I feel I should offer my perspective here.
I was working in One World Trade Center at the time of the attacks. I escaped death by my decision that morning to come in at 10 (as I had as a contractor) rather than at 8:30 (as I had since becoming an employee). I worked on a floor right in the center of the hole where the first plane went in.
300 of my coworkers died that day, including several people who were friendly to me and whom I personally liked. Because phones were down and people were marooned far from home (the trains and tunnels were shut down for security reasons), it took a long time to verify the miraculous fact: none of the people really close to me had died, none of my old friends...only my new ones.
But that wasn't what broke me, and sent me into a deepening depression I still struggle with.
The response of my fellow Americans made me ashamed. They attacked their Muslim neighbors, and their non-Muslim Arab neighbors, and their Sikh neighbors (even though no Sikh had anything to do with the attacks, the turbans were enough).
Living where I do, I know a number of Muslims. On 9/11, the owner of a Middle Eastern restaurant here in Hoboken called a bunch of men from his mosque and rushed down to Ground Zero to volunteer. When they were told the place was overflowing with volunteers (as it was), they raised money instead. That restaurant proudly displays one of the American flags flown at Ground Zero during the rescue period.
Another of my friends is an Albanian Muslim, raised right here in New Jersey. He looks, acts, sounds, and IS exactly like any other young adult from New Jersey. (The exceptions are that he didn't get drunk on his 21st birthday - or ever - and fasts during Ramadan. His favorite fast-breaking food? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich.)
Because he's white, he's often been the "surprise" Muslim in his classes, and heard people say some phenomenally stupid things about Muslims and Islam. "Wait a minute! I'm a Muslim, and I'm not like that," he often has to say, and their response is often "You're not a Muslim." He's not a brown-skinned turban-wearing psychopath, you see, so he can't be a Muslim.
Let's compare some other terrorist attacks, hmm? Tim McVeigh has already been brought up; he was a white guy from Michigan, like me. Funny, I didn't get any hate stares on the street after the OKC bombing, which at the time was the worst terrorist attack on American soil. He was a Christian, but no one says that Christian churches should not be allowed near the OKC memorial.
The terrorists who have been blowing up abortion clinics and shooting doctors are self-proclaimed Christians also, but no one throws rocks at men in reversed collars or people wearing crosses because of this, not even the family members of the people they've murdered, not even the horribly-scarred survivors of the fires they set.
But, you will say, those people aren't good Christians. They aren't good examples of Christianity. You know what? That's exactly what my Muslim friends say about Osama bin Laden and his gang of perverts. The behavior of Al Qaeda is utterly prohibited by their reading of the Qur'an...the reading they've learned in their mosques.
In my opinion this proposed mosque will be an emblem of American freedom, ESPECIALLY since it's near Ground Zero. It will help educate people about Islam, so that they will know that Osama bin Laden and his ilk are outcast heretics in Islam, and have no justification in ANY religion for their murderous behavior. There will also be a community center which will be open to everyone, not just Muslims, in a neighborhood sadly deprived of such things.
Please consider what I've said carefully, and then think about whether it changes your position. I know both 9/11 and Muslims, and I support the building of this mosque.
