Ground Zero Mosque-erade

If you don't think that there should be a mosque near the September 11, 2001 memorial on the former site of the World Trade Center, then you don't understand the purpose of prayer. It goes without saying that to deny the rights of Muslims - who, let's not forget, had friends and family who went to work in the Twin Towers that day, just as did Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and just about any other religion you can think of - to mourn the deaths of people they love is foolish at best, and xenophobic at worst. If it is your belief that the involvement of Muslims in the planning and execution of that attack should preclude the rights of Muslims whose experience of that day was no different from yours or mine, you should probably stop reading this now. Still, I would love to have a chat with you some time, because, if that is your stance, you must have a much deeper understanding of both First Amendment law theory and the interaction of God with his creation than do I.

The role of prayer in the life of any person of faith is, at its most basic, to welcome God into his or her life, with the assumption that this will improve that person's life in a meaningful way. Christians pray to one God in three persons who respectively create, redeem, and sustain. Jews pray to a God who has marked them as his own and has promised them his eternal preference. Muslims pray to a God who revealed himself and the nature of his creation to them through the prophet Muhammad. The list goes on, and you will forgive me, I hope, if I misinterpret or oversimplify, as I am no religious scholar. Nevertheless, my point is that there is a veritable myriad of religious belief - not to mention a vast array of often contradictory beliefs within each - whose adherents believe no less fervently than do any other's. Fortunately, the first amendment to our constitution protects the right of any individual to, in essence, believe whatever he wants to believe. Sure, it's more complicated than that, but for the sake of this argument, that's the interpretation with which I am going to operate. It's fortunate that our constitution protects this right of ours because it's a pretty revolutionary idea. We don't have to look so very far back into our collective, national memory to find a time when Western Europeans took their families on an often-fatal journey across an ocean to build an often-doomed life based on that very principal. We have an even shorter distance through time to travel to find a time when our country offered safe haven to Jews who were being slaughtered throughout Europe.

So, what's the point? We should give ourselves a big pat on the back for being so tolerant? Probably not, because we haven't always gotten it right, and there are plenty of other ways that we've shown our collective intolerance with gusto. What we should do is remember that religious freedom was not only one of the guiding principles by which this country set out on it's grand republican experiment, but also that it remains one of its crown jewels. Over 200 years ago, a bunch of white male European fugitives sat down to write the document by which their new country would be governed, and subsequently decided that that document was not sufficient in and of itself, so added ten amendments to it, the first of which being the protection of your right to pray pretty much however and whenever you feel like it. Perhaps the answer to the question, "How long does it take to become complacent?" is "This long." Perhaps, as a country primarily governed by white European descendants of white European faiths, we've forgotten how truly meaningful it is to have protected our right to say whatever prayer we know. The protection of that right is meaningful in a way unique to itself. The protection of every other right is admission that governments inevitably are jealous of their power. We protect the freedom of the press to keep government honest. We protect and have expanded a citizen's right to vote to keep government in the hands of its constituents. We protect and have expanded the right to own land with the understanding that a woman's worth is based on her ability to sustain herself. We protect a freedom of religion, however, as an admission of the fact that we do not, nor can we, have all of the answers. Freedom of religion is our country's way of saying that a search for purpose in this life is natural to every human being, and takes as many courses and arrives at as many destinations as there are, have been, or will be Americans. Each of us is born with the desire to make sense of an often senseless world; to give some significance to a life that seems more fraught with evil than most of us are willing to admit. When we pray, no matter to whom we pray, that is all we are doing. We are reaching out, beyond ourselves, for something that validates what we know in our heart of hearts is a monumentally insignificant existence. To deny anyone an honest and earnest attempt to do so, is to deny all of us.

On September 11, 2001 a group of people denied people whom they had never met that right in the most profound way possible. On September 11, 2001 we stood and watched in shock, terror, disbelief, anger and grief. In a lot of ways, we have never and never will get over that. But as we move beyond it, let us not forget that on September 11, 2001 many of us prayed. More importantly, let us not forget that we didn't all pray to the same god. Most importantly, let us not forget that many of us prayed to the god in whose name those attacks were made. Ultimately, no matter to whom we prayed, we all said the same prayer: Do not let this day mark the beginning of our separation from our god or from one another. In some ways, that prayer has already been answered, but there are still a few missing pieces. Just don't forget how it felt to say those prayers when you're filling in the blanks.