No better place for mosque than near Ground Zero

Max Carter:

"It is always good for me to hear about the earlier interpretations of Tanakh texts; thanks. But remember, Quakers believe in continuing revelation. The Holy Spirit continues to move, lead, guide, direct, and reveal."

To the best of my knowledge, the Holy Spirit did not offer up an interpretation of Tanakh. And Tanakh is the Covenant, the Bible of the Jewish people, as it were. Ours is a continuing, evolving thriving religion, and it will always be. You have not "supreceded" or replaced it, or anything else.

I'm afraid you haven't a clue as to what is driving you; however, I've seen it many times before, and no doubt, I will see it again.

The best "corrective" for you is Rosemary Ruether, Faith and Fratricide. I'd order it next-day air were I you. NOt a moment to lose.

"And I did not ignore your comments on the Temple Mount/Haram es-Sharif. I just felt it odd that you would compare my earlier comment about a mosque built outside a Christian holy site with a Muslim structure built 600 years after the destruction by others of a Jewish temple. No comparison."

This was not A Jewish Temple. It was the Second Temple. It informs the architecture of Judaism. You cannot be following a continuing revelation, since you don't know what the revelation was in the first place. Didn't you attend divinity school?

Jews have been going to the Temple Mount since the Temple was destroyed. Before 1967, we couldn't even go to the Wall. Now, the Mufti, like his predecessors says there is no Temple, never was. And there is the matter of Solomon's Stables.

Any person who says they're interested in peace but erases the identity and aspirations of the Jewish people has lost me at hello.

Your posts have not given you a whole lot of credibility. Neither are they entirely civil. Bigotry is not civil.

Please do not write back. We are not communicating. If you read Rosemary Ruether, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Farnaz,
I am, indeed, already off to the next question - one which, I am sure, you will find ample opportunity on which to disagree with me! Glad to have your offerings of correctives. It is always good for me to hear about the earlier interpretations of Tanakh texts; thanks. But remember, Quakers believe in continuing revelation. The Holy Spirit continues to move, lead, guide, direct, and reveal.

And I did not ignore your comments on the Temple Mount/Haram es-Sharif. I just felt it odd that you would compare my earlier comment about a mosque built outside a Christian holy site with a Muslim structure built 600 years after the destruction by others of a Jewish temple. No comparison.

Meet you, I'm sure, on future posts!

Max Carter,

Of course, on to the next question. You wanted to engage me, and you did. I'm not surprised that you cannot continue this discussion. Allow me.

An eye for an eye comes from Tanakh. It is meant to set limits on debt, not to try to get more than can be repaid, regardless of the amount. An eye for an eye means the whole world sees. It means the life of the indebted counts. Christians' distortion of a text, the Tanakh, written by and for another people, its attempted colonization of that text ushered in monumental evil throughout the centuries, including the inaugural racism of the West, as you amply demonstrate.

Read Rosemary Ruether, Faith and Fratricide.

You conveniently ignore me on the Temple Mount, accuse me of that which I have not done, bring up the site of one of the great losses of my life, which had nothing to do with my post. How very Christian of you.

Tit for tat is a Christian game, but, actually, you did not play it. You merely attacked. demonstrated when you wrote, "I'm not interested in trading a Sbarro's for a Dir Yassein." It probably would have been better had you thought a bit before you wrote. By your reasoning, you are more than blind.

I'm not interested in trading a Dir Yassein for a Hebron (August 1929), Jerusalem (February 1948), or Kfar Etzion, etc. Never said I was.

Here is what you conveniently ignore, which I will post again. Jews exist. Judaism exist. We have not converted. We will not do so at the end of time. We will survive, MR. Carter. We have a way of doing that. Kindly remember that the next time you post, so that I shall not have to remind you. You disappoint.

Again:
The site of the Temple is the holiest site in Judaism, which, given your training, you should know. No doubt, you are aware that for two thousand years, Jews have prayed three times daily facing the Temple. You know that the Temple "architecture" informs rabbinic Judaism. You are aware that the Dome of the rock did not become a sacred site until the twentieth century, entirely due to the labors of the then Grand Mufti. You know that in the original Arabic Quoran, the word Jerusalem does not occur, not once, while in Tanakh, it appears thousands of times.

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Now, remove the plank that obstructs your vision. Imagine, if a synagogue were built over the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Imagine if, then, the equivalent of the Mufti said there was no Church, that the whole business was a fabrication out to destroy Judaism.

Next year, in Jerusalem. Do you know what those words mean? I wonder at your having told your sacred story, Mr. Carter. Do you know anything about Judaism? About Jews?

Golda Meier "famously" said, "Israel will not die so that the world will think better of it." She also "famously" told MOshe Dayan when he stood at the Temple Mount, told him and all the Jews of Israel, the Middle East, the Americas, and Africa,who stood with him, now is not the time.

