Churches Capitalizing on 9-11? Seriously? Stay Classy San Diego

By the time you are done reading this you should be offended.  You should either ask “How dare they for doing that?” or “How dare you for writing that?”  If you have neither response then check yourself for a pulse. 

It would be hard to write anything new about 9-11 on the eve of the 10 year anniversary of that horrible day that triggered a horrible week and resulted in a horrible era in American Life.  When I mentioned it to my wife she said, “Don’t write about 9-11. Write about 9-10 or 9-12. It’s not just about 9-11.”  She is correct.

I was on a flight from London to Los Angeles on 9-10.  I awoke on 9-11 because my brother, deployed with the Navy at the time in Spain, called to ask if we made it. Made what? Turn on the TV he said.  In a jet legged fog somewhere between consciousness and that early morning dream state where you are awake and asleep at the same time I watched the towers come down.   You probably did too so I can stop here on that theme. I still can’t watch the video without tearing up.

The Islamic Cultural Center! The ISLAMIC cultural center? The Islamic CULTURAL center? Depends on which news you watch and what papers you read. To some, it sounds like the second choice. Sarah Palin has weighed in. Jon Stewart made his views known. President Obama gave a speech, after Mayor Bloomberg finally came out of his civil rights closet to make a solid statement.

And I really don’t get what the fuss is about. As if there are not already two mosques located within four blocks of the trade center site, one of which predated the building of the World Trade Center. In fact, none other than Fox news recently reported that “New York City has more than 100 mosques . . . more than 800,000 of its 8.21 million residents are Muslims, said Philip Banks III, chief of the NYPD Community Affairs Bureau.” My friends, New York City has more Muslims than the entire populations of two Islamic nations: Bahrain and Qatar.