What isn’t being written about is the need to learn–the need to grow as a people in response to a tragedy.  We must celebrate the heroism of the 911 first responders and those that came to their aid.  Many of those, of course, were people who are Islamic.  Many of the victims as well.  There was a particularly horrible story about Mohammad Chowdhury, a waiter who worked at the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center who died that day.  He left behind a widow who had a child two days after 911.  It was a horrific time for a young woman to be Islamic in America.  She faced much persecution by the same energy that deified all of those that were somehow made holy by their sacrifice on 911.

Clearly 911 is a tone that engenders fear, patriotism and anger.  It is that anger that we need to examine.  I find the misdirected anger at a peaceful religion hateful.  It is also a remnant of something disfigured and ugly about our American identity.  It is the same ugliness that forced people to sit in the back of the bus.  In fact, the analogy between Islam and its relationship to white America is common and the relationship between white America and African Americans in the south in the fifties.  Black people can sit anywhere they’d like, but why do they have to sit up front? They can build a mosque, but they shouldn’t.

We should be able to examine the rush to equate Islam with terror as a uniquely American ugliness.  We do know that there is a distinction.  Most Americans might not understand Islam at all, but we surely know that extremists do not represent their underlying beliefs accurately.  We need to be able to understand that we have enshrined the concept of religious tolerance as central to the American sense of belief.  We identify strongly with tolerance as a value.  We understand that we are a nation big enough to represent vastly different beliefs.  We even recognize that this makes us stronger, but in moments associated with pain and fear we revert back to an ugly, smaller people who can’t think rationally and accept the other.

More info on Islamic 911 victims

So, that is clearly a cave-in.

Add that to the Democrat concession to the banking industry and you
have the need for a revolt. I am no longer a Democrat. I am
something else. We need a new, viable party. We have two parties in
America. We have a party that works for big business and a party of
crazies.

And we got what we deserved.
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pound-bang.com