The attacks on 9/11 were horrible for our nation, yet even worse for people who had loved ones in the buildings or on the planes. Today there is division among us because of the possible building of a Muslim community center blocks from ground zero. The rhetoric I've been hearing is how insensitive the Muslim community is for even wanting to build there, but what if it were some type of Christian center? Would they have an issue with that? Absolutely not. What these people need to realize is, many nationalities died that day, and no one has exclusive rights to emotional pain.
We have been healing as a nation and the Muslim community has the right to build anywhere they choose and by building this center, then maybe people can be educated about the fundamental beliefs of Islam. To deny this community from building anywhere is an act itself of discrimination, and we have fought for Civil Rights since the 1960's where we are all equal, and our Fore Father's implemented our Constitution so all of us could have religious freedom.
The attitudes of the Christian segment of our society are frightening to me right now. They profess love, and yet they attack anyone who believes differently or is of a different lifestyle than them. We are a nation of many nationalities, and individual uniqueness and it's time we recognize this. Christians feel the only way to heaven is through Jesus and maybe by visiting this Center with an open mind, then maybe they could learn something, although I really doubt it. We are all conditioned as children to believe a certain way, and most refuse to accept anything which is contrary to that conditioning.
I know there are extremists among the Islamic faith, however there are extremists in every faith, look at Waco, and Timothy McVeigh who attacked in Oklahoma City, he was a white man, also the group led by Fred Phelps, these are just a few examples of people who are dangerous, yet if they are white, then society as a whole does not condemn them in the same manner.
Wouldn't it be nice if going forward our world could be a place of peace for our children? To get there our churches need to stop teaching or brainwashing of absolute truth, for truth is an individual perception. I don't know that Jesus really lived or not, or if he did was the true son of God, nor do I know that what Islam teaches is the absolute truth. Regardless, we can teach respect, react with respect, and live with respect.
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." -Arthur Schopenhaur
ReplyDelete"The truth must be repeated over and over again, because error is repeatedly preached among us, not only by individuals, but by the masses." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
ReplyDelete"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything--you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." --Robert A. Heinlein, If This Goes On, 1940
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