Park 51 reaction impacts young U.S. Muslims

Sunday, Aug 29, 2010 12:22 ET
SALON
By RACHEL ZOLL, Associated Press

Adnan Zulfiqar, a graduate student, former U.S. Senate aide and American-born son of Pakistani immigrants, will soon give the first khutbah, or sermon, of the fall semester at the University of Pennsylvania. His topic has presented itself in the daily headlines and blog posts over the disputed mosque near ground zero.

What else could he choose, he says, after a summer remembered not for its reasoned debate, but for epithets, smears, even violence?

As he writes, Zulfiqar frets over the potential fallout and what he and other Muslim leaders can do about it. Will young Muslims conclude they are second-class citizens in the U.S. now and always?

"They're already struggling to balance, 'I'm American, I'm Muslim,' and their ethnic heritage. It's very disconcerting," said Zulfiqar, 32, who worked for former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat, and now serves Penn's campus ministry. "A controversy like this can make them radical or become more conservative in how they look at things or how they fit into the American picture."

Whatever the outcome, the uproar over a planned Islamic center near the former World Trade Center site is shaping up as a signal event in the story of American Islam.

Heroes have emerged from outside the Muslim community. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been steadfast in his support for the project. Jon Stewart nightly mocks the bigotry that the protest unleashed.

"The sentiment, say, five years ago among many Muslims, especially among many young Muslims, was that, 'We're in this all by ourselves,'" said Omer Mozaffar, a university lecturer in Chicago who leads Quran study groups as a buffer between young people and the extremist preachers on YouTube. 'That has changed significantly. There have been a lot of people speaking out on behalf of Muslims."

Eboo Patel, an American Muslim leader and founder of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago nonprofit that promotes community service and religious pluralism, said Muslims are unfortunately experiencing what all immigrant groups endured in the U.S. before they were fully accepted as American. Brandeis University historian Jonathan D. Sarna has noted that Jews faced a similar backlash into the 1800s when they tried to build synagogues, which were once banned in New York.

Patel believes American Muslims are on the same difficult but inevitable path toward integration.

"I'm not saying this is going to be happy," Patel said. "But I'm extremely optimistic."

Yet, the overwhelming feeling is that the controversy has caused widespread damage that will linger for years.

American Muslim leaders say the furor has emboldened opposition groups to resist new mosques around the country, at a time when there aren't enough mosques or Islamic schools to serve the community.

Rhetoric from some politicians that lumps all Muslims with terrorists will depress the Muslim vote, analysts say.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, said in opposing the Islamic center that, "America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization."

U.S. Muslims who have championed democracy and religious tolerance question what they've accomplished. If the "extremist" label can be hung on someone as apparently liberal as the imam at the center of the outcry, Feisal Abdul Rauf, then any Muslim could come under attack. Feisal supports women's rights, human rights and interfaith outreach.

"The joke is on moderate Muslims," said Muqtedar Khan, a University of Delaware political scientist and author of "American Muslims, Bridging Faith and Freedom." "What's the point if you're going to be treated the same way as a radical? If I get into trouble are they going to treat me like I'm a supporter of al-Qaeda?"

U.S. Muslims are themselves divided over the proposed mosque.

Feisal and his wife, Daisy Khan (no relation to Muqtedar Khan), want to build a 13-story, $100 million community center called Park51 two blocks from the former World Trade Center site. It would be modeled on the YMCA or Jewish Community Center, with programming for the entire city, and would include a mosque.

Some Muslims felt from the start that the plan was misguided, given the wounds of the Sept. 11 attacks and widespread misunderstanding about Islam. Yet they felt compelled to defend the proposal when the discussion over religious freedom and cultural sensitivity turned ugly.

Days ago, a brick nearly smashed a window at the Madera Islamic Center in central California, where signs were left behind that read, "Wake up America, the enemy is here," and "No temple for the god of terrorism." This past week in New York, a Muslim cab driver had his face and throat slashed in a suspected hate crime.

The poisonous atmosphere comes at a still fragile time in the development of Muslim communal life.

Leaders have spent years trying to persuade Muslim immigrants to come out of their enclaves and fully embrace being American. The task became that much more difficult in the aftermath of 9/11. Many Muslims pulled back, convinced that if another terrorist attack occurs, the U.S. government will put them in internment camps, like the Japanese in World War II. Their American-born children, meanwhile, have felt rejected by their own country.

David Ramadan, a Muslim and vice chair of ethnic coalitions for Republican Party in Virginia, predicts that comments from political figures in both major parties will depress Muslim voting in years to come.

Ramadan and other Muslim Republicans have been pressing GOP leaders not to support a particular mosque, but to acknowledge that American Muslims have equal rights under the Constitution.

"Who wants to come into the fold of the Republican Party today, or even the fold of the Democratic Party?" Ramadan asked. "They just increased the number of independents in America."

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/08/29/us_nyc_mosque_fallout/index.html

Anti-mosque sentiment rages far from Ground Zero

SALON
Glenn Greenwald
Sunday, Aug 29, 2010 08:30 ET

(updated below)

One of the most under-reported political stories is the increasingly vehement, nationwide movement -- far from Ground Zero -- to oppose new mosques and Islamic community centers. These ugly campaigns are found across the country, in every region, and extend far beyond the warped extremists who are doing things such as sponsoring "Burn a Quran Day." And now, from CBS News last night, we have this:

Fire at Tenn. Mosque Building Site Ruled Arson

Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb.

Ben Goodwin of the Rutherford County Sheriff's Department confirmed to CBS Affiliate WTVF that the fire, which burned construction equipment at the future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, is being ruled as arson. . . .

The chair of the center's planning committee, Essim Fathy, said he drove to the site at around 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning after he was contacted by the sheriff's department.

"Our people and community are so worried of what else can happen," said Fathy. "They are so scared" . . .

Opponents of a new Islamic center say they believe the mosque will be more than a place of prayer; they are afraid the 15-acre site that was once farmland will be turned into a terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.

"They are not a religion. They are a political, militaristic group," Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old retiree who lives in the area, told The Associated Press.

Shelton was among several hundred demonstrators who recently wore "Vote for Jesus" T-shirts and carried signs that said "No Sharia law for USA!," referring to the Islamic code of law.

Others took their opposition further, spray painting a sign announcing the "Future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro" and tearing it up.

Earlier this summer opponents criticized the planned mosque at hearings held by the Rutherford County Commission, as supporters held prayer vigils.

At one such prayer vigil, WTVF reported opponents speaking out against construction.

"No mosque in Murfreesboro. I don't want it. I don't want them here," Evy Summers said to WTVF. "Go start their own country overseas somewhere. This is a Christian country. It was based on Christianity."

The arsonists undoubtedly will be happy to tell you how much they hate Terrorism. And how there's a War on Christianity underway in the U.S. The harm from these actions are not merely the physical damage they cause, but also the well-grounded fear it imposes on a minority of the American population. If you launch a nationwide, anti-Islamic campaign in Lower Manhattan based on the toxic premise that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11 -- and spend a decade expanding American wars on one Muslim country after the next -- this is the inevitable, and obviously dangerous, outcome.

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/29/mosques/index.html

Imam behind NYC mosque faces divisions over center

Posted 8/28/2010 6:02 PM ET

By Cristian Salazar, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK — Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has long worked to bridge divisions, be they fissures between interfaith husbands and wives or political chasms separating the United States and the Muslim world. The 61-year-old clergyman is now in the midst of a polarizing political, religious and cultural debate over plans for a multistory Islamic center that will feature a mosque, health club and theater about two blocks north of ground zero.

He is one of the leaders of the Park51 project, but has largely been absent from the national debate over the implications of building a Muslim house of worship so close to where terrorists killed more than 2,700 people.

Though Rauf has said the center, which could cost more than $100 million, would serve as a space for interfaith dialogue, moderate Muslim practice and peaceful prayer, critics say it will create a base for radical, anti-American Islam. Some critics have also asked where the funding for the center might originate and whether it may come from sources linked to Muslim extremists.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, called the backers of the project "radical Islamists." "They're trying to make a case about supremacy" with the center, he said.

The American Jewish Committee has said that while Park51's leaders have a right to build their center, they must "fully reveal" their sources of funding and "unconditionally condemn" terrorism inspired by Islamist ideology before they can obtain the organization's support.

Those who know Rauf and have worked with him say that he is anything but extreme in his beliefs or intentions. ?

"He is one of the really important Muslim leaders in America, working for and working with other religions," said the Rev. James Parks Morton, the former dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine who has known Rauf and his family for more than 30 years. "He's a very, very conciliatory, intellectual guy."

During the past few months, Rauf has been in Malaysia, where his family has long-standing ties, and on a State Department-financed goodwill tour of Gulf countries.

Through a spokesman and his wife, he declined to speak with The Associated Press in recent weeks. His few interviews lately have been with local Arabic media during his State Department tour.

He told the daily Bahrain newspaper Akhbar Al-Khaleej on Aug. 24 that he blamed the news media, in part, for strained relations between Muslims and Americans. Rauf said the media "has succeeded in portraying stereotypical images, focusing on the negative and criticizing the other."

With Rauf largely absent from the debate, opponents have scoured past statements and critics portray the imam as tone-deaf to the sensitivities of families who lost relatives on Sept. 11. They argue he should forthrightly condemn Arab political movements such as Hamas that the U.S. government has designated as terrorist organizations.

Asked in June by WABC-AM whether he believed the State Department was correct in designating Hamas as a terrorist organization, Rauf gave a winding response: "I am not a politician. ... The issue of terrorism is a very complex question. ... I do not want to be placed ... in a position of ... where I am the target of one side or another."

