
With the Pope at Ground Zero
On Friday, Pope Francis went for an walk alongside the north pool of the 9/11…
Read MoreOn Friday, Pope Francis went for an walk alongside the north pool of the 9/11…
Read MoreThe seven of us stood in the parking lot of the office building across the street, and Joe opened the zippered cover of his three-ring binder full of painstakingly collected photographs of the old neighborhood gathered for the exhibition. As he began reading aloud an oral history from Marian Sahadi Ciacci—“A Syrian who married an Italian!”—it felt like a religious occasion, a conjuring out of almost nothing of an entire world gone by.
Read MoreA poll showed 7 out of 10 New Yorkers opposing Park51 but this intolerance doesn’t square with the city’s history.
Read MoreWe must listen to our neighbors.
Read MoreThat the kindergarten logic of “hear no evil, see no evil” is being used in order to sway public opinion in favor of the Center, but while the success of these maneuvers remains to be seen, its damage is immediately apparent: if Park51 ‘sounds’ nothing like mosque, claims to ‘be’ nothing like a mosque, and, ‘looks’ nothing like a mosque, then, and only then, does it emerge a defensible endeavor within the United States.
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Lurking behind suspicion about the new Islamic Center planned to be built near Ground Zero is something much more ominous than would appear.
Read MoreThe consequences of fusing the sacred and the secular.
Read MoreThere was a fair amount of surprise when ADL went on record opposing the construction of a progressive, moderate, multifaith dialogue-oriented Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero in Manhattan. Wait a minute, my (non-Jewish) boyfriend asked me, did they drop a letter from their name? Are they the Defamation League now?
Read MoreNew York City’s Landmark Preservation Commission’s unanimous decision on August 3, 2010, to allow plans for the construction of a mosque and community center near Ground Zero to move forward has been hailed by some as a victory for religious freedom, but it has also provided more fodder for latent anti-Muslim sentiments that have surfaced nationally.
Read MoreThroughout US history the perpetrators of religiously-inspired violence have usually been white Protestant men fearful of non-Protestant communities.
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