September 10, 2010
The following originally appeared in a recent Religious Liberty Program e-newsletter. If you would like to receive our weekly e-newsletter, click here and select “Religious Liberty.”
Find additional newsletters in the IRD E-Newsletter Archive.
All attention this week was focused on Gainesville, Florida where Pastor Terry Jones and the Dove World Outreach Center intended to burn the Koran on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. (News has just arrived that Jones had announced that there will be no Koran burning because Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf will move the location of his mosque.) This unwise action (but protected under the United States Constitution) would be offensive to Muslims and to all people who believe in civilized, rational discourse.
Those who sought to call attention to themselves by burning the Koran were being extremely selfish. Did they not care that their actions would trigger retaliation by radical Islamists across the globe? Not only our troops and U.S. citizens were at risk, but millions of vulnerable Christian communities – in Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, Sudan, and elsewhere could bear the brunt of this thoughtless action.
Pastor Jones and his flock were also creating an unnecessary distraction from the very event that said that they wanted to “honor.” All of America should remember the jihad attacks that took place on our land on September 11, 2001, and the thousands who perished as a result. They should not be watching to see if the foolish fifty in Gainesville would go ahead with their plan.
The truth is, though, that the offense to Muslims caused by a Koran burning cannot compare with the magnitude of the sorrow families and friends, and people all over the world who believe in freedom and truth feel in the wake of those who died so horrifically in the World Trade Center, in the Pentagon, and on American Airlines Flight 11(North Tower), United Airlines Flight 175 (South Tower), American Airlines Flight 77 (Pentagon), and United Airlines Flight 93 (Shanksville, PA). And yet the media, religious leaders, and politicians, including the President and Secretary of State, raised this issue to such a critical level that it has been an ugly distraction to a Day of Remembrance.
The planned Koran burning also distracted attention from another affront to those who died on 9/11, the planned Ground Zero Mosque. Interfaith leaders, including church leaders of the Religious Left have girded up their loins to stand with Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), denouncing those who utter any criticism – however factual – of Islam. But the thought of trampling on the death site of those who were vaporized, or burned alive, or leapt to their death on 9/11, or tearing down a building (the Burlington Coat Factory) that should be preserved as part of the tragic history of that day, to build what constitutes a monument of conquest, a step in the establishment of a new Caliphate, doesn’t seem to faze them in the least.
No, instead they cling to deceptive arguments to defend the building at Ground Zero of the Cordoba Initiative’s 15 story Islamic center and mosque alternately known as Cordoba House, Park 51, and now, again, Cordoba House.
One argument is that America’s freedom of religion dictates that we must allow the mosque to be built at Ground Zero. But Islam is not just a religion. Islam is an all-encompassing social, cultural, political, economic, and religious ideology that is using our own American value of freedom of worship against us.
Although Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has been named a “moderate Muslim” by the liberal elites, every day, new information about the Islamist connections of both Rauf and the real estate developer, Sharif el Gamal, is being revealed. Andrew McCarthy, former New York prosecutor of the Blind Sheik in the first World Trade Center bombings and author of The Grand Jihad, said of Rauf, “What you come up with is the pretty standard Islamist tactic of saying one thing that is moderate in tone and that enthralls people that are desperate to be enthralled in the West and another quite different tone when he speaks to Muslim audiences.” McCarthy hits the nail on the head: people that are desperate to be enthralled, desperate to be deceived.
Some argue that the mosque and “community center” would be “blocks from Ground Zero.” But the Burlington Coat Factory, which stands on the spot where Rauf wants to build his mosque, was hit by Flight 175 after it sheared through Tower Two of the World Trade Center. The landing gear and fuselage ended up in the building. Not only that, but for blocks around the location of the World Trade Center, the DNA of victims is still being found every day. I learned this in a conference call I was on this week as a member of the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero. The truth is that human remains from 9/11 were found as far away as the East River. It’s ALL Ground Zero.
Others, unbelievably, argue that it is time that we “got over” 9/11. For years we have seen how the media has attempted to diminish our memory of that terrible day by not using images, audio, etc. from the attacks. New York waits for a memorial to be constructed to its loss, and many of the families of those who died on Flight 93 are horrified by the proposed memorial, the “Crescent of Embrace.” As a Christian, I know that we must forgive. But forgiveness is not denial or downplaying. For the sake of our own freedom and national security, but even more so, for the sake of all of the innocent people who died, and for the sake of the heroes who diverted Flight 93, we cannot put 9/11 behind us. The world changed forever that day.
So, even as we breathe a sigh of relief at the news that Pastor Terry Jones will not be burning Korans after all, don’t be distracted, don’t forget to remember 9/11. Last year, I began a new section on the IRD website called “Never Forgetting What We Lost on 9/11” in which I offered short profiles and tributes of those who died. I will continue to add more of the victims of the 9/11 jihad this year.
In an associated e-newsletter on 9/11, I said:
A friend of mine was concerned that remembering in this manner, this “never forgetting,” stops forgiveness. But I have always (or at least since I met people who have truly forgiven great evil) believed that “forgive and forget” is not quite right. Real forgiveness is to look the evil behavior/action right in the eye and say, “I forgive you” even though this great evil has taken place, even though forgiveness costs me deeply because in my flesh I do not want to forgive. On the other hand, to “forget” is to deny the terrible consequences of the evil towards the victim. It dishonors the victim and it cheapens the concept of forgiveness. After all, Jesus said “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” but he did not say that they weren’t “doing” it.
I still believe this is true.
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