Rauf rarely deviates in his interviews, speeches and books from a core message of the need for interfaith dialogue to resolve religious conflicts. What emerges is a portrait of a man who has passionately argued that Islam is inherently compatible with American life, and that each is enriched by the other.

He has strongly opposed acts of violence in the name of Islam.

"The Quran allows fighting only in defense -- when we are attacked or thrown from our homes or denied our basic rights because of what we choose to believe," he writes in his 2004 book.

"But even in those cases where fighting is allowed, the Quran never allows the killing of innocent people."

The annex of his book includes a 2001 fatwa, or religious ruling, signed by five Islamic scholars, that permits Muslims to fight for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

He also writes that there is no circumstance under which the Prophet permitted suicide, and says so-called "martyrdom operations" are unsupported by Islam.

"It is a phenomena that no civilized society -- in the Muslim world or the West -- should be content to accept," he said.

Rauf was born in Kuwait, the son of an Egyptian imam and noted Islamic scholar, Muhammad Abdul Rauf, who came to New York City in the 1960s and helped lead efforts to establish the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, the city's first building designed as a mosque. The multimillion-dollar project took more than 25 years and opened in 1991. The elder Rauf also led the Islamic Center of Washington before taking a job in Malaysia.

The younger Rauf didn't follow his father's path into religion until later in life. He studied physics at Columbia University and in New Jersey, and dabbled in teaching, sales and real estate. He married, first to an American who converted to Islam, and a second time to a Malaysian woman. He has two children from each of the marriages.

In the late 1990s, he married his third wife, Daisy Khan, who has actively supported the Islamic center proposal.

In 1983, Rauf was asked to lead prayers at a small mosque in lower Manhattan, 12 blocks from the World Trade Center site and near the Park51 project. The mosque, Masjid al-Farah, was created by a Sufi order called Nur Ashki Jerrahi, currently led by a woman, which means the order of light and love. Sufism is a mystical tradition that emphasizes a direct and personal experience of God through chanting and other acts of devotion, and is known for adapting to local culture.

Rauf is especially popular among young, urban professionals.

Author Asra Nomani said she once attended a retreat organized by Rauf and Khan, and noted that Rauf allowed parallel prayer sections for men and women -- a rare practice. In the majority of mosques, women sit behind men, shielded by a room divider.

"Imam Feisal, he has always been on a moderate course -- many of us would call it a liberal-progressive course," said Saleemah Abdul, 36, who works for the United Nations and is editor of a book on American Muslim women. "He has promoted women's leadership, youth leadership in a time and a place where many Muslims felt isolated and alienated."

Rauf helped to establish the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, two organizations with missions to build dialogue between Muslims and the West.

His travels have been financed partly by the U.S. government, which has been sending him on diplomatic trips to Muslim nations since the Bush administration. Contributions to his nonprofit organizations have come from American groups like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation, government agencies in Qatar and the Netherlands, and the Kingdom Foundation, a philanthropy affiliated with Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the largest shareholder in Citigroup.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Rauf was called on repeatedly by news organizations to help explain to Americans why the U.S. was so hated by some factions in the Muslim world.

Some of his comments then have now been seized on by critics as evidence of anti-American views.

"We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims," he said in a 2005 lecture in Australia. "You may remember that the U.S.-led sanction against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations."

Rauf told an interviewer in July that about a decade ago he envisioned a global association of Muslim community centers modeled after the Young Men's Christian Association, serving as centers of interfaith dialogue and spreading moderate Islam worldwide.

The first of these Cordoba Houses, as he initially referred to them, would be established in New York City.

"Our stated objective is to establish this as a launching point, as a headquarters if you want, of a global understanding, of a moderate Islam that is true to its fundamental principles," he told the New York-based Intersections International, a group that has endorsed the Islamic center. "And to accuse us as being the opposite of that flies in the face off our stated vision, our mission, my track record and everything I've ever done or stood for."

___

Associated Press Religion Writer Rachel Zoll, AP writer David B. Caruso and AP Investigative Researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Protests, Rhetoric Feed Jihadists' Fire

By JONATHAN WEISMAN
The Wall Street Journal
* AUGUST 23, 2010


Islamic radicals are seizing on protests against a planned Islamic community center near Manhattan's Ground Zero and anti-Muslim rhetoric elsewhere as a propaganda opportunity and are stepping up anti-U.S. chatter and threats on their websites.

One jihadist site vowed to conduct suicide bombings in Florida to avenge a threatened Koran burning, while others predicted an increase in terrorist recruits as a result of such actions.

"By Allah, the wars are heated and you Americans are the ones who…enflamed it," says one such posting. "By Allah you will be the first to taste its flames."

White House homeland security adviser John Brennan told reporters Friday that he had seen no evidence that the debate over the proposed Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, other mosque protests or the planned Koran burning had affected U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
[JIHAD] Agence France Presse/Getty Images

The proposal to build an Islamic community center, including a mosque, near Ground Zero brought out supporters, above, and opponents on Sunday.
[JIHAD_2] Agence France Presse/Getty Images

A White House official on Sunday stressed that Mr. Brennan was addressing the narrow question of whether the debates in the U.S. over Islam were having an impact on U.S. counterterrorism efforts, and that Mr. Brennan specifically declined to address whether those debates were energizing the jihadists.

A U.S. official on Sunday said the administration was taking the upswing in anti-U.S. chatter seriously. "Terrorists like al-Qaeda and its violent allies are motivated already to try to attack the United States, but when it comes to propaganda, extremists are pure opportunists. They'll use whatever they can," the official said.
Journal Community

* discuss

“ This article is starting to make me think that ALL religions are stupid. ”

—Matthew White

Many opponents of the planned Muslim community center say they have no bias against Muslims but that putting the building so close to Ground Zero shows an insensitivity toward the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Controversy over the community center, which will contain a mosque and other facilities, has helped fan anti-Muslim rhetoric in the U.S. far from Lower Manhattan in recent weeks.

Jarret Brachman, director of Cronus Global, a security consulting firm, and author of the book Global Jihadism, said al Qaeda and other groups have long used imagery from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to recruit new members. But the U.S. position has been that those wars are not against Islam and that the U.S. has Muslim allies in the fight.

Anti-Muslim rhetoric in the U.S is different, since jihadists can use Americans' words to make the case that the U.S. is indeed at war with Islam. The violent postings are not just on al Qaeda-linked websites but on prominent, mainstream Muslim chat forums, Mr. Brachman said.
Journal Community

"We are handing al Qaeda a propaganda coup, an absolute propaganda coup," with the Islamic-center controversy, said Evan Kohlmann, an independent terrorism consultant at Flashpoint Partners who monitors jihadist websites.

Critics of the proposed Islamic center said their right to speak out shouldn't be influenced by the possibility of jihadist threats. "We will never win a war when we are afraid to even name our enemies," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said in an e-mail Sunday.

The most violent threats stem not from the debate over the Islamic center but more fringe issues, such as a declaration by Terry Jones, pastor at the Dove World Outreach Center, a mega-church in Gainesville, Fla., that Sept. 11 be an "International Burn a Koran Day."

Supporters and opponents of a proposed Muslim cultural center and mosque near the World Trade Center site staged competing rallies in downtown Manhattan. Video courtesy of Fox News.

In an interview Sunday, Mr. Jones said he planned to go ahead with the Koran burning on the evening of Sept. 11, despite the local fire department denying a permit for the event. He said the jihadist threats only confirmed his views of Muslims.

"I can understand that they would be offended. I think their reactions—violence, threats, murders terrorist attacks—that only reveals the true nature of Islam which needs to be revealed," he said.
More

* Tensions Over Mosque Rise After Comments
* Metropolis: More coverage of the Islamic Center

Threats have been posted on Jihadist web sites in response to such planned actions as Mr. Jones's Koran burning. "Now, I wish to bomb myself in this church as revenge for the sake of Allah's talk. And here I register my name here that I want to be an intended-martyr," wrote a poster identifying himself as "Abu Dujanah."

Write to Jonathan Weisman at jonathan.weisman@wsj.com

SOURCE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703589804575445841837725272.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_newyork

ADL explains why Foxman lobbied against imams' Auschwitz trip

Monday, Aug 23, 2010 16:54 ET
War Room
ADL explains why Foxman lobbied against imams' Auschwitz trip
By Justin Elliott
SALON

*

Earlier this month eight American imams and Muslim leaders took a trip to the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps accompanied by the Obama Administration's envoy to combat anti-Semitism, Hannah Rosenthal, and its official representative to the Muslim world, Rashad Hussein. At the end of the emotional trip, the imams released a joint statement (.pdf) condemning Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.

It all seemed like a perfectly good idea, which is why some were surprised that Abe Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League -- which counts Holocaust education and battling anti-Semitisim as core missions -- actually lobbied against the participation of U.S. officials in the trip.

(The ADL also came under intense criticism recently when Foxman spoke out against the proposed Islamic community center near ground zero.)

Foxman's opposition to the Auschwitz trip was first reported by Laura Rozen of Politico earlier this month:

Organizers of the trip say they were dismayed that the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman lobbied U.S. officials against participating. They also say the Investigative Project’s Steve Emerson, author of "American Jihad," lobbied against the trip, arguing that one of the imams planning to participate had made Holocaust denial statements a decade ago.

Foxman didn't respond to Rozen's requests for comment, but the ADL gave a statement to Salon today confirming that Foxman lobbied against the participation of the Obama officials.

"Mr. Foxman raised the question of the appropriateness of the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism to accompany individually and privately sponsored trips," the statement says. "Given that there are many places in the world where anti-Semitism remains a problem, we believe that her leadership role in fighting anti-Semitism is best done government to government."

