Here's the thing, people are making a false connection between this Muslim center and what happened on 9-11. The two aren’t connected. Muslim terrorists attacked the U.S., targeting the symbolic World Trade Center as our global economic heart and the Pentagon as our military brain. Christianity was not attacked by Islam. A holy war is not underway. This Muslim center is not in bad taste. It is not insensitive. People taking offense obviously feel that the U.S. was attacked by the entire Muslim world and see Islam itself as the enemy. That's just plain old wrong.
I joined the Navy in June of 2000. I was in the Navy when the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen. I was in my first "C" school and one of my instructors had transferred there from that ship, having been aboard when it happened. In my class were two members of the Bahrain Navy, Sammy and Fassel, being instructed in the use of a weapon system that some ships we sold them were equipped with. Also in my class was the son of a native Iranian, Petty Officer Fhatie, but he had grown up in the U.S. We were all in the same class on 9-11. I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that these foreign, Muslim sailors were treated exactly the same before 9-11 as they were after. I stood a watch with Fhatie shortly after 9-11 and he said that his father knew that the U.S. was going to go after someone, he worried that it would be Iran, but accepted the fact that someone was going to pay for attacking us. Petty Officer Fhatie himself was prepared to do his job, no matter what that meant. I deployed for the first time in March of 2003, before we began the war with Iraq, but it was clear that we would likely attack them soon. I spent a few months temporary duty working in the shipboard security department. One of the MAs (Masters-at-Arms, or Navy cops) was a tall very well-spoken black man. He was funny because he sounded like a guy that had gone to Oxford, but would sometimes awkwardly throw out hip phrases like "Fo-shizzle" and the like. I was having lunch with him one day and he told me that he was Muslim, then asked me not to tell anyone else. Overseas, during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I visited Bahrain, Dubai, Kuala Lompur, Malaysia and Singapore, all of which have large Muslim populations if not an overwhelming majority of Muslims. Our big bad U.S. Navy ships pulled right into their harbors (was that in bad taste?). Our sometimes well mannered, sometimes not so well mannered sailors strode right into their streets, speaking only English, sometimes using U.S. dollars instead of Dinar, Dirham or Ringgits. Walking around piss *** drunk, being loud and arrogant all the time. Yet not once was I ever mistreated, cheated or insulted. Instead I was greeted with smiles, called "my friend" and welcomed with good manners. I deployed again in 2005, visited many of the same places and was treated exactly the same as the first time.
Here we are throwing a childish temper tantrum over a Muslim center a few blocks, not on top of, a few blocks away from "ground zero." How petty, how small, how stupid? It's embarassing to me.
