If you are an American Catholic or American Protestant and you are against an Islamic community center and mosque being built near Ground Zero, then you have absolutely no sense of your own religion or your religion’s history. And that is unfortunate. But if you are either Catholic or Protestant and speaking out against the Islamic Center, then you should be better informed before you persecute another religion or deny someone their constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Some history and examples …
Their farms were burned down. Crosses were burned at their homes. They were beaten. They were intimidated into joining places of worship not associated with their chosen religion. Rumors were spread through entire communities that they wanted to take over the American government and replace it with the leader of their religion. This was said to them: “We say firmly to the Popish Bishops and Priests among us, give us your declaration of your relation to our civil government. Renounce your foreign allegiance to a Foreign Sovereign. Let us have your avowal in an official manifesto, that the Democratic Government under which you here live, delights you best. … Americans demand it.”
Who were they that were persecuted simply for their religious beliefs? They were Catholics -- persecuted in the United States of America by a group of Protestants that were bound together in the early part of the 1900s under the Ku Klux Klan. And make no mistake: the Klan had great influence over certain parts of this nation back then. Mainly Protestants, the Klan were religious extremists.
Does that phrase sound familiar? Religious extremists.
An obscure but important book published in 1936 called ‘The Ku Klux Klan in Pennsylvania: A Study in Nativism” written by a college professor named Emerson H. Loucks, details the persecution and hatred of the Catholics by this extreme arm of the Protestant religion. (The quote above is from that book.)
So, a question for all you Protestants who are against the building of the mosque: What do violent Muslim extremists have to do with Islam? Be careful of your answer – for if you apply the horrible actions of the Muslim extremists on 9/11 to all of Islam, you must brand the entire Protestant religion with the acts of the Ku Klux Klan from their height of power in the 1920s to now. Are you ready to do that? Because there is no difference. And if any Protestants wanted to build a place of worship in America, what would you say to protestors that were against it because of the past or present actions of the Ku Klux Klan? Think about that and now you know how peaceful, non-extremist Muslims around the world feel about the Islamic Center near Ground Zero.
And if you are Catholic and against the building of the Islamic Center/mosque, you really need to stop talking and start reading. Start reading about how Catholics were persecuted for their beliefs in America. How false rumors spread through entire rural communities perpetuating that Catholics wanted to take over America and put the Pope as governmental leader. Read about the oft-reported "danger" of Catholics being elected to office. Read this passage from the Loucks book:
“In the words of Grand Dragon H.C. Shaw, ‘the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church are fundamentally hostile to the spirits, ideals, and institutions of our Republic,’ which made it unwise to have persons brought up under this doctrine in public office here in America.”
And don’t think that the KKK was just a few people in the early 20th century; in Pennsylvania alone in 1925, there were around 200,000 Klansmen, according to the Loucks book. 200,000!
To define an entire religion by the violent acts of sick extremists (be they Muslim terrorists or the KKK) is sad and un-American. And if you can’t seem to understand the difference between terrorists who happen to be Islamic and Islam then look to your own religion and history. To deny an Islamic group the chance to build a mosque near Ground Zero is a slap in the face of the ideals this country was founded on. But if you are not moved by the First Amendment of the Constitution, look to your own history – and start educating yourself -- before you condemn another religion’s right to practice.