That refers to Rosenthal, the State Department official, whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust. Given that the trip resulted in such a strong statement, in which Muslim leaders from around the U.S. publicly denounced anti-Semitism in the strongest terms, the trip organizers saw it as a major success.

One person familiar with the trip told Salon that Foxman called both Rosenthal and the White House to object. When it went forward anyway, he went beyond objecting to the participation of the U.S. officials and called a Polish rabbi who had a scheduled meeting with the imams and asked the rabbi not to see the group, the person said.

Below is the ADL's statement in full and the imams' statement below that:

Mr. Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League are not opposed to imams visiting Auschwitz. Indeed, we are delighted a group of imams recently visited two camps in which the Nazis implemented their final solution for the extermination of European Jewry. We are hopeful that through this experience the imams can now help educate Muslims in America and abroad about the horrors of the Holocaust, its lessons for today and the perniciousness of Holocaust denial

Mr. Foxman raised the question of the appropriateness of the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism to accompany individually and privately sponsored trips. Given that there are many places in the world where anti-Semitism remains a problem, we believe that her leadership role in fighting anti-Semitism is best done government to government.

And the imams:

‘O you who believe, stand up firmly for justice as witnesses to Almighty God.” (Holy Qu’ran, al-Nisa “The Women” 4:135)

On August 7-11, 2010, we the undersigned Muslim American faith and community leaders visited Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps where we witnessed firsthand the historical injustice of the Holocaust.

We met survivors who, several decades later, vividly and bravely shared their horrific experience of discrimination, suffering, and loss. We saw the many chilling places where men, women and children were systematically and brutally murdered by the millions because of their faith, race, disability and political affiliation.

In Islam, the destruction of one innocent life is like the destruction of the whole of humanity and the saving of one life is like the saving of the whole of humanity (Holy Qu’ran, al-Ma’idah “the Tablespread” 5:32). While entire communities perished by the many millions, we know that righteous Muslims from Bosnia, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, and Albania saved many Jews from brutal repression, torture and senseless destruction.

We bear witness to the absolute horror and tragedy of the Holocaust where over twelve million human souls perished, including six million Jews.

We condemn any attempts to deny this historical reality and declare such denials or any justification of this tragedy as against the Islamic code of ethics.

We condemn anti-Semitism in any form. No creation of Almighty God should face discrimination based on his or her faith or religious conviction.

We stand united as Muslim American faith and community leaders and recognize that we have a shared responsibility to continue to work together with leaders of all faiths and their communities to fight the dehumanization of all peoples based on their religion, race or ethnicity. With the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hatred, rhetoric and bigotry, now more than ever, people of faith must stand together for truth.

Together, we pledge to make real the commitment of “never again” and to stand united against injustice wherever it may be found in the world today.

Imam Muzammil Siddiqi

Islamic Society of Orange County, Calif.

Chairman, Fiqh Council of North America

Imam Muhamad Maged

All-Dulles-Area Muslim Society

Dulles, Va.

Vice President, Islamic Society of North America

Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed

National Director

Office of Interfaith & Community Services

Islamic Society of North America

Washington, D.C.

Imam Suhaib Webb

Muslim Community Association

Santa Clara, Calif.

Ms. Laila Muhammad

Daughter of the late Imam W.D. Muhammad

Chicago, Ill.

Shaikh Yasir Qadhi

Dean of Academics

Al Maghrib Institute

New Haven, Conn.

Imam Syed Naqvi

Director

Islamic Information Center

Washington, D.C.

Imam Abdullah T. Antepli

Muslim Chaplain

Duke University

Durham, N.C.

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/08/23/foxman_lobbies_against_auschwitz_trip/index.html

Obama's anti-Semitism envoy vs. the ADL

Tuesday, Aug 24, 2010 11:01 ET
War Room
Obama's anti-Semitism envoy vs. the ADL
By Justin Elliott
SALON

*

Obama's anti-Semitism envoy vs. the ADL
Wikipedia
Hannah Rosenthal

Yesterday we reported on the Anti-Defamation League's unusual lobbying effort against a trip to concentration camp sites by a group of U.S. imams and a few Obama Administration officials.

And now one of those officials, envoy to combat anti-Semitism Hannah Rosenthal, has issued a response to the ADL in a statement to Politico's Laura Rozen.

The background is that the ADL, while acknowledging that National Director Abe Foxman lobbied against U.S. officials' participation in the trip, claimed Monday that Foxman objected only because he thinks Rosenthal should be focusing on "government to government" work. (Though a person familiar with the trip told Salon Monday that Foxman went so far as to call a Polish rabbi during the imams' trip earlier this month to implore the rabbi not to meet with the American group.)

In response to the ADL's objection, Rosenthal explained: "My reason for going was simple – Anti-Semitism is growing in places for different reasons, but Holocaust denial is growing in parts of the Muslim communities and must be confronted in order to combat the anti-Semitism that accompanies it."

It's also worth noting that the imams' trip to Auschwitz ended with a strong joint statement denouncing anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Here's Rosenthal's full statement:

My reason for going was simple – Anti-Semitism is growing in places for different reasons, but Holocaust denial is growing in parts of the Muslim communities and must be confronted in order to combat the anti-Semitism that accompanies it.

The response to my participation on the trip has been overwhelmingly positive and encouraging. As I travel to countries facing increased anti-Semitism, I regularly meet with Jewish organizations, and interfaith and interethnic organizations, in addition to meeting with government leaders. I recognize that this age-old hatred will take a multi-faceted approach: calling for government leadership in condemning anti-Semitism; better education for the younger generation; interfaith understanding and advocacy; and good old-fashioned relationship building. I am trying hard to do just that.

* Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/08/24/anti_semitism_envoy_versus_adl/index.html

Karen Hughes doesn't remember Park51 organizer

Tuesday, Aug 24, 2010 12:10 ET
War Room
Karen Hughes doesn't remember Park51 organizer, would like him to move "mosque"
By Alex Pareene
SALON
*

Karen Hughes doesn't remember Park51 organizer, would like him to move
Reuters/AP

As Republicans attack progressive Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf as an America-hating, terrorist-sympathizing secret extremist, folks who aren't currently engaged in exploiting bigotry for profit often point out that Rauf did outreach work for George W. Bush's State Department, working directly with Bush senior adviser Karen Hughes, who was, at the time, the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. But it turns out that the people smearing Rauf do not care! Including, it turns out, Ms. Hughes, who claims to not even remember the guy.

Hughes officially came out against the Park51 project in lower Manhattan over the weekend. She says that while Rauf and his congregation obviously have the right to build their mosque that is not actually a mosque in the building where it's been approved for construction, it would be "a powerful example" if they decided to give in to popular hysteria whipped up by Islamophobes and move their community center, voluntarily, to somewhere else (not Staten Island).

Hughes does not mention that she knows Rauf, in her op-ed. Perhaps because, as Hughes told Greg Sargent a while back, she doesn't (or is claiming not to) remember him. "I met with many Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders and attended numerous events and conferences across the world and it's entirely possible he was at some of those, but I don't have specific recollections of that."

Well, it's not "entirely possible," it is actually just a fact that Hughes and Raud have hung out together, doin' some outreach, whether Hughes remembers or not.

Anyway, Hughes has now defined the Moderate Republican response to this idiotic debacle, and everyone wishing for the responsible GOP grown-ups of the Bush era should be very happy that they dragged Hughes into this debate.

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/news/ground_zero_mosque/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/08/24/karen_hughes_feisal_rauf

Sensitive Conservatism

frame game
Sensitive Conservatism
Is a mosque near Ground Zero "insensitive"?
By William Saletan
Posted Monday, Aug. 23, 2010, at 8:11 AM ET
SLATE

One by one, the arguments against the proposed Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero have collapsed. A "13-story mosque"? No such plan. "At Ground Zero"? Wrong again. The imam's radical politics? A myth. His shadowy jihadist financiers? Imagined. His failure to denounce terrorism? Debunked. The "angry battle" he's "stoking"? Please. The guy isn't even returning phone calls. The anger and stoking have come from the other side.

So the mosque's opponents have fallen back on one last argument: sensitivity.

"This is an insensitive move," says Sarah Palin. "The question here is a question of sensitivity, people's feelings," says Rudy Giuliani. It's "not just insensitive but provocative," argues Charles Krauthammer. "Those who want to block the mosque are demanding a truly meaningful gesture in 'special sensitivity,' " writes Rich Lowry. Bill Kristol says the proposed location fails to show proper "respect" to the dead. Jonah Goldberg invokes "appropriateness." Karen Hughes, the former Bush aide, says the mosque should be moved because most Americans "don't believe it's respectful, given what happened there."

Feelings about 9/11 are raw and real. Many people, including families who lost loved ones that day, find the prospect of a mosque near Ground Zero upsetting. I've heard this reaction in my family, too. But feelings aren't reasons. You can't tell somebody not to build a house of worship somewhere just because the idea upsets you. You have to figure out why you're upset. What's the basis of your discomfort? Why should others respect it? For that matter, why should you?

This kind of reflection is missing from the sensitivity chorus. Palin says the uproar over the mosque reflects "the wisdom of the people," but she doesn't explain how. Giuliani pleads that some 9/11 families "are crying over this," but he doesn't explore the perceptions behind their tears. Hughes, Lowry, and Goldberg appeal to "courtesy," "decency," and "good taste," but they don't say how these principles apply. Krauthammer points out that Pope John Paul II, "one of the towering moral figures of the 20th century," once moved a convent away from Auschwitz. But that doesn't explain why the convent or the mosque should have been moved.

