Dakota Beacon

As we approach the ninth anniversary of 9-11, I cannot help but remember where I was.  It’s like “Black Tuesday”, or the “Day of Infamy” (December 7, 1941), or the night the lights went out in New York, or the Kennedy Assassination - only more so.  

You know where you were.  I was at St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, praying for the recovery of my husband from a heart attack and stroke.  I witnessed the coverage of the attack on the towers in a waiting room with my family and dozens of others whose loved ones were patients at the hospital. We watched the great towers – supposed to have been designed to withstand just this kind of event – crashing down, taking thousands of innocent people’s lives in an instant.  I recall the feeling of horror and shock.  There was a sense of unreality – like a special effect in a movie.  I remember thinking of the firemen and police who tried to save lives, of the valiant airline passengers whose courage averted the same fate for the Pentagon and our Capital.  And I remember thinking, what kinds of fiends do this?  What kinds of animals celebrate the killing of over 3,000 innocent, unsuspecting human beings in peacetime by dancing in the streets?  We were at pains to keep the television off in my husband’s room.

And then I remember the atrocities since 2008 – like the attack at Ft. Hood – and I think of our servicemen and women who have risked their lives and often paid a terrible price for their love of America.  Then I hear how we, who oppose the insult of erecting a mosque (and not just “any old” mosque, but one led by a Hamas activist) are considered Neanderthal “haters” and “Islamophobes”.

It seems easy enough for the City of New York to exercise tight control over construction, especially at “Ground Zero”.  After all, the Greek Orthodox congregation, who lost their place of worship in the senseless attack, was denied permission to rebuild on its own land at the original site.  So why is the case of this Hamas-slanted mosque so different?

The memories of those who died on September 11, 2001, as well as their surviving loved ones, are justly offended by even the suggestion.  New York has other real estate.  The people there tolerate many other mosques.  So why concede on this?  It had to have been conceived and promoted by “Christianophobes”.  Muslims, in recent times in the West, have not distinguished themselves by either their sensitivity to Western or Christian values nor even by ordinary good manners. On the contrary, this and other public acts and statements seem contrived to offend us, perhaps even provoke us.  Or maybe to test us?

We, who are considered “Infidels” or “Dhimmie” by these people, are patronized and lectured to.  We must extend ourselves and relax our values and standards to be “accepting” of Islam and its practices and practitioners.  We’re told that “not all Muslims are enemies, not all are ‘radical’, not all support terrorism and violence or abuse women and children”.  Perhaps they’re right.  It does seem incredible that a whole major religious following would hold such inadmissible beliefs.  But somehow those “moderates” never surface to denounce these vicious attacks or the loss of American lives.  Where were these “moderate Muslims” in the hours following 9-ll or the Ft. Hood massacre?  Which among these “moderates” has spoken out against the honor killings, maiming and other abuse of Muslim women?  They must either see nothing wrong with this uncivilized behavior or they must be terribly frightened and intimidated by the so-called

Muslim “extremists”.  Might these “extremists” include Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, leader of the project to build at Ground Zero?  
This Imam presents himself as a “moderate” Muslim businessman but his reaction to 9-11 was that “U.S. policies were accessory to the crime that happened”.  No hint of denouncement of this heinous attack here.  He is obviously one of those “moderate Muslims” who support attacks on Americans.  American taxpayers have paid for this man to represent our country on numerous trips abroad for some three years now.  WHAT ARE WE THINKING?!  

America has tried valiantly, as a nation, and with pretty good success, to be tolerant.  We aren’t perfect, but as a matter of policy we have striven to reach the goal of tolerance.  We permit, under our law, freedom of – and from – worship.  As a matter of law we do not discriminate.  We do, however, have the naïve expectation that these others, whom we tolerate, share our attitude.  

In the case of Islam we are deceived in this.  When you are told, condescendingly, that YOU are an “Islamophobe” because you feel insulted or feel the memories of the innocent lives lost to Islamic terrorism are defiled by a Hamas-linked mosque built within spitting distance of the site of one of the most horrendous acts of violence ever perpetrated against America, should you not ask where Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was and what he and his fellows were doing as they watched the towers crashing down, entombing thousands of our countrymen?

Is it really too much to expect that “moderate”, “friendly Muslims” should shed tears with us?  If they don’t wish to be Americans there is a big Muslim world out there for them.  

The new mosque, if built, should 1) be far, far away from Ground Zero and 2) be continually watched closely for terrorist recruitment and training as well as support for terrorist organizations.  Americans must stand against this outrage.  It’s not about our tolerance of another “culture” or “religion” – it’s about our capacity to tolerate attacks on our own people.  Make no mistake.  The world watches us as we give in to this political terror movement that has been masquerading as religion.  

We can, however, send the opposite message to the world at large: America will not tolerate lawless and violent acts by terrorists and will not reward them or their supporters.  We can draw a line beyond which no terrorist, “religious” or otherwise, may go with impunity.  Let this be the hour we redefine and reintroduce ourselves as Americans and human beings who actually stand for something.




Sally Morris is a member of Americans for Constitutional Government