Mosque Discussion Reflection

From the beginning I was all for the building of the mosque in New York. Despite its being only a few blocks away from Ground Zero I felt that it was their right to build whatever they wanted to build, wherever they wanted. Stopping them from building the mosque would only be taking away their rights and would prove us to be complete hypocrites. We say that we believe in religious tolerance and the freedom of speech but, by forbidding the building we would only make ourselves look bad and we would set a bad example for other countries. Not only that but, so many people come to America because of the rights that we supposedly protect and because they were lead to believe that they could safely say what they wanted and believe in what they wanted because of the freedoms that they've heard we fight for, and by refusing these rights, we are letting our people down. Why should we judge someone because of the so called horrible things that we've only heard and because a couple of people decided to make them look bad? After the discussion we had in class, I felt that my opinion was only further strengthened. I still believed that we should build the mosque, and that if we don't, we will only show everyone how America can be filled with ignorant, judgemental hypocrites.