Kristol seems particularly incensed. He accuses President Obama of treating mosque opponents' objections as "overreactions" and "hysteria" so that their "arguments don't have to be taken seriously." OK, but what's Kristol's argument against the mosque? "Serious people have thought a lot about this," he says. And their conclusion is? "There shouldn't be a 13-story mosque and Islamic community center next to Ground Zero." And why not? Kristol never explains. Like his colleagues, he simply embraces the no-mosque position as a "sensible and healthy reaction."

With the exception of Palin, these are not stupid people. They're searching our sensitivity for an underlying rationale that justifies the exclusion of mosques from the vicinity of Ground Zero. And they aren't finding one.

What they're finding instead is group blame. The destruction of the World Trade Center "was an attack in the name of Islam," says Giuliani. "It was a perverted type of Islam, but a kind of prevalent view that goes on in a lot of parts of the world. So we've got to be sensitive to everybody here." Lowry draws a similar connection: "It is true that Islam as such is not responsible for 9/11, but symbolism and the sensibilities of New Yorkers and victims of 9/11 can't be discounted." Krauthammer adds:

Ground Zero is the site of the most lethal attack of that worldwide movement, which consists entirely of Muslims, acts in the name of Islam and is deeply embedded within the Islamic world. These are regrettable facts, but facts they are. And that is why putting up a monument to Islam in this place is not just insensitive but provocative.

This is the true thinking behind the anti-mosque sensitivity: Muslims committed the massacre. Therefore, no Muslim house of worship should be built there.

It's natural to be angry at Muslims for 9/11. In fact, it's natural to want to kill them. We've hated and killed each other for centuries. You kill us; we kill you. The "you" is collective. You aren't exactly the infidel who slew my grandfather. But you're close enough.

Seen against this backdrop, the mosque fight represents enormous progress. We aren't talking about killing Muslims or banning their religion. We're just asking them not to build a mosque near the place where they murdered thousands of our people. "Putting the mosque at a different site would demonstrate the uncommon courtesy sometimes required for us to get along," Hughes suggests. In turn, "this gesture of goodwill could lead us to a more thoughtful conversation to address some of the ugliness this controversy has engendered."

But if our revulsion at the idea of a mosque near Ground Zero is irrational—if it's based on group blame and a failure to distinguish Islam from terrorism—then maybe it isn't the mosque's planners who need to rise above their emotions. Maybe it's the rest of us.

Once we recognize the sensitivity argument for what it is—an appeal to feelings we can't morally justify—there's no good reason why the Islamic center shouldn't be built at its planned site, in the neighborhood where its imam already preaches and its members work and congregate. Asking them to reorder their lives to accommodate our instinctive reaction is wrong. We can transcend that reaction, and we should.

By all means, let's have a thoughtful conversation about Islam and its place in the United States. Let's ask the imam what he means when he says sharia is compatible with the U.S. Constitution. Let's confront the reluctance of Muslim clerics, including this one, to denounce Hamas. And let's demand transparency in the fundraising process so extremists don't finance the new building. Moving the building farther away from Ground Zero won't advance any of these discussions. It's the wrong fight. Let it go.

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William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2264754/

Let It Lie

politics
Let It Lie
Why won't any Republicans condemn the "Obama is a Muslim" myth?
By John Dickerson
Posted Monday, Aug. 23, 2010, at 8:23 PM ET
SLATE

With so much traffic on the low road in American politics, you'd imagine a politician or two might take the high road simply to beat the congestion. Sunday on Meet the Press, Mitch McConnell was asked about the Pew poll that showed 31 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim. He said, "The president says he's a Christian. I take him at his word. I don't think that's in dispute." If you only paid attention to his first two sentences, as some pundits did, you might think McConnell was trying to keep doubt alive by suggesting the matter was one of debate. If you were patient enough to listen to the last sentence, you heard him say that the matter is not one of debate at all.

If McConnell wasn't trying to stir the pot, he also wasn't trying to lower the boil. What you didn't hear McConnell say was that the whole notion that Obama is a Muslim is ridiculous because by any standard we use to evaluate the religious beliefs of our leaders, President Obama is a Christian. Nor did he go on to say that any politician who tries to benefit from this urban legend—by courting either Islamophobes or conspiracy nuts who think Obama is engaged in some kind of systematic deception—should be ashamed of himself.

He also did not produce a baby unicorn. That is to say, expecting the events of the previous paragraph would ever happen in real life is a fantasy. We can define our politics by the outrageous things people say. Rep. Joe Wilson yelled, "You lie" during a presidential address to Congress. Newt Gingrich called Sonia Sotomayor a racist, and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson said, "Republicans want you to die quickly." But the shamelessness of our politics can also be measured by silence. It's just as embarrassing that in a case like this, no politician will take the high road against their political interest.

Fine. If we can't have Boy Scouts in office, let's try it another way. Shouldn't there be someone taking the high road if for no other reason than it is unoccupied? Often in politics, doing the one thing no one else is doing usually gets you air time and exposure. But it's harder to tread the high road in an election year. For Republicans whose constituents dislike the president, there's no advantage in going out of your way to stick up for him. That's why McConnell kept trying to get back to talking about the economy. He was trying to stay on the issue voters care about.

Why is the burden on Republicans? They benefit from the misinformation, and the poll shows the myth has taken hold most sharply among their supporters. If one of them doesn't speak up, we may have to conclude that the GOP will allow any untruth to spread so long as it helps the party.

Republicans and conservatives aren't the only ones who don't bother to do the right thing. During the primaries, Hillary Clinton's campaign staffers passed around Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mails. Hillary Clinton gave a McConnell-esque response when asked whether she thought Obama was a Muslim. And Clinton's campaign strategist Mark Penn talked about making Obama's otherness the central pitch of the Clinton campaign. That's part of what the Muslim charge is about—making the president seem like something foreign, mysterious and unfamiliar to Americans.

Evangelical Christian leader Franklin Graham bypassed the high road too. Though his father made a career out of sudden conversions to Christ and he has continued that tradition, the younger Graham seemed rather lukewarm about whether Obama's Christian rebirth (described at the end of Dreams From My Father) really took. Saying Obama was "born a Muslim" (in fact, Obama's Muslim-born father and Christian-born mother were both areligious), Graham seemed skeptical of Obama's Christian identity. "That is what he says he has done," said Graham. "I cannot say that he hasn't. So I just have to believe that the president is what he has said."

Those who doubt Obama's faith practice selective hearing in its highest form. It requires real discipline to hear only Obama's remarks that might identify him in any way with Islam and miss all of the others that refer to his Christian faith. So when the president spoke in Cairo, people heard him say how his father's Kenyan family included generations of Muslims but went la,la,la, la seconds earlier, when Obama declared, "I'm a Christian." (A Republican national committeewoman, Kim Lehman, who says she believes Obama is a Muslim, seemed almost religious about her refusal to inform herself about this speech,)

During his political career, Obama has been quite comfortable talking about his faith and the particularities of his Christian beliefs. Inviting discussion about this aspect of his life has not always benefited Obama. Two years ago he faced a crisis over connections to his Christian pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Earlier, in 2006, Obama gave a high-profile speech about his faith and received a wave of criticism from progressives, many of whom compared him to George Bush.

It's hard work to sustain doubt about the president's faith or to believe he doesn't express it enough. At one point, Politico reported that Obama had actually invoked Jesus more than Bush. He often talks in personal terms. "I found myself drawn—not just to work with the church but to be in the church," Obama said at Notre Dame in May 2009. "It was through this service that I was brought to Christ." Search for Christ on the White House Web site and the first item you'll find is the president's remarks at an Easter prayer breakfast. He didn't just welcome his "brothers and sisters in Christ," but also talked at length about why Christ's resurrection and the power of redemption meant so much to him. Previous presidents may have attended church, but Obama was doing something more. He was witnessing. Different churches may have different practices, but the ones I've attended don't usually greet such expressions of faith with scorn. The usual response is to say Amen.

John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at slatepolitics@gmail.com.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2264779/

A Test of Tolerance

fighting words
A Test of Tolerance
The "Ground Zero mosque" debate is about tolerance—and a whole lot more.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Aug. 23, 2010, at 2:01 PM ET
SLATE

Two weeks ago, I wrote that the arguments against the construction of the Cordoba Initiative center in lower Manhattan were so stupid and demagogic as to be beneath notice. Things have only gone further south since then, with Newt Gingrich's comparison to a Nazi sign outside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum or (take your pick from the grab bag of hysteria) a Japanese cultural center at Pearl Harbor. The first of those pseudo-analogies is wrong in every possible way, in that the Holocaust museum already contains one of the most coolly comprehensive guides to the theory and practice of the Nazi regime in existence, including special exhibits on race theory and party ideology and objective studies of the conditions that brought the party to power. As for the second, there has long been a significant Japanese-American population in Hawaii, and I can't see any reason why it should not place a cultural center anywhere on the islands that it chooses.

From the beginning, though, I pointed out that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was no great bargain and that his Cordoba Initiative was full of euphemisms about Islamic jihad and Islamic theocracy. I mentioned his sinister belief that the United States was partially responsible for the assault on the World Trade Center and his refusal to take a position on the racist Hamas dictatorship in Gaza. The more one reads through his statements, the more alarming it gets. For example, here is Rauf's editorial on the upheaval that followed the brutal hijacking of the Iranian elections in 2009. Regarding President Obama, he advised that:

He should say his administration respects many of the guiding principles of the 1979 revolution—to establish a government that expresses the will of the people; a just government, based on the idea of Vilayet-i-faquih, that establishes the rule of law.

