Well said. And is that really a pic­ture of St Nicholas Church while it was still standing?

Absolutely. Just a lit­tle four-story build­ing that man­aged to hold on until the World Trade Cen­ter col­lapsed onto it.

Quick follow-up: Just caught the Ancient Faith Radio — Shep­herd of Souls pod­cast HERE on the sub­ject. Very help­ful to me, and very worth­while in terms of lend­ing some good per­spec­tive on the subject.

I’d rec­om­mend you also lis­ten to for­mer CIA offi­cial and his­to­rian Gra­ham Fuller’s inte­view on Talk of the Nation:
In ‘A World With­out Islam,’ Not Much Would Change http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor…

Read a lit­tle more about the “Hal­lowed Ground”…

‘Hal­lowed Ground’ and the Scary Scary ‘Mosque’ http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/08/18/hallowed-g…

Cor­doba House: The Acid Test
Lib­erty against the lynch mob: which side are you on? http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/08/17/cor…

Anti-Defamers Defame Mus­lims
Dark alliance: ADL joins with far-right cra­zies to ban mosque http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/08/01/ant…

So it’s dis­gust­ing from an Amer­i­can point of view. It’s even in very bad taste from a Mus­lim point of view. I whole­heart­edly agree with all of that. That leaves us with the incon­ve­nient issue of the con­sti­tu­tion. Don’t for­get that New York City tried to stop the mosque through stan­dard legal chan­nels and it turns out that the city of New York isn’t allowed to just throw a reli­gious group on its ear because they’re in bad taste.

And while I find noth­ing in Islam that is even slightly redeem­ing, it is just as fair to equate the ter­ror­ists (who were a Wahabi fringe group) with main­stream Mus­lims as it is to equate the Branch David­i­ans with the South­ern Bap­tist Church.

While it’s dis­taste­ful, the deci­sion is good news. Today we can’t tell the Mus­lims that they can’t build a mosque in south Man­hat­tan. Like­wise, tomor­row we can’t tell the Anti­ochian Ortho­dox Church they can’t be in West­ern Penn­syl­va­nia and they’ll have to give back Anti­ochian Vil­lage to the Pres­by­te­ri­ans. (Sorry about the dou­ble neg­a­tives; I didn’t know how else to say it and still get the point across.)

Which brings me to Hagia Sophia. It’s not pre­cisely the same because Turkey has no reli­gious free­doms, but pre­vent­ing the Mus­lims basic free­doms of wor­ship here is anal­o­gous to what they did to Hagia Sophia. That Church — a holy place to us — was an offense to them, so they turned it into a mosque. On the other hand, if Turkey had the con­sti­tu­tional guar­an­tees that you’re propos­ing we set aside, Hagia Sophia would still be a Chris­t­ian Church.

Which brings us to the con­tro­versy around the pro­posed Islamic com­mu­nity cen­ter, slated to be built at 51 Park Place in lower Man­hat­tan. The facil­ity is not, for the record, a mosque. And it is not at Ground Zero (it’s two blocks away). The Cor­doba Ini­tia­tive, the non­profit group spear­head­ing the project, describes it as a “com­mu­nity cen­ter, much like the YMCA or the Jew­ish Com­mu­nity Cen­ter … where peo­ple from any faith are allowed to use the facil­i­ties. Beyond hav­ing a gym, the Cor­doba House will house a pool, restau­rant, 500-person audi­to­rium, 9/11 memo­r­ial, mul­ti­faith chapel, office and con­fer­ence space, and prayer space.”

Oppo­si­tion to the cen­ter started among fringe, right-wing blogs, and has since been swept into the main­stream. While the hole at Ground Zero has yet to be filled, as bil­lion­aire devel­op­ers bicker over the plans, the news hole that August brings has been read­ily filled with the “Ground Zero Mosque” con­tro­versy.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/mosque-issipp…

While my heart yearns to see a big, huge St. Nicholas rebuilt in the same area, I can’t con­done not allow­ing the cul­tural center/mosque to be built.

Doug:
Thanks for all the links. If it makes you feel bet­ter, I’m not trav­el­ing on the impe­tus of “right-wing blogs.” This really is my own opin­ion, but it is informed from Fr. Elias’ recent teach­ing on Islam and Chris­tian­ity. As some­one that lived half his life in a coun­try under sharia law, I think his opin­ions are worth considering.

I fully under­stand that a lot of Libertarian-inclined peo­ple think that the prop­erty rights issues trump all. FWIW, I’m not say­ing that the state should now take any extra­or­di­nary action. But let’s stay clear on what’s obvi­ous: this IS a state­ment by Mus­lims, and not just a “rad­i­cal minor­ity.” They are dou­bling down on the action of 9/11 with an action that is too unbe­liev­ably offen­sive to be an acci­dent. Non-Muslims have every right to be concerned.

One thing that is often omit­ted in this con­tro­versy is how great the US Mus­lim reli­gious com­mu­nity is on the war on home­grown ter­ror. A inte­grated Mus­lim com­mu­nity is a great source of infor­ma­tion to the coun­try. This isn’t the case in France due to the oth­er­ness of the Islamic community.

