NCCC-USA supports building of Islamic centre near ‘Ground Zero’

Amid the upsurge of anti-Muslim protests across America following the approval of the planned construction of an Islamic community centre two blocks from the former World Trade Center site in New York City, Christians under the umbrella of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA (NCCC-USA) voiced their stand in favour of the controversial project.

Opponents of the project call the planned building a mosque, which played up a religious slant to the controversy. But a place of worship is only one of the facilities of the proposed community centre. The planned 13-storey structure will also house meditation rooms, a 500-seat auditorium, and facilities and services for recreation, fitness, and educational and cultural programmes.

Officially named Park51 but more known as the Cordoba House, the proposed community centre’s proximity to Ground Zero sparked a conflagration that raised questions about religious tolerance in the United States. This, despite the project’s planners’ intent to make Cordoba House open to people of all faiths, “a center for multifaith dialogue and engagement.”

The NCCC-USA, its Interfaith Relations Commission and Christian participants of the National Muslim-Christian initiative decried the anti-Muslim reactions of many church leaders and members, particularly the planned burning of the Qur’an on September 11.

“Such open acts of hatred are not a witness to Christian faith, but a grave trespass against the ninth commandment, a bearing of false witness against our neighbor. They contradict the ministry of Christ and the witness of the church in the world,” the group said in a joint statement issued on the eve of the observance of the Ramadan on August 11.

NCCC-USA General Secretary Michael Kinnamon said “Ground Zero must be open to the religious expression of all people whose lives were scarred by the tragedy”, including Muslims for whom the tragedy is “exacerbated by the fact that so many of the rest of us have formed our opinions about them out of prejudice and ignorance of the Muslim faith.”

Rev. Kinnamon warned that blocking the building of the Cordoba House would be to engage in the same bigotry that has scarred the nation’s forebears who once regarded the country’s original inhabitants as “sub-human savages”, subjugated black Africans in cruel slavery armed “with Bible proof-texts and a belief that blacks were inferior to whites”, and divested and imprisoned tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans out of fear of anyone of Japanese ancestry.

“Today, millions of Muslims are subjected to thoughtless generalizations, open discrimination and outright hostility because of the actions of a tiny minority whose violent acts defy the teachings of Mohammed,” Rev. Kinnamon said in a separate statement.

Other faith-based groups and religious leaders, particularly from the Jewish and Christian communities in the United States, have come forward in support of the project and to counter the frenetic efforts of anti-Muslim groups to fan the flames of Islamophobia among Americans.