Tiny Upstate New York Town Wants Local Muslims to Dig Up Their Cemetery

by Andrew Reinbach
Journalist
Posted: September 27, 2010 12:10 AM
Huffington Post

A town in upstate New York is trying to force a local Muslim religious community to dig up a small cemetery on its property and never bury anyone there again because it says it's illegal.

"What we would not want is an unauthorized cemetery," says Bob McCarthy, town supervisor of the Delaware County town of Sidney, population 5,993. "We're taking care of a bunch of cemeteries, and they just came in and buried the bodies, and didn't go through...there's no funding there, it's not a standard kind of deal, and it's going to become a liability to the town."

So what steps have the Muslims skipped? "I don't know what the exact law is," he says.

Which is the problem; because whether or not the town government likes it, there are no laws in Sidney -- or New York state, for that matter -- covering cemeteries on private land -- religious cemeteries included. Plus, the town approved the cemetery in 2005.

In any event, the cemetery, in the tiny hamlet of Sidney Center, was never a secret -- and couldn't have been: When the first body arrived in November, 2009, it had a 3-car escort from the Passaic, New Jersey, Police Department, which necessarily told local authorities it was arriving.

And there's certainly nothing illegal about it as far as the State Troopers are concerned. "We looked into the cemetery and it was determined what they were doing is lawful," says Captain James Barnes of the New York State Police, Troop "C," based in Sidney.

This apparently isn't stopping the town board. Town attorney Joseph Ermeti wouldn't speak with us, but two other town officers indicated that in the absence of specific laws forbidding the cemetery, the town may try for a court order to force the Muslims to dig up the graves, based on a New York law against cemeteries on mortgaged land -- a technicality that covers the Muslim site, sitting in a hillside glade no larger than a Manhattan studio apartment.

Shaykh Abdul Kerim al-Kibrisi, leader of the Sufi group -- called Osmanlı Nakş-ı'bendi Hakkani Dergahı -- says he just discovered the problem himself, and is correcting it -- his options being to either subdivide the property to exclude the cemetery, or to pay off the mortgage, which is under $200,000.

In any event, whether a lawyer could convince a court that a 650-square foot cemetery on mortgaged property so offends the dignity of the law that it merits digging up bodies is the sort of fine distinction only lawyer could love. Likewise, there's the question of whether taking such a course is wise, since the town's actions could attract all sorts of unwelcome attention -- and possible civil rights lawsuits.

"Islamophobia is something we're definitely aware of," says James Mulvany, Deputy Commissioner of the New York Division of Human Rights.

Some interested parties are certainly looking at the religious bias angle -- in part because the board took its first official steps in July, just as the so-called "Terror Mosque" controversy was making headlines.

"It's like Sherlock Holmes used to say," says Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has attracted its own Islamophobes. "When everything that's untrue is disproved, what's left must be true, and this is obviously bias."

Feelings in Sidney about the cemetery are certainly strong. Asking a sampling of people in Sidney drew responses ranging from a deer-in-the-headlights stare followed by categorically denying knowing anything about it, to a strong stare and a curt, "mind your own business."

In fairness to both the town and Sidney Center -- population 1,391, area 44 square miles -- the Shaykh, in his flowing robes, long beard and turban, must cut quite a figure to deeply traditional, rural Americans.

And the fears that fasten on him and his followers aren't helped by the fact that in the past year or so, Muslims have been buying property near the center, spurring speculation that the ultimate plan is to create a town-within-a-town, governed by Sharia law.

"I understand [those fears], but that's not our intention," says the Shaykh, who says no more than a half-dozen Muslims have bought property nearby. "They just want to participate [in the center], get away from the city, and live a clean life."

And in fact that's exactly why the Shaykh and his 30-some followers moved to the 50-acre sheep farm in Sidney Center in 2002, his basic teachings being that since the world is what it is, people who want to live a spiritual life need to live apart from it -- not unlike Hasidic Jews or Amish people.

But that hope hasn't stopped what the community considers harassment. Hans Hass, a spokesman for the group and member of the local EMS team, says that while most relations with their neighbors are civil, some trucks do blare their horns and throw rocks at the little farmhouse on Wheat Hill Road.

Then, he says, there have been the "dozens" of visits by various police departments since 2002 -- including one in 2003, made by the FBI on a Muslim holy day -- the Eid-ul Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan.

That visit, says Capt. Barnes, was triggered by a report that a man wanted for murder was seen on the property. Hass says it was because of reports of "people with turbans." Captain Barnes says his men have made "only about a half-dozen" official visits to the center, although he concedes there may have been more, unofficial visits from members of his Troop as well as Delaware County and Sidney police.

At the end of the day, the entire hoo-hah may be the result of third parties using the town as a cat's paw to attack the Shaykh and his followers. An email from one Salih Kalfaoglu and made available to me accuses the center of being a fraudulent, for-profit venture (an email to the address on the email requesting comment wasn't returned).

Another email, from McCarthy to a third party, discussed telephone calls from someone claiming Tea Party affiliation who "...wanted to know how he could help with 'the Muslims.'" In that email, McCarthy says "all outward signs...indicate this is a for profit venture and should not receive any of the benefits afforded to a religion."

None of this, says Hass, who was born in Maine, is what the Shaykh and his followers want. "We hope to put down our roots and live here as Americans."

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-reinbach/tiny-upstate-new-york-tow_b_739832.html

Disney, Muslim worker agree on scarf substitute

Monday, Sep 27, 2010 17:51 ET

Disney, Muslim worker agree on scarf substitute
The park will allow a specially designed headscarf after initially objecting to her religious head covering

By Associated Press

*

Disney is allowing a Muslim employee at its Southern California park to wear a specially designed headscarf after initially objecting to her religious head covering.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Monday that 22-year-old Noor Abdallah was told she couldn't wear the hijab while working as a vacation planner at a Disneyland Resort Esplanade ticket booth. She declined to take another job away from the public.

Disneyland spokeswoman Suzi Brown says the park worked with Abdallah to design a covering to match her costume and meet her religious needs. She's been wearing a blue scarf topped with a beret since early this month.

Brown says the case is separate from that of another Muslim Disney worker who refused to accept a costume headpiece and filed a federal discrimination complaint.

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/disney/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/09/27/disney_muslim_worker

Muslims' acceptance in U.S. society

Muslims'
acceptance in U.S.
society still an
issue, notes the
outgoing Islamic
Society of North
America leader

The Indianapolis Star
Sunday, 26 September 2010

Ingrid Mattson made history four years ago
by being elected the first female president
of the Plainfield-based Islamic Society of
North America.

But her groundbreaking didn't stop there.

Mattson and other Islamic Society leaders
forged new partnerships with major
national Jewish and Christian organizations.
And her prominence in interfaith circles
landed her a role with other faith leaders in
the inaugural festivities of President Barack
Obama.

Yet the achievements of Mattson's tenure
as the organization's president, which
comes to an end this weekend, have been
tempered somewhat by the realities of life
right now for American Muslims -- many of
whom feel less secure than at any time
since shortly after the 9/11 terrorist
attacks.

During the recently completed Muslim holy
month of Ramadan, loud objections were
raised to a plan to build an Islamic center
in New York City because it was within a
few blocks of Ground Zero. A Florida
pastor threatened to burn Islam's holy
book. And Newt Gingrich, the former
House speaker and a potential presidential
candidate, made an analogy between the
New York mosque planners and Nazis who
would plant their insignia near a Holocaust
museum.

