See if You Can Count all the Real World Parallels.
September 20, 2010
Okay people, I'm going to do something completely different for today's comic. I'm going to make a comic with a political message. Now you may say, "What gives you the right to make a political statement, you're just a shmuck with a website." Well it turns out that really all you need to make a political statement. That's all personal sites like this are, just a place for the creators to voice their opinion to anyone who'd listen. Up until this point I've just been doing that with a relatively benign subject like video games. Today I'm going to put my spin on a political issue that has been consuming the media for some time now. Of course I'll be doing this with a chocolately video game coating. Well enough with the foreshadowing, I suppose I should start explaining the actual comic.
The subject I'm speaking of in the proposed Mosque near Ground Zero. This has proven to be a really polarizing topic. On one hand you have the people who feel that as this is America, a country of religious freedom, and that these people should be free to build their holy building on any parcel of land they have access to. Then on the other hand you have people who feel that since Muslims were the ones that perpetrated the terrorist attacks on September 11th they don't want them building anything near Ground Zero. I am of the former, so that's the view I'll be defending in this post, then be defending in a manner that hopefully people find humorous in comic form.
First I must say I understand to a certain point the fears of the people who are against the Mosque. With the ninth anniversary of September 11th having resently past the memory on the tragic events are firmly in their minds, as it is mine. However you can't deny the rights of an entire people due to the actions of a few people who never really represented them and their views in the first place. When I see people protesting the building of the Mosque I don't see people acting patriotic, I see people acting Xenophobic.
I also think that a lot of the people against the Mosque wouldn't be if they were a little more educated about it. Fox News, which serves as one of the main media outlets against the Mosque, I know I'm shocked too, Fox News against something non Christian. Anyway the way they're reporting this issue is really misleading. First of all calling it the Ground Zero Mosque is misleading, seeing as the Mosque is actually being built several blocks away from Ground Zero. The way they harp on about it you might think that the Mosque is being built smack dab in the center of Ground Zero, and sadly I know that some people who don't bother to educate themselves on the issue probably thinks this. Secondly This isn't a new Mosque. This isn't a new unknown entity moving in, this Mosque has existed for decades. They simply want to build a newer more up to date building. And thirdly, it's not really a Mosque. It's a large community center open to the public, it just happens to have rooms for Muslim prayer within it. Essentially its an Muslim version of a YMCA.
The thing that really gets me about the people against the Mosque is that they say that Ground Zero is sacred ground. There's two things wrong with this, one. If it's sacred ground then its the perfect place for a sacred building, and two, its not being built on ground Zero, it's being build seveal blocks blocks away. Another thing I also hate to hear people saying is, "If they can build a Mosque here, than why can't we build a Church over there?" Well this can simply be answered with the fact that America, unlike pretty much the entirety of the Middle East has religious freedom. We don't build Churches over there simply because we'd probably be shot on sight for doing so.
Another issue I have with this whole "sacred ground" defense is that it's really hypocrtical when you take into consideration that there's over half a dozen strip clubs within a ten block radius of Ground Zero, but I guess those are sacred Christian Strip clubs, so its okay.
So anyway I chose to do a World of Warcraft comic on this issue, really because I found a really good basis for a parallel between the real world and in game World.