We will not forget...but does that mean tolerance is not possible?

America doesn’t seem to have healed from the wound that the terrorists gave us on 9/11. We won’t forget, and indeed this generation who beheld that event, will not be able to forget. We will all remember.

But the lesson of forgiveness is a hard one learned. People are still struggling through issues of justice in light of what happened almost 10 years ago. I think America is still asking the question, “how much grace is too much grace?” Are we being too gracious in letting Muslims build a Mosque near ground zero? When do we say no more? Perhaps, when we have healed, and we are able to open the hand of tolerance and be able to live in peace side-by-side. One way to get there might be for there to be understanding of each other. We get frustrated at things and people we don’t understand. The Organization of the Islamic Conference are thinking education is the answer to Islamaphobia.

Islam has recently been under attack in the United States, especially with a controversy over a proposed Islamic center near the World Trade Center site and threats by groups to burn the Quran in protest. The OIC chief’s new book, “The Islamic World in the New Century: The Organization of the Islamic Conference, 1969-2009,” includes an entire chapter on the danger of growing Islamophobia in the West.

“The Muslim world is going through an unprecedented difficult and trying time,” İhsanoğlu told the ministers during their annual meeting Friday. “We are facing daunting challenges and severe hardships. Islam and Muslims are under serious attack, and Islamophobia is growing and becoming more rampant and dangerous by the day.”...

...Education, İhsanoğlu said, is the key to helping the West truly understand Islam.

Read the article here