http://www.leanspa.net

My new webisode is taking this debate head-on.

The Hand-Off is a web series where comedians
using Hauppets (hand puppets) debate hot topics.

Check out the Hand-Off here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctD4sa6Fzzw

Not removed. Converted to pretty parking ramps and mixed use housing/commercial developments.

Am in full agreement with your opposition to the proposed Cordoba Initiative (they call it now Park51) Mosque, except with respect to your suggestion that all religious buildings be removed from Manhattan.

Here’s some additional information that may be useful to you and your fellow commentators here:

1) Saint Nicholas Church, the Greek Orthodox Church destroyed during the 9/11/01 Al Qaeda terrorist attack, has not yet been granted permission by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – which owns the Ground Zero site – to rebuild.

2) The Cordoba Initiative site is partly own by Con Edison (the local electrical utility company) and by SoHo Properties, whose owner, Sharif El-Gamal, is a native New Yorker of Egyptian and Polish heritage. He owes local governments $227,000 in back taxes on this property.

3) El-Gamal has an interesting history, having been a waiter at several high profile restaurants, then spending a year as a realtor, before establishing SoHo Properties back around 2003. He has been arrested seven times for physical misconduct.

4) Imam Faisal Rauf is the owner of several residential properties in Union, NJ, and apparently, has been unmasked as a slumlord.

5) Local building trades unions have pledged that they will not work on the Cordoba Initiative project.

Given these circumstances, it is highly unlikely that the project will ever be built.

I have offered my own two cents on this elsewhere over at Facebook:

Personally I think an Islamic Cultural Center in New York City is a great idea, as long as it devotes ample time toward condemning ongoing Muslim human rights abuses in the United States and elsewhere around the globe, and works toward ensuring that Islam emerges finally out of the Middle Ages with respect to religious tolerance, the proper role between the state and religion, and the humane treatment of women and religious and ethnic minorities. But it shouldn’t be built at the World Trade Center site, which is hallowed ground, and should be respected as such for all people of all faiths. But of course I don’t think Ramal, El-Gamal and Khan would support this.

I see now, and apologize for misunderstanding you. It was your wording, coupled with your insistence that you agree with CFI that had me very confused about what exactly you meant. I temper my apology though, with the understanding that your position is not the position that CFI espoused in their initial press release. In particular:

To honor those killed by faith fanatics, Ground Zero and its immediate vicinity should be kept free of any newly constructed house of worship â?? of any religion.

That is not a call for avoiding the phenom you are describing. That is a call for turning ground zero into a sacred space that must, out of respect for the heinous act that was perpetrated there, be free of any new religious constructions. It is that and not issues with the first amendment that pissed off most of the CFI members in my area (many of whom have emailed me, as well as Jen, CFI MI’s events coordinator) and many of the people who have been commenting on this issue.

I share your hope that the immediate vicinity of GZ is kept free of this touristy phenom – whether the garbage sold is religious or not. While I think it is important to leave a historical remembrance in that place, I would hope that it would be minimal, criticize the terrorism that perpetrated it and also criticize the insanity we followed it up with. But that is another issue.

This still has left me wondering about my association with CFI, something I have been very pleased with. Regardless of the nature of the commentary, I am not all that pleased CFI felt the need to weigh in on this controversy at all. It might have been different, had they simply made a statement condemning the xenophobic, bigoted fucking neanderthals.

And I was disappointed that the statement included a rather ignorant perspective about the OK City bombings. I would have expected rather better fact checking, rather than the perpetuation of an urban myth about Mcveigh. As he planned his atrocity in my own state and because I know people who knew him, I had rather a keen interest in learning more – and what I learned was that he was not a Christian, nor a white supremacist. He was a survivor and was associated with the Patriot movement. His association with white supremacists (as well as other survivalist type groups) was as an illicit arms trader – purely business. I can understand people who haven’t really had any interest in learning about it accepting the word of elements of the press and organizations they trust – I don’t understand an organization that a lot of people trust making the same blunder.

I would note that this is only important to me, because it is an important example of political terrorism that doesn’t conform to specific political ideology. In the context of studying terrorism it is of specific scholarly interest precisely because it was reactionary, but not motivated by religion or specific political system. Claims that Mcveigh’s terrorist act was motivated by Christianity and white supremacy, would be much like claiming FARC (Columbian political terrorist group, supported by Venezuala’s Chavez government) is motivated by Christianity.