And I bet you unaware of this fact. Yes the project, called Park 51 (because of its street address at 45-51 Park Place, in Lower Manhattan), ubiquitously known as The Cordoba Initiative, and pejoratively deemed the Ground Zero Mosque, opened to the public Wednesday, September 21st, a mere 10 days after the Tenth Anniversary Observance of the 9/11 tragedy. That it did so, absent the roiling ruckus and fanfare that swirled around the project during its conceptual stages says several things about both our American psyche, and the true nature of the facility.
As for our often too-sensitive psyche, I would submit, it proves unequivocally the furor was part media contrivance, part political Molotov cocktail. It was a man-made controversy designed to incite intense emotional reactions from the survivors of 9/11 victims, while intensifying and leveraging the enthusiasm advantage of the GOP-Tea Party, heading into the 2010 mid-term elections. Finally, it was meant to test the resolve of President Obama, moderate Democrats, and all non-Islamophobes, to stand behind their values and belief systems.
Regarding the facility, as I wrote August 18, 2010, in a post called, “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,” “The facility would include a Mosque, but is not just a Mosque, nor would it serve predominately in that capacity.” The project is an Islamic Cultural Center, and is modeled after a Jewish Community Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. While the building does include a Muslim prayer space, antagonists conveniently failed to note in the debate, a year ago, that particular space was already open. In fact, it has note been open two years.
The Center’s developer, Sharif El-Gamal, conceded project planners and designers also made mistakes. Principal among them was not involving the family members of 9/11 victims, from the start! This critical oversight proved crucial in providing mischief-makers a foothold, and an all too-generous opportunity to create a controversy where none needed to, and in fact, should not have existed. The Center is open to all faiths, and will include a 9/11 Memorial. Any suggestion that placing the facility at the chosen location is insensitive is simply wrong-headed, and flies in the face of what in most other instances is thought of as the great, unequalled American ethos for fairness, tolerance, and reason.
Of course, emotional rants, and media-driven stories are not actions that come to mind, typically, when traditional American virtues and values are discussed. In that light, the fast and loose use of these manipulative tools led me to inquire, when framing the August, 2010 post, in juxtaposition to the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave (which we like to believe we are), “Are we also the Sanctuary of the Hypocritical?” Have we, or at least segments of our society, become conditioned to a palpably intentional, and therefore, in our minds, no-fault (of our own) schizophrenia? The question is rhetorical, but you may want to answer for your personal edification, and naturally, from your unique perspective.
In that earlier post, I quoted our nation’s first President, George Washington, saying, “For happily the Government of the
That quote made by President Washington, when he was responding to concerns expressed by the Jewish community of Rhode Island, was made over two hundred years ago, as the President visited the local Synagogue in New Port. It was framed as an inviolable contract between our nation and its citizens, protecting all of us from bigotry, religious and otherwise. The actions of some Americans, relative to Park 51, clearly violate the terms and conditions of the President’s verbal contract.
But here we are, little more than a year later, and guess what? The facility is open and operational; moreover, project leaders are making a genuine effort to ensure they involve family members who lost loved ones in the 9/11 incident, community leaders, and activists, in planning the various uses of the facility. One of the more poignant examples is that the featured photographer in the “NYChildren” exhibit is, Danny Goldfield, who is Jewish.
Mr. Goldfield was inspired, to create the exhibit, by the story of “Rana Sodhi. “ Rana is a Sikh who immigrated from
Thus far Mr. Goldfield has photographed children from 169 of the countries represented in the 9/11 disaster. He focus continues to be finding and photographing children from the remaining 24 (of the 193) countries, in order to complete the exhibit.
Much work remains in the overall project, including erecting a new 15-story building. But, it is significant that a functioning facility is up and running now. After the sound and fury emanating from the project’s early stages, it is difficult to imagine so much progress would be made, and that attitudes would have been altered, so fundamentally, in one year. That is, unless you actually considered these key facts…the Center is, ”Not A Mosque, Not at Ground Zero: Open for Business!”
I’m done; holla back!
Read my blog anytime by clicking the link: http://thesphinxofcharlotte.blogspot.com. A new post is published each Wednesday. For more detailed information on a variety of aspects relating to this post, consult the links below:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2011/0922/Ground-zero-mosque-opened-to-public-Wednesday
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