Friday's New York Daily News reported that many of New York's construction workers are saying that they will not work on a mosque if it is built on Ground Zero.
According to the article:
""It's a very touchy thing because they want to do this on sacred ground," said Dave Kaiser, 38, a blaster who is working to rebuilt the World Trade Center site."
The idea of refusing to work on the mosque is growing. One construction worker posted the "Hard Hat Pledge" on his blog which is for construction workers to sign saying they will not work on the mosque.
Meanwhile, NBC New York reports that there will be a protest opposing the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero today.
The article at NBC reported:
"Gov. David Paterson has offered to help find developers of the mosque secure another location -- even on state land -- if they agree to move a little farther from the Ground Zero site."
So far that offer has been turned down.
When you look at the whole picture of this controversy, you wonder why New York City issued the permit for the mosque in the first place. If this were truly about freedom of religion, why would it be so important to the Muslims to build the mosque at Ground Zero? The other concept to keep in mind is the one of reciprocity. Let's look at the way Muslims around the world treat people of other religions. In countries where Muslims are in control of the government, there is no freedom of religion. In Saudi Arabia, you can be sent to jail for having a Bible. In Turkey, which actually has a relatively moderate Muslim government, Christian churches keep a very low profile for their own protection. As we saw recently in Afghanistan, medical missionaries were murdered because the Taliban thought they might be sharing their Christianity. The concepts of 'honor killing' and sentencing someone to death for converting to another religion from Islam is also a bit severe.
Ground Zero is sacred ground. For that reason I believe it is inappropriate to build a mosque there. I have no problem with building a mosque anywhere else in New York City if the zoning laws permit. If the people backing the mosque project continue to attempt to move forward with building the mosque, I think they are simply going to stir up more opposition to the project. I simply do not see this mosque being built without major political upheaval in New York and across the country.
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