Coyly untranslated here (perhaps for "outreach" purposes), Vilayet-i-faquih is the special term promulgated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to describe the idea that all of Iranian society is under the permanent stewardship (sometimes rendered as guardianship) of the mullahs. Under this dispensation, "the will of the people" is a meaningless expression, because "the people" are the wards and children of the clergy. It is the justification for a clerical supreme leader, whose rule is impervious to elections and who can pick and choose the candidates and, if it comes to that, the results. It is extremely controversial within Shiite Islam. (Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, for example, does not endorse it.) As for those numerous Iranians who are not Shiites, it reminds them yet again that they are not considered to be real citizens of the Islamic Republic.

I do not find myself reassured by the fact that Imam Rauf publicly endorses the most extreme and repressive version of Muslim theocracy. The letterhead of the statement, incidentally, describes him as the Cordoba Initiative's "Founder and Visionary." Why does that not delight me, either?

Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the center, its defenders have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance. It would be nice if this were true. But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything "offensive" to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter …

As for the gorgeous mosaic of religious pluralism, it's easy enough to find mosque Web sites and DVDs that peddle the most disgusting attacks on Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and other Muslims—to say nothing of insane diatribes about women and homosexuals. This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be "phobic." A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.

From my window, I can see the beautiful minaret of the Washington, D.C., mosque on Massachusetts Avenue. It is situated at the heart of the capital city's diplomatic quarter, and it is where President Bush went immediately after 9/11 to make his gesture toward the "religion of peace." A short while ago, the wife of a new ambassador told me that she had been taking her dog for a walk when a bearded man accosted her and brusquely warned her not to take the animal so close to the sacred precincts. Muslim cabdrivers in other American cities have already refused to take passengers with "unclean" canines.

Another feature of my local mosque that I don't entirely like is the display of flags outside, purportedly showing all those nations that are already Muslim. Some of these flags are of countries like Malaysia, where Islam barely has a majority, or of Turkey, which still has a secular constitution. At the United Nations, the voting bloc of the Organization of the Islamic Conference nations is already proposing a resolution that would circumscribe any criticism of religion in general and of Islam in particular. So, before he is used by our State Department on any more goodwill missions overseas, I would like to see Imam Rauf asked a few searching questions about his support for clerical dictatorship in, just for now, Iran. Let us by all means make the "Ground Zero" debate a test of tolerance. But this will be a one-way street unless it is to be a test of Muslim tolerance as well.

Like Slate on Facebook. Follow Slate and the Slate Foreign Desk on Twitter.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2264770/

Ground Zero mosque: A monument to modernity

Ground Zero mosque: A monument to modernity

A mosque near Ground Zero would be the perfect rebuke to Islamic fundamentalists, and demonstrate the power of western liberalism

By Andrew Potter, Citizen Special
August 22, 2010

OTTAWA — The fight over the Cordoba Initiative's plan to build an Islamic cultural centre and mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan has revealed the basic mean-spiritedness of contemporary American conservatism. But more tellingly, the dispute has revealed the way in which conservatives have more in common with Islamic fundamentalists than they do with their fellow Americans.

Liberals have had an easy time of their usual strategy, portraying their opponents as xenophobes and ignoramuses. The campaign against the Cordoba centre has been a disgrace, with fat, dumb fish like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich swimming happily into the barrel to be shot. In the face of stiff competition, radio host Rush Limbaugh made probably the stupidest argument when he contrasted liberal support for the Cordoba project with the inability of Wal-Mart to get a store built in Manhattan. He then went on to accuse Barack Obama of being the first "anti-American president."

In response to the hysteria being whipped up by the lunatic right, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a speech at an event on Governors Island in which he defended religious tolerance and affirmed the constitutional right of American muslims to build a mosque anywhere Jews would be free to build a synagogue, or Christians a church. As he put it, "This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favour one over another." Yes, Ground Zero is the site of a great national tragedy, "But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan."

Atlantic magazine editor Michael Kinsley probably summed it up best in a widely-circulated blogpost this week, where he asked, "Is there any reason to oppose the mosque that isn't bigoted, or demagogic, or unconstitutional?"

Actually, responded some of the savvier conservatives, there is. It's not a question of law, but a matter of manners. Sure, they concede, the constitution says that Muslims have the right to build the mosque there. But should they? Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani came out against the mosque on Wednesday, saying it was simply "creating more division, more anger, more hatred." What it comes down to, he said, is a matter of "sensitivity." And so the conservative rallying cry has evolved into the following: "That we let them build the mosque says a lot about us. That they will build it says a lot about them."

The defining characteristic of Islamic fundamentalism is not its hostility to Christianity. Muslims are pretty convinced God is on their side, and they would easily win an even fight between competing religions. But when it comes to the fight between Islam and modernity, it's another story. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism over the course of the 20th century was driven largely by a growing fear of the secularism, individualism, and consumerism of the modern West.

They should be afraid. While conservatives like to describe liberal society as "soft," it is actually an incredibly strong and robust culture, one that can withstand and absorb almost any form of opposition or criticism, and come back even stronger than before. Just ask the radical left, which has spent the better part of the last 40 years trying to take down "the system," only to see their efforts repeatedly co-opted, commodified, and sold back to them at a premium.

But beyond that, what makes western civilization so powerful is precisely the fact that people here are free to think, say, and do just about anything. Centuries ago, Voltaire remarked about England that it was a nation "of many faiths but only one sauce." His point was that far from being a threat to the stability of society, diversity of opinion was actually its foundation. "If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of despotism," he wrote. "If there were only two they would cut each other's throats; but there are 30, and they live in peace."

It is hard not to conclude that the reason conservatives are so upset by the proposed mosque is that they don't have much faith in their own culture, and it is too bad they don't have Voltaire's confidence in liberalism. Imagine a society that could not just permit, but actually encourage Muslims to build a mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero. How fearsome would that be?

The Cordoba project has been repeatedly described as a 13-storey "raised middle finger" aimed at the relatives of the victims of 9/11. That is precisely the wrong way of thinking about it. If anything, it would be a raised middle finger aimed directly at America's most implacable enemies.

Andrew Potter is the author of The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves, published by McClelland & Stewart.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

SOURCE: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/monument+modernity/3420572/story.html

Park51 and the shame of American skittishness

Park51 and the shame of American skittishness

Aug 21st 2010, 15:41 by W.W. | IOWA CITY

HIGH-PROFILE conservatives contend that no one denies that the owners of the property at 51 Park Place in lower Manhattan have the legal right to build an Islamic community centre and mosque on their property. Rather, their argument is that a building devoted to Muslim purposes mere blocks from the site of the enormously deadly attacks on the World Trade Center—attacks motivated in part by a virulently radical strain of Islam—would be in exceedingly bad taste.

However, as this week's Economist/YouGov poll shows, slightly more than half of those identifying themselves as Republican do deny that Muslims have a constitutional right to build a mosque near the World Trade Center site, as do a quarter of those identifying themselves as a Democrat or Independent. Moreover, groups of Americans have been protesting the construction of mosques in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and Temecula, California, none of which are mere blocks from ground zero.

I think this adds up to fairly strong evidence that much of the opposition to the Park51 project flows from a general uneasiness about Islam, and that the argument that it is offensively provocative is to a significant extent cover for less noble sentiments. But why should Americans be uneasy about the growth of a religion that commands the allegiance of a tiny percentage of the population? Could it be that Americans, and conservatives especially, have grown sceptical of the capacity of American culture to accommodate even a little more religious pluralism?

Andrew Potter writes sensibly in the Ottawa Citizen:

It is hard not to conclude that the reason conservatives are so upset by the proposed mosque is that they don't have much faith in their own culture, and it is too bad they don't have Voltaire's confidence in liberalism. Imagine a society that could not just permit, but actually encourage Muslims to build a mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero. How fearsome would that be?

Mr Potter is right, I think, that the hubbub over the Park51 project has revealed the anxiety of an American public increasingly convinced that theirs is a culture too fragile for unfettered religious freedom. One would think that the proud denizens of the home of the brave would behave rather more bravely, and would not need Canadian columnists to tell them to grow spines.

source: http://economist.com/node/21009862

Real Americans, Please Stand Up

August 20, 2010, 9:00 pm
Real Americans, Please Stand Up
By DICK CAVETT
The Opinionator
The New York Times

All this talk about the mosque reminds me of two things I heard growing up in Nebraska.

I had a 6th grade teacher who referred to American Indians as “sneaky redskins” and our enemies in the Pacific as “dirty Japs.” This abated somewhat after I asked one day in class, “Mrs. G., do you think our parents would like to know that you teach race prejudice?” She faded three shades.

The rest of that year was difficult.

As a war kid, I also heard an uncle of mine endorse a sentiment attributed to our Admiral “Bull” Halsey: “If I met a pregnant Japanese woman, I’d kick her in the belly.”

These are not proud moments in my heritage. But now, I’m genuinely ashamed of us. How sad this whole mosque business is. It doesn’t take much, it seems, to lift the lid and let our home-grown racism and bigotry overflow. We have collectively taken a pratfall on a moral whoopee cushion.

Surely, few of the opponents of the Islamic cultural center would feel comfortable at the “International Burn a Koran Day” planned by a southern church-supported group (on a newscast, I think I might have even glimpsed a banner reading, “Bring the Whole Family,” but maybe I was hallucinating). This all must have gone over big on Al Jazeera news.

I like to think I’m not easily shocked, but here I am, seeing the emotions of the masses running like a freight train over the right to freedom of religion — never mind the right of eminent domain and private property.

A heyday is being had by a posse of the cheesiest Republican politicos (Lazio, Palin, quick-change artist John McCain and, of course, the self-anointed St. Joan of 9/11, R. Giuliani). Balanced, of course by plenty of cheesy Democrats. And of course Rush L. dependably pollutes the atmosphere with his particular brand of airborne sludge.

