The real insult to victims’ memories

Critics of the proposal to build a mosque and cultural center just blocks from the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan believe the construction of such a facility would be an insult to the memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

This is because the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks were motivated by a militant ideology derived from Islam. As Pamela Gellar, executive director of Stop Islamization of America, said at a recent community board meeting on the subject, “It’s demeaning to non-Muslims to build a shrine dedicated to the very ideology that inspired 9/11.”

If Gellar were to take her premises — that the construction of mosques is demeaning to non-Muslims and that things demeaning to non-Muslims should not be allowed — to their logical conclusion, she would be advocating a ban on the construction of mosques.

To take such a position would, of course, be to advocate a restriction on the free exercise of religion, a fundamental freedom protected in the Bill of Rights and one upon which this country and its precursor states were founded, going back many decades before even the Declaration of Independence.

Thus, if we take it as given that advocating restrictions on freedom would dishonor the memory of the victims of the attacks, it is clear that those who oppose the construction of the mosque on the grounds Gellar opposes it, not those who support the construction of the mosque, are the ones doing the insulting.