Now, I just want to go out of my way and say this right now. I am Canadian. I don’t live in the states, nor do I live in New York where the attack on the world trade centre happened, so I likely have a different perspective than others. However, I do have a grandfather who lived through the Blitz and I know people who’ve lived through the Holocaust, so I believe I have something to contribute.

As a Jew who did my Bar Mitzvah speech on what happened in the holocaust I can’t help seeing multiple similarities between the incident of the protests against the mosque on a site near Ground Zero and the segregation of Jews leading up to the Holocaust. First of all, both countries are in a bit of a fix. Germany had just lost the war and was in a recession/depression and the US is still recovering from one and has had a horrible environmental accident on the gulf. This isn’t the first either. The US has had it pretty rough over the last few years what with Hurricane Katrina. So just like the Germans did, Americans may be trying to find someone, for lack of a better term, “to pin it on”.

The timing might not be right to build a mosque near ground zero. It’s like a perfect storm coming together, there is unease, there’s stress, there is hatred and I’m not afraid to say there seems to be a fair amount of racism around.

People are so angry about this that a Christian Pastor was actually planning to burn 200 copies of the Koran. Now I don’t know what it is like in other religions but if someone walked into my synagogue and burned the Torah we would have a few choice words to say. Burning the sacred object that connects these people to their divine entity is probably one of the biggest insults you could do. And I really have to scratch my head and think to myself – who on earth thought this would be a good idea. You are burning the Koran for God’s sake. The President himself has asked you to knock it off. I’m wondering where this Pastor could have spent his time better. Oh, I don’t know... doing just about anything else! Go and get a dog, or read some nice books – or do your job as a Pastor - which is spreading love and unity – mot just in your community but in the world. And I don’t mean uniting around a common hatred. I’m talking about uniting in what your job stands for – or should – peace and harmony.

Also, am I the only one who is scratching his head about how a Christian Pastor got his hands on 200 copies of the Koran? According to a friend of mine you could just buy them at an Islamic store. But again, what excuse could this man have given the owner of the store for buying 200 copies of the Koran? Actually, I have to scratch my head at this whole situation.

I understand Ground Zero is a sacred site for some people and I have nothing but respect for the people who died there on that day. But they died because of extremism which is the exact same thing that people seem to be doing to try and honour them.

I would like to quote Obama on this – “It was not a religion that attacked those buildings.”