It was not the time. When will it be time?

Farnaz,
At the risk of sounding "blue," I don't want to engage in a game of "tit for tat" on this issue. In an asymmetrical conflict, there certainly are enough "cemeteries" on both sides. I'm not interested in exchanging a Sbarro's here for a Deir Yassein there...an "If only Arafat had taken the 'generous offer' " for a Netanyahu prideful boast, "We destroyed Oslo." We could engage in this day in and day out to no good effect.

As good friend Landrum Bolling once said, "A tragedy of the Middle East conflict is that neither side is willing to give up the hope for a better past."

I'd rather talk about hope for the future, not resentments and grudges of the past. Trite but true: "Eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." And as biting as our comments could be to each other, "A tooth for a tooth makes the whole world look like hockey players!"

On to the next "On Faith" question!

Max Carter:

Had the Palestinians followed through on Oslo, there would have long been a Palestinian state for several years.

There may be that possibility again, I don't know, bur I doubt it. T

You write:
"Having taken Jerusalem from the Crusaders and being invited to pray inside the holiest site in Christendom, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he refused, not wanting to risk the possibility that his followers would turn it into a Muslim site."

This tale of sacred generosity must be followed by somewhat different narrative, in the interest of perspective.

The site of the Temple is the holiest site in Judaism, which, given your training, you should know. No doubt, you are aware that for two thousand years, Jews have prayed three times daily facing the Temple. You know that the Temple "architecture" informs rabbinic Judaism. You are aware that the Dome of the rock did not become a sacred site until the twentieth century, entirely due to the labors of the then Grand Mufti. You know that in the original Arabic Quoran, the word Jerusalem does not occur, not once, while in Tanakh, it appears thousands of times.
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Now, remove the plank that obstructs your vision. Imagine, if a synagogue were built over the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Imagine if, then, the equivalent of the Mufti said there was no Church, that the whole business was a fabrication out to destroy Judaism.

Next year, in Jerusalem. Do you know what those words mean? I wonder at your having told your sacred story, Mr. Carter. Do you know anything about Judaism? About Jews?

Golda Meier "famously" said, "Israel will not die so that the world will think better of it." She also "famously" told MOshe Dayan when he stood at the Temple Mount, told him and all the Jews of Israel, the Middle East, the Americas, and Africa,who stood with him, now is not the time.

It was not the time. When will it be time?

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, Mr. Carter. Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine.

There will be no international city. Sorry about that.

Max Carter:

"Who are your heroes?"

My heroes are dead, Mr. Carter.

To Farnaz Mansouri,
I appreciate the civil response and the background information on what you have experienced that has led you to have the particular perspective on these issues that you do. I am sorry for the deaths and suffering you and your family have suffered.

So, my question would be, what do you see as the path to a future in which there is less of the suffering you have experienced, a future when all exiles and refugees can return to their homes, when, as the ancient Hebrew prophets wrote, "swords will be beaten into ploughshares...and all will live under their own vine and fig tree in peace and unafraid."?

In the 40 years that I have been deeply involved in travel and work in the Middle East, my "heroes" have been those who once opted for violence and revenge but now work side-by-side for peace with former "enemies:" Abed Rabbo/Beilin; Nusseibeh/Ayalon; Sadat/Begin; the Bereaved Parents Circle; Shevrom Shtika....

When I first began teaching in Ramallah, my students didn't recognize Israel, and Golda Meir had famously said "There are no Palestinians." Now, those same students are adults negotiating with Israel for a two-state solution, and even Netanyahu acknowledges Palestinians and their national aspirations.

Who are your heroes? Who do you see leading us into the future described in Isaiah's vision of a peaceable kingdom?

Erratum

"Mr. Carter, I quite like 'evil hovering,' since although hardly religious myself, I concede to religion on the notion of evil."

I quoted myself incorrectly. I had actually written: "[S]omething of the damned seems to hover about you," meaning, "of damnation."

Ah, but you misquoted me: "the damned hovering about me." Now, that really is neat! However, Jews don't have the imagination required to come up with something like that on their own. I shall store it in memory, however, for possible future use.

Mr. Carter, I quite like "evil hovering," since although hardly religious myself, I concede to religion on the notion of evil.

You replied to me on your last thread, but I was in Israel visiting my friend, brother, really, Dror, he who had been a phsycisist, but is now nothing, having been at Sbarro's at the wrong time. He will die soon. He is forty-eight.

As for your reply on the last thread, I did not ask you about Quakers and Native Americans, I asked about you.

As for poisoned wells, again, I have no evidence of them. I did, however, witness a stabbing in a Hebron shopping center of a light-skilled woman. The con census was that the would-be assassin thought that she was Israeli. She was a Palistinian Christian. The mutterings around us suggested that to some of those present it was six of one, half dozen of the other. I am brown, myself, which in some situations, is not a bad thing to be.

