Thank you for the thoughtful and heartfelt responses to the Ground Zero blog. Here’s an example from Proud Podcast Participant, Ray:
Dick, I lost a cousin in the World Trade Center. She worked at a sandwich shop. She was a wonderful girl born in the Dominican Republic who saw America as the land of opportunity. Working in the World Trade Center was like a dream come true.
I think that you can’t wipe out an ideology unless you are willing to kill every last person that believes that ideology. The best chance we have to live in peace is to reach out to Muslims and celebrate what we have in common with them. If our way of life is a threat to the more fundamental believers, we should do everything we can not to export our culture where it is not understood or appreciated. But the worse thing we can do is paint all Muslims with a wide brush and say that Muslims attacked us. That would be like saying that Christianity was responsible for the Tragedy at WACO or saying the LDS Church is responsible for child brides in Fundamentalists Camps. We need to embrace our Muslim brothers and sisters and tell them that there is a lot of things we are selves hate about our Western Culture. How can we ever say that we are the land of the free if we stop even one church or Mosque from being built anywhere in this country? The only evidence that the Terrorist will have achieved their goal is if we say no to this Mosque.