Column wrong-headed

Charles Krauthammer's column (Aug. 15) regarding the proposed Muslim community center in New York was eloquently written, but ultimately wrong-headed. It's not just that there's already a mosque even closer to ground zero than the proposed community center or that other businesses on the "sacred ground" where the World Trade Center once stood include a strip club. It's not just the fact that at the center of this controversy is just a group of patriotic and peace-loving American citizens who want to build a place of worship intended to foster inter-faith dialogue, or that among the American citizens killed on 9/11 were Muslims.

We were attacked, not by Islam, but by a tiny sect of Islam, al-Qaida. To define a complex, peace-loving world religion by its most extreme fanatics would be like defining Christianity by the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. If we use the events of 9/11 to foster hatred and intolerance of our fellow citizens, then terrorism will have succeeded and al-Qaida will have won. We should applaud the ground zero mosque. As Christians, we should donate money to aid in its construction. This is America. We stand for religious freedom. We cannot and will not let the bin Ladens of the world take that away from us.

Eric Samuelsen

Provo