"There were a few days during that month,"
Mattson said, "where I felt that I am coming
to the end of nine years of constant service
(including five as the society's vice
president) and, 'This is where we are now?'
"

Mattson has said her tenure as president
has been, in many ways, one crisis after
another -- from responding to a new wave
of anti-Muslim commentary to responding
to attacks by Muslim extremists, such as
her denunciation of the murder of Christian
civilian aid workers by Taliban fighters in
Afghanistan as against the "foundation of
Islam."

"I think the biggest challenge," she said,
"was not to simply be reactionary."

Mattson, 47, is leaving as president
because of the society's two-term limit, but
she will remain on its executive council. Her
successor hasn't officially been named. The
current vice president, All Dulles Area
Muslim Society imam Mohamed Magid, was
the only nominee on a presidential ballot
that also had room for write-ins. His
confirmation as the new president was
expected today.

As a white, Canadian-born, Catholic
convert to Islam, Mattson put a new face on
the leadership of an organization
previously led by immigrants from Africa
and Asia.

Arsalan Iftikhar, media commentator and
founder of TheMuslimGuy.com, further
noted the importance of gender.

"Whenever you have a historical or political
'first' of this kind within a community,"
Iftikhar said, "it tends to chip away at some
of the gender stereotypes and glass
ceilings that occur within society and allows
our little girls to keep dreaming that they
can be whatever they want to be when they
grow up."

Mattson said she was well-received at
mosques and Islamic societies around the
country, even at places that still have
progress to make in expanding the role of w
omen. But the ongoing struggle for
acceptance of Muslims within the broader
American society has been a bigger
concern.

Mattson said there are some key factors
making that difficult:

President Obama. Not the president
himself, she said, but Obama's political
adversaries who are determined to oppose
him at every turn -- including his attempts
to improve relations with the Muslim world
and to note the contributions of Muslim
Americans.

Obama mentioned Muslims in his inaugural
address and made a major speech in Cairo
promoting American-Muslim relations.

"Now," Mattson said, "opposition to Obama
takes the form also of opposition to e
verything he says about Islam and
Muslims."

Noise from the blogosphere and
elsewhere. Mattson said the many anti-
Muslim blogs, books and authors have
been using the actions of Muslim extremists
to promote their political, religious and
ideological agendas. Years of such noise
are having an effect, she said, "that is just
cumulative."

Nine years of war in Muslim countries. The
enemies in the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq -- the ones killing American troops
and committing acts of terrorism -- have
been Muslims. The drumbeat of the news
and commentary has been a daily
reminder of those facts. What is lost in all
that, Mattson said, is that "many Americans
have forgotten that the ally was Muslim."

What former Secretary of State Colin Powell
described in a GQ interview as the "terror
industrial complex." As Powell put it,
billions of dollars are being spent on
homeland security, and an array of
companies have arisen whose success
depends on keeping the threats of
terrorism pumped up.

"There's a lot of money in it. There are a lot
of people making careers out of it. It is now
institutionalized," Mattson said. "They have
to really keep fear alive to keep selling
their product."

Despite the difficulties, Mattson said she is
optimistic about the future of Muslims in
America because of the fundamental
quality of generosity and fairness in
ordinary Americans.
"If they have access to the right
information," she said, "they are going to
be fair."

SOURCE: http://www.indystar.com/fdcp/?1285564082626

Texas ed board adopts resolution limiting Islam

Texas ed board adopts resolution limiting Islam

By APRIL CASTRO
24 September 2010

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas State Board of Education adopted a resolution Friday that seeks to curtail references to Islam in Texas textbooks, as social conservative board members warned of what they describe as a creeping Middle Eastern influence in the nation's publishing industry.

The board approved the one-page nonbinding resolution, which urges textbook publishers to limit what they print about Islam in world history books, by a 7-5 vote.

Critics say it's another example of the ideological board trying to politicize public education in the Lone Star State. Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for religious freedom, questioned why the resolution came at a time when "anti-Muslim rhetoric in this country has reached fever pitch."

"It's hard not to conclude that the misleading claims in this resolution are either based on ignorance of what's in the textbooks or, on the other hand, are an example of fear-mongering and playing politics," Miller said.

Future boards that will choose the state's next generation of social studies texts will not be bound by the resolution.

"This is an expression of the board's opinion, so it does not have an affect on any particular textbook," said David Anderson, the general counsel for the Texas Education Agency, when asked by a board member what legal weight the resolution would carry.

"So this is a cosmetic exercise?" asked board member Mavis Knight, a Democrat from Dallas.

The resolution cites world history books no longer used in Texas schools that it says devoted more lines of text to Islamic beliefs and practices than Christian ones. Chairwoman Gail Lowe said the resolution cites old books because board rules prohibit them from discussing current books more than 90 days after their adoption.

"I believe that it's happening in the current (social studies books) even though we can't cover that in the resolution," said board member Terri Leo, a Republican from Spring. The resolution sends a "clear message to publishers that it should not happen in the future."

The resolution also claims "more such discriminatory treatment of religion may occur as Middle Easterners buy into the U.S. public school textbook oligopoly, as they are doing now."

Two Republicans broke from their party to vote with the Democrats. Two Democrats — Mary Helen Berlanga of Corpus Christi and Rene Nunez of El Paso — were absent for the vote. The initial vote on the resolution was 7-6, but the board later reconsidered the measure. The second vote was 7-5 after a Democratic board member left the meeting.

The measure was suggested to the board this summer by Odessa businessman Randy Rives, who lost his Republican primary bid for a seat on the panel earlier this year. Members of a social conservative bloc of the board then asked Lowe to put the resolution on this week's agenda.

During public testimony, which included comments from activists as well as a handful of parents, Jonathan Saenz, a lobbyist for the conservative Liberty Institute, argued that the board was "doing the right thing ... to prevent any type of religious discrimination or treat any religion in a way that's incomplete."

Several times during the testimony, Lowe intervened, attempting to calm flaring tempers.

"The Board's mission, and Texas' future, is ill-served when the board chooses to use its limited meeting time to discuss and vote on discriminatory and politically motivated measures, such as this proposed resolution," said Frank Knaack, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

The resolution concludes by warning publishers the "State Board of Education will look to reject future prejudicial social studies submissions that continue to offend Texas law with respect to treatment of the world's major religious groups by significant inequalities of coverage space-wise and by demonizing or lionizing one or more of them over others."

Social conservatives control the 15-member board for now, although the landscape is set to change after one member of the bloc lost his primary election bid and another chose not to seek re-election. The board in recent years has become a battleground for social conservatives and liberal watchdogs, each accusing the other of imposing ideological agendas into what about 4.8 million public school students learn in Texas classrooms.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

SOURCE: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j4sqVK4MHDBAtdbpIojupT4bJD_AD9IEGUT82

Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry

September 18, 2010
Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times

Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.

That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.

I’m inspired by another journalistic apology. The Portland Press Herald in Maine published an innocuous front-page article and photo a week ago about 3,000 local Muslims praying together to mark the end of Ramadan. Readers were upset, because publication coincided with the ninth anniversary of 9/11, and they deluged the paper with protests.

So the newspaper published a groveling front-page apology for being too respectful of Muslims. “We sincerely apologize,” wrote the editor and publisher, Richard Connor, and he added: “we erred by at least not offering balance to the story and its prominent position on the front page.” As a blog by James Poniewozik of Time paraphrased it: “Sorry for Portraying Muslims as Human.”

