Freedom to build a Mosque

Monday, 30 August 2010 06:02

Written by Bailout Main Street Now

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Freedom to build a Mosque

I am surprised to read so many conservatives and tea partiers enraged over the concept of an Islamic Mosque being erected in the close proximity to “ground zero” (the former World Trade Center location).  While the personal opinions of many, which state that a Mosque so close to the World Trade Center’s location is reminder to many of the hatred that we experienced at the hands of a few radical and extremist Muslims may sting as we remember the attacks of 9/11, we must also remember something else: the U.S. Constitution and the freedom of religion that it encompasses. The recent debate of the proposed New York Mosque has brought with it a plague of “Islamaphobia” as Ron Paul has tagged it. While tea partiers and conservatives have rallied around the wagon against government mandated health care and financial regulation (and this, because they believe the government should be smaller and less invasive); many of these same people have also petitioned that the New York Mosque should not be allowed to be built so near to the World Trade Center memorial.

The problem with asking the government to prevent a religious group from erecting a facility somewhere is simple: it’s unconstitutional. Our government should not be defending or attacking ANY religious group; we as a nation are founded on religious freedom.  Further, we cannot envelope the acts of 9/11 into an all encompassing hate for peaceful Muslim communities here in the states. As Charles Heston so eloquently said in a speech shortly after the Columbine school shooting, “each horrible act can't become an axe for opportunists to cleave the very bill of rights that binds us. America must stop this predictable pattern of reaction, when an isolated terrible event occurs, our phones ring demanding that the NRA explain the inexplicable. Why us? Because their story needs a villain. They want us to play the heavy in their drama of packaged grief” –this is the same with the mosque in New York.

How dare we as a nation of freedom and individual liberty deny that same freedom to others by grouping a religion collectively because of a few radicals who acted out in hatred towards the United States! This country promises a heritage of freedom, yet in our past, we often denied it to religious or ethnic groups. Let us learn from our past and extend the same basic rights of freedom of speech, association, and assembly to those who are fellow citizens of this richly diverse nation. When we begin to deny the rights of citizens based upon any of these criteria, we begin to tear down the freedoms that we all share collectively.

As Ronald Reagan once stated, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”; - we must defend the rights of the oppressed citizen, or someday we may be the next generation to have our Constitutional liberties infringed on.

Source: Campaign for Liberty