I think it’s about time I weighed in on a hot political issue. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I’ve decided that the Muslim Prayer Center, which is proposed to stand 600 feet from Ground Zero, should be built. Will it be controversial? Most definitely. Will there be protests? Probably. Will violence erupt? Possibly. The question then arrives: Why build it?
In the years since 9/11, public opinion in this country regarding Muslims has been widely misguided. From the moment the towers fell, terrorism has been associated with Muslims; and thousands of innocent Muslims have paid the price for their extremist representatives. Hate crimes against Muslims spiked from 354 attacks in 2000, to over 1,500 attacks in 2001; and, throughout the country, Muslims have been subject to prejudices ranging from Attorney General John Ashcroft’s statement, “Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you” and the ongoing case A.C.L.U of N.C. v State of North Carolina, in which Muslims fight for the right to swear on the Qu’ran rather than the Christian Bible in the court of law. Furthermore, as usual, the media has propogated the negative view of Muslims. A Eurpol report showed that more than 99% of terrorist attacks in Europe were carried out by non-Muslims and, contrary to popular opinion, only a small minority are carried out by Islam extremists. An article in the New York Times stated:
On top of the fear and confusion in New York about Islam after 9/11, a movement had begun to spring up against Muslims seeking a larger role in American public life. In 2007, Debbie Almontaser, a Muslim educator, had been forced to resign as the principal of an Arabic-language public school in Brooklyn after such groups helped paint her as supporting terrorism. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/nyregion/11mosque.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&sq=mosque%20debate&st=cse&scp=31)
Just or not, the Islam community must deal with this negativity. In my personal experience, there are two separate “Islam Awareness Week”s at Rutgers in which Muslims set up tents and distribute pamphlets, Qu’rans, play games informative of Islamic beliefs and practices, and participate in communal prayers. Organizers of the Prayer Center hope that it’s erection will not only quelch anti-muslim sentiment but also bring Muslims together. As reported in the above article, Robina Niaz, one of the center’s organizers, explains, the mosque controversy has “made it legitimate for everybody else out there to lash out at Muslims. It has brought us together. But it also shows how much we have to do.” The Islamic community must constantly struggle with the negative image imposed on it, and seek to break down that image by garnering positive publicity from sites like the Prayer Center, which hopes to be a symbol of the diversity and freedom of religion and toleration in the United States.
There are some who see the center as some sort of victory tower, or as a commemoration to the extremists who died in the 9/11 attacks. I think these people need to visit the center and see for themselves what Islam is about– peace, love and tolerance. No one won on 9/11. Terrorists thrive through fear. Through ignorance, and I think that this Prayer Center is a important and effective to bridge the river of fear and intolerance, of ignorance, that has flowed against the Muslims for nearly 10 years. The stark juxtaposition between the remnants of Ground Zero, displaying the castrophe brought about by hatred and prejudice, and the Prayer Center, focusing on the true pillars of Islam and serving as vindication for the unjustly oppressed Muslim-Americans building it, would sent quite a statement vibrating throughout not only the country, but the world.
I do, however, fear what the Prayer Center will mean in the short run. I expect there to be protests, and I fear there may be violence. The black civil rights movement dealt with similar dilemnas. In 1957, 9 black students enrolled in Little Rock High School, but only 1 arrived on the first day; she didn’t recieve the phone call regarding the immense danger the students were in. On that occassion, President Eisenhow called in the air force to protect the students, escorting them to and from school and between classes. These students had to deal with the threat of violence and the arousal of fear, but, in the long run, it was a definite move towards equality in the United States. Similarly, I believe that the Muslims organizing the Prayer Center will have to face protest and hatred, but, in the long run, its construction will be an important step in educating US citizens about the true spirit of Islam and help bring an end to the decade of violence and discrimination– at schools (Islam headscarfs are banned in schools in France), airports (Sharukh Khan was subject to what he described as ”humiliating” questions for several hours at Newark Airport because of his last name), government (Turkey is still not able a part of the EU) , in their own homes (spike in hate crimes), and a 2010 study showed that “Muslims sending out resumes in hopes of a job interview had 2.5 times less chance than Christians’ with similar credentials “of a positive response to their applications.”[164] — that they have had to endure.
Prejudice is like a mold. Something sets it off, a personal dispute or an extremist action, and that event becomes a representative of an entire group. The hatred, the image, is harbored, and ferments. Similar to way in which mold begins when dad missed a spot with the mop in the corner of the celler after it flooded in the last storm. The moisture sits. Slowly, the mold begins to grow. Prejudice is then handed down, father to son, generation to generation, strengthening and growing more rank, more violent, until it has become so engrained that it becomes nealry impossible to uproot, or to remember how it began. We don’t question the actions of our predessessors, we merely continue them. Here we are, on the threshold of mold formation, with a chance to eradicate it.
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