From: ShunkW <shunkw@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 11:46 PM
Subject: The Real 'Ground Zero Mosque' Was on the 17th Floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower
To: ShunkW <shunkw@sbcglobal.net>
The Real 'Ground Zero Mosque' Was on the 17th Floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower
Jon Ponder | Sep. 10, 2010
The New York Times has a story up about what it calls a Muslim "prayer center" in the World Trade Center. Muslims who worked in the Twin Towers met there for their daily prayers — there was even a wash room nearby set up for the pre-prayer ritual cleansing.
By any measure, the "prayer center" in the trade center is much closer to the definition of a mosque than Park 51, the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" — a 12-story non-sectarian community center with a culinary school and sports facilities.
The fact that there was a mosque in the south tower — compounded by the fact that it is as likely as not there were Muslims praying in the mosque on the 17th floor when terrorists jet-bombed the building — should make it harder for Republicans to argue that construction of Park 51 somehow defiles the memory of those who died in the 9/11 attacks.
It should, but it won't. This controversy is not about Park 51 or even about Ground Zero. It's about Republican leaders fanning the flames of fear and hatred among their tea bagger base.
noticing some fellow Muslims on the job, Mr. Abdus-Salaam voiced an equally essential question: "So where do you pray at?" And so he learned about the Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the south tower.
He went there regularly in the months to come, first doing the ablution known as wudu in a washroom fitted for cleansing hands, face and feet, and then facing toward Mecca to intone the salat prayer.
On any given day, Mr. Abdus-Salaam's companions in the prayer room might include financial analysts, carpenters, receptionists, secretaries and ironworkers. There were American natives, immigrants who had earned citizenship, visitors conducting international business — the whole Muslim spectrum of nationality and race.
Leaping down the stairs on Sept. 11, 2001, when he had been installing ceiling speakers for a reinsurance company on the 49th floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam had a brief, panicked thought. He didn't see any of the Muslims he recognized from the prayer room. Where were they? Had they managed to evacuate?
He staggered out to the gathering place at Broadway and Vesey. From that corner, he watched the north tower collapse, to be followed soon by the south one. Somewhere in the smoking, burning mountain of rubble lay whatever remained of the prayer room, and also of some of the Muslims who had used it.
Given the vitriolic opposition now to the proposal to build a Muslim community center two blocks from ground zero, one might say something else has been destroyed: the realization that Muslim people and the Muslim religion were part of the life of the World Trade Center.
Sw
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Palash Biswas
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http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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