Muslims are American. What are you?

First, in 2009, a Sufi Muslim group began the process of turning an abandoned Burlington Coat factory on Park Place in Lower Manhattan into a 13-story Islamic community center. This center would be stacked with state-of-the-art facilities and amenities: a conference hall, basketball court, and place of worship (much needed to accommodate the over 100,000 Muslims who live and work in New York City). Two floors will have a prayer room. The other 11 will host all manner of community activities. The center will be open to everyone while religiously serving the Muslim community.

Sounds good, right? The rest of New York thought so at one point. Newspapers and talk radio shows were giving positive reviews, citing Sept. 11 victims' families that supported it. On May 6, 2010, after a public hearing in which New Yorkers expressed strong feelings pro and con, the New York City community board unanimously approved the project. Months later, a few right-wing pundits like Pamela Geller have engaged in a campaign of misinformation; and as a result a wave of yellow journalism and political agendas have plagued the nation's perspective on things.

Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, argues "it is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero. While the Muslim community has the right to build the mosque they are abusing that right by needlessly offending so many people who have suffered so much." But no one has cared to ask, or even wondered, why are people offended in the first place? We are ignoring the elephant in the room; Islam does not equal the Sept. 11 attacks. Then again, fear has no place for logic. The opposition's logic seems to be this: The terrorists were of Muslim faith, so it is utterly disrespectful to build a Muslim center, since there are Muslim terrorists.

Shall we follow the logic? The most notorious American-born terrorist was Timothy McVeigh. He detonated a truck bomb at the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing more than 160 adults and children. He was raised as a Catholic. Would any of the people who object to a mosque near Ground Zero object to a Catholic church being built near the Oklahoma City bomb site? They should if they truly believe that any faith that finds terrorists in its midst should be ostracized.

Nevertheless, this is the illogical voice of many opponents. People have blindly opposed a cultural center on the "hallowed ground," that is, a vacant store on Park Avenue, four blocks away from Ground Zero. This passionate debate has become more than just a question of respecting and protecting the rights of American citizens. It has become a vivid symbol of how the Otherized are subject to second class citizenship as a result of fear and ignorance.

President of the United States Barack Obama actually took a stand and defended those "radical terrorist sympathizers." King insists that "the right and moral thing for President Obama to have done was to urge Muslim leaders to respect the families of those who died and move their mosque away from Ground Zero. Unfortunately the President caved in the face of political correctness."

Somehow we got lost in the political sauce and forgot that all Americans shared the same pain on Sept. 11. Mohammad Salman Hamdani, a Muslim-American, was a New York Police Department cadet and paramedic. When he saw smoke coming from the Twin Towers, he ran to assist and died helping victims. The Sept. 11 terrorists attacked all Americans, including Muslims! So when the opposition talks about "needlessly offending people who have suffered so much," let us remember that Muslims suffered the same and more, especially due to anti-Muslim sentiments and attacks.

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, also condemned the proposed mosque and the President's comments. "There is nothing surprising in the President's continued pandering to radical Islam," he said. "The fact is this is not about religious liberty." Gingrich said the proposed mosque would be a symbol of Muslim "triumphalism" and that building the mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks "would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum."

The Pentagon opened an interfaith chapel in November 2002 close to the area where hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building, killing 184 people. Muslims gather multiple times weekly, drawing no complaints. What happened to America's "sensitivities" about that location? What is this debate over building a mosque a few blocks away from the World Trade Center site really about?

The New York Times states, "In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law." In spite of these nonsensical claims, let's consider some things that have been neglected in this debate: the facts. Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam who's being branded an extremist, has been valued by both administrations of both parties as a moderate Muslim. He's devoted much of his career to working to advance interfaith understanding. He's scolded his own religion for being, in some ways, in the ‘'Dark Ages.'' According to The New York Times, no one has established a link between the cleric and radicals. New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said, ‘'We've identified no law enforcement issues related to the proposed mosque.'' Even the government, including both the Bush and Obama administrations, has been paying Rauf to do outreach to the Middle East. Are we accusing the State Department of putting "terrorist sympathizers" on their payroll? If so, that's a whole other issue.

While the right-wing has made radical and completely unsubstantiated claims about the extremism of Islam and the Islamic cultural center's immorality, they have incited more terror into the heart of Americans and cultivated an incredibly more hostile environment for Muslims. This irrational commotion about prejudices has been justified and dressed up in the concept of "sensitivities." Such a rampant resentment of a group of innocent Americans that practice Islam is anti-American at best. And, at worst, it is indication of a terrorist victory—irrational fear. This controversy of unlimited ignorance and prejudice, rooted in fear, has revealed just how much progress our nation has to make despite our idealistic claims of progressivism. So this debate is about adhering to the values that truly make us American. Muslims are American. What are you?