A business opportunity led me to Manhattan this afternoon and while there I took time to visit ‘Ground Zero’. A once vibrant public space with two beautiful towers pointing to the heavens is now a great construction site. The only remnant of the old World Trade Center on view at Ground Zero is a cross of steel girders that was found standing in spite of the Islamist tantrum.
I reflected on memories from when the ‘Twin Towers’ still stood: with my family looking out over the city from the observation deck; seeing Joe Torre sign books in the subway station below; and with my friend Patrick trying to jump upward as one of the cavernous elevators began rapidly ascending. I miss those times, and I regret that bigots and murderers have taken the place where they occurred from me.
Since that dark day in September 2001, I have read much about Islam. I have studied the Koran as well as apologetic and exegetical works. I have read the passages in the Koran that counsel tolerance and love, and I have learned about the Islamic doctrine of abrogation that cancels those passages in favor of intolerance and bigotry. I have read and listened to arguments that Islam promotes a fundamental equality for all people, and I have studied enough of history, ‘dhimmitude’, and current events to see that this claim is false. I have met Muslims around the world, I have Muslim friends, I have learned that the vast majority of them are not Islamists and wish to live peacefully with their neighbors regardless of the literal teachings of their faith.
Ground Zero is an Islamic problem. The terrorists who flew passenger planes into the Twin Towers acted out of belief in the literal teachings of Islam. These teachings cannot be denied or ignored, but rather must be confronted and consigned to what President Bush called the "dustbin of history". The intolerance for discussion, debate and disagreement throughout the Islamic world prevents the intellectual encounter necessary to end Islamic bigotry and violence. Only when Muslims are literate and have freedom of conscience, and when Muslim governments respect free speech and free press, will the Islamic world be empowered to move beyond fundamentalism.
It surprised me that the cross of steel girders is displayed at Ground Zero. Secularists work hard to rid the public square of all reference to religion. Humanists argue for a re-writing of history so that all the great accomplishments of the Christian West are read as having occurred in spite of the Church, not because of it. The marginally intellectual types who lead American society are so often incapable of historical or theological distinctions. Multiculturalism and political correctness mandate a belief in the view the Judeo-Christian tradition is no better than any other tradition, and Christianity is no different in its fundamentals than Islam. To see the cross in public display at Ground Zero is to believe that God still animates America in spite of her elite class.
The plaza between the Twin Towers held a wonderful Fritz Koenig sculpture that combined an obvious image of the globe with a more abstract image of Atlas. A portion of the sculpture survived the World Trade Center attack. Early in her history, Christianity claimed the heritage of Greece, and synthesized its myths and philosophies, such that today, post-Renaissance and post-Reformation, the image of Atlas has metaphorical meaning in the West. It is fitting that a stubborn cross and a sculpture of Atlas survived the World Trade Center attack, as if to say that Christendom will continue to hold aloft the ideal of human rights for all of the world in spite of an intolerant and aggressive Islam so desperately in need of renaissance and reformation.
God bless all who were murdered on 11 September 2001 and God speed the war against terror.
Posted by publius at February 10, 2004 03:54 PM