Monday, September 13, 2010

On the Proposed Islamic Center...

I'm taking part in a conversation elsewhere about the proposed Islamic center in Manhattan, and it has struck me... it makes sense that people are freaked out by this idea.  It's not beyond the pale of rationalization to associate a religious building with violent actions from the same religion, even if the building has nothing to do with these violent attacks.  I don't begrudge people for being quite sensitive about 9/11 to the extent that they associate religious terrorists' coreligionists with the violence that occurred at the hands of terrorist elements.  But this fearful sentiment has nothing to do with the religious center itself; it has to do with 9/11, and Ground Zero.  As I said over there:
The argument seriously consists of nothing more than this "This center should not be built near Ground Zero because it represents the violence of the Islamic tradition. Why does it represent the violence of Islam, you ask? Because it is being built near Ground Zero, of course!"  Just apply the transitive property of equality and the argument boils down to "it shouldn't be built near Ground Zero because it's being built near Ground Zero."

This led me to wonder...

...has anyone yet proposed that we relocate Ground Zero in order to solve the whole dilemma?  Because that really seems to be what this is all about.  Ground Zero is apparently in the wrong location for these people, despite their claims that it's the Islamic community center that bothers them.

3 comments:

  1. We could move it to Murfeesboro, TN, so that they look marginally less dumb.

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