I called Mr. Connor, and he seems like a nice guy. Surely his front page isn’t reserved for stories about Bad Muslims, with articles about Good Muslims going inside. Must coverage of law-abiding Muslims be “balanced” by a discussion of Muslim terrorists?

Ah, balance — who can be against that? But should reporting of Pope Benedict’s trip to Britain be “balanced” by a discussion of Catholic terrorists in Ireland? And what about journalism itself?

I interrupt this discussion of peaceful journalism in Maine to provide some “balance.” Journalists can also be terrorists, murderers and rapists. For example, radio journalists in Rwanda promoted genocide.

I apologize to Muslims for another reason. This isn’t about them, but about us. I want to defend Muslims from intolerance, but I also want to defend America against extremists engineering a spasm of religious hatred.

Granted, the reason for the nastiness isn’t hard to understand. Extremist Muslims have led to fear and repugnance toward Islam as a whole. Threats by Muslim crazies just in the last few days forced a Seattle cartoonist, Molly Norris, to go into hiding after she drew a cartoon about Muhammad that went viral.

And then there’s 9/11. When I recently compared today’s prejudice toward Muslims to the historical bigotry toward Catholics, Mormons, Jews and Asian-Americans, many readers protested that it was a false parallel. As one, Carla, put it on my blog: “Catholics and Jews did not come here and kill thousands of people.”

That’s true, but Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor and in the end killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda ever did. Consumed by our fears, we lumped together anyone of Japanese ancestry and rounded them up in internment camps. The threat was real, but so were the hysteria and the overreaction.

Radicals tend to empower radicals, creating a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and anger. Many Americans believe that Osama bin Laden is representative of Muslims, and many Afghans believe that the Rev. Terry Jones (who talked about burning Korans) is representative of Christians.

Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about “Muslims” as an undifferentiated mass.

In my travels, I’ve seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God’s bidding.

But I’ve also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.

I’m sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/opinion/19kristof.html

Two Men Behind Islamic Center Have Their Differences

September 16, 2010
Two Men Behind Islamic Center Have Their Differences
By ANNE BARNARD

The two men behind the proposed Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero are from different generations and distinct backgrounds — the imam, 61, grew up in England and Malaysia and immigrated to New York as a teenager; the real estate developer, 37, spent his early childhood in Brooklyn, then attended American schools overseas.

The imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is cerebral, soft-spoken, sometimes otherworldly. The developer, Sharif el-Gamal, is businesslike, brash and sometimes pugnacious.

Each has his own public relations firm and behind-the-scenes advisers. They have individual — not always identical — visions for the project, which they occasionally call by different names: the imam still speaks of it as Cordoba House, a name laden with religious history, while the developer uses the less charged Park51. And amid the swirling controversy about their shared mission, they sometimes give different answers to thorny questions.

When asked why they resist moving the center to defuse critics who call its location near ground zero insensitive, for example, Mr. Abdul Rauf said that a move would anger Muslims overseas and endanger American troops. Mr. Gamal, though, has always based his adamant stance on a Constitutional right to build what he wants, where he wants, declaring: “I’m an American, I’m a New Yorker. I don’t hold my faith responsible for 9/11.”

While some differences are only natural — an imam focused on religious activities planned for the center and a developer more likely to talk up the swimming pool — and could be complementary, they have sometimes undermined efforts to build support. Their loose coordination has caused public misunderstandings — sometimes dramatic ones, as when it was briefly believed that the imam had agreed to move the center in return for a fringe Florida pastor’s promise not to burn the Koran. And even some supporters say the two men’s differing priorities are making it harder, or at least more time consuming, to quell the controversy.

“They’re very different individuals and they have different interests in the project,” said Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1, a largely advisory body that evaluates neighborhood projects and voted in favor of this one.

Sometimes, she said, “It seems that they’re on two separate pages.”

The two men met around 2006, when Mr. Gamal, who works downtown, began visiting Masjid al-Farah, the mosque in TriBeCa where Mr. Abdul Rauf has presided since the 1980s. Both came to Sufi Islam as adults, and they have a strong personal bond: Mr. Gamal said that hearing the imam’s Friday sermon for the first time was “a dose of spirituality I hadn’t had in the longest time.”

Soon after, he asked the imam to officiate at his wedding, and they began dreaming up the community center, out of a shared concern about overcrowding at two existing mosques in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Gamal describes himself as the man in charge of the planned center, 120,000 square feet in size, and the sole arbiter of its location; his real estate company owns and leases the properties where it is to be built, 45-51 Park Place.

Mr. Abdul Rauf describes himself as the center’s visionary; he tried to initiate a similar project in the 1990s but failed to raise the cash.

Both agree that the imam will run the mosque and its interfaith programs — though they are still working out what those programs should look like.

Further complicating the situation is the role of Daisy Khan, the imam’s wife, a chatty, sophisticated former interior designer with a public profile that complements but does not mirror her husband’s.

It was Ms. Khan who took a phone call last week from a Florida imam trying to dissuade the fringe pastor Terry Jones from burning the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11, agreeing that “we” — it was never clear who — would meet with the pastor, who promptly declared on television that the imam had agreed to move the center.

In the initial confusion, not even Mr. Gamal was sure it wasn’t true.

Ms. Khan, whose American Society for Muslim Advancement shares an office with her husband’s Cordoba Initiative near Columbia University, has often been involved in public relations about the project, particularly when Mr. Abdul Rauf was out of the country in August on a State Department trip to the Middle East. The couple shares a professional collaboration not unlike the one in the Clinton White House. But Mr. Gamal has recently let it be known that Ms. Khan has no official role in Park51.

The most recent disconnect has come over a compromise being suggested, in which the community center would add worship space for Christians, Jews and others. Mr. Gamal at first appeared cool to the idea, while Mr. Abdul Rauf was quick to publicly embrace it, according to Ms. Menin, a supporter of the project who has suggested that such a move could attract a wider base of donors and support.

Ms. Menin said that Mr. Gamal told her that existing plans for programs to bring together different religions were enough. The imam, who wrote in an Op-Ed essay in The New York Times on Sept. 7 that the center would include worship space for all faiths, seems more eager to compromise and “build more consensus,” Ms. Menin said.

On Wednesday, Mr. Gamal’s spokesman, Larry Kopp, said that Mr. Gamal had decided to include an ecumenical worship space, as long as it did not reduce the space available to Muslims, and that details would take time to work out.

On the larger question of the project’s proximity to the World Trade Center site, Kurt Tolksdorf, one of Mr. Abdul Rauf’s closest friends from college, said in a recent interview that he “would not be surprised” if the imam consented to changing the location, if only because the conflict was exhausting and saddening him. “He can oppose intolerance without building the mosque at that particular spot,” Mr. Tolksdorf said.

Mr. Gamal, meanwhile, has told supporters he feels more determined the shriller the opposition becomes.

Mr. Abdul Rauf, Mr. Gamal and others have insisted in interviews that they have no substantive disagreements about the project, just different roles and personalities.

“Sharif is a businessman and he owns the property; I’m an imam and a spiritual leader who has a vision,” Mr. Abdul Rauf said last week. “He is a very capable man, very deeply committed towards the goal, a contribution to our country, to our city, to our neighborhood.”

Mr. Kopp, Mr. Gamal’s spokesman, said simply, “They are on the same page.”