A Pakistani friend, more a sister than a friend, a Muslim, would like to know when the Christians of Pakistan, the Dalit, the wretched of the earth can expect you thither. Of course, they do not attend a wealthy school in Ramallah since they are busy cleaning the sewers with their hands.

Next time your friends meet with the bastard Nejad, ask him when I and the other one million Iranian Jews in exile can return to our homes. (I would like my daughter to see Shiraz.) Also, ask when they will tell us where the IRG put the remains of Ismael, our family friend, murdered in front of me when I was a girl. We, my family and his, would like to bury him.

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Max Carter:

On Quakers and Nejad:

An invitation to an international dialogue between religious leaders and political figures:

"Has not one God created us?"

The significance of religious contributions to peace

It is an honor to invite you to participate with religious, cultural, and political leaders in a conversation about the role of religions in tackling global challenges and building peaceful societies at an Iftar – a dinner to break the Ramadan fast.

In the presence of

His Excellency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

With contributions from

His Excellency Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, President of the General Assembly of the United Nations

His Excellency the Rev. Kjell Bondevik, former Prime Minister of Norway and President of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights

and distinguished religious leaders

This conversation is the fourth in a series of high-level bridge-building and reconciliation efforts that have helped to build mutual understanding between our peoples, nations and religious traditions. It is our hope that as religious and political leaders, this communal meal and exchange of views will enable us to explore faith perspectives for dealing with global issues such as poverty, war and prejudice while deepening mutual understanding.

The dinner will be at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, 109 East 42nd Street, New York, N.Y., on Thursday, September 25, 2008, beginning with evening prayers from several religious traditions. Please arrive by 6:00 pm to clear security. Following dinner and presentations, the moderator will open the floor for comments and discussion.

Please note, entrance to this event is by limited invitation only. Some members of the media have been invited to cover the event.

RSVP by e-mail to sept25@us.mcc.org no later than Monday, September 15, 2008, confirming you interest in participation and sending us your mailing address. After confirmation of your participation, we will send a card explaining procedures for entry to the event.

The Sponsoring Committee welcomes your participation and appreciates the cooperation of the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations in co-hosting this event.

Just a brief response to "Farnaz Mansouri:" I would welcome a conversation about the issues; judgments about "you folks" and comments like "the damned hovering about me," however don't rise to the level of informed dialogue. And as for "ten minutes of research" sufficing to learn as much as you need to know about me, well; I question the research methods, since I never attended a meeting with Ahmadinijad, nor did any Quaker body sponsor one. Some Quakers did attend on the invitation of the sponsors - and, guess what? They asked very hard questions of him. Please be more careful in the commentary; let's promote constructive dialogue rather than name-calling.

Ah, Max Carter, I've had a bad feeling about you for the last couple of months. Why is it that some of us can spot you folks even in cyberspace just from looking at you? What is that? Something of the damned seems to hover about you, I suspect. Still, being, at heart, a positivist, I decided I must do some research. It took all of ten minutes.

So, tell us, Max Carter, how went the dinner which you held in honor of the bastard, Ahmadinejad?

More questions to follow....

"Having taken Jerusalem from the Crusaders and being invited to pray inside the holiest site in Christendom, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he refused, not wanting to risk the possibility that his followers would turn it into a Muslim site."
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Just as the Temple Mount was turned into the Dome of the Rock?

Is that what you mean, Max? Or, do Jews not exist in your geography?

I'm jes' askin'

So what's the limit for where people can build what you (whoever "you" is) decide is an objectionable religious buildings 1 mile from Ground Zero? 10 miles? Where does it end?

Of course, when you think it about it that way, it becomes kind of silly. Of course this community should be allowed to build a mosque here if they want. The reality is, the people we say we're fighting wouldn't allow Christians to build a church - and we want to emulate that?

Max, as usual, your perspective on religious pluralism is valuable.

Since I live in the DC area, not New York, I don't really have a say in the matter. But, one suggestion about the mosque. Keep it there, but name it after Tariq Amanullah, a Fiduciary Trust employee and Islamic community organizer who died on 9/11. Or Salman Hamdani, an ambulance driver who was killed by debris from the Towers while trying to save people.

To cianwn:

Your assertion that this is an instance that Americans must suck it up and learn the lesson that the freedoms that we enjoy are hard is merely your opinion.

It is my opinion that Americans via popular opinion and political pressure have the right to tell muslims to build the damn thing somewhere else.

Your unsupported assertion has the moral equivalency of building a halfway house for child molesters next to an elementary school.

Of course people have a right to express outrage and exert political and civil pressure in order to ensure that the halfway house is built somewhere else.

