Recently, I’ve been thinking about the debate going on two blocks away from Ground Zero. To be honest, I’ve been trying NOT to think about it, but as it continues to escalate, it gets harder to ignore.

Now I could make some grand statement about first amendment rights, national tragedy, Islamaphobia, but what I really want to say is much simpler. We need to let people mourn. It’s been nine years since we lost loved ones, tried to process what we saw on television, and came crashing to the reality that we are not untouchable. Songs were written, footage replayed and replayed, and names were read out in a national ceremony. And then we went to war. All the hurt and anger and sorrow was balled up and thrown at the “bad guys,” and now it’s come publicly boomeranging back.

I’d like to suggest that what we really need is to finish the memorial. I don’t think that, as a nation, we really had a conversation about grief, and nine years later, we’re still not having it, and Ground Zero is still just a hole in the ground with disaster tourism opportunists hawking wares around its fringes. When people visit, there’s no sense of catharsis or relief, just a construction site where nothing ever seems to get built. And so, left without a public space to grieve, we’ve instead built our own private memorials, mythologizing the moment and enshrining all the emotions we felt.

Which brings us to now. This cultural center should be a place of reflection where people can come as part of their pilgrimage to the site and explore what Islam really is, and how they feel about it, and work out the misinformation. It should be in spatial dialog with the memorial. Except there isn’t a memorial - there’s a big, raw, ugly hole in the ground and mirrors the fermented emotions of a nine-year-old national tragedy.

Now is the time for healing, for grieving, for bringing peace. For telling our stories and sharing our memorials, but more importantly, for reaching out and asking others about theirs. Churches, zendos, temples, mosques – we’re all supposed to be in the healing business. If ever people needed that function, I say the time is now.