Freedom is a Victory for All
By Joel Straley

On 9/11 America was forced to assert herself against the kind of injustices Al Qaeda and the Taliban find permissible in advancing their political ideology. Namely the control, primarily with violence, to prevent what people can say, teach, and think. Holding a place of worship for a non-violent sect of Muslims is the most American way to combat the type of animosity that caused 9/11.

Reacting viscerally and changing your positions under the threat of violence is exactly how terrorism works. By allowing their violent actions to affect our view of freedom negatively IS a victory. It is exactly what is meant by that phrase that is touted by the American Right; “Those who sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither.” The only way one can be “un-American” in this sense is to be the fool who breaks from his values to conform with the herd.

The American Right’s allegiance to Christianity, blind militarism and its fear of terrorism is forcing them to use this debate to further create the narrative that Islam is a threatening “other”. An act that in itself is completely counterintuitive in maintaining a free society. They have taken the actions of 19, acting on behalf of an organization of only a few thousand, to shape their image of a religion followed by a billion people. If 9/11 caused you to believe that all Muslims are terrorists then I suppose by the same logic you must also believe all Americans are dead.

In a Tweet that first garnered public attention to the Park51 community center, or Ground Zero mosque, Sarah Palin stated “Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate [sic]”. The text reads that somehow this mosque, or any mosque in the United States, is not being built by “peaceful Muslims”. I’m sure that Mrs. Palin and her followers are aware that the founders of the Ground Zero Mosque are adherents of Sufism, a mystic branch of Islam much different from Salafist jihadism of which Al Qaeda is affiliated.

By making Islam an evil and mysterious “other” for traditionalist, conservative Christians they are able to play up the Us versus Them mentality that the American Right loves to maintain. In the opening lines of a segment on the Ground Zero mosque Bill O’Reilly confirmed as much in stating “If you oppose gay marriage you’re a homophobe, if you don’t want an open border you are anti-Hispanic and now if you think building a mosque 2 blocks from Ground Zero is inappropriate you’re an intolerant, anti-Muslim bigot”. These comments are delivered in jest so they will be quickly written off by the audience who, like Mr. O’Reilly, fall into each of those categories.

The American Right loves to claim as they oppress others that it is only because they are being oppressed. They claim we don’t have to have sensitivity towards Islam and allow the mosque to be near Ground Zero because they lack sensitivity about 9/11 by building it there. If Muslim protesters in the Middle East burn our flag, then we’ll burn their holy books. The American Right consistently lowers itself to continue being offended and creates its own fear by never rising up and standing behind the values they claim to believe in when they are screaming at protesters.

To the American Right, under the view that all of Islam is extremist Islam, building a mosque in Ground Zero is nothing more than a monument of victory over 3,000 dead Americans, ignoring the fact that over 60 of the victims were Muslim. A victory for Islam is when we equate a religion of a billion people to the actions of a few thousand and try to stomp out their culture from our melting pot. Only when we begin to oppress our own religious citizens do we begin to move towards a victory for extremist Islam.

It is times like this that really makes one wonder why the American Right is so committed to bringing democracy to the Middle East through war. Are much of the same members of the Tea Party who have such a fear of Islam really that committed to stopping Islamic theological oppression half a world away? Are they really concerned with the goals of the combat mission of Iraq or do they honestly only support it in hopes that the world will gain a few thousand more dead Muslims?

If Jihadist Islamists wanted a victory monument so bad why don’t they just build one in Iraq where they have killed a larger number of Americans and have done much greater damage to America’s reputation? Islam is not our enemy, Islam is our answer. It is a love and embrace of Islamic culture into our own society, of which they have showed their own admiration of our culture by adapting themselves to it, that truly lets us embrace the freedoms of which we speak in a post 9/11 world.

The Ground Zero Mosque debate, as well as the protests of other American mosques truly lets us show to the world what American means when she says “freedom”. I am an American, and as an American my views are not threatened by those that think, speak or worship differently than me because that is precisely what makes me a free American.

As Featured on The Politicizer’s Spark (http://spark.thepoliticizer.com/news/freedom-ub...)