Building a church in Manhattan, or the “Victory Mosque” as many media outlets have dubbed it.

So I want to get it straight what I am talking about first, building a church is what many are up in arms about and oppose on moral grounds. “They” are not slapping anyone in the face, “they” are not being disrespectful and it is not a victory Mosque – whatever the hell that term means. I am really surprised by the reactions of our populace about this but even more troubling, I am surprised by the reactions of people I respect, love and admire. I am not even sure why I am bothering writing this because those who have chosen sides have made up their mind already. In one case I was involved in a back and forth on a friends FB page where it also showed a picture of Osama Bin Laden – I remember thinking, really - what logic was used to tie him to this building project.

One fella actually said the following about building the Mosque. “I find it disgusting ... I served '84-'89..... I also believe everything I need to know about Islam I learned on 9-11 and until they can prove otherwise, I firmly believe they are here to do harm to me and my family”. I obviously responded with disbelief that one could form that opinion about the 5-8 million American Muslims who were living in the land of the free and the 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide. That is about a quarter of the population of the planet, and a bigger number than the 1.1 billion Catholics. I also asked about how one could learn all about a religion that has been around for 1400 years in one day – one can form an opinion about something like that in a day but NOT learn anything about the Muslim religion.

This topic is yet another instance of our inability to have a civilized dialog about the problems of our country and our world. There seems to be a rampant intolerance of everything not us in our country, I would be willing to bet that man who learned all he needed to know in one day has never even seen a Quran let alone opened one and read any part of it. I am sure he is an otherwise rational man but when we start to paint an entire group of folks with the narrow-minded brush of ignorance and arrogance we lose track of the radicals who actually attacked us. That is not my opinion, have we captured Osama Bin Laden? We lost track of him. Have we pissed off most of the Muslim world with our intolerance and invasions of their sovereign nations? This approach is creating divisiveness and hate and hating creates haters and it is doing that (creating haters) on all sides of this issue. Seems easy enough for me to see that more hate is not going to solve any of the problems we have. Understanding and civilized dialog will be what heals a nation and a world.

I think it is irrational for folks to lump together the "fanatics" who blew up the twin towers in a way that labels all Muslims fanatics. To me it is as crazy as saying all Christians are whack job militia men because Tim Mcvey blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma. Every religion and every group has crazies riding along on the fringes of the group, they are called radials no matter what group we are talking about. To lump those folks that ride on the fringes in with and then condemn the whole group is a BIG part of the reason we can’t seem to have a civilized dialog about the problems we face. To oppose someone building a church (and that is what it is) in Manhattan seems petty and not in any way attempting to move toward resolution of the race and religious problems in our country and in my opinion, it is counterproductive ridiculousness.

Isn't this supposed to be the country that stands for and was built on religious freedom and tolerance? Do we automatically judge a person based on the color of their skin or what religion they practice? I seem to remember reading about that someplace, oh yeah something about our founding fathers deciding the King could not impose his religion upon them. Seems I read someplace that all men were created equal as well, hummmmm…. where was that? Is religious and race intolerance what we Americans stand for and better yet is that what our constitution stands for? I believe this is one of those moments in time that history will not judge us kindly, this is truly a “we need to take a hard look at ourselves in the mirror” moment and start asking ourselves some hard questions about our own xenophobia.

When I hear folks lump all Muslims into the grouping of terrorist the engineer in me starts pondering and taking things out to their logical conclusion. So this is what I came up with, we need to round up some folks because they must be part of a sleeper cell operating here in the United States. Folks like Dave Chappelle, Lewis Arquette (yes Rosanna and David Arquette’s Dad) and even Ahmad Rashād of Minnesota Viking and television commentator fame. Using that logic “those” people are suspect and need to be watched. The rapper’s Mos Def and Busta Rhymes and even Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul Jabbar) – we need to persecute “them” as well, they are one of “them”. Let’s remember their faces and their accomplishments before we put them on a national no fly list. Every time we use words like they, them and those people we need to put faces to it, because it seems if you use this flawed logic we have to include all “those” people into that group of Muslims.

I am not sure how we got to this point of widespread intolerance. I suspect it has something to do with the 24 hour news cycle. We plug our brains into Fox News or CNN and that is where we get our information, depending on your political persuasion. I actually have one friend who said I watch CNN and Fox and somewhere in the middle is the truth – REALLY. That was the saddest commentary I have uncovered in this whole process. I am not even sure what that means, somewhere in the middle is the truth? To me the truth is the truth, the middle of two opinions is not the truth. That is exactly why I do not watch those dunderheads, on either one of those channels. Putting a guest with one opinion next to someone with a different opinion and then playing referee for 3 minutes is not providing us news, it is providing the wow factor for the ratings so the advertisers will pay for the broadcast - plain and simple. There is no unbiased news out there, if what they call news was actually news it would be the same information no matter where you heard it. News is “a report of recent events” according old Merriam Webster so how can a recent event be reported in 2 completely different ways? Because it is their opinion of that event. The great thing about this age is the internet, you can find sites that are not news related and find a WEALTH of information, if you want to.

This is part one of a multipart oratory, there is a lot a material I want to cover, I hope I have not offended you in a way that you won’t finish the series.