While the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has passed, the furor over the “Ground Zero Mosque” continues (still ignoring the fact that the Cordoba House/Park51 is neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero). But hopefully this brief story from the New York Times about the other Ground Zero Mosque can put the issue to bed once and for all.
You see there already has been a mosque at Ground Zero, there was an Islamic prayer room inside the South Tower of the World Trade Center, a room that was destroyed along with the rest of the building in the terrorist attacks. It would be nice if this little bit of knowledge served to 1) remind us that the people killed on 9/11 weren't just white Christian folk like some would like to imply (nor were they all Americans, it is important to remember that about 700 were citizens of approximately 70 other nations); 2) that lower Manhattan has had and continues to have an Islamic community that has the same right to exercise their faith as anyone else and that 3) the Islamic fundamentalists who attacked the buildings destroyed their own prayer space, holy texts (I would assume the prayer room had at least a few Korans laying about) and their coreligionists, meaning they weren't brave individuals on some sort of grand mission, but a bunch of sick individuals co-opting religious ideas to serve their own twisted world view.
A guy can always hope.
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