Change the World

I have time to relax before working tonight, so I thought I'd post right now. And it's an angry post concerning certain sentiments towards Muslims that have been making headlines.

It makes sense that there is a lot of news about Muslims being released right now. Ramadan is ending, and the celebration of Eid is upon us. Unfortunately, Islam is also connected to the attacks on America on September 11, 2001. It is this date and this attack that is releasing the firestorm of discussion on Islam in the news lately.

The big thing that's been going on for the past month plus is the location of an Islamic center in New York. It's two or three blocks from Ground Zero (I've heard both numbers), and many Americans believe it's a "slap in the face" to everything that was lost on September 11. They say it's "disrespectful" towards the families that lost someone in the attacks.

And yet no one has any qualms with the strip club, McDonald's, bars, and other commercial outlets that are closer than the proposed site. So we can't allow people to go practice their faith in good spirits, but can feed into capitalism and have our base sexual needs fulfilled, all because a few people practiced the same religion?

Let's get something straight: Islam is a fairly peaceful religion. You have extremists in every religion (Westboro Baptist ring a bell?), and throughout history Christians have committed some pretty horrible acts in the name of religion as well. But since they were the winners, they got to write history and decide that their actions were justified.

Not only that, but Islam has a fair amount in common with Christianity. The key aspect of Christianity is the belief that Christ was the son of God. Well, guess what? Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet. That's what makes it not Christian. But they do believe that he was an important aspect in their religion. They also feel the same way about Muhammad, Abraham, and Moses. Allah is the Arabic word for God; the Gods are the same.

Why focus on all the differences between your religions instead of finding common ground? Why not try and discuss the location of the Islamic center instead of protesting, hurling slurs, and generally being a bigot? Why call for the government to halt the development of the project, when the First Amendment guarantees us freedom of religion?

Take a second and put yourself in their place. Say your religion has been attacked for the past nine years, because a few crazies went too far. Say people look at you out of the corner of their eyes because of what you believe is truth. Say you're told you're not a citizen because of your faith. Now imagine you hear the nation is rallying to stop the building of your place of worship because these few crazies did something horrible that you were appalled by. How would you feel?

Let's take it a step further: How would you feel if someone was declaring to burn copies of the Bible to send a message to the Westboro Baptist Church? You'd be quite upset, right? Lucky for you that this nation has a good number of Christians in power, so this probably won't ever happen to you. But for Muslims in America, it is.

Terry Jones, a pastor in Florida, has scheduled a protest to burn copies of the Koran (Qur'an) on September 11 to send a message to extremist Muslims. He claims he's all right with the moderates, but either way he tries to cover his bigoted ideas, he's still burning a holy book of a massive group of people, and I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate it if a non-Christian burned the Bible.

Thankfully, it's been reported that he's calling off his protest if he gets a conference with the Imam of the Islamic center that's the center of so much controversy, and the Imam has agreed. Even so, it disgusts me that people can be so short-sighted as to walk around with these ideas in their head that what they're doing is acceptable.

The media has come up with a term for what seems to be sweeping the country: Islamaphobia. People are afraid of the little they know about Islam, and don't even go and try to find out more. They just believe the few things they've heard from whatever "news source," or judge based on what happened September 11. It's 2010; we should know by now to do research before forming opinions. We should know by now how dangerous stereotypes can be. We should know by now that it's not right to condemn a whole group of people for the actions of a few.

Shouldn't we be proving to the world that we can still be a melting pot, and that our country is one to be proud of? Showing off our bigots isn't helping this cause.