How close to Ground Zero is too close for Muslims?

A Mormon, a Baptist and  a Muslim goes into this bar. Wait! What’s wrong with that line?

Nothing really. People of such faiths aren’t generally known as the biggest drinkers of the religious world. That’s not to say they don’t drink, even if they may preach against liquor. The fact is that only their personal beliefs and their local laws are all that might prevent them from going into that bar where they may become the butt of some joke. It’s called “freedom.”

Freedom is bandied about and is talked of in grand and florid terms by politicians and all other of the Americans who feel, for whatever the hell reason, that their freedom is being taken away. I bet many of those would be really pissed off if steps were taken which restrict their Constitutional right to freely practice their religion.

Yet some of these who speak so grandly seem not to have any worries about restricting a church from being built a couple of blocks from the scene of the largest mass murder and terrorist attack in American history. It is the latter, they say, that supposedly compels them to demand the church built somewhere else. Muslims want a mosque — okay people are saying a community center, whatever — there. Granted, the Imam seems to have a shady past but some of our great religious leaders have also cried out: “I have sinned.”

President Obama made a remark and later clarified that remark saying he believes the mosque has a right to built wherever it is able to be built because of the religious freedom in this country. He isn’t the only politician to share that view. New York’s Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg agrees. Bloomberg’s fellow Republicans, though, have decided to seize upon this issue and use it to their advantage politically. When such a disagreement is used for nothing more than political gain, it seems to really lose meaning of the bigger picture.

The picture: Religious freedom and freedom in general. First, one wonders how far away the Muslims, who are only being targeted because some of their own who have perverted their religion perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, have to move? Two blocks, four blocks, six blocks, a dollar, every one who thinks Muslims should not have their mosques within a 50-mile radius of the World Trade Center stand up and holler!

Just which religions can have their churches within a few blocks of this hallowed site? Baptists? No, not them. They dunk children into the water. Mormons, like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is facing an election against a real nut job and so he has decided to part ways with Obama on this one? Some say they are really a cult. Jews? My God, look at what they do to little baby boys!

Do you see how ridiculous this whole argument over restricting one church’s religious freedom in the United States of America is? I hesitate to say it, and that in itself seems wrong, but it does make you wonder just what would Jesus do? Well, I guess that all depends whether you are Old Testament, New Testament or No Testament. Or whether you read the Koran, Talmud, The Book of Mormon or none of the above for that matter.

The greatest point about the freedom to worship in this country is that you can or you don’t and you can worship whomever you want or not worship anyone or any faith at all. If you can find anything in the U.S. Constitution that says this nation was meant to be a theocracy then please let me know because I must have missed it.

So, we will listen to the people raise their voices in disgust — aided and abetted of course by the mighty Republican propaganda machine — and we have another ridiculous argument to distract discussion on real issues and real problems in this country. Tell me, Mr. GOP politician, what would you do to ensure the Muslims or any other religion offensive to you don’t build two blocks or four blocks from the World Trade Center? What’s that? Nothing, you say? That’s kind of what I thought.