Ground Zero
With reference to the debate about building a mosque near Ground Zero, Irfan Husain, a columnist for Karachi daily Dawn, touched the crux of the problem of religious intolerance in Pakistan when he recently wrote: "The sad reality is that non-Muslims in Pakistan live on sufferance, and it would be unthinkable for them to even dream of expanding their places of worship, let alone constructing new ones. A few years ago, I recall writing about the trials and tribulations of Christians trying to build a church in Islamabad despite having received official permission. They were bullied by a local mullah, and found no support from the city administration. Since then, things have got worse for the minorities."
In Pakistan, not only churches and other places of worship of non-Muslims are under attack, mosques are also being destroyed by the Taliban and their acolytes. The Taliban have been bombing schools, hotels, hospitals and even mosques -- all in the name of their interpretation of Islam. Last December, they bombed a mosque in Rawalpindi, killing scores of Pakistanis.
In all fairness, the $100 million to be spent on the project to build a mosque in Manhattan should have been sent to Pakistan to rebuild the Parade Lane mosque destroyed by the Taliban. Spending money to build a mosque in New York should be secondary to rebuilding the destroyed mosque in Pakistan. As Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah, two Canadian Muslims of Pakistani origin, so correctly argued in an op-ed in The Ottawa Citizen that proceeding with the project to build a mosque near Ground Zero is tantamount to mischief-making, an act prohibited in Islam.
All charity must begin at home and the money should be diverted to Pakistan to rebuild the destroyed mosque in Rawalpindi and to help construction of the church in Islamabad. Only after that Muslims can ask for building a mosque in New York.
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