After having disparaged the deep and wide upheaval of public emotion that views the project as sacrilegious (wherein one Rabbi Yaakov Thompson merits Mr. Pitts' particularly stern rebuke), the author suddenly relents:
"We should not be without sympathy for those who cringe at the notion of a mosque so near Ground Zero. Memory of what happened there is burned into us all. To put a mosque there would be an unavoidably painful and provocative thing.
"But the Constitution does not carry an escape clause. We do not get to jettison our national ideals just because they cause pain or provoke."
Just where in the Constitution, one may ask, is it written that a mosque must be built in Manhattan on this particular place? And did the Founding Fathers really mean to sustain our national ideals so that they cause pain and provoke?
Even a person religiously neutral (as I happen to be) should have some common sense of respect for the country's mainstream symbols, ideas, traditions, cultural legacies--all that constitutes our national face, rooted in the past.
If putting
Why should we let ourselves be besotted in the name of the Constitution? The Constitution is not an abstraction licensed to abuse the public sentiment for the benefit of frivolous gain. That would be worshipping technicality, an idolatry of sorts, obliterating the very essence of the Constitution.
The World Trade Center, a quintessentially secular institution, logically belonged in Manhattan, on the very spot of the Twin Towers. But why should an Islamic worship center be located there, rather than somewhere else? God is at equal distance from any spot.
Olga Arans
Stafford