Building a mosque near Ground Zero? It’s a NO-brainer.

Last updated on January 3, 2023

My latest cartoon on building a mosque near the Twin Towers.

Interesting story of man who burned the Koran on 9-11 and then was FIRED from his job at the NJ Transit Authority. From NY Daily News:

Derek Fenton, 39, of Bloomingdale, N.J., burned the book during a protest on the ninth anniversary of Sept. 11 outside Park51, the controversial mosque slated to be built near Ground Zero.

“Mr. Fenton’s public actions violated New Jersey Transit’s code of ethics,” an agency statement said.

“NJ Transit concluded that Mr. Fenton violated his trust as a state employee and therefore [he] was dismissed.”

“He said, ‘This is America,’ and he wanted to stand up for it, in a Tea Party kind of way,” a police source said.

Another police source said Fenton described himself as a “loyal American” exercising his “right to protest.”
If Fenton was fired for burning the Koran while off-duty, his First Amendment rights probably were violated, Chris Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union said.

I would think so! The guy is doing this on his own time, and certainly not representing NJTransit! I don’t believe any book should be burned, let alone religious books. But a book isn’t as bad as a flag, and he did have a right to his beliefs.

Myself, I did some research on the poor souls who were forced to jump from the Twin Towers on Saturday September 11, 2010. Very interesting, and I may post it here. It was the most horrifying part of the event to me, and perhaps to others.

And I think even Obama realizes now that he may have put a big schism in the Democratic party for voters, for him to act like this is no big deal. Freedom of religion, yes. But it’s not like everyone can just build wherever they want to anyway. Zoning, neighborhoods, height, number of similar businesses, traffic congestion – these all regulate where building is allowed.

And so should a major event in our history.

And I was really pissed off when someone on Facebook wrote this on someone’s page:

Yes, while I honor those who died, I never cease to flinch at the hyperbole about freedom surrounding 9/11 when it seems to me that since 2001 we have played into the terrorists’ hands by ultimately forgetting some of our core-values—-like freedome of religion. And don’t get me started on the “marketing” of 9/11.

This started a long discussion of me disagreeing with all the other libs there who seem to think 9-11 was just a dream or a movie or a fantasy. It’s almost as if…and feel free to correct me here…they’re jealous that conservatives can point to an actual event that happened. As if this is a PARTISAN issue, instead of history! Amazing.

There are probably many more comments on this cartoon on Gocomics, (Sorry, no link now. Uclick threw away 2 years of my cartoons on Slate, Gocomics and Yahoo News when they kicked me out of Gocomics.) and I made a few minor changes in the drawing there.

For search engines: GROUND ZERO and GROUND HALF A BRAIN. Ground Zero is the Twin Towers and Ground Half a Brain is the White House. (meaning Obama.)

Related posts:

9/11 Cartoon in 2009. Doesn’t Windows 7 deserve a good cartoon?