If they own the private property, they have every right to build whatever they want on it. However, the relevant parallel would be a Shinto youth center, as the Cordoba House is basically an Islamic YMCA.
I haven't forgotten 9/11, and I have the wisdom, knowledge, and mental acuity to know that it was allegedly perpetrated by 19 men who were supposedly Muslim, and not by all 1.5 billion Muslims around the world. I also know that it was politically motivated, and not carried out in the name of Islam. It was a response to US policy in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world. The notions that "they hate us for our freedoms" or "they hate us for our way of life" are complete hogwash, empty rhetoric, blatant propaganda, and make no sense whatsoever to any person that has an interest in reality. If that were that case, the US would be under constant attack from the Muslim world. A government of one the 57 majority Muslim nations has not carried out an attack on the US since long before 1776. There were many motives behind 9/11, but achieving martyrdom, blind hatred, jealousy, or the ?convert or die? misconception were not the motives.
It was allegedly a reaction to the financial and military support that the US provides to Israel, a country that has and is actively collectively punishing 1.4 million Palestinian Muslims, and has relegated them to living in what is essentially a concentration camp. The remaining 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military occupation on their own land. Their homes are being bulldozed at the whim of Netanyahu as we speak. Whether or not one supports Israel, it is hard to not acknowledge or criticize their land-grabbing and policy of using excessive force.
9/11 was allegedly also a protest of US military bases being maintained in Saudi Arabia, despite the disapproval of hundreds of millions of people. The US basically pays the puppet Saudi government to allow it, but most of the population does no approve, just like you wouldn't approve if Saudi handed the Italian Prime Minister a fat check and built a Saudi base in Vatican City.
9/11 was also allegedly perpetrated in response to the US's campaign against Iraq's civilians for over a decade in the 90?s. Estimates range from 750,000 to 1,500,000 civilians dead because of our continuing trade sanctions, half of them children. We refuse to lift these trade sanctions until Saddam Hussein resigned. But he remained in power only because President Bush 41 refused to pursue a military objective ? warriors vs. warriors ? by conquering Iraq in 1991. He deliberately let Saddam's army get away. We then starved Iraqi children for a strictly political objective: to get him to resign.
Also, you cannot ignore the fact that our tax dollars paid for the use of vaporized depleted uranium in Iraq during the Gulf War. The depleted uranium used against them has 4.5 billion year half-life, and will contaminate Iraq for the rest of humanity. Google "Iraq depleted uranium" images.
When Iraq started to build nuclear power plant that might possibly have been used to build a nuclear weapon, the Israeli Air Force bombed it ? and all the civilians working there ? into oblivion, without warning and without a declaration of war in 1982.
President Clinton did the same thing in 1998 to a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan that had no military significance. Tens of thousands of workers were killed.
The US was complicit in prolonging the Iran-Iraq war for much of the eight-years, and funded and militarily aided Saddam in order to keep Iran from gaining power, and to protect its oil and trade interests. That war led to the deaths of over 500,000 Iranians and Iraqis, including civilians.
The US has been meddling in the Middle East since 1953, when it staged a coup to overthrow the elected president of Iran, and they haven't stopped since. The items I mentioned are only a partial list of US involvement of Middle East affairs, and there are many, many more. Millions of Muslims have been killed, and tens of millions have been displaced.
If you actually believe that that the 9/11 attacks came out of nowhere, or were done to further the cause of Islam, you need to brush up on your contemporary American history and stop looking at the actions of the US government with blinders on. I am not implying that the US is a "great big Satan". I love this country, but I do not blindly support the filth that comes out of D.C. in the form of its foreign policy.
That is not to say that all Muslims are angels or all Muslim countries are utopia, or Muslim governments are even close to being perfect. All Muslims aren't the boogie man, and are not to blame for what a handful of men allegedly did on 9/11, just as all Christians and Germans around the world aren't to blame for what Nazi's did.
The two points I want you to take away are that you cannot collectively blame or punish Muslims or Islam for what happened, and you cannot ignore the acts of injustice and the atrocities carried out by the US government. To do so is willful ignorance, and it only serves to deepen the divide between truth and perception.
You are right on. I have made this point several times. Other than being a religious war, being built there has nothing to do with religion. The Muslims are building it there to show the remainder of their religion and the rest of the world that they can say "In your face, USA, we are not afraid of you and we are winning".
Would you approve if the Japanese build a Shinto shrine next to Pearl Harbor and open
