a missile with your name on it

Arye Sachs is deploying two decommissioned missiles to fight the proposed mosque on Ground Zero.

Missile parked across street from future site of Park51

Attention anti-Muslim protestors: when you say I’ve got a missile with your name on it, your message is that you, not they, are violent terrorists.

Their target is Park51, an Islamic community center being built at 51 Park Place. Opponents stoke bigotry by dishonestly calling it the Ground Zero Mosque, but both halves of that name lie:

1. Park51 will not be on Ground Zero, nor around Ground Zero, nor in sight of Ground Zero, but two blocks away and down a side street, on the hallowed ground of an old Burlington Coat Factory.
2. Park51 will not be a mosque, but a 13-story Muslim community center, modeled after the 92nd Street Y, which will have a restaurant, a pool, a basketball court, a child-care center, a 500-seat performing arts center, and a prayer space too.

I point out that Park51 will not actually be a mosque only to emphasize that those claiming otherwise are lying. Because if it were a mosque, it’d make zero difference: They’d still have no legit­imate reason whatsoever to oppose its construction.

Our nation was founded upon a bedrock principle of freedom of religion. If we obeyed demands of hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh and banned Muslims from building Park51, we would betray everything America stands for. Those who stand against our freedoms stand against American values.

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indul­gence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assist­ance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
— George Washington

So said our first president. Alas, our current president has not upheld these principles. In Newsweek, Joseph Weisberg cites President Barack Obama’s reluctance to stand up for Park51 as an example of his moral cowardice:

In responding to the fight over the mosque, Obama has been character­istically legalistic and technical. At an iftar dinner he hosted at the White House, the president supported the right of Muslims to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan — itself a too picky allowance. The next day, he hedged even further, telling reporters, I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. This sail-trimming, where a bold defense of freedom of worship was wanted, left it to the newly heroic Michael Bloomberg to instruct us, at his own iftar dinner in New York, that the issue was a test of our commitment to American values.

On The Daily Show, comedian John Oliver satirized such “it’s their right, but is it wise?” concern trolling, You can build a Catholic Church next to a playground. But should you?

• In Manhattan, Ground Zero means where, on 11 September 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were demolished with crashing passenger planes by militant Islamic organization al-Qā’ida ( القاعدة‎), not either of the hypocenters where, on 6 and 9 August 1945, Japanese cities Hiroshima (広島) and Nagasaki (長崎) were annihilated with atomic bombs by the United States of America.
• Michael Bloomberg is the current mayor of New York City.
• For several decades, there have been lawsuits, criminal investigations, and scandals involving pedophilia by Catholic priests. When a priest was identified as a sex offender, the Catholic Church hierarchy would not report him to authorities, but move him to another location where he would continue to have contact with minors. Their current pope, Joseph Ratzinger, in his former role as a cardinal, was himself personally complicit in protecting pedophile priests from prosecution.