The imam, whose Cordoba Initiative has offices in a building packed with religious — mostly Christian — nonprofit groups and nicknamed the God Box, has spent much of his time since 9/11 networking with Jewish and Christian leaders, urging American Muslims to expand their civic roles at home while promoting moderation abroad. He has also been on something of a media campaign, appearing recently on “Larry King Live” and speaking on Monday at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Gamal, who became a broker and property manager with Soho Properties after an abortive college career and several brushes with the law, has largely retreated behind the scenes since the imam’s return to New York.

To Mr. Abdul Rauf, who always emphasizes the center’s interfaith agenda, its location near ground zero is essential to its message of healing the wounds of 9/11 and promoting moderate Islam.

Mr. Gamal, who tends to stress plans for a “world-class” architectural design, swimming pool, cooking school, restaurant and performing arts center, said he had selected the site because it was near the crowded downtown mosques and inexpensive. Ground zero, he said, had “nothing to do with it.”

They initially agreed to call the center Cordoba House, for the Spanish city in which Muslims, Jews and Christians shared a scholarly golden age a thousand years ago, but Mr. Gamal changed the name to Park51 after some opponents said medieval Cordoba, which Muslims ruled until Christians conquered them in the 13th century, signified Muslim domination. The imam’s religious programs will still bear that name, and he seemed to use it to refer to the whole center in his essay in The Times.

The day after the essay appeared, Mr. Gamal issued a press release reminding people that the center’s name was Park51.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/nyregion/17rift.html

Imam Won't 'Barter' Over So-Called 'Ground Zero Mosque' with Florida Pastor

Abdul Rauf Says Mosque Construction Won't Halt Because Pastor Terry Jones Canceled Koran Burning

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf insisted today that moving the Islamic community center and mosque from the site near ground zero under the current circumstances would threaten U.S. national security.

"We have two audiences," the Imam told ABC News' Christiane Amanpour late Thursday afternoon. "We have the American audience and we have the Muslim audience. And this issue has riveted the attention of the whole Muslim world. And whatever we do, and whatever we say and how we move and the discourse about it is being watched very, very closely. And if we make the wrong move, it will only expand and strengthen the voice of the radicals and the extremists," he said.

"There are any number of wrong moves. But the basic theme of the wrong moves is if there is a perception or the perception is created, real or not, that Muslims are under attack," Rauf said. "Let's say we moved under this current circumstance with this dialogue. What will be the headline tomorrow in the Muslim world?" the Imam asked rhetorically. "'Islam under attack in America.' That's the theme of it. 'Mosque forcibly removed by whatever.' That will feed the radicals. So diffusing terrorism is a necessity for our national security," he said.

"My major concern with moving it is that the headline in the Muslim world will be Islam is under attack in America, this will strengthen the radicals in the Muslim world, help their recruitment, this will put our people -- our soldiers, our troops, our embassies, our citizens -- under attack in the Muslim world and we have expanded and given and fueled terrorism," he said.

"Do you think that is a legitimate reason not to move it?" Amanpour asked.

"It is an extremely important consideration," the Imam said.

Rauf strenuously denied that he would move his Islamic community center and mosque in return for a Florida pastor not burning Korans, as the pastor, Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla. had claimed.

Rauf released a statement to ABC News: "I am glad that Pastor Jones has decided not to burn any Qurans. However, I have not spoken with Pastor Jones or Imam Musri. I am surprised by their announcement. We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we here to barter. We are here to extend our hand to build peace and harmony," the statement said.

In her interview Amanpour asked the Imam whether he might not build the center if the Florida pastor promised not to burn the Korans.

"You can't equate the two, Christiane. This is…now the moment between the radicals and the moderates. We are to look at it from the point of view of those who are trying to create a breakthrough for moderation against those who are trying to create a breakthrough for the radical voices," he said.

SOURCE: http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/imam-feisal-abdul-rauf-barter-ground-mosque-florida/story?id=11597772&page=1 and http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/imam-feisal-abdul-rauf-barter-ground-mosque-florida/story?id=11597772&page=2

Inside the Real Quran-Burning Church

Inside the Real Quran-Burning Church

by Amarnath Amarasingam
Daily Beast

Pastor Terry Jones may have decided against burning Qurans on 9/11 after he sparked global outrage, but that didn’t stop the Westboro Baptists. Amarnath Amarasingam on why the church burned a Quran—and the American flag—yesterday.

After the Dove World Outreach Center Pastor Terry Jones said he would “not today, not ever” burn a Quran, Westboro Baptist Church members, notorious for picketing the funerals of dead soldiers, decided to do it instead.

“That guy is an apologist. He was never going to do it,” says Shirley Phelps-Roper, the spokeswoman and daughter of Pastor Fred Phelps, the church’s leader.

So at noon Saturday, while the rest of the country was in mourning and remembrance of the 9/11 attacks, Westboro members in Topeka, Kansas, surrounded by local news media, photographers, Muslim and non-Muslim counterprotesters, opened a Quran, gently placed a single American flag down the middle of it, and set them both on fire. Westboro members also used the “mosque at ground zero” controversy to get their message out: America as a whole is doomed. In fact, they are supportive of the proposed plan to build a community center a few blocks from ground zero. “Why should the idols of doomed America take precedence over the idols of the next guy?” asks Shirley. Their support, in other words, does not come from a newfound respect for the Islamic faith.

Westboro has long latched on to controversy as a way to market their message. According to them, the United States, with its tolerance of homosexuality, and other vices, has spit in the face of God. The nation and those who defend it will continue to experience the wrath of God. The church, consisting of three families, with a total membership of about 60 people, has been protesting the funerals of homosexuals and American soldiers for some time. Attracting counterprotests, hate mail, and lawsuits, their actions have always provoked outrage.

When they announced their decision to burn Qurans on 9/11, they noticed a slightly novel response from the public though. “One thing that was very interesting about this experience,” Shirley tells me, “is that as soon as the word went forth that we were going to do this, the emails increased drastically. What we’ve never seen before is a whole bunch of people writing us saying how happy they were that we were burning Qurans.” Many of the emails said that while all of their other actions are abhorrent, the burning of Qurans is commendable. “I’m thinking, what the heck is that about?” she says, “What happened to all this talk of ‘tolerance’?”

Understanding the church and its actions requires an understanding of its history and theology. Founded in 1955, Westboro falls in with the Primitive Baptist tradition, and preaches the five points of Calvinism often called the TULIP doctrine (total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints). Rebecca Barrett-Fox, a University of Kansas Ph.D. candidate who has been conducting extensive dissertation research with the Phelps family since 2004, says Westboro members pay particular attention to unconditional election and limited atonement. “Those two together really mean a lot to them.”. The doctrine of unconditional election states that there is nothing human beings can do to obtain salvation. The elect and the non-elect have already been decided by God before the beginning of time. The doctrine of limited atonement states that Jesus Christ did not die for the salvation of all humankind, but only for the elect.

Unconditional election seems to undermine the actions of Westboro members, however. Presumably, if there is nothing they can do to ensure that humanity is saved, what is the point of protesting or spreading the word of God? Even if Westboro managed to convert throngs of individuals, it would, according to Calvinist doctrine, make no difference on their salvation. This is true, says Barrett-Fox, but adds that Westboro is not looking for converts. Rather, they seek to function as a litmus test for individuals. “I see them like a sieve or a sorting mechanism,” she says, “they approach you and say, hey you, do you believe that gay people go to hell? And you respond, well no, I don’t believe that. Then what they say is, by your word, you now know that you are going to Hell. They force everybody to express their opinion and, in this way, they say they are helping people discover whether they are hell-bound or not, whether they are one of the elect.”

