Have you heard of Park51? Chances are you have, but you may not know it yet.
Let me fill you in. Park51 is the official name for a proposed Islamic center (let’s call it a mosque) to be built two blocks from the World Trade Center.
That, I am sure, you have heard of.
What about this story has made it explosive? Well, you see, it was almost nine years ago that a group of extremist Islamic jihads successfully launched the first terrorist attack on American soil in over sixty years.
The very thought of a mosque just blocks from where so many Americans, and others, lost their lives that tragic September morning has our country in a furor.
How dare anyone propose that a mosque dedicated to the destruction of America be anywhere near Ground Zero!
That’s hallowed ground; people died at the hands of Islam! The Muslim community has no right or reason to do such a preposterous thing!
I could go on, like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich did, comparing the leaders of the proposed Park51 to “Nazis [who] don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington.”
Is this really the America we love?
No, it is not.
I do not necessarily support the decision to put an Islamic center so close to Ground Zero.
I fear it may attract violence and hatred in what should be a safe and inviting environment.
But I am appalled to hear some of the comments that are coming from the ideological right that seem to suggest that Islam is a religion based on violence, and that all Muslims seek to destroy our nation.
Both statements are unequivocally false. As seen historically in Christianity, some followers of Islam have misrepresented their faith for violence.
But at their core, the pillars of Islam mirror the tablets of Moses, stating peace is to be found through faith in God, and justice among fellow human beings.
That seems to be overlooked in 2010. In the fever of an election year, radicals in the Republican Party are fear mongering against the proposed mosque in an attempt to score political points against a president that the majority of the party, according to CNN, believes is Muslim.
Sarah Palin, who, along with Gingrich, wants to be our president, suggests that the mosque will be a training ground for terrorists. Is it any wonder why most of the Middle East holds an unfavorable view of the United States?
Therefore, I am extremely proud and grateful for President Obama (a Christian, by the way), for his strong remarks on Aug. 13, where he proclaimed that “America remains … a nation where peoples of different faiths [can] coexist peacefully and alongside one another.”
Obama also correctly noted that the war on terror is not a war on Islam. It was al-Qaeda, not the Islamic faith, which brought down the World Trade Center.
Would this conversation be taking place if the Pope requested to build a cathedral two blocks away?
And as a SLU student, I am deeply concerned with the mud being slung across the nation.
We are supposed to be taught to be men and women for others. As educated people, we must pursue the truth and not fall into the traps of prejudices and biases, however difficult that may be.
Our mission is to distinguish opinion from fact, experience from preference.
Palin may believe that a mosque in downtown Manhattan will recruit terrorists; but perhaps it will provide an opportunity for us to learn about the truths of Islam instead of the easily accepted, and misconstrued, perception of hatred and distrust.
As members of a Jesuit university, we must stand strong in the face of extreme ideologies that attempt to discriminate against other faiths.
It is our generation’s responsibility to eliminate prejudices of faith, color, and orientation. Our country was built on the promise of freedom of religion and ideas. If we allow those core values to vanish, we have lost everything we hold dear about the United States. This is not just a matter of religion versus state; this is a conversation about the most important, most vibrant and living dynamic of our democracy.
SLU, as a Catholic university, provides us an environment to bring a voice of wisdom to any and all debates and issues. That is our responsibility.
We are one nation, and we must always live by that one rule that both Christ and Muhammad preached: do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Derrick Neuner is a senior at Doisy College of Health Sciences