Religion Did This

"There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness."

"I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there."

I'll comment. My opinion on putting a mosque near Ground Zero? Do it.

Remind the world that religion made this heinous thing possible. Remind everyone what happens when men cede their secular influence to those who claim to know the will of God. Remind people that they cannot seek knowledge of or comfort from a God via other men without also being knowledgeable and wary of the flaws of men. Remind us all about the dangers of dogma and unquestioning belief.

Remind us that there are people in this world who so despair of their condition and place in it that they will live and die based on promises of an afterlife. Remind us that there are men who will exploit that despair for secular gain.

Remind us that the structures of organization feed everything that is bad about religion.

Of course, putting only a mosque near Ground Zero for those reasons would feed the illusion that those dangers are only present in the religion of Islam. And who else looks at the Christian churches near Ground Zero and sees in them everything I've just said? Only the idea of a mosque near Ground Zero triggers such an outcry. And that tells me that we are not having the necessary discourse on this topic. Because only when we no longer see the terrorists of 9/11 as Muslims, but rather as men who were preyed upon by other men, will we have truly understood what happened that day and made real progress towards a world free of terrorism.

Let the proximity to Ground Zero be a reminder to everyone who walks through the doors of any nearby church, mosque, or temple that what you seek in there should not be 'found' without a great deal of questioning and doubt on your part. Let all religions build a sacred space near Ground Zero, and let their proximity to each other remind us all of our common humanity and our common fallibility in presuming exclusive knowledge of the unknown. And let the proximity to Ground Zero serve as a reminder that suffering is universal, and that what is good about any religion is that which seeks to alieviate that suffering with something other than unprovable words and empty promises.