and unfair and they will be mourned for decades more to come. However, the loved ones they left behind have become biased and hateful against other innocents; Muslim American citizens.

If a Muslim is living in New York City, either on a Visa or was born into/has obtained a citizenship of the United States, doesn't he or she have as much right to a Mosque as a Catholic or Christian of the same situation does to a church?

Yes, the terrorists who destroyed the towers were Muslim extremists. Other than their religious faith, they have nothing to do with the Muslims living in the United States, particularly New York, and those citizens should not have to suffer the indignity of being grouped in with them. We have no right to assume that any Muslim living in our country has extremist and terrorist ideas; it's cruel and judgmental to assume such things. What if we went around assuming every Japanese citizen was a kamikaze bomber? What if we assumed every German or person with German blood was a Nazi? Every Russian a communist? These accusations are easily recognized as bias, and the same goes for the notion that every Muslim is a terrorist at heart.

In 1995, a US citizen and an American Militia sympathizer, Timothy McVeigh, set off a homemade bomb [a heavily-explosive-laden vehicle] outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. He harbored a deep hatred for this country's government and chose to express his feeling in a violent and murderous way. His bomb killed one-hundred and sixty-eight people, including nineteen children under the age of six. He also destroyed or damaged three-hundred and twenty-four nearby buildings and eighty-six nearby cars. In two-hundred and fifty-eight more buildings, the glass in the windows was shattered.  This attack is known as the Oklahoma City Bombing, and until the World Trade Center fell, it was the deadliest terrorist attack committed on American soil.

Timothy McVeigh was a Caucasian citizen and an Irish Catholic.

Now, let's say it's 2004, nine years after the Oklahoma City Bombing. If the Irish Catholic church wanted to build a church across from the explosion site, would the government lift a finger to stop it? Would the public outrage as they are now about the Mosque? No. Catholicism and Irish Catholicism are common religions in the United States, and considerably Caucasian religions at that. No one would even speak up.

You can argue that, while the World Trade Center's destroyers were fueled by religion, McVeigh was fueled by politics.

So replace "Irish Catholic Church" with "American Militia Headquarters." Would there be any outcry? If so, would it reach the same level as the Mosque has sparked?

No. No, it wouldn't.

Why? Because the American Milita is AMERICAN, as in, supporting of our country no matter their motives. Because the Irish Catholic Church is mostly Caucasian in attendance, no racism or hatred would be felt toward them by the general American public.

Although Islam is a religion practiced widely, the main concentration of followers originate from the Middle East. They are not white or Christian/Catholic, and so they are not Americans in the eyes of many, no matter if they are citizens or not.

It has been nine years since the World Trade Center fell. If the state of New York, as well as the entire country, cannot accept that not all who follow the Islamic faith are responsible for the deaths of their loved ones and fellow Americans, then they are proving their obvious biased racism to the world. The Muslims who want this Mosque built ARE our fellow Americans, in fact, and they were being denied a right they deserve.

I am a fifteen-year-old Caucasian, female high school student, and this is my standpoint on the New York City Mosque in a nutshell; The Mosque should be built because American and visiting Muslims deserve a place of worship. They are Americans for the most part, and if they're visiting, they're human beings all the same and deserve the same rights as anyone else in this country.