The Muslim Iwo Jima

cultureJason2
Rod Dreher has one word for the proposal to build a mega-mosque near Ground Zero: insane.

Of course it is wrong to blame all Muslims for 9/11. But why on earth
rub salt in the wounds of the 9/11 dead by allowing a mosque to go in
just two blocks from where jihadists incinerated or crushed over 2,700
innocent victims, in service of their faith?

…

however distorted the religious views of those terrorists may have
been, it is deeply offensive to build a giant mosque in what would have
been the shadows of the Twin Towers, had they not been brought down
explicitly for the greater glory of Allah. I see the desire to erect
such a building on that site not as a gesture of interreligious peace
and reconciliation — which we need — but rather as an outrageous act of nerve and arrogance.

Insert boilerplate here about how we’re tolerant of all religions and not all Muslims are terrorists and we’d like to buy the world a Coke and all that.  The fact remains, this is an arrogant insult to 9/11 survivors just as Dreher said, but it’s worse than that.

Muslims world-wide, and even non-Muslims who take an interest in the relative strength of America, will see this as the forces of Islam planting their flag at the site of a great victory, like the Marines at Iwo Jima. When this mosque stands next to the giant whole where the World Trade Center used to be (And how much do you want to bet that the mosque is finished before anything is built at Ground Zero? Could you even get odds?), it will send an unmistakable message about who is the strong horse and who is the weak.