Ground Zero Emotions While Mosque Debate are in Place
Ground zero – quite an important part of the Americans and not only, see it as a place of mourn. A place of sacrifice. A place where tourists come and see what has terrorism made out of the world. A place by which people pass by in grabbing their lunch in their lunch breaks. A place that has had a lot of pain and that has felt people pain as well, that was almost nine years ago, and nothing is forgotten, not to this day, no.
It is a scar on this city that is about to be there forever and none will be able to heal it, it sis something that has been made not against the Americans but against people, humanity against religious ideals of some fundamentalist thoughts.
Despite of this fact, life needed to move on and people find their way and pass by this place and have nothing else to do, they cannot change what happened.
However, in recent weeks there have been some debates regarding an Islamic center and a mosque to be placed a couple of blocks from the construction, but Americans do not all approve of this. Americans are those that are entitled to have a saying into all this. Gesturing at the land he helped clear in the weeks after 9/11, Louis Pabon believes he knows who owns it: “This is mine.”
A place that was once filled with business people and with tourists and commuters has turned in just some mere minutes into a place of history and loss. A historical place that is about to be an important part in the American history. In 24 hours time, someone has dubbed it into ground zero and it has never been the same, ever again.
In these attacks it is very well known and felt that each and every American has lost something, a relative, a friend, an ideal, a skyline, a sense of safety that they felt, something that they relied upon, a sense of control and of knowing where everything was heading. But since that day, nothing was the same anymore, not for the Americans or for the other countries in the world.
Muslims, yes there were as well Muslims living in the city at that time, they were feeling almost like home there, they enjoyed a certain anonymity and they liked it, but their lives changed since then, despite of them having nothing to do with these killings. ”Now no one can talk about Islam … because Islam became like equal to violence,” says Noureddine Elberhoumi, a cab driver who says that after Sept. 11 he stopped volunteering information about his religious affiliation. “In their mind, Islam is always going back to Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11 — that’s it.”
Anyhow, it is not the business of the Americans, those that had mainly to suffer from the situation to care for the feelings of the Muslims. They are under no circumstance guilty for what happened and they do not intend to sympathize for someone that had “stolen” so many things from them.
People are still struggling into building something worthy to pay respect to the dead persons there.
As the September 11th hijackers’ claim to have acted in the name of Islam, people do not see it with good eyes, the building of an Islamic center and mosque, auditorium and other such facilities two blocks away from the ground zero. This should not be taken into consideration at least due to the sensitivity that they should feel for the people that lost some relatives and friends in hose attempts of destroy. But, other opinion is that moving the mosque will lead to religious intolerance and ceasing the religious freedom, which America so far burst itself with.
Anyhow, ground zero is a shuttered place. There is no one allowed but the families of the dead persons, in 2008 the pope was allowed as well to enter and as well in the yearly memorials it is opened. Meanwhile, workers are trying to rebuilt it.
The Memorial that is building there is intended to be a sacred place for those people that had lost their family ambers and their loved ones but is it normal to restrict this just to those people? The 9/11 attacks triggered a raise voice to all the world and all the nations were in the same tune with what happened.
“The memorial museum is selling souvenirs, for God’s sake,” says Diane Horning, who lost her son, Matthew. “You can’t stand in ground zero without seeing Century 21′s big banners advertising whatever their special is. … This hasn’t been sacred space since the day they put the first rivets in something. It’s office buildings, it’s places to eat, it’s everything but sacred space.”
Anyhow, for some parts of the city life did not end with this happening but continued. They are not to blame; however, what is important is what you feel inside and the place itself, what it signifies.
As for the mosque, so many talks about its placement have raise the awareness and the revival of the Americans and what happened nine years ago. At the moment the Freedom Tower was renamed One World Trade Center as the architect Daniel Lebeskind made it come back to earth.
Anyhow, the plan for the memorial pools set in the footprints of the towers still remains. It looks peaceful now, but with time it intends to trigger more emotions, as it will slowly become what it supposed to, a place worthy to commemorate the deaths of so many.
