Reply #30: K & R

[Withywindle]

I agree with you. You know what fuels radical extremism? Poverty, ostracism, and hate.

I'm not so naive that I think middle-class interfaith handholding is the CURE, but it sure as hell doesn't hurt.

There already are houses of worship very close to the WTC. Trinity Church, been there in some incarnation since (I think) the 1700s. Pretty sure there was already a small mosque within a couple blocks, and I think a synagogue as well. The site in question, first off, would not be a "mosque" per se, it would be a community center open to everyone--and, has already been pointed out, run by moderate Muslims and Sufis, who if anything are even more hated by the Wahhabist radicals than Westerners are. And it's two blocks away from the site? Do any of the people screaming understand how dense Lower Manhattan is? Just how many blocks away from Ground Zero do we have to declare off-limits?

It's this kind of thinking that illustrates why, almost 10 years later, the actual WTC is still a goddamn hole in the ground. That's a bigger disgrace to the memory of the fallen than a combination mosque/shooting range/flight school/abortion clinic/titty bar, IMO. What the terrorists WANTED to do is shut the busy, diverse, closely-knit, prosperous, ambitious, complex life of a great American city down. And for a few blocks for a shameful number of years, they've succeeded.