Westboro has been protesting at the funerals of homosexuals since 1992, and they now maintain a travel budget of about $250,000 for the sole purpose of holding demonstrations around the country. Their decision to protest the funerals of dead soldiers, however, came in 2005. The reason for this “innovative” move is not entirely clear. Westboro members had made frequent trips to New York City holding “God Hates America” placards since 2001, but between 2001 and 2005, they did not picket any military funerals, despite the two wars involving the United States. “Something internal must’ve changed in the church for them to shift in this direction,” says Barrett-Fox.

According to Nate Phelps, the estranged son of Pastor Fred Phelps, the shift in this direction is reflective of his father’s personality. “My father knows how to just piss someone off,” he tells me, “he’s a pretty bright man, and I think that he spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to piss off the most people.”

Barrett-Fox points to Lawrence v. Texas as the likely catalyst for Westboro’s change in strategy. This 2003 Supreme Court case repealed all sodomy laws in the U.S. “Before this case,” she says, “they had really only focused on cultural icons, local politicians, or journalists, or individual gay people. They saw this ruling as the moment when the United States expressed a clear national commitment to legitimizing or showing tolerance for homosexuality. So, I think that was a real galvanizing moment.”

According to Westboro members, because the United States expressed its tolerance for homosexuality, anyone fighting to defend this national commitment has become an enemy of God. “According to them, we as a nation have made God our enemy,” says Barrett-Fox, “and when a soldier dies in combat, it is God who is killing that soldier. You can’t fight for a country that defies God and expect God not to be angry with you.”

Although Westboro has gained national notoriety, they are in fact fairly isolated. “They’ve got no friends, they’ve got no alliances with other churches, nobody shares their ideology,” says Barrett-Fox. Even among other Primitive Baptist churches, Westboro finds little support.

Such an embattled identity, however, is important for Westboro’s self-conception. While growing up in the church, Nate recalls that such antagonism with the broader public was a frequent element of their weekly services. “The evidence that we were right was that so many people disagreed with us,” he says.

Amarnath Amarasingam is a doctoral candidate in the Laurier-Waterloo Ph.D. program in Religious Studies in Ontario, Canada, and is the editor of Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal. You can follow him on Twitter here.

SOURCE: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-11/quran-burning-westboro-baptist-church-burns-qurans-and-the-american-flag/?cid=hp:mainpromo2

Why the GOP embraced Islamophobia

Fanning fears of Muslims has never made better -- or more cynical -- political sense
By Joe Conason
SALON
Only a few years ago, an angry political demonstration at ground zero on September 11 would have been deemed an unthinkable offense not only to the bereaved families of victims and responders but to the nation. Yet this anniversary featured a raucous and highly partisan rally, as well over a thousand protesters gathered to show their opposition to the Park51 Islamic center – and to listen to tirades from Republican politicians and commentators against the Obama administration.

More than a flaky Florida pastor’s cancelled threat to burn the Quran (or the actual scattered torchings that took place the same day), the ground zerio rally answered the question posed repeatedly over the past few weeks: Why are millions of Americans suddenly caught up in a torrent of fear and fury over Islam so strong that both the president and the commanding general of U.S. forces in Afghanistan have warned of deadly consequences? What motivates the outpouring of rancor against Muslims, especially in the conservative media? How did they escape until now?

The answer is that until the advent of the Obama presidency, Republicans had no reason to scapegoat Muslims or demonize Islam -- and indeed, they could not have inflamed those prejudices without damaging their own leaders, especially George W. Bush.

Evidence of the blatantly partisan character of the current anti-Muslim campaign can be found everywhere -- on Fox News Channel, cable channel of the GOP; in the latest excrescence of Newt Gingrich and David Bossie; and in the roster of speakers at Saturday's "no mosque" rally, which featured a video message from John Bolton, the Bush administration’s former ambassador to the United Nations.



The presence of Bolton is telling because he served a president who articulated precisely the same benign view of Islam -- which Bush famously described as a religion of peace -- as his successor. But the political and cultural messaging that Republicans and conservatives accepted quietly from Bush is today considered tantamount to treason when promoted by Obama.

Certainly the years since 9/11 have seen a growing hostility to Islam on the right, not only among evangelicals and Christian Zionists but in other wings of conservatism as well. From time to time, the issue of Muslim influence within the United States and on American foreign policy has been debated among conservatives. Books denouncing Islamist aggression -- and conflating "Islamofascism" with the faith itself -- have reached a broad audience on the right. But the expression of those views was usually muted or ignored by the most important institutions and media organizations on the right until January 2009.

Consider the case of Grover Norquist, the anti-tax crusader, lobbyist and organizer who has long been among the most influential figures on the American right. As long ago as 2003, Norquist (who is married to a Muslim woman) became the target of harsh criticism by conservative defense analyst Frank Gaffney over his connections with American Muslim leaders, including some accused of links with foreign terrorist groups. The most troubling accusation made by Gaffney and echoed in National Review and elsewhere was that Norquist had compromised the Bush White House and the Republican Party by introducing extremely unsavory Muslim leaders into their midst.

Norquist denied those charges and accused his critics in turn of racism and bigotry, expelling Gaffney from the fabled weekly meeting of powerful conservative and Republican leaders that still occurs every Wednesday in his Washington offices. (In fact, his reputation suffered much worse damage over his close association with crooked lobbyist Jack Abramoff than over his supposed truckling to Islamists.)

Back then, Gaffney admitted that Norquist was only a minor player in the Bush White House and its alleged sympathy toward what he identified then as “Wahhabist” or radical Islamist elements both in the United States and abroad. “I think the role that [Norquist] has played personally in this effort of behalf of Wahhabi-sympathetic and supported institutions is an important one, but it’s a bit role,” he said. Norquist was a side show, according to Gaffney, while the “main show” was the Bush administration’s continuing engagement with Muslim groups that he and others had identified as jihadist or radical.

Gaffney’s challenge to Norquist received attention on the right, but his critique of the Bush White House was essentially ignored. Norquist continued to play a powerful role on the right -- hosting a debate between candidates for Republican National Committee chair last year, for instance. And the Muslim-bashing faction that had attacked him was relegated to the sidelines, notably when Pamela Geller, impresario of yesterday’s anti-mosque demonstration, was barred from hosting an official panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Three years ago, very few conservatives would have worked with her or echoed her message.

All that has changed since the inauguraton of a president whose middle name is Hussein and whose father was Muslim, because he provides a central focus for a politicized campaign against Islam. Since January 2009, Norquist has again become a target of critics on the right. Bush himself has remained silent, perhaps preferring not to revive the dormant controversy over his own relationships with the Saudi kingdom and with Muslim groups here. Figures such as Bolton and Gingrich, who never spoke out about Islam during the Bush administration, have discovered that Muslims pose an existential threat to Western civilization.

Paranoia and prejudice have long been instruments of right-wing politics in America, from the Red Scare and McCarthyism to the Nixonite Southern strategy. The current outbreak of Islamophobia represents the latest product of the same old manufacturing process. It is irresponsible and dangerous as well as cynical precisely because we face deadly adversaries whose movements profit from every rift between the West and Muslims.

* Joe Conason blogs in Salon several times a week and writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His latest book is "It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush."

