Victory for Islamists: The Feet of Muslims Trodding Over Bones and Ashes

I have the impression that many people who don't have a problem with the erection of a mosque at Ground Zero live at a distance from New York City and therefore don't have an accurate mental picture of what it's like for thousands and thousands of grieving family members and friends of those murdered at the World Trade Center on 9/11/01 to be unable to lay their loved ones to rest--for the simple reason that the massive explosions and building collapses did not leave many bodies left to bury.

To people who think that 600 feet from the Ground Zero "hole" is plenty far enough away for a mosque, I think that it cannot be too strongly emphasized that Ground Zero--and the area around it--is literally the graveyard of the 9/11 dead, where, as many understandably believe, "their souls are going to be . . . forever."

Think of that.

Think of that not in the abstract, but in a real physical and emotional sense. Imagine losing a loved one and having no idea where their blown-to-bits body has landed. Imagine wondering to what indignities that loved body, once filled with sacred life, is being subjected. Imagine erecting a little plaque or shrine somewhere in your world, your backyard, perhaps, so that dearly loved person gets at least the dignity of a memorial spot.

In many ways, New Yorkers have valiantly tried to create some kind of closure to 9/11. On May 30 of 2002, eight-and-a-half months after the attack on the World Trade Center, "one last stretcher" carrying, not a flag-draped body, but a folded American flag, was slowly carried from the World Trade Center site to a waiting ambulance by ten people, symbolically marking the official end of the recovery effort.

Of the 2,823 dead, the remains of more than 1,100 victims of the World Trade Center attack had not been recovered or had not been identified.

During the week following the "official" end of the recovery effort, more human remains were found in nearby buildings damaged in the attack, including on West Street and Cedar Street, "office buildings that were struck and punctured by plane parts and sections of the twin towers."  These remains included bone fragments and a jaw with teeth still intact.

This piece of landing gear from the first plane to hit the Twin Towers fell through the roof of the proposed mosque site.

In September of 2006, five years after the second attack on the World Trade Center, yet more remains of victims of the attack on the World Trade Center were discovered under a service road near the Southern edge of Ground Zero. These human remains included "recognizable bones from skulls, torsos, feet and hands."

By June of this year, as more remains were still being discovered, there was still no identifiable trace of more than 1,000 human beings murdered at the World Trade Center, although DNA testing has been used to identify the human remains found.

So why is there a supposed necessity to build a mega-mosque on this Ground? The fact is that the great majority of people killed in the Twin Towers were not muslims, and were never intended to be.

As Joshuapundit pointed out:

The very name Cordoba House invokes Islamist triumph, invoking the capitol of Islam's Spanish conquests at the height of Islam's power. The new mosque will be designed to rise up from the ashes of 9/11 and tower over Ground Zero.

The feet of Muslims will be trodding over the bones and ashes of the people who died on 9/11, and again, those who are aware of Arab and Muslim culture understand full well what a gross insult this is in that world.

Islamists understand this symbolism quite well.

And so do many Americans: Americans who insist that the American flag leaving Ground Zero on a stretcher in May of 2002 continues to symbolize what Americans intended it to symbolize -- the entire nation's honoring of and grief for the loss of the 9/11 dead -- and not what our enemies want it to symbolize, the collapse of our Constitution and our country.

The red box outlines the Burlington Coat Factory Building with a destroyed roof, the proposed site of the Ground Zero mosque. As you can see, it  is just one building away from complete rubble, not two blocks as is being claimed.

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