tea berry-blue

From the linked article

Sharp set the truck on fire, igniting ammunition inside the vehicle in what police believe was a tactic to draw people out of the building, Kowalski said. Sharp also attempted to set fire to the truck’s trailer, which was carrying wood chips, road flares, gasoline and ammonium nitrate fertilizer, but it failed to ignite, Kowalski said.

“It looks like it was possibly an improvised explosive device,” he said.”

I need to say something, here.

The “debate” (which would be more appropriately referred to as “vitriol”) surrounding the Cordoba House community center planned for Lower Manhattan has kept me on the edge of tears on and off for days now.

I have heard people refer to Imam Rauf, founder of the Cordoba Initiative, as a terrorist, simply because he has, time and time again, tried in the name of a spirit of tolerance and understanding, to explain why some people feel the way they do about the United States, and why people might be incited into violence against the US and our political allies.

People, saying “hey, they’re pissed off because you have armies in their countries and side with Israel” ain’t terrorism. And he has said repeatedly that he doesn’t feel that this places blame on the US for making those decisions. He’s explaining the line of rationale, not excusing it.

This man is not a terrorist:

This man is a terrorist:

I am a New Yorker. Our city still has wounds that desperately need to be fixed. You, people spewing your hate at people who live in our city, work in our city, lost loved ones in our city, simply because they are of the same faith as the people who caused that dreadful event, maybe because they don’t look like you or share the same cultural habits as you, you are the ones tearing the scabs off our wounds. You are the ones who will not let us heal. Every time you rationalize, claim some more and more preposterous excuse for why people should not be able to practice their faith, teach other people about their faith, improve their community and help contribute to the healing process, you, you are compromising the values of the American ethos, but the values of nearly every major world religion. Every time you call a man who has dedicated his life to spreading tolerance between faiths “a terrorist,” you are failing to open your eyes to the most basic kind of love we can feel for each other as human beings.

And I want to be able to remember what happened at the World Trade Center with a spirit of love, with the beautiful and bittersweet memories of the way New Yorkers came together to help each other and mourn together in the days that followed, not with the horror, fear, and confusion of those life-altering hours. I want to be able to say that what happened that day made me a stronger and better person, made me more compassionate and just, and that it made all of us stronger and better people, more compassionate and just.

You are making that impossible. You are destroying my memories. You are demanding that I feel misery for something I already felt too much misery over. And I will not stand for that.

I would urge you all to think on the message that Imam Rauf is trying to spread, and not the message Patrick Gray Sharp tried to spread. I don’t know if I agree with everything Rauf says in his Ted speech, and we don’t know what Sharp was saying when he tried to hurt those police officers, but I certainly approve messages of tolerance, compassion and love over messages of terror, hate and fear.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

According to Facebook, Presented Without Comment:

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.