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/republican_party/index.html?story=/opinion/conason/2010/09/12/islamo

Your request is being processed... Black Muslims Hear Echoes Of Jim Crow In Current Anti-Muslim Furor

First Posted: 09-11-10 09:04 PM | Updated: 09-11-10 09:04 PM
Huffington Post
By Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS) Imam Mahdi Bray is feeling a sense of deja vu these days, with threats and attacks on Muslims reviving memories of his younger days working and marching alongside civil rights activists.

"For me and for America, these types of things have happened over and over again," said Bray, of the Muslim American Society.

He and other African-American Muslim leaders say the recent verbal and physical attacks against Muslims because of their faith are painful reminders of past discrimination felt by blacks because of their skin color.

Threats to burn Qurans recall the bombings of black churches, they say, and anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller's crusade against the proposed Park51 Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero summons memories of Bull Connor's orders to aim fire hoses at civil rights marchers in Alabama.

"When people are talking about exclusionary zones where Muslims cannot build houses of worship or cannot freely assemble, then it evokes memories of those exclusionary politics and exclusionary laws African-Americans had to deal with," said Imam Zaid Shakir, a professor at Zaytuna College, the nation's first Muslim college, in Berkeley, Calif.

The Coalition of African American Muslims, saying their voices had been missing from the debate around Park51, declared recently that they would not "silently accept a return to Jim Crow exclusionary practices and policies that relegate either ourselves or our coreligionists ... to second-class citizenry."
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The coalition includes leaders such as Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan and Asma Hanif, the founder of an organization that helps homeless Muslim women.

Hanif sees parallels in how all black people--"it didn't matter if you had one drop of black blood"--were treated in the 1960s when she was a teenager in a small town in North Carolina.

"Now it doesn't matter what type of Muslim you are, they are treating you the exact same way," said Hanif, executive director of Baltimore-based Muslimat Al-Nisaa.

Lawrence Mamiya, a professor of religion and Africana studies at Vassar College, said there are parallels between the treatment of blacks during the civil rights movement and the backlash over Park51, but there are differences, too.

"The civil rights movement was dealing with a system of legal segregation and here, at least Muslims do have the freedom of religion," said Mamiya, an expert on African-American Muslims. "But in terms of the kind of opposition they're meeting, certainly the parallels are there."

Akbar Muhammad, a retired international representative for the Nation of Islam, faults ignorance about Muslims and the Quran for the recent wave of anti-Muslim bigotry, just as lack of understanding resulted in racially based bigotry decades ago.

"They thought we were either inferior or ... that we deserved to be relegated to a corner or lynched," he said. "Now, Muslims are profiled as black people are profiled."

Aminah McCloud, professor of Islamic studies at DePaul University in Chicago, estimates that at least 40 percent of leaders of predominantly black mosques were active in the civil rights movement or were born soon after. She hopes their perspective, and experience, can be a "reflective voice" in the current controversies.

"It draws people's attention away from the hysterics and back to the history of who we are in this country ... a remembrance of how many Americans, white and black, brown and of all religious traditions, have worked so hard to make multiculturalism, multireligious existence work," she said.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/11/black-muslims-hear-echoes_n_712862.html

What Is Shariah and Why Does It Matter?

by Sherman A. Jackson
Arthur F. Thurnau
Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Michigan
Posted: September 11, 2010 08:16 PM
Huffington Post

It's 10:30 p.m. You're a black male driving along the back roads of Anywhere, USA. Your car breaks down just as your cell-phone battery dies, so you'll have to get out and knock on someone's door for help. You come upon a patch of houses, some proudly boasting American flags, the others flagless. Which of these houses shall you approach? While it may come as a shock to some, most blacks to whom I have posed this scenario opt for a flagless house. This has nothing to do with any lack of patriotism. Outside these circumstances, they proudly stand for, salute and wave the flag. In fact, that Ralph Lauren gear with the chic little American flags as emblems -- you can't keep 'em on the shelves in some black communities! History, however, and the political symbolism that the deeds and rhetoric of some have attached to Old Glory have simply transformed it under certain circumstances from our national flag into a red flag.

The same applies to shariah. Most Americans have no idea what it really means or stands for. But the deeds and rhetoric of some have produced a similar effect: shariah has come to constitute a red flag, even without the misrepresentations of so-called Islamophobes. Many Muslims dislike this logic and are actually as offended by it as some Americans will be by the insinuation that our flag can double as a symbol of racism. Both groups would do well, however, to note that people are not going to ignore their actual experiences just to make others comfortable in their ideologically constructed world of ideals.

And yet only the naïveté of the most crass and cynical utopianism would deny the validity of an ideal based solely on the reality of an experience. We don't conclude that the ideal of eradicating hunger is bogus simply because so many hungry people continue to exist. Rather, if those who have the resources and opportunity to eradicate hunger consistently fail to do so, we conclude that they are either not fully committed to this ideal or that they are woefully blind and inept in their attempts to realize it.

At the most basic level, shariah is the Muslim universe of ideals. It is the result of their collective effort to understand and apply the Quran and supplementary teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (called Sunna) in order to earn God's pleasure and secure human welfare in this life and attain human salvation in the life to come. While the Quran and Sunna are transcendent and unchangeable, shariah itself is the negotiated result of competing interpretations. In fact, most Muslims tend to speak not of shariah but of fiqh, which literally means "understanding" and underscores the distinction between God's prescriptions on the one hand and the human attempt to understand these on the other. This in turn explains two other unavoidable characteristics of shariah: diversity of opinion, and inevitable change. In Sunni Islam (and to do Shiism justice would require a separate treatment) there are four "schools" of fiqh, all equally orthodox, all equally authoritative. This is because Sunnism never established a single ecclesiastical authority or "church" to decide doctrine. Instead, the only doctrines deemed binding on the community as a whole were those on which the community's scholars reached a unanimous -- not majority! -- consensus. In the absence of this, competing parties would simply have to agree to disagree, as no school or individual -- not even the Caliph or temporal ruler -- could claim the infallible right to impose a doctrine as unassailable truth.

As for change, the rules of shariah are divided into two categories: religious observances (prayer, fasting, etc.) and civil-criminal matters (marriage, sales, adultery, jihad, etc.). While religious observances are relatively static and fixed, the rules on civil-criminal matters are subject to change in accordance with circumstances. Here, in fact, we come to a fourth important feature of shariah: in addition to interpreting scripture in order to apply it to reality, shariah also includes the attempt to process reality to determine how scripture, Prophetic teaching and the cumulative tradition of deliberation would have one respond to it. In this capacity, shariah may end up sanctioning, or even including, all kinds of ideas and institutions that were not dictated by scripture. For example, there were no domes, schools of fiqh or minarets in the Prophet's Arabia. Likewise, the fact that there was no democracy or "human rights" does not automatically render these "un-Islamic." In short, shariah includes the attempt to proffer God-conscious responses to an ever-changing reality. And in this capacity, many of its rules are subject to change with changes in the circumstances to which it seeks to respond.

Having said all of this, shariah is not just "rules." While the common translation, "Islamic law," is not entirely wrong, it is under-inclusive, for shariah includes scores of moral and ethical principles, from honoring one's parents to helping the poor to being good to one's neighbor. Moreover, most of the "rules" of shariah carry no prescribed earthly sanctions at all. The prescriptions covering ablution or eating pork or how to dress are just as much a part of shariah as are those governing sale, divorce or jihad. Yet there are no earthly punishments prescribed for those who violate these dictates. Like the bulk of shariah's "rules," reward and punishment in these areas are the preserve of God in the Afterlife.

