ground zero

Moral Myopia at Ground Zero

23 Comments

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 388

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 394

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sexybookmarks/public.php on line 400

Source: National Review Online

By Charles Krauthammer

Supporters of the mosque fail to see its true significance.

It’s hard to be an Obama sycophant these days. Your hero delivers a Ramadan speech roundly supporting the building of a mosque and Islamic center at Ground Zero in New York. Your heart swells and you’re moved to declare this President Obama’s finest hour, his act of greatest courage.

Park51 - Site of Ground Zero Mosque

Alas, the next day, at a remove of 800 miles, Obama explains that he was only talking about the legality of the thing and not the wisdom — upon which he does not make, and will not make, any judgment.

You’re left looking like a fool because now Obama has said exactly nothing: No one disputes the right to build; the whole debate is about the propriety, the decency of doing so.

It takes no courage whatsoever to bask in the applause of a Muslim audience as you promise to stand stoutly for their right to build a mosque, giving the unmistakable impression that you endorse the idea. What does take courage is to then respectfully ask that audience to reflect upon the wisdom of the project and consider whether the imam’s alleged goal of interfaith understanding might not be better achieved by accepting the New York governor’s offer to help find another site.

Where the president flagged, however, the liberal intelligentsia stepped in with gusto, penning dozens of pro-mosque articles characterized by a frenzied unanimity, little resort to argument, and a singular difficulty dealing with analogies.

Continue reading →

God and Man at Ground Zero

7 Comments

Source: Hot Air

By J.E. Dyer

In which a bemused observer tries to make sense of man, religion, and the state

Here’s my bottom-line problem with the concatenation of events and trends surrounding the Ground Zero mosque: I see privilege being accorded to Islam, as against situations in which the civil authorities have de-privileged Christianity and Judaism. The reflexive animus against America’s traditional major religions will be recognizable, in what I describe below, to every conservative. Yet in a situation where a very large group of Americans objects to the placement of a particular mosque, government authorities not only don’t privilege the objectors, they castigate them as bigots and override their concerns.

We can stipulate at the outset that none of the situations here is exactly analogous. The situation involving synagogues is not even in Manhattan; it’s in Brighton Beach. But in each case, the reflexes of the civil authorities have responded very differently, and the difference is telling.

Continue reading →

Deprecated: str_replace(): Passing null to parameter #3 ($subject) of type array|string is deprecated in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/functions/image.php on line 116
class="post-7457 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog-archive tag-alex-giannoulias tag-ground-zero tag-uncategorized entry">

Why no support for Ground Zero church from Giannoulias?

16 Comments

Alexi Giannoulias

Illinois Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias made waves earlier this week when he announced his support for the Ground Zero Mosque. Giannoulias’s support for the mosque isn’t particularly surprising; he’s far behind his Republican opponent, Mark Kirk, in the money race and can’t afford to alienate the White House, or risk no more presidential fundraising trips.

The people who should be surprised are Giannoulias’s Greek supporters, particularly those who call New York City home. You see, as Fox News reported today, the only house of worship that was actually destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks was a Greek Orthodox church, Saint Nicholas. And while the mosque cleared city red tape earlier this month, Port Authority officials have been dragging their feet for years on rebuilding Saint Nicholas.

“We have people that are saying, why isn’t our church being rebuilt and why is there … such concern for people of the mosque?” Father Alex Karloutsos, assistant to the archbishop, told FoxNews.com. He said religious freedom would allow a place of worship for any denomination to be built, but accused officials with the Port Authority of making no effort to help move his congregation’s project along.

Unfortunately, they have just been silent — dead silent, actually, said Karloutsos, whose father was ordained at Saint Nicholas. They just simply forgot about the church.

Krauthammer: Sacrilege at Ground Zero

19 Comments

Source: National Review Online

A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz).

When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there — and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized, or misappropriated.

That’s why Disney’s early ’90s proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition fearing vulgarization of the Civil War (and wiser than me; at the time I obtusely saw little harm in the venture). It’s why the commercial viewing tower built right on the border of Gettysburg was taken down by the Park Service. It’s why, while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.

Read the entire article on the National Review Online website.

Ground Zero is American Holy Ground. No Mosque Near Ground Zero

55 Comments

This is my essay that appeared on Catholic Online today.

Don’t Let Muslims Define 9-11

NAPLES (Catholic Online) – Muslims have it over secularists, but not Christians – at least the clear thinking ones anyway. The Muslim proposal to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is not only an affront to all people who died there, but another chapter in a cultural jihad that seeks to replace the cultural traditions of Christendom with Sharia, the code of law derived from the Koran and from the teachings and example of Mohammed.

First the caveats. Yes, most Muslims are not jihadists; they may see the non-Muslim as an infidel but won’t resort to violence to defeat him. Yes, Muslim believers pose no threat to American cultural norms and legal structures as long as their numbers remain small. Yes, every Muslim citizen should be afforded the rights due to all Americans regardless of their religion.

The $100 million mosque however, represents more than religious freedom. Named the “Cordoba House,” it is meant to recall the great Cordoba Mosque built in Cordoba, Spain in 784 after the Muslim conquest (and etch it forever in the West’s historical memory). The Cordoba House in New York (which assuredly will function as a mosque) is meant to broadcast to the world that the destruction of the Twin Towers was a victory for jihad.

It’s a perverse twist to a practice that Christians hold dear: Some ground is sacred and must reference God to make sense of the events that took place on it.

Continue reading →

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function nuthemes_content_nav() in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/prose/archive.php:58 Stack trace: #0 /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include() #1 /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/aoiusa/pu...') #2 /home/aoiusa/public_html/index.php(17): require('/home/aoiusa/pu...') #3 {main} thrown in /home/aoiusa/public_html/wp-content/themes/prose/archive.php on line 58