OP ED - Other People's Noses

Early this morning, I read an article on CNN.com about how Donald Trump had offered to buy the land that is the potential future site of the hotly contested 9/11 Mosque. But what truly caught my attention were the comments (this was early enough that there was a manageable amount of them). The first comment actually pertained to the article at hand (the author felt that Mr. Trump was trying to buy off people’s morals), but the remaining comments quickly disintegrated into flagrant statements about the rightness or wrongness, as judged by the constitution, of building the mosque and whether all Muslims could be equated with those who carried out the terrorist attacks or whether that was an extremist group of Muslims. And I realized they all had missed the point.

There is an adage that says “your freedom ends where my nose begins.” The implication being that, we all have a right to liberty, but we also should not encroach upon the liberty of others. In a physical realm, we demonstrate this all the time. If I buy a bus ticket, I have a right to sit on any seat in that bus; however, if someone is already seated, I waive my right to that particular seat—I do not sit on top of them, and I do flippantly not ask them to move. The reality is that sometimes our freedoms overlap. A civilized society compensates for this through graciousness and selflessness.

Mr. Elzanaty and the other owners of Park51 have an unequivocal right to build a Mosque at that site. They own the property and the zoning laws are such that their proposed plans are in line with them. Freedom of religion is culturally accepted in the United States, so there are no laws barring their building a place of worship for their religion. And yet there are noses in the way. These are the noses of the family and friends of those who died in the 2001 terrorist attacks. These are also the noses of Americans who think it’s distasteful or dangerous to build an ostentatious Islamic building in proximity to the primary site of those terrorist attacks, lest it be viewed as celebratory gloating or a challenge.

Americans have, since their founding, accepted that men have a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” These rights were violated in the September 11^th Attacks. And many Americans argue these foundational rights are again being violated in the building of a Mosque near the site of those attacks.

The “non-extremist” Muslims protest that theirs is a religion of peace and of love toward fellow man. Mr. Elzanaty has been offered an opportunity by Mr. Trump (and according to the article, several others) to withdraw, with no financial loss to him, from the volatile situation and defer to other people’s noses. In refusing, he is not practicing the Islam that his Mosque is alleged to support.