Before moving on in our understanding we must address this man, this Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, and his endorsement of Sharia law.  We all know that Sharia law advocates the stoning of women, and commands Muslims to practice unjust and aggressive Jihad.  We all know Sharia law marries strict Islamic law to the political process.   We all know in comparison to Western ideals, Sharia law is inherently evil.  Yes, we respect the right to worship Satan, Lucifer, Angels, and Devils.  However, we should be allowed to draw a line, right?  One man has stated on a YouTube vlog that Islam should erect its mosques only in appropriate areas of America, like Death Valley, or the Arizona desert.   Hmmm, that doesn’t sound hateful … does it?

We must therefore conclude that Imam Feisal, a man who has apparently worked tirelessly on behalf of America and all her people, who has confronted extremism at the behest of the American government, risking life and limb under the threat of being branded a traitorous infidel, of this man who supports Sharia law we can only draw one conclusion.  As Sharia law is evil, so too then must be Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. 

And here, I must pause.  Here is the line I must draw, and from which I must step back … way back.

As an aspiring critical thinker I cannot just adhere to one perspective.  I must ask the question, is Sharia truly evil?  I must consider the perspective, why would Imam Feisal support Sharia law?  Well, let’s start with facts.  What is Sharia law?

To consider it without rancor or bias one must settle on what it means to its adherents.  Clearly, to Muslims, it is the way of life.  It is the law of God, a combination of the Islamic system of law and how a Muslim should live their daily life.

Sharia’s source is the Holy Qur’an and the words of Muhammad that explain the Qur’an, what Muslims call the Hadith.  With unbiased study one comes to understand that Sharia law runs the gamut from the very liberal to the almost inhumane extreme.   When this spectrum of moral value is placed in comparison to other religions, most especially biased Western Christianity, we find Christians doing exactly that which they are admonished to not do, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” 

Can we and should we agree to integrate Sharia law into our daily legal and political lives?  Most certainly not!  America is not a theocracy, nor should it be.  This statement applies to Christian zealots as well, who are so fond of calling America a Christian nation.  The great experiment that is America is most certainly about separation of church  and state and religious tolerance for the express purpose of avoiding the codification of zealotry, which most often leads to the must inhumane and barbaric behavior, which extremists conveniently attribute to God’s will.

Christians need to stop and consider this judging of others critically.  Much of what we find abhorrent in Sharia law as practiced by conservative extremists derives from personal belief and cultural mores that have been imprinted on the religion.  This same behavior has been emulated by Christians.  Christians have stoned.  Christians chopped off heads.  Christians have boiled, drowned, and burned at the stake.  Christians have claimed personally the right hand of God, the mantle of the just, and used it to spread blood, not love.  Christians say this is our past.  However, you need only look inward for but a brief moment to see Fundamentalist Christian groups readying themselves for Holy War, and even taking their positions of power (See Pentagon Generals and Secretary of Defense Daily Briefings), as being ordained by God, bringing peace and democracy to evil tyrants and terrorists through the projected might of blood and steel.  Christians, please look in the mirror and paint your own picture before you rush to judgment of others, and please remember just as you rush to judgment, such acts are not your province, but rather the province of the Lord.  You have not the right. 

When Imam Feisal expresses a belief that Sharia law is compatible with American freedom and concepts of justice, he is not wrong.  He is interpreting Sharia law and apparently living it, from his own personal perspective, his own personal belief, his desire to make Sharia law a thing of goodness, beneficial to all its adherents.  Who are we, and why should we, tell him he’s wrong?  Again, judge not lest ye be judged.

In honesty, we Americans should step away from ignorance and understand his perspective, if only so we can hold all Muslims accountable to it.  Why?  Because Imam Feisal’s interpretation of Sharia Law is an expression of the good will of God, that we do good things, and be good to each other.  There have been so many examples in history where tolerance, acceptance, and love have been the rule, not the exception, as was the case in Cordoba, Spain.  We should learn from these examples, and we should all disavow ourselves of the extreme perspective and embrace that which is best in us, that which has been before, and can be again.  

