The Realities, The Truth, and the Historical Significance of P51

Good Morning-
I have been reading with heightened interest, all of the opinions on the proposed "Community Center" in New York City.

I read this, this morning on Heidi's blog

I searched and found the original link online-

Most of your opinions have been "against" this proposed construction, on land that is owned by these people for many years.
I can only hope that, after you read this, you will be able to make a more highly intelligent and informed opinion...

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*Please forward to as many people as you can!*

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Off-Ramp commentator Marc Haefele lived in New York City for many years, so he wasn't shocked that Muslims wanted to build a community center, and perhaps a mosque, near Ground Zero. After all, he knew they'd been a major part of that neighborhood since -- are you sitting down? -- 1870.

The Return of Little Syria
By Marc Haefele

In all the discussions and arguments brought regarding the proposed P51 Islamic Community Center's proximity to the city of the World Trade Center in downtown New York, I'm astonished to see that one important historical fact hasn't turned up. It's about time that it did.

It's that the controversial cultural center (not a mosque, although it may include one) is close to another important historical site, obliterated when the WTC was begun in 1967.

It was Manhattan's old Arab District, which flourished for nearly a century.
Yes, much of the region the P51's denigrators defend as sacred American ground, was, from about 1870 on, the home of many thousands of Middle Eastern immigrants -- largely Muslim.

This was "Little Syria," both an Arab ghetto and a popular tourist zone, which the Los Angeles Herald proclaimed in April 11, 1909 as having "the mystery of the Orient upon it."

 

(Photo: "A man, wearing a fez, selling drinks from an ornate, portable, samovar-like dispenser in the Syrian Quarter of New York City." US Library of Congress.)

Little Syria was frequented by the humble and the celebrities--including actor John Barrymore, who loved to eat at a place he'd persuaded the owner to rename "The Sheik," after the Valentino film.
Other popular restaurants included "The Nile," "Little Egypt," and "Lebanon." The coffee houses were renowned for their dense, aromatic brews. In 1941, the New York Times reported Little Syrians as "friendly; they readily enter into conversation with the visitor, to talk about their native lands and customs." 

(Photo: Syrian children playing in New York street. US Library of Congress.)

A 1905 Baltimore Sun reporter noted, "troops of black-haired, olive-skinned children play in the streets, and lithe, slender and generally pretty mothers gossip in the doorways; the fruit stalls, bakeries and groceries are stocked with many things unfamiliar to the American eye and palate." Little Syria was so important a part of the New York ethnic scene for so long that it now seems incredible it's so completely forgotten.

The district ran down the Lower West Side, along Washington Street south to what is now Battery Park City. Unfortunately, it flourished before poor neighborhoods had any  standing in urban planning. In 1940, the Brooklyn Battery tunnel erased much of it. By 1950, the West Side Highway (long since torn down) destroyed more of Little Syria.

When I showed up in the early 1960s, just a block or two remained--including Sahadi's market at 195 Washington Street, which had the best baklava and apricot leather in the city.  As well as some wonderfully crafted musical instruments -- ouds and hourglass drums. In 1967 it vanished under the WTC jackhammers -- even the original streets are now gone. The old businesses moved to Brooklyn or died. And I moved away too.

 

(Sahadi's today. Flikr/Rachael Ash.)

Now, in another century, the tragedy of 9-11 is offered as an excuse to refuse some 700,000 New York Muslems their right to observe and celebrate their faith where they please.

* Freedom of Religion means nothing, of course, if it only applies to religions everyone approves of.

But there's another reason for P51 to be built where it's planned. It's that the location is so close to New York's lost but once vital Islamic-Middle Eastern past ... which the new center for an emerging new Islamic population cannot but serve to commemorate and recall to us.

(Marc Haefele is a literary and cultural commentator for KPCC's Off-Ramp.)



Comments from the above article include:

# 1)
"Thank you for this! It needs to be part of the conversation, too. Even tho I don't believe that the "past life" of any particular piece of real estate gives any one group the right to claim it forever -- oh, let's say Jerusalem and the claims of Muslims, Jews and Christians -- Arab people from all over have been a part of cities in this hemisphere for a long time. They have just as much right to a place as any other of the emigrants and natives that make up this motley experiment of a country."


# 2)
"I cried on Sep.11,2001 and I cried after I read this article, both time I cried for the atrocities against humanity. I was in NYC on August 20,2010, nine years after the tragic incident of Sep. 11, I wanted to go to ground zero and pray for those who lost their lives and to see it for the first time with my in person. It shook me badly once again! It shook me even more when I saw those ignorant people who were demonstrating their freedom of speech, while asking to take away the right of Freedom of Religion of others. It was obvious that these people were ignorant about the history of little Syria. I stood right in front of those people between them and ground zero and looked in their eyes, with my head covered with hijab. I wanted them to see beyond my hijab that first and foremost I am a person too, and that it is my God given right to choose my belief and practice them, just like they do. I am not responsible for the Muslims who commit atrocities, just like I am not rewarded for other Muslim's good deeds.
I was saddened by the ignorance of those people who held the posters of " Islam is a cult"! Of what I ask?
Please do some research before you hold a poster like that. It only promotes more ignorance. This demonstration that I saw looked more like a political propaganda, not a 'freedom to speak' practice.
Love all hate none."

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Is this irony, or just plain sad? Because there really is no difference, is there?

What's the point in all the fighting?

"Love all hate none."
I believe that commenter is correct.  (Funny, that's what my "God" says too).

XOXO
Me