Dear George,

After the last several months of passionate and highly politicized debate on whether or not Muslims should build a mosque near Ground Zero, if there were ever any doubt in anyone's mind that Muslims will decide against building a mosque at the site, let that doubt cease now. The "Muslims must build a mosque near Ground Zero." It is not only their right but they have an obligation to build a mosque near Ground Zero.

Muslims have stated their intention to build an Islamic Community Center and Mosque called Cordoba House, two blocks around a corner from the World Trade Center site. From the future Cordoba a person cannot see Ground Zero.

The City of New York has approved the plan for the mosque to be built on the private property owned by the Muslims. This space has been used for prayer by Muslims since last year. The building used to house a Burlington Coat Factory. Of the 2.5 million Muslims in the United States about a quaerter of them live in New York

The mayor of New York, Michael R. Bloomberg, gave his strong approval to the plan to build an Islamic Center near Ground Zero. New York Governor David A. Paterson wants to persuade the Muslims to build farther away from Ground Zero.

President Barack Obama, without expressing his view on the wisdom of building the mosque at Ground Zero, last week took a stand in support of a core principle: "freedom of religion." H said, "This is America. Our commitment to religous freedom must be unshakable." House speaker Nancy Pelosi said what is happeining "is preposterous pontification on the Ground Zero mosque."

Leading Republicans have condemned the Muslims for planning to build a mosque near Ground Zero where nearly 3000 people were killed by terrorists on 9/11/01 when two airplanes attacked the Twin Towers.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas have sided with Newt Gingrich (GA ) who said "Building a mosque so close to where terroriss killed thousands of Americans would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Sarah Palin said "This is an insensitive move on the part of those Muslims who want to build that mosque in that location. It feels like a stab in the heart to, collectively, Americans who still have the lingering pain from 9/11."

Recent polls support opposition to building the mosque at Ground Zero. The Siena College poll showed that 63% of New Yorkers oppose the project, with 27% supporting it. A poll taken by the Pew Research Center shows that since Obama made his comments on the right of Muslims to build the mosque, nearly one in five Americans - 18% - wrongly believe that President Obama is a Muslim. In my poll of African Americans not a single person believes that Obama or his wife is a Muslim even though 99% of them believe that Louis Farrakhan is a Muslim.

There is little doubt in my mind that if a poll was taken on the question, should we go back to the way things were in 1948?- when blacks were disfanchised - denied the right to vote, denied access to state universities in the South, forced to attend segregated schools, denied access to public facilities, including restaurants and discriminated against in housing - that most white Americans, particularly, most white southerners, would agree with former Senate Majority Leader (R-MS) who during a 2002 speech in which he lauded Senator Strom Thurmond during his birthday celebation party, stateig that "if the rest of the country had followed our lead (his and Thurmond's) - and elected the segregationist Dixiecrat in his 1948 bid to be president we wouldn't have all these problems over all these years." Thurmond filbustered longer than any senator ever filbustered in his attempt to defeat passage of the 1964 Voting Rights Bill. Ask African Americans, would Americans be better off if Thurmond had been elected president? Their answer is obvious. In 1948 there were two African Americans in the House of Representative and none in the Senate. In 2010 there are 42 African Americans in the House of representatives and 1 African American in the Senate.

Leaders need to embrace principles, not polls, as President Obama has done in affiriming the "freedom of religious right" Muslims have to build a mosque at Ground Zero. Let us heed these challenging words expressed bv James Russell Lowell during the Abolition period: "They are slaves who dare not be in the right with two or three."

Congressman Peter T. King (R-NY) and some other people opposing the Muslims building a mosque at Ground Zero said Muslims have a right to build a mosque here but some things that are right should not be done.

This writer's response is: If a person has to err let it be on the side of doing the right thing, not the wrong thing. Some of these opponents say sensitivity or insensitivity, depending on whether they are referencing loved ones of the victims of 9/11 or Muslims in general, use this as their defense for forsaking right and embracing wrong. It is this kind of post 9/11 thinking that accounts for the deaths of 4,415 American soldiers in Iraq and 1,230 American soldiers in Afghanistan. Some 40,000 Ameircan soldiers have been wounded in these two wars. And the number of Iraqis and Afghans I dare not guess.

Not to build the Mosque at Ground Zero would be the worst thing the Muslims could do at this particular time in history. It would send a message not only to the Muslim world but to people throughout the world that there is not religious freedom for Muslims living in America.

Yet, many American leaders say they are waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan to bring freedom and democacy to the people, who are almost entirely Muslims, in those two countries. It sounds like another frequently announced statetment we heard duirng the Bush-Cheney Administration years, "We are fighting the terrorists over there so we want have to fight them here." Now we hear those opposing the mosque being built at Ground Zero say, "We are for religious freedom for the Muslims over there, but not for them here in America."

This writer, unequivocally, forthrightly and daringly, support not only the right of Muslims to build the mosque at Ground Zero but challenge them to fulfill their obligation, not just in their own interest but in the interest of America, and build the Ground Zero Mosque. I am a Christian who looks forward to visiting, in the not too distant future, the Ground Zero Mosque.

May Americans not only remember the nearly 3000 people, including Muslims who died in the 9/11 terrorists attack on the Twin Towers but also the 4,415 Americans killed in Iraq and the 1,230 Americans killed in Afghanistan. Many Americans also remember those thousands of people who were lynched and others who died as a result of other kinds of cruel atrocities that occurred in Mississippi, my native state of Alabama and elsewhere in America. The ground where they died is also sacred. It has been saturated with innocent blood.

Be it known to Muslims that you have a divine mandate to build a Mosque at Ground Zero that will welcome people of all faiths as well as the faithless, so-called unbelievers. They too are God's children and each of them has a soul which indicates that they are in the heart of God and like the faithful, they too have a faith that transcends institutionalized faiths.

Uriah J. Fields (Electronic mail, August 13, 2010)