Der üble Streit um das geplante islamische Zentrum, nicht auf dem Ground Zero, sondern zwei Blocks weiter, in Park 51, ufert aus, lässt die latente Islamophobie auch in Amerika deutlich werden.
Dabei ist dieser Protest in zweifacher Hinsicht völlig unsinnig:
1. Selbst wenn Muslime für die Zerstörung des WTC verantwortlich waren, andere deshalb an der Errichtung eines islamischen Zentrums hindern zu wollen, hat etwas von Sippenhaft.
2. Auch unter den - hier als Vorwand für Islamhass vorgeschobenen - Opfern des 11.9. waren Muslime.
Und tatsächlich gab es IM WTC einen muslimischen Gebetsraum, der auch entsprechend genutzt wurde. Ein Artikel in der NYT berichtet darüber, mir war die Information auch neu, danke dem Journalisten, der diesen Artikel schrieb:
Over the next few days, noticing some fellow Muslims on the job, Mr. Abdus-Salaam voiced an equally essential question: “So where do you pray at?” And so he learned about the Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the south tower.
He went there regularly in the months to come, first doing the ablution known as wudu in a washroom fitted for cleansing hands, face and feet, and then facing toward Mecca to intone the salat prayer.
On any given day, Mr. Abdus-Salaam’s companions in the prayer room might include financial analysts, carpenters, receptionists, secretaries and ironworkers. There were American natives, immigrants who had earned citizenship, visitors conducting international business — the whole Muslim spectrum of nationality and race.
Leaping down the stairs on Sept. 11, 2001, when he had been installing ceiling speakers for a reinsurance company on the 49th floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam had a brief, panicked thought. He didn’t see any of the Muslims he recognized from the prayer room. Where were they? Had they managed to evacuate?
...
“We weren’t aliens,” Mr. Abdus-Salaam, 60, said in a telephone interview from Florida, where he moved in retirement. “We had a foothold there. You’d walk into the elevator in the morning and say, ‘Salaam aleikum,’ to one construction worker and five more guys in suits would answer, ‘Aleikum salaam.’ ”
One of those men in suits could have been Zafar Sareshwala, a financial executive for the Parsoli Corporation, who went to the prayer room while on business trips from his London office. He was introduced to it, he recently recalled, by a Manhattan investment banker who happened to be Jewish.
“It was so freeing and so calm,” Mr. Sareshwala, 47, said in a phone conversation from Mumbai, where he is now based. “It had the feel of a real mosque. And the best part is that you are in the epicenter of capitalism — New York City, the World Trade Center — and you had this island of spiritualism. I don’t think you could have that combination anywhere in the world.”
Ich weiß nicht, wie viele Muslime an jenem Tag vor neun Jahren starben. Aber sie werden meist als Opfer völlig ignoriert. Bis dahin, dass selbst in dieser Community als rücksichtslos bezeichnet wird, zwei Blocks entfernt durch Muslime ein Zentrum bauen zu lassen, dass auch einen Gebetsraum haben soll.