So where does that leave us with regard to the Mosque?  Should we still protest?  Protesting is a great All-American pastime.  Sure, why not.  She would brandish Sharia Law and the fear that it will be codified into American Jurisprudence as a justifiable reason to protest the building of the Mosque?  Sure, if you want to adhere to ignorance.  Again, America is not a theocracy, nor will it be, if we remain vigilant.  The fear of Sharia Law becoming common in America is not a valid point of protest.  It is not critical to the debate.  Therefore, it must be abandoned when considered under the light of reason, and the American mandate for religious tolerance.  Muslims have the right in America to walk God’s path, and live God’s way, as they interpret it.   

And so we arrive at the crux of the matter.  The image above is the Cordoba Mosque in its current state.  It’s in ablighted neighborhood almost two blocks away from where the World Trade Center towers once stood.  This is where the Muslims seek to build their house of understanding with a space for worship.  They say it is not a mosque, that it won’t look like a traditional mosque, that it is a communitycenter for understanding, one that will bring life to the neighborhood, as well as jobs.

However, we Americans have a different question to ask, right?  We want to know how can the Muslims be so incredibly insensitive?  How can they not see the pain they are causing not only the 9/11 victims’ families, but all Americans who hate and despise the Islamofascists that practice aggressive Jihad against all who see the world differently?  How can they so blatantly pursue building a terrorist training center in the heart of New York City?  How can they not see how utterly evil this pursuit is? 

I sorely lament the loss of critical thinking skills.  I so greatly lament the lack of focus on fundamental questions, wholistic thinking styles, mental approaches to issues that traverse the ideological divide.  I miss … I miss people that think for themselves. 

Words like Islamofascists are incendiary and only serve to divide us further.  We know the truth of hate, and calling others evil.  It does not promote understanding.   It does not build bridges or mend fences.  Such words only serve to guide us further down the road to conflict and death.

The perspective that believes the above building is a fomenting hotbed for terror is not rational, and does not take into account the facts.  Interestingly enough, not to be impolite here with regard to the violation of privacy, but do we all, by all I mean us Americans, think that a community center in New York, led by an Imam who serves at the behest of the State Department, and any Governmental apparatus that demands his services, will be free of the prying eyes and ears of government?  Can we really believe that funds moving into and out of this center will not be scrutinized?  Do we really think that a terrorist training facility could operate within the Cordoba center with impunity?  

How insensitive are the Muslims for reconstructing so close to Ground Zero?  I say reconstructing and not building because you see … they were there already.  Are they really being ignorant and insensitive?  I have to say yes.  However, for our critical consideration, is the converse true?  Are 9/11 families and anti-mosque supporters being ignorant and wholly insensitive?  Well, without equivocation they most certainly are.  In fact, pardon me for saying so, they’re being downright un-American.

Please allow me to clarify.

The Muslims and the mosque-protestors are ignorant, as are we all.  Those who aspire to wisdom recognize that we live our lives in a constant state of ignorance.  We may be learned in one area, but we are most certainly ignorant in another.  None of us knows everything.  And so, those who walk the path to enlightenment seek to be in a constant state of knowing, learning, moving from a state of ignorance to one of knowledge.  Mosque-protestors are ignorant of the perspective of Muslims because they have not taken the time to understand Islam without the poison of bias and subjectivity.  Cordoba supporters are ignorant of the situation they’re in as Americans, as evidenced by their approach to the situation, their acquiescence in changing the name from Cordoba to Park 51, their supposed silence because they are not given to being loud and opposing.  They are insensitive to the 9/11 families only in that they continue to remain ignorant of the import of the situation as a whole.  They must find their passion.  They must find their voice.  They clearly must speak, and speak loudly enough without rancor in order to be effectively heard. 

Are the families of the victims’ being insensitive?  Some of them are indeed being insensitive, to their fellow victims’ families.  Muslims died in 9/11, and I’m not talking about the perpetrators.  In addition to this insensitivity they are being willfully ignorant and intolerant.  America has a long tradition of intolerance, for hate and racism are at the very root of our national genesis.  It is something we can and should acknowledge.  It is an ancestral lesson for us all, something we must never forget, an ignorance we must readily thrust aside and ever strive to be above. 

