For weeks, a debate raged over plans for an Islamic community center that will be built near the site where the World Trade Center towers once stood. This area known as Ground Zero is a ground zero of a different sort.
This is where some have said our thinking on religion, war, politics, and the economy began to evolve in the 21st century. The truth is, that place and the tragedy of 9/11 have given people a reason to say out loud things that they have thought and kept to themselves for years.
Racism and greed are nothing new to humanity; they have darkened our hearts from the beginning of time. And it is greed, not healing, that has spurred politicians to support the building of new towers on the former World Trade Center site. Their thinking is the best way to honor the memory of the souls that lost their lives there is to allow business to flourish there. Make no mistake, the souls of those buried at Ground Zero will not be honored by building towers on top of them where money will be made by people who may or may not be acting with the best of intentions.
The people, the politicians, of Oklahoma City got it right 15 years ago.
The Murrow federal building was not rebuilt in the exact same place as the bombing site. The grounds were turned into a memorial park for the lives lost. That is the example we should follow. A memorial park and the museum that is already planned are the only appropriate construction that should be built on what is now a burial site.
It is not unusual for burial sites to have places of worship built around them. St. Paul’s chapel, built long before the Trade Center, now overlooks this site. It is not inappropriate for those who come to remember to have available to them their places of worship near to the site if they wish to go there to pray after visiting in the museum.
St. Paul’s chapel was never considered part of the World Trade Center complex because it is a couple of blocks away. Equally distant, but in a different direction, is the Con-Ed building where the new Islamic community center (ICC) will be built. They are near the site, but not on it, and in particular the view from the ICC is not in the direct sight line of the footprints of the two towers. In other words, if you don’t want to see the center, you won’t.
What would our Founding Fathers want us to do?
To be true to the faiths we have been brought up in, to honor the lives lost on 9/11, and in Iraq and Afghanistan every day, we must, no matter how hard it is, preserve the freedoms of expression, of speech, of religion, that we would deny to Muslims by actively working against the building of the ICC.
We are free to believe or not in Islam, to hear or ignore what is said at the ICC, to visit the center or to stay away. We are not free to stop them from building at the Con-Ed location. The moment we do we become what those hateful monsters who have hijacked Islam think we are.
So yes, the Islamic community center should be built wherever the congregation thinks it is best to do so, so that they may continue to practice their beliefs and educate others so the degradation, the theft of Islam, stops.
What I do know is that those who died and are dying from the after effects of the wars and Ground Zero are doing so in service to our country and deserve to be honored by upholding the tenets of our democracy. To do anything less is the true dishonor to their memory.
Barbara Emanuele is a lifelong resident of Flushing and an adjunct lecturer at the City University of New York.