Sad to see Mr. Reid’s venerable knees buckle upon seeing the vilification heaped on Obama, and the resulting polls. (Not to suggest that this alone would cause the sudden 180-degree turn of a man of integrity facing re-election fears.)

I got invigorating jolts from the president’s splendid speech — almost as good as Mayor Bloomberg’s
— but I was dismayed, after the worst had poured out their passionate intensity, to see him shed a few vertebrae the next day and step back.

What other churches might be objectionable because of the horrific acts of some of its members? Maybe we shouldn’t have Christian churches in the South wherever the Ku Klux Klan operated because years ago proclaimed white Christians lynched blacks. How close to Hickam Field, at Pearl Harbor, should a Shinto shrine be allowed? I wonder how many of our young people — notorious, we are told, for their ignorance of American history — would be surprised that Japanese-Americans had lives and livelihoods destroyed when they were rounded up during World War II? Should all World War II service memorials, therefore, be moved away from the sites of these internment camps? Where does one draw the line?

I just can’t believe that so many are willing to ignore the simple fact that nearly all Muslims were adamantly opposed to the actions and events that took place on 9/11, and denounced them strongly, saying that the Islamic religion in no way condones it.

Our goal in at least one of our Middle East wars is to rebuild a government in our own image — with democracy for all. Instead, we are rebuilding ourselves in the image of those who detest us. I hate to see my country — and it’s a hell of a good one — endorse what we purport to hate, besmirching what distinguishes us from countries where persecution rules.

I’ve tried real hard to understand the objectors’ position. No one is untouched by what happened on 9/11. I don’t claim to be capable of imagining the anguish, grief and anger of the people who lost their friends and loved ones that day. It really does the heart good to see that so many of them have denounced the outcry against the project. A fact too little reported.

And it seems to have escaped wide notice that a goodly number of Muslims died at the towers that day. (I don’t mean the crazies in the planes.) What are their families to think of being told to beat it?

“Insulting to the dead” is a favorite phrase thrown about by opponents of the center. How about the insult to the dead American soldiers who fought at Iwo Jima and Normandy, defending American citizens abiding by the law on their own private property and exercising their freedom of religion?

Too bad that legions oppose this. A woman tells the news guy on the street, “I have absolutely no prejudice against the Muslim people. My cousin is married to one. I just don’t see why they have to be here.” A man complains that his opposition to the mosque is “painting me like I hate the whole Arab world.” (Perhaps he dislikes them all as individuals?)

I remain amazed and really, sincerely, want to understand this. What can it be that is faulty in so many people’s thought processes, their ethics, their education, their experience of life, their understanding of their country, their what-have-you that blinds them to the fact that you can’t simultaneously maintain that you have nothing against members of any religion but are willing to penalize members of this one? Can you help me with this?

Set aside for the moment that we are handing such a lethal propaganda grenade to our detractors around the world.

You can’t eat this particular cake and have it, too. The true calamity, of course, is that behavior of this kind allows the enemy to win.

Note: An earlier version of this article mentioned Dunkirk instead of Normandy; that has been corrected.

SOURCE: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/real-americans-please-stand-up/

When Is a Muslim Not a Muslim?

August 20, 2010, 6:38 pm
When Is a Muslim Not a Muslim?
By TOBIN HARSHAW
"The Opinionator"
The New York Times

The Thread is an in-depth look at how major news and controversies are being debated across the online spectrum.

Do you think Barack Obama is a Muslim? According to the Pew Center, many Americans do. According to Politico’s Josh Gerstein, Time magazine’s pollsters found that a majority of Republicans do. But here’s another question: How many of the Americans who say they think Barack Obama is a Muslim actually believe that he is one? That’s not as obtuse a query as it might appear, as some of the blogosphere’s better minds have argued in recent days.

But before we get to that far remove, let’s look at the raw poll data. The Pew survey, which was taken before the president’s seeming endorsement of the mosque near ground zero last Friday and subsequent backpedaling last weekend, found that “nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009. Fully 43% say they do not know what Obama’s religion is.”

Time’s poll dealt with Islam more broadly:

Twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly one-third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President — a slightly higher percentage than the 24% who mistakenly believe the current occupant of the Oval Office is himself a Muslim. In all, just 47% of respondents believe Obama is a Christian; 24% declined to respond to the question or said they were unsure, and 5% believe he is neither Christian nor Muslim.

The news led the whole gang at NBC News’s First Read to climb on the same high horse: “These results don’t many anyone look good — Obama’s political opponents (who have helped spread false information about the president’s religion and birthplace), the press (which obviously hasn’t done its job here, thanks to some outlets even serving as a megaphone by running false equivalency debates), and the American populace (which should be embarrassed).”
Polls show Americans increasingly question Obama’s religious faith. But is this really just the emergence of another political code word?

Taylor Marsh, however, doesn’t think the vast right-wing conspiracy needs any willing dupes in press:

The rise in the belief that Pres. Obama is a Muslim is due to a concerted effort from the right. Barack Obama and his team should have learned this lesson from the ’90s, but instead they were too busy running from that reality. It’s why conservatives have jumped on the Corboda House issue, and why the White House political team’s bungling of it is so deadly. Like health care last August, we’ve got another festering issue out there when the public’s mood is set on fume. Pamela Geller, Newt Gingrich 9/11 rally against the mosque planned for September is going to set the stage for an emotional engine that will drive November elections. Numbers on the economy make it worse, but the bonfire hasn’t begun to blaze.

Whether the Cordoba House is moved or not hardly matters at this point. The rallying cry on 9/11 this year will be the funnel through which the right’s fury will be lit for the midterms. There isn’t a similar fire on the Democratic Left, which is no one’s fault but Pres. Obama, who chose to listen to a team of triangulating, concession fetishists, who believed that courting conservatives was more important than listening to his base and movement progressives who know how to wage a fight.

Karoli at Crooks and Liars disagrees, and apparently feels that declaring this a non-issue will make it go away:

Because it’s “let’s be stupid because Congress is on recess and we like jumping over a cliff” month, the story actually gets some traction, because it was reported by the ever-vigilant Washington Post. That the question was polled at all lends legitimacy to it. That it was reported simply offers the cynical and the stupid cover to believe what is just simply not true, not relevant, and not an issue.

Alan Colmes takes the Dawkins-Hitchens approach: “It’s a sad commentary that it even has to be stated what faith the president observes, as if it should matter whether he follows Christianity, or any religion at all. What if he were a Muslim? What if he were an atheist? Why should that matter? And let’s not forget that some of the same critics who insist that Obama is a Muslim criticized him for going to a Christian church where prayed for 20 years, got married, and baptized his children.”

And for Paul Rosenberg at Open Left, it’s all the fault of you-know-who: “More than anything, what suggests to me is the severe danger that comes from lying to the American people. The Bush Administration did it all the time. Obama promised to clean things up. But he didn’t. He lied about that. He thought that if he just played nice, the Republicans would play nice, too. So there was no need to ‘look backward,’ and examine all the sordid, mean, and nasty–not to say lethal and illegal–things the GOP had done.”

Back to grasping reality, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza thinks the “don’t know” number might be the most worrisome one for the White House:

The political ramifications of the growing uncertainty regarding Obama’s religious affiliation are more difficult to ascertain. There is, without question, some significant level of partisanship inherent in questions about Obama’s faith; the less you like the President, the more likely you are to say he is a Muslim. And, in truth, that 18 percent who falsely identify the President with the Islamic faith would almost certainly never be voting for him anyway.

Perhaps more important from an electoral perspective, however, is the growing number of people who don’t know what religion the President identifies with. While most Americans don’t tend to vote based on religious faith — although being either a Muslim or a Mormon can, among certain demographic groups, complicate a politician’s electoral calculus — they do like to believe that their president is a man of faith.

The Atlantic’s Nicole Allan ponders a trickle-down effect:

If Obama himself were up for re-election in November, the fact that nearly one-fifth of Americans falsely believed he was Muslim, and that Americans in general don’t have the rosiest view of Muslims, might worry Democrats. But it’s unclear whether confusion about the president’s religious identity will trickle down to affect his party’s candidates in congressional and gubernatorial races.

Democrats are already worried about Obama’s plummeting approval and popularity ratings rubbing off on their party’s incumbents, who are facing fierce anti-Washington sentiment at home. The Muslim confusion may not intensify these worries, but it probably won’t soothe them either.

Curiously, Jason Kuznicki of the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, thinks the kerfuffle could actually help the Obama agenda:

Here’s where managed ignorance begins to destroy itself. I disagree with the president on a long, long list of policies and decisions — stimulus spending, health care, Citizens United, civil liberties, surveillance, his Supreme Court nominations… the list probably runs to pages if I think about it. He’s been bad in the areas where I knew he’d be bad, and he’s been even worse in the areas where I thought he might be halfway decent.

But every column-inch devoted to this idiot conspiracy theory forestalls meaningful debate by just that much. Which means we don’t get the political opposition we deserve, Obama’s policies don’t get the scrutiny they so desperately cry out for, and Obama becomes… all the more effective at doing just the things that I wish we could prevent.

On the right, Byron York of The Washington Examiner thinks the White House has itself to blame for not dealing with the issue more openly in the past:

The White House blames the situation on a “misinformation campaign” from Obama’s opponents. But Obama and his aides might also blame themselves for the way they’ve handled the Muslim issue over the years. The question did not come out of nowhere. As Obama said, his grandfather was a Muslim. His father was raised a Muslim before becoming, by Obama’s account, “a confirmed atheist.” Obama’s stepfather was a Muslim. His half-sister Maya told the New York Times that her “whole family was Muslim.”

Obama spent two years in a Muslim school in Indonesia and later, in a conversation with the Times’ Nicholas Kristof, described the Arabic call to prayer, the beginning of which he recited by heart, as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” Given all that, it is entirely accurate and fair to describe Obama as having Muslim roots.