In stepping back and viewing this aspect of the issue wholistically, utilizing a critical thinking mind, one finds that both Cordoba supporters and detractors should step back and reassess their positions.  They should strive for understanding, to truly internalize the perspectives of those that are diametrically, even violently opposed to their own position, and endeavor to come together, to help each other see more clearly.  Such a critical thinking perspective dies in the withering heat of hate and intolerance.  We must all remember that America, the ideal of America, is about freedom, religious freedom most certainly, even freedom for Islam, and Islamic-Americans. 

This stance, this position of denial and intolerance is antithetical to the American ideal, and truly runs counter to our military mission abroad.  None other than General Patreaus himself has stated that this anti-Islamic hysteria threatens our national security.  It puts our troops squarely in harm’s way.  Now, considering how so many seem to readily support our military, one truly questions their level of ignorance when they visibly, demonstrably, loudly join the chorus of Islamic decriers.  The language incites.  Now, in Florida there is a pastor who’s preparing to hold a bookburning.  The book to be burned?  The Holy Qur’an.  What does this say about intolerance and ignorance?  What does this say to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan?  What does it say to the people we supposedly seek to liberate, to set free, and share the fruits of democracy?  Consider it.  Truly consider it.

So why is this happening? 

Why are we having to deal with a new divisive issue that starts seemingly from nothing and erupts into a national conflagration every two weeks or so?  Is it because our President is black?  No.  Is it because those in power are defying the American people and redefining America?  No.  Is it because we’re losing our freedoms by the passing hour?  No.  However, many do feel this way.  They wake every morning and begin the task of regurgitating bile, vitriol, and hate, and decry the great days of yesteryear and an America that has long since vanished, and any remnant of its glory passes into obscurity the longer evil liberals, and the undercover Islamic Communist remains in the White House.  Yes,this is what they think, and this is what they say.  But is it the truth?  Is this why we’re having such an upheaval? 

Is it because those in power are turning America into a Hispaniola, Islamic, socio-fascistic, communist, anti-Jesus, anti-God, anti-Christian degenerating quagmire cesspool of hippy-leftist, anti-constitutional contradictions?

Is it? 

Or is it because the rabid right is turning America into a jingoistic, self-possessed, hegemonic, authoritarian, elitist, wanna-be theocratic, cro-magnon master state?

We must consider critically the atmosphere in which the strife and consternation of this Cordoba Initiative germinated and prospered, and what either extreme perspective does to our national discourse.  My friends, this is primetime politics at its best.  The most common of us stand as observers, then internalize this strife, and act accordingly.  We’re puppets.  We must harness our critical thinking abilities and cut the puppet strings.  All this, each and every last bi-weekly controversy is part of the game of brinkmanship leading into November.  This is truly unfortunate.

Why?  Because I firmly believe that we can, and must evolve into our better selves.  We must understand that just like in war, this political game our leaders play with policy costs lives.  I’m not being metaphoric.  People die, YES DIE, based on the actions taken in our state houses, and in Washington.  And make no mistake, these games are played by both Democrat and Republican, so-called Conservative, and so-called Liberal.

Everyday people readily leap to join the voice that yells the loudest, the voice that reaches in deep for those emotions that feed fear and resent change.  It’s an old, tried and true tactic.  However, as I said, we lack, or do not exercise our critical thinking abilities.  If we did, we would know that such tactics have been utilized again, and again, and again.  Our history is rife with examples of, hearkening back to a better day.  It’s always used as a tool to resist change, change that many fear, do not understand, and have not the courage to seek a good, deep understanding so that they can truly make an informed decision.  Should I support this change?  Really?  Will it benefit me?  Will it benefit my family?  Will it benefit my community, my state, my nation?  Will it … will it benefit OUR posterity.

We must also consider the information itself; information that is conveyed by those who claim to not be part of the Mass Media but are, and those who aren’t.  Information, data collected into a constructive format for communicative purposes carries power.  We say words only have the power we give them, but we all know truthfully that we so readily give over our power to those very words. 

