No mosque near Ground Zero

There are certain issues in life where using intellect alone isn't enough to make a proper determination. I believe the debate over the building of a mosque at Ground Zero in New York is one of those issues.

My gut more than my mind or politics tells me that this is not the time to build a towering mosque just a couple hundred yards away from where the World Trade Center went down in a radical Islamic attack on America.

Sure, our country allows many freedoms. But it also has many commonsense restrictions. You can't build a strip joint or a casino in a residential neighborhood. Zoning laws prohibit it. You can't dig up historic cemeteries to build a 7-Eleven or place a YMCA in the middle of a Civil War battlefield. There are certain things that just aren't appropriate to people who would be prone to feel the most pain.

And so it is with a mosque in lower Manhattan.

Religious freedom doesn't mean rubbing salt into wounds (whether the salt is perceived or real) -- wounds that aren't healed, as a hole in the ground still has not been filled 10 years after the 9/11 attacks. New York is a big place. This mosque can be built elsewhere. It shouldn't be constructed before new towers and memorials are built at Ground Zero. It's just one of those things that doesn't feel right, despite logical arguments made by the mayor and others in support of the mosque. Read more.

This isn't just any old mosque. It's a proposed Islamic center -- an enormous, glowing facility that doesn't blend into the area but instead dominates it.

No matter how you cut it or how politically correct one wants to sound, a bastardized version of Islam is at the core of our fight against terrorism. I say that hesitantly, not wanting to sound like a commentator for Fox News. This is a hot-button reality in a post-9/11 world. We're at war in two mostly Islamic nations, looking for terrorists with jihad on their minds. I don't agree with the wars because I believe there is a better, more cost-efficient way to fight terrorism than militarily occupying countries. Regardless, the fact remains that we're still at war with Islamic extremists.

Eliminating terrorism doesn't mean we're against Muslims or that they don't have the right to worship here. It simply indicates that there is, at the very least, a strong emotional connection between the hateful fringes of that religion and some of the problems we are facing as a country. Some of those extreme fundamentalists will undoubtedly worship at the Ground Zero mosque. Government officials charged with determining the fate of the facility need to keep that in mind. If they don't, things could get uglier. It's not a good idea to congregate and/or provoke the more unstable people on either side of this issue (Muslims and non-Muslims) -- not when there are reasonable alternatives. The city has a responsibility to safeguard its citizens, whether they are Muslim, Jewish, Christian or of no faith. Building this mosque near Ground Zero is taking an unnecessary risk and jeopardizing everyone from worshipers to passersby.

A lot of people died in the attacks of 2001. Most of the deaths came at Ground Zero. We're still paying an economic price for those acts of terrorism. Many rescue workers are suffering from illnesses that were caused by breathing the dust of the burning towers. The point is, 9/11 still remains in the hearts and minds of many people, particularly New Yorkers.

There is a large, elaborate mosque a few miles from where I live. It is set off from the road and obscured by trees. It's accessible and right off a main road near Reston, Va., but not easy to see as you drive by. It appears to have been designed with privacy in mind. It is not a welcoming place to outsiders, as security cameras and locked iron gates surround it. There are also many store-front mosques in the area that are quite visible. Needless to say, Northern Virginia has a large Muslim population. However, I am unaware of any new towering mosques in the shadow of the Pentagon. Commonsense seems to have prevailed here.

The proposal for a mosque at Ground Zero has instigated a controversy that didn't need to be stirred. Frankly, if I was a sincere follower of that religion, I wouldn't want the attention that this debate has brought. Build the mosque elsewhere and let the people of lower Manhattan remember those who died on 9/11 in the manner and environment in which they choose.