As the media-stoked controversy over the so-called “Mosque at Ground Zero” in New York City rages on, I can’t help thinking about a similar situation:
Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, was a Catholic. Yet no one demanded the removal of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, which stands directly across the street from the site, now the Oklahoma City National Memorial. And there were no protests when the church later erected a statue of Jesus to remember and mourn the bombing.
It’s not an exact parallel, since the church was there before the bombing. But it’s something to think about. Why is it okay to have a Catholic church across the street from a Catholic bombing site, but not okay to have a Muslim mosque two blocks from a Muslim bombing site?
What I don’t understand is why those who object to the property owners intended use… don’t just buy the property. If they are really serious, they need to put their own money where their mouths are instead of trying to get some governmental body to put my money and the barrel of a gun to the head of a legitimate property owner. Let ’em take up a collection if they can’t afford it individually. I might even contribute if they’d just shut up.
Excellent point!! Talk is cheap; let ’em put up or shut up. Of course, the Muslims already own the property, but money talks.
Hey, Hitler was a Christian, but there are churches at Auschwitz. The whole thing is just stupid, stupid, stupid.
I couldn’t agree more.
The sad thing is that, horrendous acts aside, Timothy McVeigh is considered to be “one of us” gone astray, while Muslims are still considered to be “outsiders” whose beliefs and intentions are considered “inscrutable” the way we once though of the Asians. Sadder still, until we reach a time when we’re able to look inside ourselves for flaws – and answers – we’ll always feel the need for those we can label “outsiders” to to hold responsible when things aren’t going the way we want.
Yes, terrorists are terrorists, no matter where they’re born. And their victims are just as dead. Yet somehow our terrorists are never as evil as foreign-born terrorists. Funny how that works.