Unfortunately, many Americans have been led to believe that shariah equals not only rules but criminal punishments -- floggings, for example. Three quick points: First, criminal sanctions constitute a tiny sliver of shariah. Of the 1,081 pages of the two-volume Arabic text from which I studied shariah, only 60 pages were devoted directly to criminal sanctions! (Jihad, incidentally, took up only 19.) Second, the criminal sanctions of shariah did not emerge as the property or instrument of the Muslim state but functioned in fact to impose limits on the use of state power. Third, the punishments for criminal behavior cannot be separated from the evidentiary rules -- equally shariah! -- that provide for their application (e.g., multiple eye-witnesses). In practical terms, in other words, short of confession, rules on such things as adultery or fornication function almost entirely as moral exhortations. God-consciousness spawned by shariah, not fear of being punished, sustains these ideals. Of course, many Americans will object that such issues should not be subject to any rules or religious exhortations at all. But given some of our increasingly worrisome realities (out-of-wedlock births, etc.), perhaps this would make for fruitful conversation.

Why does shariah matter? It matters for Muslims because it represents the ideals that define a properly constituted Islamic existence. Islam without shariah would be Islam without Islamic ideals. While most non-Muslim Americans may think of Islam without shariah as simply Islam without rules or criminal sanctions, for Muslims Islam without shariah would also mean Islam without prescriptions on ablution, prayer, alms, sales, diet, filial piety, civics, etc. While the discourse in America around shariah will probably continue to succumb to the self-serving tendency to "compare my ideals with your realities," shariah itself will continue to inspire Muslims, especially in their personal lives, to strive, with hope and humility, to narrow the gap between the unacceptable "is" and the ever-elusive "ought."

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherman-a-jackson/what-is-shariah-and-why-d_b_710976.html

Muslims and Islam Were Part of Twin Towers’ Life

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
The New York Times
September 10, 2010

Sometime in 1999, a construction electrician received a new work assignment from his union. The man, Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, was told to report to 2 World Trade Center, the southern of the twin towers.

In the union locker room on the 51st floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam went through a construction worker’s version of due diligence. In the case of an emergency in the building, he asked his foreman and crew, where was he supposed to reassemble? The answer was the corner of Broadway and Vesey.

Over the next few days, noticing some fellow Muslims on the job, Mr. Abdus-Salaam voiced an equally essential question: “So where do you pray at?” And so he learned about the Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the south tower.

He went there regularly in the months to come, first doing the ablution known as wudu in a washroom fitted for cleansing hands, face and feet, and then facing toward Mecca to intone the salat prayer.

On any given day, Mr. Abdus-Salaam’s companions in the prayer room might include financial analysts, carpenters, receptionists, secretaries and ironworkers. There were American natives, immigrants who had earned citizenship, visitors conducting international business — the whole Muslim spectrum of nationality and race.

Leaping down the stairs on Sept. 11, 2001, when he had been installing ceiling speakers for a reinsurance company on the 49th floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam had a brief, panicked thought. He didn’t see any of the Muslims he recognized from the prayer room. Where were they? Had they managed to evacuate?

He staggered out to the gathering place at Broadway and Vesey. From that corner, he watched the south tower collapse, to be followed soon by the north one. Somewhere in the smoking, burning mountain of rubble lay whatever remained of the prayer room, and also of some of the Muslims who had used it.

Given the vitriolic opposition now to the proposal to build a Muslim community center two blocks from ground zero, one might say something else has been destroyed: the realization that Muslim people and the Muslim religion were part of the life of the World Trade Center.

Opponents of the Park51 project say the presence of a Muslim center dishonors the victims of the Islamic extremists who flew two jets into the towers. Yet not only were Muslims peacefully worshiping in the twin towers long before the attacks, but even after the 1993 bombing of one tower by a Muslim radical, Ramzi Yousef, their religious observance generated no opposition

“We weren’t aliens,” Mr. Abdus-Salaam, 60, said in a telephone interview from Florida, where he moved in retirement. “We had a foothold there. You’d walk into the elevator in the morning and say, ‘Salaam aleikum,’ to one construction worker and five more guys in suits would answer, ‘Aleikum salaam.’ ”

One of those men in suits could have been Zafar Sareshwala, a financial executive for the Parsoli Corporation, who went to the prayer room while on business trips from his London office. He was introduced to it, he recently recalled, by a Manhattan investment banker who happened to be Jewish.

“It was so freeing and so calm,” Mr. Sareshwala, 47, said in a phone conversation from Mumbai, where he is now based. “It had the feel of a real mosque. And the best part is that you are in the epicenter of capitalism — New York City, the World Trade Center — and you had this island of spiritualism. I don’t think you could have that combination anywhere in the world.”

How, when and by whom the prayer room was begun remains unclear. Interviews this week with historians and building executives of the trade center came up empty. Many of the Port Authority’s leasing records were destroyed in the towers’ collapse. The imams of several Manhattan mosques whose members sometimes went to the prayer room knew nothing of its origins.

Yet the room’s existence is etched in the memories of participants like Mr. Abdus-Salaam and Mr. Sareshwala. Prof. John L. Esposito of Georgetown University, an expert in Islamic studies, briefly mentions the prayer room in his recent book “The Future of Islam.”

Moreover, the prayer room was not the only example of Muslim religious practice in or near the trade center. About three dozen Muslim staff members of Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the north tower, used a stairwell between the 106th and 107th floors for their daily prayers.

Without enough time to walk to the closest mosque — Masjid Manhattan on Warren Street, about four blocks away — the waiters, chefs, banquet managers and others would lay a tablecloth atop the concrete landing in the stairwell and flatten cardboard boxes from food deliveries to serve as prayer mats.

During Ramadan, the Muslim employees brought their favorite foods from home, and at the end of the daylight fast shared their iftar meal in the restaurant’s employee cafeteria.

“Iftar was my best memory,” said Sekou Siby, 45, a chef originally from the Ivory Coast. “It was really special.”

Such memories have been overtaken, though, by others. Mr. Siby’s cousin and roommate, a chef named Abdoul-Karim Traoré, died at Windows on the World on Sept. 11, as did at least one other Muslim staff member, a banquet server named Shabir Ahmed from Bangladesh.

Fekkak Mamdouh, an immigrant from Morocco who was head waiter, attended a worship service just weeks after the attacks that honored the estimated 60 Muslims who died. Far from being viewed as objectionable, the service was conducted with formal support from city, state and federal authorities, who arranged for buses to transport imams and mourners to Warren Street.

There, within sight of the ruins, they chanted salat al-Ghaib, the funeral prayer when there is not an intact corpse.

“It is a shame, shame, shame,” Mr. Mamdouh, 49, said of the Park51 dispute. “Sometimes I wake up and think, this is not what I came to America for. I came here to build this country together. People are using this issue for their own agenda. It’s designed to keep the hate going.”