The development of MDC (Media-Driven ConsumerCelebreality) has indeed evolved into a high art form in its cyclic inception, creation, and utilization, but at its core it’s still the old vehicle, propaganda.  Now, when entertainers that dress up as pundits, purveyors of truth, patriots of what’s right, and national decriers of what’s wrong, go out and say things that incite … well, that’s just it, their words incite. 

Yet, they continue to walk the world with zero accountability.  Why?  Because as we have just pointed out the entertainers work a part of a business, and the businesses ever seek higher profits, and those profits come at the expense of the common people.  Those common people hear a message, and that message reaches down deep and affects them on a visceral level.  When they give the words they hear that much power, when the words come candy-colored, voluminous, rife with the power and ability to move hearts and minds people will act.

In Mayor Bloomber’s New York, a polyglot of a city where its billionaire leader, a man who seeks profit, preaches clear understanding and passion, and disavows hate; in his city a Muslim cab driver was attacked.  Michael Enright attempted to murder Ahmed Sharif.   It’s alleged that Enright was drunk.  He was also known to volunteer for Intersections International, a group that promotes interfaith dialogue.  Now, please understand, I am only inferring.  I have not one fact to connect Enright’s actions to one of the people that pollute our airwaves with constant hate and vitriol, which they somehow manage to sell as not hate, but common sense and traditional American Values (one could bend that on its ear and collect a really good black humor laugh).  

No, I have no facts.  However, I can consider the situation critically, and infer that the heated environment in New York, the words of anger and distrust that form a frothy mind numbing fog around all the people involved, the fog charged with the rhetoric of the compassionless, can and does move hearts and minds.  And when those hearts and minds lack the ability to think critically, they lack the ability to grasp hold of rationality, and act responsibly.  Instead, they find in acts of hate and terror, rational justification,j ustification that is buoyed by the words, thoughts and ideas that dance around in their heads, MDC in action, a meme virus obstructing critical cognition, and lending reason to such actions as gunning down fellow servicemen, or flying a plane into a building, or stabbing a cab driver because he’s Muslim.  The men and women on the airwaves are not directly responsible.  We should not and dare not attempt to legislate against their right to speak. 

However, we can still hold them accountable.  We can still push our fellow citizens to embrace critical cognition.  We can still hold them close and ask them to ask critical questions of those that push hate and vitriol, that say things like bomb them all and let God sort them out, that say things like an entire population, nearly half of all Americans, those that identify as liberal or progressive are not only dumb and stupid, but are in fact … diseased, or worse evil.  We can, should, and must hold them all accountable and show them quite clearly, the mirror they so readily avoid, so that they can clearly see the evil they speak of, the destruction and freedom they fear, is in fact gaining traction, evolving, and growing in the very words they speak, that the evil they rail against is in fact, a reflection … of themselves.

My friends, President Barack Hussein Obama II, who is not a Muslim (and it should not, would not matter if he was), but rather an aspiring critical thinker, did not flip-flop.  His second statement was only meant to clarify the first, even as he continued to walk the incredibly thin tightrope of brinkmanship.  The worshipers of Islam are guilty of no more than are we all, ignorant of something to a certain degree.  It is time to step into knowledge and put ignorance on this issue behind us.  After critical consideration, with regard to the best that is American, the very nature of our ideal, I have come to the decision that no matter what other Muslims say, what Christians say, what other Americans say, I have to take a stand based on my own critical perspective, based on my opinion established with regard to the facts as they are, clarified by a sincere desire to be the best of myself, the best humanity has to offer, I have decided  that THE CORDOBA project must proceed,NOT THE PARK 51 PROJECT, BUT THE CORDOBA PROJECT.  They must lay claim to the legacy that is Cordoba in fact, and let it shine as a beacon for ALL religions and faiths, as it once did in Spain.  I know in my heart the Mosque must be built.  I know that those fair-minded individuals who are trying to acquiesce to the ignorance that is the sound and fury of American righteousness, antithetical to the American ideal, must cease and desist in their actions to concede the ground of justice ,and lay claim to it with hearts full, heads held high, and hands down, no violence should they commit, no anger must they spread, for they have what’s right, what’s truly American as core to their cause.  They must STAND, they must claim justice, they must BUILD THE CORDOBA HOUSE! 

Yes, THIS MOSQUE MUST BE BUILT!