Spare us O Lord, from us all hatred of the mur­der­ers, and from prej­u­dice
toward those whose only crime is to be of their eth­nic­ity and/or
reli­gion. Spare us, O Lord, from para­noia and rash acts by which we
tram­ple each other like rabid beasts.
–From Bishop Basil/September 11th prayer (2010)

“O Lord our God, Who art Thy­self, the Hope of the hope­less, the Help of the help­less, the Sav­ior of the storm-tossed, the Haven of the voy­ager, the Physi­cian of the sick; be all things to our land which nine years ago on this date was dev­as­tated by the cow­ardly and hate­ful acts of false mar­tyrs; who imi­tated wicked Herod in his slaugh­ter of 14,000 inno­cents, whose only crime was to be born at the time of Thine incarnation.”

This is how Bishop Basil begins the prayer. <a rel=“nofollow” href=“http://www.antiochian.org/node/18267&quot; rel=“nofollow”>HERE.

For that mat­ter, here are the lines that imme­di­ately pre­cede the quote you gave: “For those who hate us, speak to their hearts as St. Pro­cla sought to speak to her hus­band Pilate con­cern­ing Thee, and as Thou didst speak to Pharoah con­cern­ing the Hebrews, to soften the hearts of those who seek our destruction.”

The quote you gave makes more sense to me in con­text, since the prayer he gave isn’t a gen­eral homily to Chris­tians about para­noia. It is pos­si­ble for peo­ple to over­re­act, cer­tainly. But it is inac­cu­rate to the point of insan­ity to say that the pri­mary vic­tims of the 9/11 attacks were Muslims.

Who said the pri­mary vic­tims of 9/11 were Mus­lim? And it is inac­cu­rate to the point of insan­ity to say that the pri­mary cause of the 9/11 attacks was Islam.…

A Prayer from Bishop Basil
A Prayer for Sep­tem­ber 11th

O Lord our God, Who art Thy­self, the Hope of the hope­less, the Help of the help­less, the Sav­ior of the storm-tossed, the Haven of the voy­ager, the Physi­cian of the sick; be all things to our land which nine years ago on this date was dev­as­tated by the cow­ardly and hate­ful acts of false mar­tyrs; who imi­tated wicked Herod in his slaugh­ter of 14,000 inno­cents, whose only crime was to be born at the time of Thine incarnation.

For those who lost loved ones, grant the com­fort you imparted to the Mary and Martha before you raised Lazarus and care for them as Thou didst care for Thy Mother from the Cross, putting her in the care of the Apos­tle John. For the sur­vivors, grant them heal­ing in every sense, as you strength­ened and healed the con­fes­sors. For those related to and aid­ing the sur­vivors and the fam­i­lies of the fallen, grant the strength and compassion

Thou didst instill in Thy fos­ter father Joseph, who was Thy guardian in Thine earthly youth. For those who died, grant them remis­sion of their every sin in Thy great com­pas­sion; both those who like the wise ser­vant and the wise vir­gins, con­stantly pre­pared them­selves to enter the heav­enly ban­quet at any hour; and those who emu­lated the Rich Fool, pre­fer­ring to enjoy earthly pur­suits and ignore heav­enly ones. To the rest of us, instill in us the knowl­edge that while the devil still manip­u­lates our Divinely-given free will to his own ends in this world, his power is fleet­ing and ulti­mately void, as Thou hast already crushed his domin­ion, leav­ing to him only those who freely choose him.

Remind us that, while evil at times seems to win, and the death of the inno­cent seems to sig­nal the destruc­tion of good­ness, the inno­cent are at peace, and while the God-fearing will endure a period of tor­ment; those who choose evil shall endure eter­nal tor­ment. For those who hate us, speak to their hearts as St. Pro­cla sought to speak to her hus­band Pilate con­cern­ing Thee, and as Thou didst speak to Pharoah con­cern­ing the Hebrews, to soften the hearts of those who seek our destruction.

Spare us O Lord, from us all hatred of the mur­der­ers, and from prej­u­dice toward those whose only crime is to be of their eth­nic­ity and/or reli­gion. Spare us, O Lord, from para­noia and rash acts by which we tram­ple each other like rabid beasts. Spare, O Lord, those who pro­tect us, those who serve in our gov­ern­ment, armed forces, law enforce­ment agen­cies and all first respon­ders, from despon­dency, dis­il­lu­sion­ment, and all things which would under­mine their right­eous call­ing to pro­tect us in the man­ner of our Guardian Angels, and care for us in the man­ner of the Good Samaritan.

All this we ask of Thee our all-powerful and all-loving Sav­iour, together with Thine unorginate Father, and Thine all-holy and good and life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

“Who said the pri­mary vic­tims of 9/11 were Muslim?”

Tak­ing one quote out of con­text from an entire prayer gave the impres­sion that that’s where you were com­ing from. If it’s an impres­sion you didn’t mean to give, I’m really relieved, because it’s nuts.

No, that’s not what I mean, but I don’t think con­text makes a difference…it is what it is either way.