Prejudice, fear taints mosque debate

If two towers crash in a city, what sound will a nation make?

Nine years later, the scar over New York City has opened a chasm that has swallowed America whole.

Yet, the pure geography of the site has never evolved past the cordoned-off line of chain-link fencing.

The hallowed ground itself manifests a presence that over-reaches the swath of lower Manhattan, wends from one end of the nation to the other side of the world, all the while kindling a spark of acknowledgment in the hearts of those that take pause.

This intangible boundary has become the hallowed Ground Zero, and like the empty ellipse its name suggests, so, too, has a hole been left unfilled for so long.

However, as time weathers all, the sharp imbalance of loss has fermented into the passion of mistrust and prejudice, and nine years has changed into two blocks from the epicenter of the 21st century's defining moment.

The Park 51 construction project is not a shopping center of the consumer culture. It is neither a church nor a synagogue. It is a mosque.

Two wars and years of fear have not abated the overwhelming sense of impropriety of the fastest growing religion in the world.

Strange tongues, covered women, and devout piety have created a weary America that neither seeks understanding nor acceptance. Islam's ties to the World Trade Center attacks have been irrevocably branded as a watermark on all Muslims.

Upon discovering that the impetus for the attack was the fanaticism behind a curtain of the religion, the entire creed was damned.

The Koran became a covenant with the devil and the evil of man was emanated by any turban wearing foreigner. But to dismiss an entire people and expel them from building a place of worship is to disavow fellow Americans.

I take severe offense to the intolerance toward American Muslims.

The proximity and the significance of a mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero grow larger with miles instead of feet.

A location two blocks away should not make it synonymous with the site,as the moniker "Ground Zero Mosque" proclaims.

Do not condemn the faith, condemn the individual. If the argument is the mosque's presence, should the issue not be questioning the imam behind the planned construction?

My concerns lie not with those that pray to Allah, but with him that has a questionable background and m.o.

An imam that refuses to condemn Hamas and, by extension, has aligned America as partially culpable in the 9/11 tragedy should not be the proponent for any house of worship.

His role is too politically charged and close to the principles he upholds. Interviews with 60 Minutes and WABC Radio have left unsatisfactory answers that have only been fodder for out-of-context circumstantial evidence.

Yet, perhaps it is this very slippery nature of inconclusive gesturing that has left arguments against the heart of the issue grasping for the throat of the religion, instead.

If there was any leader that had a more salient background and was not currently involved in a State Department funded tour of the Middle East, where would the issue be found?

Rejecting the culture of fear is impossible if steps are not taken to travel across the divide. Opening the lid off of repressed culpability will only leave America in the throes of a culture built on fear.

If one must take an issue with controversy, take issue without ill-founded reasoning.