Today, we went out for pizza, and while we ate, we watched the flat-screen television show images of that other September 11.
We talked a little about the mosque they want to build in New York, near Ground Zero. I said that I wondered if anyone was planning to fly something into it, and my wife replied that it wasn't fair to Muslims that they should have to pay forever for the actions of fanatical maniacs. I had to admit that that was so. I thought of what I've heard about riots in Afghanistan because an idiot preacherman in the United States said he would burn a copy of the Koran, and how silly it was that they might regard it as the actions of all of us, not just one fool. (But they flew a goddamned airplane into our buildings, killed three thousand of our people!) And then I take a breath and think Not all of them. Not even most of them. A few, evil ones who deserve to burn in hell everlasting. Not that that would make it right. I thought about asymmetrical forces, and asymmetrical warfare, which, to my mind, has always had a form of cool elegance - hit them where they ain't; use your small firepower against their great weakness -- that now doesn't seem quite so mathematically elegant to me.
There's a commercial for gay marriage in Ireland; it shows a man going up to ten, hundreds of people, asking if he can marry this woman, and at the end they say Imagine if you had to get the permission of everyone you meet just to get married, and, today, I think Imagine if every Muslim had to apologise for what those few did. And in my heart, I think Would that be so bad, that they had to do that? I know that wouldn't be right, but still, I wouldn't mind. How long? How many years? I don't know. Till I forget, I suppose. Is that fair, is that right? No. Holding the whole responsible for the actions of the few? No.
Then who?
Sometimes I think that once you get past the basics, there isn't a right or wrong, anymore. Even what feels right can have a wrong component to it.
It's a pretty day. It was then, too.
2 comments:
Or maybe its not a mosque at all, but a gathering place.
Wonder if this means anything. I found it in an old book.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Guess that just words on paper....
Are they
a) giving special privilege to the mosque,
b) prohibiting the practice of the Muslin religion,
c) prohibiting their ability to speak out (which does NOT means the ability to choose the media),
d) prohibiting their right to peaceably assemble, or
e) sue for redress?
I think not.
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