Just as Americans have the right to express outrage and demand via political civil pressure that such a building cannot be constructed virtually on the site of the single greatest act of murder in the history of this nation by the very kind of people that now want to worship there.

These people have a right to worship, certainly. Just has child molesters that have served their sentence have a right to live within society. But society reserves the right to tell them where they can live, so that they pose no inordinate danger to a community.

Just as Americans have the right to tell muslims that they cannot construct this abomination so close to ground that is soaked in the blood of innocents that were murdered by muslim extremist filth. Because certainly, such a divisive symbol will pose an inordinate danger to the community.

lmedrish, the WTC site might, in your opinion, be sacred ground, but that does not make it so in any universal sense. What happened there was criminal and tragic, and should be remembered, but it is no reason to curtail the rights of others.

This is one of those times when Americans need to learn that the values we celebrate aren't easy to uphold. Indeed, they require that people who were victims of something horrific not try to use their grief and pain to limit the freedom of fellow citizens. The price of your freedom is everyone else's ability to do things that you may find offensive or lacking taste. You must still respect the rights of others to do those things. If we only hold to these values in cases where it's easy and everyone agrees, then our values have no meaning. It's only when we're tested and called to respect the rights of those we dislike, disagree with, or despise that we meet the true test of our commitment.

To cianwn: To my mind a site of death of 3000 people at the hand of terrorists is sacred. I remember visiting it shortly after 9/11 when there were laser beams shining upwards into the stars and my 8 yr old nephew saying how he wants to remember this, so he can tell about it to his children. If you want to build a mosque in NY City, fine - we do have a freedom of religion, but please have a good taste and sensitivity to the grief of so many people, not tho do it at WTC.

Typical liberal claptrap. Your imagery of a battlefield cemetery "littered with crosses" is offensive and is a lurid attempt to discredit the faith of those that fell on that ground.

Further, you conveniently misrepresent the muslim tradition of building mosques on the very ground where Christian cathedrals and churches once stood.

I need only mention the origins of "Cordoba" to support the assertion that muslims delight in the symbolic nature of erecting a mosque on the once holy ground of a conquered Christian nation.

Contrary to the rhetoric of the empty suit now currently in office, the west in general, and the US specifically, is at war with islam.

And just as new units of IDF stand at Masada and take an oath that never again will Masada fall, so should the citizens of the US swear that never again will a tower on US soil fall to muslim extremists.

In war, it is imperative to keep clear in the minds of the citizenry just who your enemies really are. And the act of building a mosque on the very ground that the blood of innocents, murdered by muslim filth, has made sacred, is the provocative act of a belligerent enemy.

For starters, I'm a Muslim.

I think this mosque is a dumb idea. The imaam and his congregation will be the subject of harsh scrutiny for all time to come, as well as false accusations and lies. We're already seeing that now from the anti-Muslim hate groups that have taken this as a cause. I don't see the representation of Cordoba putting up a rebuttal to the accusations levied against them, they simply don't have the tact for it. I don't believe they have what it takes to convince America that they're a force for inter-faith dialogue when there's an overwhelming number of Americans trying to scare themselves into believing that this is some kind of "victory mosque" being built to celebrate 9-11.

The wishful thinking is misplaced. This project can only make things worse for the Muslim community that is already feeling more isolated because of the increased pressures against them brought about by 911. Concede defeat, move the building elsewhere.

Erecting a mosque at the site of the world trade center terrorist attack of 2001 is akin to erecting a US flag and embassy at the ground zero sites of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan. The very ideals which perpetrated the attacks on the world trade center are represented in a mosque, perverted though they may be, just as the very ideals which perpetrated the unnecessary murders of innocent Japanese women and children are represented by the US' flag and her embassies.

Both are absolutely ludicrous ideas that can only have been put forth by those who are completely out of touch with reality and the human condition.

lmedrish, how can it be sacrilege when there is nothing sacred about the WTC site? The site was held holy by no religion I know about and just because people died there during a crime doesn't mean it becomes sacred. It is a city block like any other and the owners of Cordoba House have a right to build their community center there.

Placing a mosque at the this site is a sacriledge. Why not build it somewhere else? How do you stop it from becoming a symbol of celebrating the distruction of the WTC and murder of 3000 people?

This was terrorism Mr. Carter, not war. To put a Mosque at the site of the largest scale terrorist attack this country has ever seen would simply be disrespectful. Why add fuel to a fire that has not gone out yet? Why try to instill more frustration in a country than what we are already dealing with? For you to compare wars of the past to the Terrorism that has hurt the US of today is simply irresponsible. What do you know about annihilation? War? Or do you get your ever so "experiece" filled opinion from what you read in the paper? Im gonna go with the last option because anyone that has truly experienced this or has felt the effects directly would never write anything that is so out in Left Field as what you just wrote.

Thanks. This really should be a no brainer just like not torturing people should be a no brainer.