Posted by
grad_1986 on Saturday, September 04, 2010 3:03:15 PM
People today are confused about what the 1st Amendment is really all about. I constantly hear people arguing that telling the Muslims that they cannot build their beloved mosque near ground zero infringes on their 1st Amendment rights. But the 1st Amendment has NOTHING to do with location, purposes or even sizes of buildings. It has to do with their BELIEF. It says that government cannot tell you what to believe, not believe, or worship in a certain way. The government (in this case New York City) reserves the right to control WHERE you worship and other building codes. For example, the city can limit the number of people who can enter the building so in the case of an emergency they can all exit safely. My church for example, was required to make sure our communion rale area always has 1 opening for the servers to exit in case of an emergency. We were also required to do neighborhood surveys before we built our church to insure the people living in the area would be okay with more traffic on sunday morning and a little more noise. The result of the survey required us to build a 7ft sound-wall to cut down any possible noise from the cars.
Therefore telling the Muslims that they cannot build their mosque near Ground-Zero because it will cause emotional harm to the residents of New York is NOT infringing on their 1st Amendment rights as long as New York City is telling them how to worship or what they can believe as Muslims. We are saying Muslims are not welcome in New York City, New York State or even in our country. We as citizens are only requesting that they respect our feelings
Finally, supporters of this mosque must realize that Americans are not stupid. We know from history that Muslims use mosques as symbols of victory over their enemies. Muhammad used religion as a way to unify the arab people and also to fortify the cities he conquered militarily. By leveling the enemies religious temples and symbols and erecting mosques around Islamic myths and legends he would be certain that those cities would forever be under his peoples control. This mosque near Ground Zero is nothing more than a victory dance on the American symbol of power and wealth. Only a fool would think otherwise