Ground Zero Mosque

First off, it's not even a mosque. It's a community center. Sure, they're going to put a prayer room in it, but that doesn't make the building a mosque.

And it's not AT Ground Zero, it's two blocks away. Also, there are at least ten Christian churches within two blocks of the former World Trade Center, and I've never heard any opposition to their existence.

I don't care if you are prejudiced or intolerant. That's your right. But it's no one's right to say they can't practice their religion freely in America. The only reason people are objecting to the cultural center is because it's going to be used by Muslims. And that is unconstitutional, un-American, and inhuman.

When the first European settlers came to North America in the early 17th century, they were fleeing religious persecution. They wanted the right to practice their religion freely. However, they were no better than the oppressors they left behind. They made their religion the new state religion, and other beliefs were illegal. In the 18th century, at the beginning of the United States, when our founding fathers were working out the first details of our government, they knew that one of the things the government should never have control over was religion. Thus the first clause of the First Amendment in our Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

Now, I know the United States is far from perfect, and I know we have a rather violent and discriminatory past. But one thing we've always had right is the freedom of religion. You can believe anything or nothing, and no one has any right to tell you that you're wrong.

So what happened? Have people forgotten our past? How is it within anyone's rights to prohibit another religious group from building a community center specifically geared toward their own group? What happened to "Congress shall make no law...prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]"? People have no right to ask the government to stop this community center. Like I said before, you can think whatever you want. But you can't blame an entire culture for the crimes of a few extremists. Not unless you want to go back to World War II, when American citizens were arrested and put in prisons- sorry, "concentration camps", just because they were of Japanese descent.



This is America. One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for ALL.