For those of you that haven’t been around here often, let me make it abundantly clear that I am by no means a religious person. I was raised Catholic, ex-communicated myself about a decade ago, and have had an ambivalent relationship at best with organized religions ever since. So, this is not coming from someone pushing a religious agenda.
I wrote before about the Muslim center going up near Ground Zero, and suggested that ministers consecrate the ground in question. That was recognition of what is done traditionally with hallowed ground. While I am not religious, I understand that there are religious ceremonies and traditions involved in declaring a given location as hallowed ground. Now, in the context of 9/11, there is a secular definition of “hallowed ground”. It is a term that is mentioned primarily when one is talking of the Flight 93 crash site, if for no other reason because of logistics. But the fact remains that the general public is forbidden from setting foot on the crash site itself, and that is by order of the National Park Service. The final park policy listed on that page reads:
10. The crash site itself is accessible only to Flight 93 passenger and crew family members.
It wasn’t a church, or a religious leader that determined it was best to leave that field for only the families of those lost in that crash. It was the decision of secular leaders in our Federal government, and in the organizations created to facilitate the construction of a permanent monument to those that were lost that day. To suggest that the public be forbidden from setting foot on any of the properties that had been the resting place of human remains from the attacks on 9/11 is utterly impractical – and probably unenforceable – in New York and D.C. But that does not mean that those bits of land are undeserving of special treatment otherwise.
Katha Pollitt at “The Nation” suggests that this is a First Amendment issue, as I flippantly did previously. While she calls foul against the Religious Right for intolerance toward Muslims in general, I suggested that the most convenient way to remind the public of the importance of that particular piece of real estate would be to have ministers consecrate it as they do when creating a burial ground. But that is not enough. The argument could be made that the remains have been removed, just as they were (as best as they could) from the land at the Flight 93 crash site.
So does that mean that the ones that died in New York were somehow less valuable than the ones that died in Pennsylvania? I hope not. While we can’t restrict the public from setting foot on that property in New York – at least not beyond Ground Zero, if that becomes the final decision for that site – what is wrong with restricting precisely which organizations can build in those locations? Yes, the argument is primarily being made by intolerant religious zealots, but that does not mean that there are no secular arguments worth considering. As the grandchild of a WWII veteran of German descent, I was raised to understand the concept of respect given to fallen heroes – military or civilian. My grandfather taught me that he worked during that war to keep aircraft in the air so that they could bomb his cousins, and that he was alright with that concept because he knew that it was duty to work for the U.S. military. He would play a record with a documentary on D-Day on the anniversary of that battle every year. But because of his German heritage, he never participated in anything related to remembering Holocaust victims. “I didn’t commit those crimes, but my family did. It is not my place to be there,” was his simple reply. The Jewish friends he had eventually gave up on asking him to those events once they understood that his choice was out of respect for them. He saw himself as a German-American, and as such, in spite of helping to fight the Germans during the war, he felt he didn’t have the right to participate in activities honoring Holocaust victims.
In hind sight, it seems a bit of overkill, but if nothing else, my grandfather was an honorable man. And when I first heard the talk of a Muslim center being proposed anywhere close to Ground Zero, I immediately thought of him. This is not about intolerance, religion, or potential terrorist plots being facilitated by people in that building. It is about respect. It is not about appearing as the more tolerant nation on the world stage, nor is it about First Amendment freedoms. It is about respect. It is not about healing wounds of the past, or building bridges between religious organizations in the future. Yes, I will say it once more, it is about respect. There is one thing that the Religious Right has said that is absolutely accurate in this – failing to question the motives of the ones seeking to build this Muslim Center so close to Ground Zero is a huge mistake. If these people are honestly blameless, and have no ulterior motives in this choice, then they should have backed down when the people started saying it was disrespectful to the memories of those that died near and on that ground. Their religion is not so flawed that it fails to recognize that it is right and proper to respect the memories of the dead, particularly those lost violently in battle. That is what that day was. Those people were civilian casualties of war. Their memory deserves respect, including restricting organizations that share the same belief system that their murderers followed from using the land where they died. Or we can start the debate of the true value of lost lives. Who wants to start by explaining why the lives of the passengers and crew of Flight 93 were more valuable than the lives of the ones whose body parts landed where that Muslim center is proposed to be built?
Secured by