NYC community board OKs ground zero mosque plans

[agzg]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

So, it is no surpise if people can't overlook the "place of worship" image. Also, as you stated regarding the age of the YMCA as compared to the JCC, the Islamic community center theme is new for many people. It isn't a more mainstream concept. The Jewish community center theme used to be new and some areas had to adjust to it. If the Islamic community center is ever built and the newness wears out, people may eventually think of the ICC similar to how they view the YMCA and JCC.

I know this is semantics, but I wasn't comparing the age of the YMCA to the age of the JCC or the age of this potential ICC, and in my opinion it's an important distinction which is central to my point.

A. Just because it's older doesn't mean it's better and while it may be more commonplace to society as a whole, there's little benefit to saying "well, the Y is better because we're used to it and it's all white people there" or "oh, well, Pittsburgh has a JCC in Squirrel Hill, and no one died there, so JCCs are OK but ICCs are not" or something equally ridiculous (yes, I realize these are exaggerations to what people may be saying/thinking but I'm trying to make a point that splitting hairs between religions when the proposed function is essentially the same is pretty ridiculous as well).

B. My point with the whole "what the YMCA has become in recent decades" was that the YMCA has actively been distancing itself, at least on the outside, from its original mission in an attempt to be more inclusive, while at least most of the JCCs that I'm familiar will have not done so.

If people want to characterize it as a mosque, that's fine, but the correlation between the Y and JCCs is not irrelevant when considering the actual FUNCTIONS that the proposed structure would be there to perform. One cannot make the assumption that because it includes a place of worship that the primary function would be "a place of worship" in practice, just like many JCCs don't function primarily as a place of worship (at least those that I know, YMMV based on the community in question and the resources available) and (also YMMV) none of the YMCAs that I have ever even been to function primarily as a place of worship.

I don't speculate as to what the breakdown of function would be, it could totally be used as a mosque. But, I'm OK with that, anyway.

I don't like that people are emphasizing religion so much with Ground Zero, anyway, but I don't need to preach as to the blindness that extremists of any religion or nationality or what-have-you tend to see "outsiders" to their particular line of thinking.