Yet during the campaign his aides shouted down even a measured discussion of the topic, and Obama’s critics could face ostracism simply for uttering the candidate’s middle name…. Many people do not pay close attention to news reports. It’s entirely possible some of them blurred the distinction between “Muslim roots” and “Muslim,” especially since Obama in Cairo celebrated what his campaign had once downplayed. The public may be doing the same thing now, particularly after Obama chose a White House Ramadan iftar dinner to make a high-profile statement in support of the Ground Zero mosque

Hot Air’s Allahpundit thinks this is mostly a case of honest confusion:

As for why he’s so often accused of being Muslim, the default lefty explanation is of course racism but I think it’s more a combination of his middle name, his background growing up in Indonesia, and his attempt to win over Muslim public opinion with his Cairo speech last year. And all of that gets compounded by soundbites that are taken out of context or cleverly edited to make it sound like he’s making admissions about his “true faith.” Just last week a commenter e-mailed claiming that Obama had once told Stephanopoulos that he was a Muslim and I had to send him the link to this post from two years ago to set him right.

It’s all very lame and obnoxious, especially given the testimony from pastors that Obama takes his Christian faith seriously, but much like the Birther thing, there’s virtually nothing you can say to convince someone who’s sure that O is what he thinks he is.

The neo-neocon thinks the confusion stems from the larger haziness of the entire Obama narrative:

One might just as well say he’s a space alien and leave it at that. There is no other president about whom we’ve asked similar questions, because in some essential way we’ve known who they are/were. We didn’t and still don’t really know Obama, although we’re getting there, we’re getting there.

The relevance of the speculation about Obama’s true religious beliefs is that it is a subset of the speculation on his inner core and how that is expressed in his behavior as president. What are his true wishes for, and allegiance to, this country? His actions make a great many people doubt that he has the usual conventional dedication to its history and its best interests at heart, a speculation that—despite all the arguments about the wisdom of previous presidents, and disagreements with their policies—has not been seriously leveled at his predecessors.

It is leveled at Obama, however. And it’s sticking and growing because of a combination of three things about him that are unique in presidential history:

(1) His previous track record in public life was relatively short.
(2) He has kept many of the other salient facts of his life hidden, and the press has allowed him to do so.
(3) He campaigned as one thing and has governed as another—and this is not true just of a detail or two, but of his basic political stance, including how liberal or middle-of-the-road he is.

But the conservative commentator who got the left most riled was John Hinderaker of Power Line:

Obama postures as a citizen of the world who has graced America by condescending to be our President and to instruct us. Some liberals accept this posturing gratefully, but most Americans don’t. Obama has defined himself as literally exotic. Small wonder that some Americans attribute exotic qualities to him. We’re not sure who he is, exactly, but he certainly isn’t one of us. Given the currents that swirl through world events these days, being a Muslim is one interpretation of Obama’s exoticism. Those who construe Obama in this way may well be wrong, but it is not hard to understand why they interpret his aloof non-Americanism in this way.

“I think on some level, Hinderaker is right,” responds American Prospect’s Adam Serwer, who goes on to explain why Hinderaker is mostly wrong:

Some conservatives see Obama as being different from them, and they deploy “Muslim” as an epithet to express their suspicion and anger toward him. I’m sure part of it also has to do with conservative elites reinforcing or at least winking at the notion that Obama is being deceptive about his religious beliefs and that describing someone as a “Muslim” is some kind of an insult. As the Pew poll notes, “Beliefs about Obama’s religion are closely linked to political judgments about him. Those who say he is a Muslim overwhelmingly disapprove of his job performance, while a majority of those who think he is a Christian approve of the job Obama is doing.” In a less politically correct time they probably would have used a different word.

Slate’s David Weigel runs with that thought: “Maybe before the Great Mosque Freak-Out of 2010 this would have been more surprising, this idea that ‘Muslim’ is synonymous with ‘un-American’ or ‘anti-American.’ But for three weeks we’ve been asked to admire the resilience and bravery of the family members of 9/11 victims who believe that the existence of a Muslim worship center defiles the area near Ground Zero. It’s acceptable, respectable to argue that this religion, not just the radical perversions of it, is a threat to America. So it becomes a way of describing what’s wrong with Barack Obama.”

And Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen takes it to its conclusion:

In other words, we’ve come to a point in our discourse at which “Muslim” isn’t an adjective used to describe 1.5 billion people; it’s an adjective some Americans use as an insult. While some Democrats used to criticize George W. Bush with words like “idiot” and “liar,” Obama’s detractors now use “Muslim” in much the same way. And the more the president’s support falters, the more “Muslim” he appears in the eyes of his critics.

As a cultural matter, this is insane. As a political matter, there doesn’t appear to be much anyone can do to convince Americans that the president is not, in fact, a secret Muslim.

Doug Mataconis of Below the Beltway is hardly a liberal, but he’s no less disturbed than the preceding troika:

I disapprove of the President’s job performance and I don’t think that the President is Muslim, for example… But, for some group of Americans, quite obviously, opposing the President means that you believe every stupid conspiracy theory about him, like the 22% of Americans who believe that President Bush had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks but choose not to prevent them. There’s no rational reason for people think things like this, they just do.

That last explanation is disturbing on some level, though. If thinking badly of the President makes someone more likely to think he’s a Muslim, then the next logical conclusion is that people think there’s something bad about being a Muslim. Unfortunately, as another poll out today seems to indicate, that seems to be exactly what some Americans think … It is, quite honestly, easy to believe dark and conspiratorial things about a group of people when you don’t know anyone who belongs to that group.

His final point isn’t any less true for being familiar. What is new, however, is that you can tar the politician of your choice with those conspiracies even if you know he’s not literally a member of the group. So, I’ll ask it again: How many of the Americans who say they think Barack Obama is a Muslim actually believe that he is one? Kudos to anyone who can come up with an answer.

* Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

* NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

SOURCE: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/when-is-a-muslim-not-a-muslim/

An inconvenient Constitution

An inconvenient Constitution

By Daniel Ruth, Times correspondent
In Print: Tuesday, August 17, 2010
St. Petersburg Times

We sure do love our cherished freedoms, our beloved rights, our rock-ribbed values — unless, of course, we actually have to defend them.

And so even though it was a fairly fleeting comment, once again Gov. Charlie Crist offered up a compelling example of just how liberating it can be to shed the ideological strictures that come with being associated with the elitist junta of jodhpurs controlling the Republican Party these days.

The newly minted independent candidate for U.S. Senate said he agreed with President Barack Obama's view that building a mosque near the 9/11 ground zero site in New York was perfectly appropriate and in keeping with fundamental American principles protecting religious expression.

Crist could have taken the easy route and joined the chorus of political bloviating phonies decrying the very idea that a mosque might be built within blocks of ground zero. Many others, including Democrats such as U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Greene and gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, jumped on the demagoguery bandwagon to oppose the notion of people practicing a faith so near the site of the worst act of terrorism in U.S. history. And nobody exploited the situation as brazenly as Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott with his overheated rhetoric and quickie ad.

Instead, Crist sided not so much with Obama but with the U.S. Constitution, that oftentimes awkward, inconvenient, troublesome document that protects stuff like the rights of the people to pray, to speak, to assemble, to petition their government.

"I know there are sensitivities and I understand them," Crist said, adding however, "This is a place where you're supposed to be able to practice your religion without the government telling you you can't."

Now this may not have qualified as a profile in courage, but it certainly represents a declaration of political independence for Crist in taking an unpopular stand in the middle of a contentious campaign environment.

Does anyone seriously doubt had the mosque kerfuffle arisen six months ago, when Crist was still a Republican, that the governor in the midst of a nasty primary fight with former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio would have felt compelled to oppose Obama out of fear of flummoxing the checkbook of foie gras in command of the GOP?

Instead, Crist was free to — how revolutionary — do the proper thing in siding with the right of American citizens to worship.

It is always worth noting that the Constitution exists not to protect your right to stand on a street corner praising motherhood, apple pie and the flag but to protect unpopular, sometimes offensive and most certainly insensitive expressions, opinions and beliefs.

And it could certainly be argued the flap over the mosque has more to do with Islamaphobia than the more specific notion of building a mosque within blocks of ground zero. Indulge an idle question. Had the 9/11 attacks, resulting the murders of 3,000 innocent victims (including Muslims), been perpetrated by a gang of deranged Methodists, would there still be the same cacophony of faux outrage over plans to build a Methodist church within blocks of the World Trade Center site?

It is more than fair to regard that hole in the ground in lower Manhattan as "hallowed ground." It is indeed a memorial to incredible loss of life and the unbounded courage of the first responders who paid the ultimate price that horrific day.

But the same people who are so discombobulated over the idea Muslims might worship steps from ground zero seem blithely indifferent to the presence of strip clubs, lingerie modeling shops and off-track betting parlors which populate the area within the same distance of the proposed mosque near this "hallowed ground."

You want offensive? I have visited ground zero on many occasions and I have always been struck — and offended — by the sleazy street vendors hawking 9/11 "souvenirs" — everything from 9/11 key chains, to 9/11 snow globes, to 9/11 geegaws picturing Osama bin Laden. How offensive is the notion that the murder of 3,000 people has become a business opportunity for a bunch of tawdry vultures? And not a peep of protest. But at least they aren't praying to Allah.

We don't do "hallowed ground" very well in this country.

Offensive? Graves have been desecrated in Arlington National Cemetery. There is an effort to build casinos on the edge of the Gettysburg Battlefield. Our national parks system has been allowed to deteriorate. And since 9/11, reconstruction of the "hallowed ground" location has been bogged down by petty interests.

