Ground Zero, Sacred Territory This is a comparison paper on modern day sacred secular places versus mythological secular places in history. This report will summarize what elements mythical secular sites have in common. The report will explain how Ground Zero qualifies as a modern day secular site. The significance and functions of the twin towers before the attack will be addressed. Ground zero will be compared with the Areca Tree, noting differences in meaning, function, and common elements. Our modern day secular site is Ground Zero. On September 11, 2001; 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four jet airliners. At 8:45am. American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) and exploded. At 9:03am, United Airlines flight 175 crashed into the south tower of the world trade center and exploded. At 9:17am the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shut down all New York City airports. 9:21am …show more content…
These sites are places where the dead are buried and ceremonies are held. Sacred places are where people go to contact mythic forces, or to relive the stories. Sites of origin are sacred because it indicates something of great importance within our own history that has occurred. Sacred places fall into symbolic categories to remember, honor, and revitalize our essential connections to the earth and the natural world. They invite us to associate the spiritual with such natural material phenomena as mountains, rivers, lakes, trees, and caves (Leonard & McClure, 2004). Some places are sacred because they dramatize our fears of and resistance to the inevitable facts of aging, weakness, disease, and death. The power of a sacred site is an invisible field of energy permeating the area of the sacred site. This energy field, or power of place, may be defined as a nonmaterial region of influence extending in space and continuing in time (Gray,
In 102 Minutes, Chapter 7, authors Dwyer and Flynn use ethos, logos, and pathos to appeal to the readers’ consciences, minds and hearts regarding what happened to the people inside the Twin Towers on 9/11. Of particular interest are the following uses of the three appeals.
On a clear Tuesday Morning, approximately nineteen (19) militants of a radical group known as Al Qaeda boarded and hijacked four different airliners. The First Aircraft, a Boeing 767 flying out of Boston, Struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 0845 local time. The Second, another Boeing 767, struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center approximately eighteen (18) minutes later. As millions of Americans watched the events transpire on T.V. a third aircraft, a Boeing 757, collided with the Pentagon at approximately 0945 local. A fourth aircraft, United-Airlines Flight 93 out of Newark New Jersey, was hijacked. The passengers onboard attacked the hijackers and the plane plummeted toward the ground crashing into a field in Pennsylvania. The events that occurred on this day, September 11th 2001 (9/11) have caused significant damage to the minority group of people from Middle Eastern decent. For this paper, the treatment of those with Middle Eastern decent after the events that took place on 9/11 will be discussed.
For a second, the U.S. stood still. Looking up at the towers, one can only imagine the calm before the storm in the moment when thousands of pounds of steel went hurdling into its once smooth, glassy frame. People ran around screaming and rubble fell as the massive metal structure folded in on itself like an accordion. Wounded and limping from the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, America carried on, not without anger and fear against a group of innocent Americans, Muslim Americans. Nietzsche’s error of imaginary cause is present in the treatment of Muslim Americans since 9/11 through prejudice in the media, disregard of Muslim civil liberties, racial profiling, violence, disrespect, and the lack of truthful public information about Islam. In this case, the imaginary cause against Muslims is terrorism. The wound has healed in the heart of the U.S. but the aching throb of terrorism continues to distress citizens every day.
Gladstone. 3 reasons why the ground zero mosque debate makes no sense. 20 August, 2010
More than a year and a half ago, on September 11, 2001, a group of terrorists from the al Qaeda network hijacked four airliners and successfully used three of them to attack the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the World Trade Center in New York. These attacks marked the first time in American history that a full-scale attack was executed on our own soil, and they affected the American people on a number of different levels. Americans found themselves shocked that such an event could occur, as well as reeling with grief for the more than 3,000 people who died in the tragedy. Soon, the shock and grief that penetrated the hearts of the American people gave way, in part, to a sense of national pride. American flags waved from every overpass, and “God Bless America” could be heard on every r...
In today’s world of chaos and war, many people are turning to religion. People look to organized religion not only for solace but on the contrary, they also look to attribute cause for the world’s woes. The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th has many people looking to the religion of Islam for a culprit, as the men who flew the planes were Israeli suicide missionaries. These men thought themselves to be on a mission from God (Allah). This implies that they were acting on the words of a prophet, or thought themselves prophets. In response to this, I decided to research the major religions in today’s world that rely on modern day prophets for guidance. By doing so, I am attempting to prove the religion of Islam innocent by comparing it to many other religions that have similar structure but no terrorist intentions.
Throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century, words such as jihad, suicide bomber, and al-Qaeda increasingly permeated the collective consciousness of Americans. These words were associated with fear, with terror, with the threat of death, and with the eastern ‘Other’. September 11, 2001 is a day on which most can recall the shaky words of broadcasters and the billowing plumes of smoke that were emitted from the towers of the World Trade Centre when members of the Islamic fundamentalist group al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial passenger airplanes and crashed them into targeted landmarks in the United States. Lawrence Wright’s novel, The Looming Tower, draws upon several years of first-hand research and investigative journalism that reveals the political and historical atmosphere that led to the events of that day. The author composes a rigorous, detailed, and poetic work of nonfiction that illustrates the complex and geographically dispersed histories of Islamic fundamentalism and gives life to the personalities of the men that shaped the ideas that guided al-Qaeda. In the book, the actions of these men are built around narratives of their pasts; narratives of sexual obsession and repulsion, humiliation, torture, and resentment. The novel is rich with detail and divulges the reader in the particularly emotional and personal nuances of men such as Sayyid Qutb, Ayman Zawahiri, and Osama bin Laden. In 1978, Edward Said wrote the groundbreaking book, Orientalism, which has since given clarity to the power dynamic between the East and the West, the Occident and the Orient. Orientalism is the pervasive and largely Western tradition of building stereotypical and negative archetypes of people of the Middle East and Asia. Or...
When it comes to the modern relationship that Islam shares with both Christianity and Judaism, it is not difficult to recognize mutual hostility. Islamic extremism has been gradually dominating the Western perception of Muslims—in the midst of this, the World Trade Center attacks could only exacerbate the situation. On that account, it was no surprise when these hostile attitudes were unmistakably revealed during the “Cordoba House” mosque controversy at which point in 2010, it was proposed that a mosque dubbed the Cordoba House be established near ground zero. Sure enough, the proposition was met with overwhelming opposition and rebuke (Barbaro). Most of the country objected to the mosque while many of those with more personal experiences regarding 9/11 felt deeply offended and unsettled. What is more, the event garnered picket signs, protests, and contempt from local civilians (Goodstein). Among the mosque’s prominent opponents was former house speaker Newt Gingrich. Speaking out against the proposal, he claims that the push for the Cordoba House mosque “is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites” (Gingrich). Gingrich goes on to say that calling the mosque the “Cordoba House” is a deliberate insult in that “it refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex,” and “every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest. It is a sign of their contempt for Americans.” However, an investigation into Cordoba’s state of affairs during Muslim rule might lead one to believe that the existing hostility between these cultures has not ...
It has been confirmed that both “The Crucible” and American post 9/11 reactions were not only explosive, but harmful to many innocent people. Project Salam reported that “hundreds of innocent Muslims have been targeted, prosecuted, and convicted in the hysteria and fear following 9/11” (Jackson, Callan). Meanwhile, it is known know that “More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the Devil's magic—and 20 were executed” (Blumberg). Both events resulted in unjust situations for a lot of people. The
The world of Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods is a place where gods are brought into existence by the belief of humankind but also where they fade away into nothingness if that belief dies. All the deities from human myth and religion are able to exist, but only if there are people who are around who truly worship them. In the words of Wednesday, one of the gods of the story, “That’s what it’s like for my kind of people…we feed on belief, on prayers, on love” (Gaiman 225). In American Gods, Gaiman emphasizes America’s position as a place without any unique religious culture to call its own. Instead, it is country filled with the religions and myths of the many ethnic groups who carried their own culture with them when they arrived to the New World. American Gods is not just a novel about gods in America, however. This is also a story about how the gods reflect the best and worst attributes of American society. American Gods explores America’s lack of original religious traditions and analyzes the nature of religious belief in America.
The definition of sacred as a place separate from the secular world has different connotations and meaning for different individuals and groups. The main academic argument is between the ideas that the site is inherently sacred or is the product of human effort. Eliade (1961) argues that the ‘manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world in objects tha...
One of the most sacred places in America is the Arlington National Cemetery. Each year heroes are laid to rest here. Families from across the nation visit Arlington throughout the year to pay respect to their love ones. Many American hero families who visit the Arlington Cemetery may have been mourning at the wrong grave.
...nto religion, one must ponder significance in today’s modernized world. With technology and signs increasingly championing the power of reason today, many religions have seen their members and followers stagnate or decline. Considering the compromise and accommodation of temple locations and orientations in a colonial-era should one consider commodification, a similar compromise to remain relevant in the modern world? One can observe that although several principles have been compromising modernity, religion at its core has remained true to its teachings and principles. As a physical embodiment however, the architecture today presents a certain image of itself to the rest of the world. It remains to be seen as to what extent such architectural changes suit the changes of the world today and to which extent do they begin to present religion in an unsuitable manner.
I have seen and been to a few monuments in my life. The one that’s sticks out in my mind the most is my visit to the World Trade Center after the first bombing. I remember the first couple of floors were being worked on, and you couldn’t really walk pass the building. Still, it was a magnificent site to see. I must have looked like a tourist because my eyes were constantly focus on all the huge skyscrapers that surrounded me.
On September 11, 2001, a terrorist attack was imposed on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Two planes were hijacked, and as a result both crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center. Thousands of lives were lost that day, as well as an entire Nation’s soul. We now remember the tragedy of what happened on September eleventh by the emptiness created by Ground Zero. Ground Zero is the location at where the twin towers once stood. It is a memorial site in which millions of people travel from all over to see.