"[This book] embodies the Buddhist wisdom about change, life, and the
world more than anything written after the events of that day."
Robert Stone

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May 31, 2010

WHAT SHOULD SURROUND HALLOWED GROUND?

The Times’s Clyde Haberman has a thoughtful column that answers the question, “Should a new Islamic center be allowed to be built close to Ground Zero?” The answer: Absolutely. “It is guaranteed in the First Amendment, the same one that ensures freedom of religion, with no asterisk that says ‘*except for Islam.’ It is the same amendment that allows a strip joint and a porno shop to exist a couple of blocks from hallowed ground.”

Haberman also points out that “since long before the Islamist terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, a storefront mosque has been sitting on West Broadway in TriBeCa, a dozen blocks from the World Trade Center. No one seems to have ever minded its being there.”

The hysteria surrounding the proposed Islamic center has been misplaced, the public energy wasteful and debilitating. Moreover, the new institutions that grow up around the site should be expanding--not limiting--connections and understanding, building bridges between religious, ethnic, cultural, and social communities. This sturm und drang has some of the same poisonous tenor that surrounded opposition to the proposed International Freedom Center near Ground Zero, a flawed but virtuous endeavor, which died on the vine in 2005.

...On this remembrance day, I recommend a look at Alan Chin's images of the ceremonies surrounding the return to Dover Air Force Base of the remains of U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To all: a reflective and peaceful Memorial Day.

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