It took nine years to build the Acropolis in Athens — in 438 B.C. And yet nine years after 9/11 the World Trade Center site is still mostly an open gap in the Manhattan landscape.

In the short term, it might be argued a faith that has an estimated 1.5 billion adherents is under attack for purely craven political gain. But the real victim here is the very Constitution all these pandering pols are supposed to be defending.

How offensive is that?

[Last modified: Aug 16, 2010 06:50 PM]

Copyright 2010 St. Petersburg Times

SOURCE: http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/an-inconvenient-constitution/1115578

Islam in Two Americas

August 15, 2010
Islam in Two Americas
By ROSS DOUTHAT
The New York Times

There’s an America where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run. An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims.

But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.

These two understandings of America, one constitutional and one cultural, have been in tension throughout our history. And they’re in tension again this summer, in the controversy over the Islamic mosque and cultural center scheduled to go up two blocks from ground zero.

The first America, not surprisingly, views the project as the consummate expression of our nation’s high ideals. “This is America,” President Obama intoned last week, “and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.” The construction of the mosque, Mayor Michael Bloomberg told New Yorkers, is as important a test of the principle of religious freedom “as we may see in our lifetimes.”

The second America begs to differ. It sees the project as an affront to the memory of 9/11, and a sign of disrespect for the values of a country where Islam has only recently become part of the public consciousness. And beneath these concerns lurks the darker suspicion that Islam in any form may be incompatible with the American way of life.

This is typical of how these debates usually play out. The first America tends to make the finer-sounding speeches, and the second America often strikes cruder, more xenophobic notes. The first America welcomed the poor, the tired, the huddled masses; the second America demanded that they change their names and drop their native languages, and often threw up hurdles to stop them coming altogether. The first America celebrated religious liberty; the second America persecuted Mormons and discriminated against Catholics.

But both understandings of this country have real wisdom to offer, and both have been necessary to the American experiment’s success. During the great waves of 19th-century immigration, the insistence that new arrivals adapt to Anglo-Saxon culture — and the threat of discrimination if they didn’t — was crucial to their swift assimilation. The post-1920s immigration restrictions were draconian in many ways, but they created time for persistent ethnic divisions to melt into a general unhyphenated Americanism.

The same was true in religion. The steady pressure to conform to American norms, exerted through fair means and foul, eventually persuaded the Mormons to abandon polygamy, smoothing their assimilation into the American mainstream. Nativist concerns about Catholicism’s illiberal tendencies inspired American Catholics to prod their church toward a recognition of the virtues of democracy, making it possible for generations of immigrants to feel unambiguously Catholic and American.

So it is today with Islam. The first America is correct to insist on Muslims’ absolute right to build and worship where they wish. But the second America is right to press for something more from Muslim Americans — particularly from figures like Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the mosque — than simple protestations of good faith.

Too often, American Muslim institutions have turned out to be entangled with ideas and groups that most Americans rightly consider beyond the pale. Too often, American Muslim leaders strike ambiguous notes when asked to disassociate themselves completely from illiberal causes.

By global standards, Rauf may be the model of a “moderate Muslim.” But global standards and American standards are different. For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, they’ll need leaders who don’t describe America as “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 (as Rauf did shortly after the 2001 attacks), or duck questions about whether groups like Hamas count as terrorist organizations (as Rauf did in a radio interview in June). And they’ll need leaders whose antennas are sensitive enough to recognize that the quest for inter-religious dialogue is ill served by throwing up a high-profile mosque two blocks from the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam.

They’ll need leaders, in other words, who understand that while the ideals of the first America protect the e pluribus, it’s the demands the second America makes of new arrivals that help create the unum.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16douthat.html

Islam Is Ground Zero

SLATE
Islam Is Ground Zero
Why we should build the proposed Islamic center in Lower Manhattan.
By William Saletan
Posted Monday, Aug. 16, 2010, at 8:28 AM ET

Are we at war with Islam?

That's the central question now in the debate over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. On Friday, President Obama entered the debate, defending the right of Muslim-Americans to worship where they choose. He was then chastised by Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and other Republican leaders. Yes, they conceded, the project's sponsors can legally build it at the planned site, two blocks from Ground Zero. But that isn't the issue. The issue, they argue, is propriety. As Palin puts it: "We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they?"

Confronted by that question on Saturday, Obama ducked it. "I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there," he said. "I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have."

So let's answer the question. Should the planners of the Islamic center move it somewhere else? Consider the arguments for doing so.

1. The project is a statement of Islamic conquest. This is Gingrich's position. "The ground zero mosque is a political statement of radical islamist triumph," he tweeted Friday in response to Obama's speech. Debra Burlingame, the co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America, issued a similar statement: "Building a 15-story mosque at Ground Zero is a deliberately provocative act."

These are flat-out lies. The project isn't a "15-story mosque." It's a community center with a library, gym, auditorium, and restaurant. Yes, it will include a mosque. It will also host events to facilitate "multifaith dialogue." It isn't at Ground Zero—it's two blocks away, in what used to be a Burlington Coat Factory.

Deliberately provocative? Radical triumph? Hogwash. Go watch Faisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the project, as he outlines the project to a local community board: "It will establish this community as the place where the moderate Muslim voice condemns terrorism and works for new, peaceful, and harmonious relationships with all New Yorkers." Or listen to Daisy Khan, the imam's wife and executive director, as she explains to radio host Brian Lehrer why they're planning to build the project near Ground Zero:

Imam Faisal has been leading a congregation for the last 27 years in Tribeca, really only 10 blocks from Ground Zero. … We, the members of the Muslim community, want to be part of the rebuilding process. And we feel a special obligation. And it's also our way of giving back to this great city that has given us so much. So we're coming at it from the point of view of wanting to contribute to our society and to take that tragedy of 9/11 and turn it into something very peaceful and hopeful for all of us.

2. Any mosque near Ground Zero is offensive. Responding yesterday to Obama's speech, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said, "[I]t's unwise … to build a mosque at the site where 3,000 Americans lost their lives as a result of a terrorist attack."

I'm sorry, Senator: Did you say it's unwise to build a mosque near the site of a terrorist attack?

Others have put the equation more subtly. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., says, "It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero." Marco Rubio, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Florida, says, "It is divisive and disrespectful to build a mosque next to the site where 3,000 innocent people were murdered at the hands of Islamic extremism." All these objections rest on the premise that the 9/11 hijackers, by committing mass murder in the name of Islam, made Islam a religion of mass murder. To accept this equation is to give them the power to define the religion of 1 billion people. That—not the rise of pro-American Islamic pluralism—is the conquest the masterminds of 9/11 sought. Don't let them have it.

3. Ground Zero is sacred. Palin, rebutting Obama, asks why the project's sponsors are "so set on building a mosque steps from what you have described, in agreement with me, as 'hallowed ground.' " Her question assumes that the presence of a mosque would defile the sanctity of the site. In other words, unlike Obama, she believes in the kind of sanctity that excludes Islam. That's exactly the kind of sectarian thinking al-Qaida wants to attribute to the United States and cultivate among Muslims.

4. By persisting in the face of opposition, the project's sponsors prove their hostility. King says the project's planners are "abusing" their rights by "needlessly offending" the 9/11 families. Burlingame says, "No one who has lived this history and felt the sting of our country's loss that day can truly believe that putting our families through more wrenching heartache can be an act of peace." Palin asks: "If those who wish to build this Ground Zero mosque are sincerely interested in encouraging positive 'cross-cultural engagement' and dialogue to show a moderate and tolerant face of Islam, then why haven't they recognized that the decision to build a mosque at this particular location is doing just the opposite?"

Note the sleight of hand. First, opponents stirred up discomfort about the project by claiming that its sponsors were radicals and that any mosque near Ground Zero was inherently inappropriate. These claims, as explained above, are false. But that no longer matters. What matters is that people now feel discomfort about the project, and for that reason alone, it should be relocated. The same argument could be made against anything that upsets a local majority: same-sex marriage, Jews in restricted neighborhoods, Christians in Mecca, blacks sitting in the front of the bus. If you can't justify your discomfort, it merits no respect.

5. Terrorists will see the mosque as a triumph. This objection, a Gingrich favorite, has now been taken up by Burlingame. She says of the mosque:

Those who continue to target and kill American civilians and U.S. troops will see it as a symbol of their historic progress at the site of their most bloody victory. Demolishing a building that was damaged by wreckage from one of the hijacked planes in order to build a mosque and Islamic Center will further energize those who regard it as a ratification of their violent and divinely ordered mission: the spread of shariah law. …

This is another derivative and dangerous argument. On this view, the nature of the Islamic center and the motives of its sponsors don't matter. Nor do the perceptions of ordinary Muslims around the world. What matters is al-Qaida's perception. If al-Qaida thinks it's a statement of conquest, we should oppose it. In this way, we make ourselves al-Qaida's slaves.

In short, the arguments against building the project at its planned site are wrong, fallacious, and self-destructive. Obama made the essential point in his speech on Friday:

Let us also remember who we're fighting against, and what we're fighting for. Our enemies respect no religious freedom. Al-Qaida's cause is not Islam—it's a gross distortion of Islam. These are not religious leaders—they're terrorists who murder innocent men and women and children. In fact, al-Qaida has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion—and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

That's what we must never forget about 9/11. This was never a war between us and the Muslim world. It's a war between us and al-Qaida. The central battleground in this war isn't Iraq, Afghanistan, or Lower Manhattan. It's Islam. That's the ground al-Qaida is fighting for. It's the ground Imam Rauf wants to take back. He wants to build an Islam that loves America, embraces freedom, and preaches coexistence. Let's help him.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2264046/