A Mosque Near Ground Zero - another perspective

A great controversy is raging in America.

A New York City community board voted Tuesday - May 25, 2010 -- to support a Muslim-led plan to build a community center with a mosque near ground zero. About 150 people packed the Community Board. One meeting and after four hours of heated debate, the board ultimately gave a 29-to-1 vote of residential approval. The building will be called Cordoba House.

Opponents of the project protested the proposal, waving pictures of loved ones killed in the World Trade Center and holding up signs that read, "Honor 3,000, 9/11 -- No mosque!"

Why a mosque near ground zero?

Why a mosque at that particular place - the site where the existing structure was damaged when World Trade Center twin towers were attacked by Muslim terrorists in the name of Islam? The site has emotional feelings for not just the relatives and friends of those who were killed on that fateful day or the New Yorkers but also for the entire nation as this was a well orchestrated attack on the fundamental icons of America. On that day the plan was to attack three icons of what America stands for - economic might, military might and democracy. The first two icons were successfully attacked - the attempt for the third was foiled by the brave and vigilant passengers of the flight that crashed in the fields of western Pennsylvania. The pagan pantheon of the Ka'aba, located in Mecca, was the first non-Muslim sanctuary to be used as a mosque; this was done by Prophet Muhammad himself after he conquered Mecca in 630 CE.

Since then it has been established practice of Muslim conquerors to demolish icons of people they conquer and build a mosque or use the iconic structure of the vanquished as mosque. Islam is a supremacist faith - it believes it is to be the only true faith.(Koran 3:19 and others) Al-Aqsa mosque of Jerusalem at a site also known as the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, the place where the First and Second Temples, are generally accepted to have stood, Ummayad mosque in Damascus on the site of church of St. John, the converted Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Babri mosque (demolished in 1992) at Lord Rama's birthplace in Ayodhya, India - are just a few of the long list of mosques built on the site of earlier churches and temples. In India alone historian Sita Ram Goel in his book Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them gives a partial list of 2000 Islamic monuments built at the site of deliberately demolished Hindu temples or material obtained from them.

In the medieval times churches, synagogues and temples used to be icons of civilizations. So they demolished those and built mosque there. Today these icons have been replaced by democracy, military and economic might - that is what America stands for today. Building a mosque at the hallowed ground of demolished WTCs -- icons of America's economic might is in Muslim eyes be a symbol of Islam's victory over mighty America. The selection of the site is not accidental - it is rather a very astute decision.