The “Ground Zero Mosque” Non-Issue

Anyone who knows me knows I love to gripe about how the mainstream media, and cable news in particular, can twist and manipulate a story to fit into their personal ideals.  All of the big cable networks do it to some extent.  Blame it on the 24-hour news cycle or on each station’s politics but regardless, for someone who’s always appreciated good journalism, it sucks.  And once something becomes an issue on one station, the others tend to roll over and “report” it just to avoid looking like they don’t pay attention.  And then they all get in on it together to some extent.

The so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” is a great example.  When I first heard about it, it was getting praised by a lot of people in a lot of places.  It disappeared from my mind.  Fast forward a while and suddenly, it’s a huge disgrace, stomping on the memories of people who died on 9/11.

There’s just a few problems with this story, the most important of which is there is no Ground Zero Mosque.  And no plans for one.  Here are a few of the issues I’ve heard, the ones that most people seem to be talking about, which a little explanation.

1.  “I can’t believe they want to build a big mosque on Ground Zero.”  If you just listen to the periphery, you might think a bunch of Muslim terrorists were going to build a mosque the size of Vatican City right where the North Tower used to be.  Saying that though would be a lie.  There is no mosque being built at Ground Zero.  There is an Islamic community center in the planning stages several blocks away, completely out of eyesight or earshot.

2.  “OK, so it’s not actually at Ground Zero, and calling it the Ground Zero Mosque is completely disingenuous by the media.  But it’s still close, and that’s disrespectful to our guys who died on 9/11.”  I totally respect the feelings of people who need healing.  But there’s still a problem with this.  For one thing, the people who died on 9/11 were a hodge podge like the rest of the country – Christians, atheists, black, white, Muslims, etc.  There may not be any groups in this country who didn’t have someone die there.  Number two, Muslims pray inside the Pantagon, as do a number of people of other religions.  No one has an issue with that.

If we really want to get into an argument about extremists, and the urge by some to paint an entire group based on those extremists, we’d have to eliminate Christianity and remove it from places around the world.  The KKK, the Christian Identity Movement, and a vast amount of history draws a pretty dismal picture…of those people.  But like not all Christians are racist, homophobic, “let’s kill the infidels” nuts like their extremist outcrops, not all Muslims are terrorists.  They lost on 9/11 too.  The difference is, because of a small percentage of their overall group, they continue to suffer in other ways, like being called terrorists by people who don’t know how to separate bad people from good.

Let’s face it, if we eliminated entire groups based on some of their members, the earth…would be empty of people.  Period.

3.  “Well the President should never have weighed in.”  OK.  The President said Muslims have the right to build.   Now let’s look at a statement that has become a very important part of American history:  “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  So we yell at him when he doesn’t do his job, and we yell at him when he does?

I think there are two people who summed this up fairly well.  Michael Gerson, a former Bush aide, said, “An enormously complex and emotional issue — but ultimately the right thing to do.  A president is president for every citizen, including every Muslim citizen. Obama is correct that the way to marginalize radicalism is to respect the best traditions of Islam and protect the religious liberty of Muslim Americans. It is radicals who imagine an American war on Islam. But our conflict is with the radicals alone.”

Florida Governor Charlie Crist said, “I think he’s right — I mean you know we’re a country that in my view stands for freedom of religion and respect for others. I know there are sensitivities and I understand them. This is a place where you’re supposed to be able to practice your religion without the government telling you you can’t.”

4.  “But Christy, despite all that, I still think it’s disrespectful.”  If there were actually plans to build a mosque at Ground Zero, I would object.  Not because it was a mosque, but because if there was going to be a religious building built specifically on the site of Ground Zero, it would need to be non-denominational, in order to represent that more than one group of people were killed that day.  A place where anyone who walked in could feel good.  But there is no mosque being built on Ground Zero, and no disrespect intended.

So why would so many people be ok with it and then suddenly spin around?  Because that’s what cable news and politicians do best, in general.  At the moment we could still be talking about health care and sorting out fact from fiction there, or about the jobs bill, or about our soldiers still dying in a war we never should have waged in the first place, or about any number of other things.  But they don’t want us talking about those things because we might actually figure out the truth and support things they don’t want us to support, or fight things they don’t want us to fight.

Whipping tiny things into giant problems is like a game.  Not only does it distract us from what’s really important, but it keeps us separate.  And keeping us separate is the number one way to guarantee that we can be easily split up on any non-issue they want to throw at us later.  In 2004 they didn’t want anyone paying attention to the war or our other problems, so they went after gay marriage and other completely unimportant issues, whipping people into a frenzy so they’d stop considering the more pressing realities.

And we wonder why progress, when it does come, takes so much more work than is really necessary.