Sunday, August 15, 2010

Said and unsaid

Part of my training in my work is not only to listen carefully to what people say, but to keep my ears open for what they don't say.

In trying to make clearer to people who think the Ground Zero Mosque is just a matter of the First Amendment, I thought I'd make an image of a mosque being built over the field where Flight 93 went down.



It's not a matter of rights but of what is right. The insult would be immediately perceived. For people who seem to have some of the thinnest skin on the planet (see "Muslim sensibilities"), the notion that they do not intend an insult is ludicrous. This is the contemptuous assertion of their religion's superiority right in the face of their "fellow-citizens'" grief. Anyone with any respect would have backed off.

While we're on the subject of Flight 93, which, along with the Pentagon, gets lost in the narrative of 9/11...the fight about that memorial, now resolved, it seems, was deeply alarming and disheartening. The plane was taken down by Muslim jihadis and the architect decided to build a structure call The Crescent of Embrace...whose arms faced in the direction of...Mecca. Don't get me started. After a lot of screaming and yelling, we now have a new circular model. Sort of.

But if you check out the government website, one thing you'll find odd is the overloading of sacred language to describe the memorial's parts, but what you do not find at all is any reference to Islam. The said and the unsaid: Overcompensation in one direction to cover up the cowardly silence on the other?

What the hell is wrong with this country?

1 comment:

Leah said...

The question should be what is wrong with the elites in this country. The country itself is still as wonderful as it always has been.
To answer my own question about the elites. They are losing power and respect fast - so are hitching their wagon to the strong horse Islam.
They have some stupid notion that all those things Islam says about them aren't really true - and if they help Islam gain control here, they will be allowed to continue on their own merry way as if nothing happened.
I needn't tell you how stupid that makes them look.

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