Zero

I saw on CNN this evening fourth and fifth generation Americans protest the building of a mosque a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero.

These people argue that Muslims are terrorists, that their culture and religion will be compromised, and that constructing an Islamic site near where the World Trade Centers once stood is a mockery to the 9/11 victims.

Rather, I think that we only began to notice Muslims ten years ago, and now it’s time to realize that they are also American, and need a place to gather.  In fact the right to assemble is basic democracy.

I do sympathize with the older generations who ultimately know nothing other than their own ancestry - that since their grandparents are buried down the street, it is “their” neighbourhood.  I understand that this is a shift in their own backyards, and change is frightening.  Being frightened is being vulnerable.  And being vulnerable make us all too aware of our own mortality.

Ultimately though, what these people are protesting is not only the unrefined animal characteristic of hoarding (which is also defined as a mental illness), but also their sense of entitlement is so great, that they ignore, forget, or are simply unaware, of why they are even in America in the first place.

North America is the poor man’s land.  We are ALL here to live in a dignity that we did not have access to before.  Some obtain much more than a survivor’s wage, and some don’t make it off the streets, but no one on this continent should be exempt from humility, meekness, compassion, and of course, obtainment.

I have judged Muslims, I have believed that they are wrong in their faith, that they hate Westerners, that they think Western women like me are whores before God.  But then I realized that I was projecting.

We must accept that this is no one’s land, not really.  Where on this earth did we develop this ridiculous sense of entitlement?  We are forever at war.  At least one war every ten years.  If a country more powerful invaded, this would become their land.  Then what do we really have?

I am not a liberal: in fact I am voting for Harper in May, and encourage all Canadians to do the same.  I am no humanitarian, I am merely a woman - a woman in a sexist, depraved, insulting, undermining, and perverted world, where not much is fair or justified.  A world where Muslim women across the Atlantic have to cover themselves from head to toe like how Europeans once did, lest they be raped.

A passion of mine is women’s rights.  I found something in me that could separate the line socially sketched between me and the orthodox Muslim woman.  I began to understand why we do things one way, and why they do things another way, and that we are not really that different after all.  I believe that in a couple of generations, we will grow more and more alike.  Western women will become more dignified, and Muslim women will begin to feel safe and shed a layer of material or two.

   

If we do not find something in us that can identify with the “other”, then we will always feel violated, always feel that we must gather, prepare, scheme, defend, fight - that we will win or lose.  What kind of existence is that?  We will forever exist within a zero, within nothingness.

America is for everyone, and I have it on good authority that if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.  So now what.