Big­otry: stub­born and com­plete intol­er­ance of any creed, belief, or opinion that dif­fers from one’s own. (from Dictionary.com)

I’ve read, with growing anger, sev­eral defenses of per­sons with legit­i­mate con­cerns (to para­phrase Howard Dean) about the pro­posed con­struc­tion of a com­mu­nity center and prayer space by a Muslim orga­ni­za­tion in down­town Man­hattan (“Park51”). To clarify for the igno­rant: Park51 is not going to be a mosque, and the building is not going to be con­structed at, or within sight of, Ground Zero (the former World Trade Center site). Park51 will have more in common with a YMCA than it will with St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The “legit­i­mate con­cerns” appar­ently stem from the sen­si­tivity that fam­i­lies and friends of the 9/11 vic­tims  feel toward having a Muslim com­mu­nity center and prayer space near Ground Zero. In other words, it’s sup­pos­edly insen­si­tive for Park51 to be located so close to a place that has such an emo­tional con­nec­tion for so many people. What they don’t say directly but imply clearly is that it bothers them because Park51 is going to be built by Mus­lims and have a prayer space for people who prac­tice Islam.

I hate to tell you, but the “sen­si­tivity” that some (cer­tainly not all) of the friends and fam­i­lies of the vic­tims are feeling is based in prej­u­dice (at best) and big­otry (at worst). Here’s the simple reason why: they con­sciously or uncon­sciously blame Islam and all Mus­lims for the attacks of 9/11. This may be the result of igno­rance about Islam. It may have come from the prej­u­dice man­u­fac­tured by Amer­ican Con­ser­v­a­tives. It may be the result of a pre-existing prej­u­dice. But what­ever the root cause, the result is big­otry. Islam and all Mus­lims are not respon­sible for the 9/11 attack. And that’s why there is no rea­son­able or legit­i­mate objec­tion to this com­mu­nity center.

Some of the people who argue against the con­struc­tion of Park51 would make this analogy: what if someone came into your house on 9/11 and raped your wife/husband, only to come back 10 years later and build their house next door? Wouldn’t you be mad? Yes I would. But the imam behind Park51 isn’t respon­sible for or even related to the ter­ror­ists respon­sible for 9/11, except in one way: he’s Muslim. As one Tweet I saw asked, should we blame every Chris­tian every­where in the world for the evil done by the Klu Klux Klan? Should every white person in Amer­ican need to answer for the crimes of Tim McVeigh? Of course not. They’re white people. But we can go ahead and blame all Mus­lims and Islam for 9/11, because Mus­lims are brown people so they must hate America.

And that’s the other part of this night­mare. Because you know that if the 9/11 ter­ror­ists had been white Chris­tians, and today a white priest rep­re­senting a Chris­tian orga­ni­za­tion was now trying to build a church near Ground Zero, we wouldn’t be having this same kind of argu­ment. You can’t tell me that’s not the truth, because you’d be lying and you know it.

I’ve had to accept some hard truths about myself over the course of my life. On sev­eral occa­sions I’ve dis­cov­ered that I’m actu­ally not the person I thought I was, and that was really uncom­fort­able. While I like to think of myself as open minded and free of prej­u­dice, I’m not. The dif­fer­ence is I rec­og­nize it and know how to con­trol and not act upon those deeply seeded feel­ings. A lot of other people are going to have to deal with the same thing. They may think they’re open minded and free of prej­u­dice and big­otry, but really they are not. Denying it and trying to ratio­nalize it does not make it go away or look any more rea­son­able to other people. I’m sorry, but you’re being a bigot. That may offend you, but your desire to curb the First Amend­ment rights of a par­tic­ular group of Amer­ican cit­i­zens is more than just offen­sive to me; it’s wrong and it’s goes against every­thing this country (that you claim to love) stands for. So maybe you should take a look deep inside your­self and think about why you feel the way you do.