Fear is a word that is understood without it being spoken aloud. Every part of society is intricately built, surrounded by the sudden twinge of the unknown. Fear pulls each citizen into one harmonizing being.

You may be afraid of rejection from a sweetheart, or the fallout after a nasty debacle with a friend. After the event occurs, you keep walking until the next scary event happens. Then what?

Do you take mental notes of your mistakes and regroup until the next problem comes up?

Maybe you blame other people for your mistakes and steer clear of them, going as far as to ban them from your environment. But, after all is said and done, what happens next?

Four years of fighting later, and the Muslims still do not have their mosque at Ground Zero.

You may remember, September 11th, 2001. The Twin Towers, which stood to be two of the tallest architectural greats in American history, fell during a terrorist attack. An attack that also took away the lives of people on two planes, firefighters, police officers, random pedestrians, and those working within the towers.

On this day, America received a grim reminder of what fear feels like.

We Americans are usually used to attacking our enemies, defeating all those in our path, and coming home in glory with a sack full riches. It seemed like a nation so strong and so invincible, yet, a team of Islamic Extremists take us down.

Oh no! It was the exact opposite, in tears and relinquished fear, we stood as strong as before. No longer were we a nation divided by racism, color, age, sex, money and status. Oh no, no, no!

We took that fear, helped our American brothers and sisters, buried it beneath us, and then kept walking forward. That is, until we knew where to place our collective fear: Muslims.

Yes, the Middle East has had some trouble before. We could sit here and recount the events of the old war, or westernization (all with the help of good old Uncle Sam).

Yes, we had no choice as a nation but to fight off the bubbling threat of terrorist attacks, because of the loss of our citizens.

Yes, we have the right of freedom of speech in this country. No, it does not give a right to ‘we the people’ to stereotype all “Arabic looking” individuals. After 9/11 happened, the tension built between any and all of those who were assumed to be Middle Eastern.

I understand the Muslim culture is different and hard to understand for some people. Their women are, in some countries, oppressed to the point where they cannot vote, nor drive, nor think for themselves. However, that is not everywhere.

Some Muslim women wear a hijab as a choice. It is not right to assume that all Muslim men keep a bomb inside their turbans. In fact, Muslim men do not wear turbans, Sikhs do. This whole “generalization-upon-one-type-of-race-because-I-am-afraid” thing should not be the American way of getting over a terrible tragedy.

A Muslim is not a terrorist. Yes, Islamic Extremists were the ones who left this horrible scar on our nation, but the important term to keep in mind is extremists. They are not really Muslims; they came up with their own agenda.

The Prophet Muhammad would never want others to die, no matter what religion, race, or nation. Bloodshed and violence are never the solution. Muhammad himself would have preached about brotherly love. If anything, we should feel sorry for one another.

Sorry that we let each other live in fear of one another for so long. We the people, should try and fix the tainted image that 9/11 has brought Muslims, Middle Eastern people, and ourselves. (The war made it seem like good old Uncle Sam was a hungry warmonger or something.)

Do not get me wrong; there should in no way be a Ground Zero Mosque.

However, there should not be a string of condominiums sitting on a literal graveyard. (Oh, corporate America!) The only thing I want to see to commemorate Ground Zero are the names of the lives lost due to this act of evil.

There should not be a profit made out of misery, nor should we attract more misery to the group suffering the most at hand.

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