E-mail: sgf1@columbia.edu

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 10, 2010

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the proposed Islamic center and mosque near ground zero. It is Park51, not Parc51. It also misstated the name of a chef at the Windows on the World restaurant who died on Sept. 11. He was Abdoul-Karim Traoré, not Abdul Karim. And the article misstated the order in which the World Trade Center towers fell. The south tower fell first, not the north tower.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/nyregion/11religion.html

Quran Burning Story: This Is How The Media Embarrass Themselves

By Jason Linkins
jason@huffingtonpost.com
Huffington Post

First Posted: 09-10-10 02:41 PM | Updated: 09-10-10 02:56 PM

Yesterday afternoon, the leader of a microscopic cult of idiots who announced plans to stage an "international" day of Quran burning in Gainesville, Florida, held a press conference, for a rapt media which decided that his moronic plans were the single most important thing going on in America. At that press conference, in front of "9/11 Truther" signs, this cult leader lied to everyone who was watching, telling them that he was going to call off his 9/11 book burning festival because he had successfully reached a deal with the people behind the Park51 community center in Lower Manhattan, in which they would move their facility away from the site of the World Trade Center.

Not a word of this was true, but it was amazing, all the same -- at one fell swoop, we had finally knit up the strands of a season of irrationality into one big, shiny, synergized knot. This was supposed to be the end of Recovery Summer? More like Relapse Summer.

The story of how one lone idiot, pimping an 18th-century brand of community terrorism, held the media hostage and forced some of this nation's most powerful people to their knees to fitfully beg an end to his wackdoodlery is an extraordinary one. It's a modern media retelling of Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying", in which a gang of Islamaphobes, cast in the role of Addie Bundren, bamboozle the media into carrying their coffin full of malevolence on a journey of pure debasement. Let's begin at the beginning.

Earlier this year, an organization called the Cordoba Initiative were granted permission by the appropriate authorities in New York City to turn an old Burlington Coat Factory at 51 Park Place in lower Manhattan into a community center. The organization was headed by an Imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf, who has made it his life's work to stand against radical cults like al Qaeda and teach young Muslims that America is a place where one can freely worship at the appointed times and then join other faith communities in America in the task of building a great nation. The proposed community center was to include a basketball court and space for different religious communities in New York City to have interfaith relations. It was also going to have a place for Muslims to pray, if they liked.

The news didn't sit well with many people in New York, most notably people who didn't live in Manhattan. This is because they were told by a gaggle of dumb Islamophobes that what was planned was a "Ground Zero mosque." Of course, the planned community center was not, strictly speaking, a "mosque." And it was most definitely not "at Ground Zero." "Ground Zero" is the site of an interminable municipal construction project. There are no plans to build a mosque there. "Ground Zero" is also not the name of a recognized New York City neighborhood, like DUMBO or Murray Hill. But, here's the thing: even if it was, the battle to stop the "Ground Zero mosque" was already lost, because there already is a mosque in that neighborhood.

This logic failed to sink in, because very few people outside of me and the good people over at Wonkette made any attempt to bring these facts to light. But it might not have mattered, because the fertile field of opposition to the Park51 community center was the raw wound of the September 11th attacks. Obviously, many people are still feeling the loss of that day. And that loss breeds many emotions, among them sadness and anger. And people definitely do have the right to express their sadness and their anger. But what people don't have the right to expect is that the government will intervene to remedy claims that have no basis in law.

As soon as the media saw themselves a shiny shiny shining thing shining shinily in New York City, they pounced! How perfect! Something for us to talk about during the slow-news summer! I mean, we could talk about the nation's unemployment crisis, but that would mean we'd have to talk to poor, jobless people, and there's no currency in having access to a bunch of poors. Right away, they accepted the premise that this was a "Ground Zero mosque," when it wasn't. And so, by the power vested in the media, things that weren't in fact true were accorded the privilege of being "one side of a great debate" and "an interesting point of view."

Charlie Brooker, calling out the media for this bullshit, states what should have happened at this very moment:

New York being a densely populated city, there are lots of other buildings and businesses within two blocks of Ground Zero, including a McDonald's and a Burger King, neither of which has yet been accused of serving milkshakes and fries on hallowed ground. Regardless, for the opponents of Cordoba House, two blocks is too close, period. Frustratingly, they haven't produced a map pinpointing precisely how close is OK.

That's literally all I'd ask them in an interview. I'd stand there pointing at a map of the city. Would it be offensive here? What about here? Or how about way over there? And when they finally picked a suitable spot, I'd ask them to draw it on the map, sketching out roughly how big it should be, and how many windows it's allowed to have. Then I'd hand them a colour swatch and ask them to decide on a colour for the lobby carpet. And the conversation would continue in this vein until everyone in the room was in tears. Myself included.

That hasn't happened. Instead, 70% of Americans are opposed to the "Ground Zero mosque", doubtless in many cases because they've been led to believe it literally is a mosque at Ground Zero. And if not...well, it must be something significant. Otherwise why would all these pundits be so angry about it? And why would anyone in the media listen to them with a straight face?

And because the media couldn't do their job, a group of hack politicians, like Rick Lazio and Newt Gingrich, desperate to get a little famewhore attention for their quixotic political career goals, saw an opportunity to horn in on the "discussion." They started telling all the sad and angry people that they actually did have the right to expect someone to provide a remedy to their claims. Their case was primarily based on the idea that nobody has the rights of religious freedom, no one has property rights and that the government has the right -- nay, the duty! -- to intrude.

Right away, they should have been entirely ridiculed, because the people pimping this bilge were primarily right-wing types who would ordinarily say that church and state should not be separated, that property rights are sacrosanct, and that government should be small and unobtrusive. Someone really should have said to Newt Gingrich, "Is this seriously the stand you want to take? Because if it is, we shall never allow you to claim to be a supporter of small government or a 'Constitutional constructionist' ever again. And if you try to assert that claim, we will drop on you like a ton of bricks. We will cause you real, public pain."

But of course, that's not what happened. The media has too much invested in flattering people like Newt Gingrich, and whoever writes Sarah Palin's tweets. And so, these inherent contradictions simply became "one side of a great debate" and "an interesting point of view."

And from there, some idiot news producer said, "Hey, I bet we can shoehorn this into our election narrative somehow!" And so the Park51 community center became an election issue. Imagine that, in a world with a nine year-long, going nowhere war and a massive unemployment crisis! Imagine how many times you would have to hit yourself in the head with a ball peen hammer before you would ask a politician from California how they stood on a local zoning issue in Manhattan.

But ask they did, all the way to the White House. And that's when Democrats like Harry Reid stepped forward to publicly cover themselves in cowardice. This turned the frenzy up several notches for the media, because suddenly, they had obtained a very precious thing -- the right to say "both sides do this." The matter had become a folie a deux -- a madness made for two! -- but the media focused all their attention on the "two" and none on the "madness."

And in that climate, a pastor named Terry Jones saw an opportunity to make himself famous. Jones heads up a heretofore unknown and uncared-about gang of Florida morons known as the Dove Outreach Church -- minor bit players in the field of antagonizing American Muslims. This idiot announced that he was going to burn some Qurans on September 11th, and was anyone interested in giving this nonsense a whole lot of media attention?

And boy howdy, lots of people took him up on the offer! And you know why they did that? Because of the shame. Because deep down, your media all-stars knew that they had aided and abetted something that closely resembled an intellectual atrocity, and now it was time to atone by finding the lowest-hanging fruit available and make themselves feel better by beating on them repeatedly for being assholes -- something they should have already been doing for months!

And this gave an opportunity for some of those who had opposed the Park51 community center -- who deserved the treatment being meted out to Terry Jones -- to do the same. They joined their friends in the media in this demonstration of game-show absolution, saying, "This level of bigotry is unacceptable! It's so declasse in comparison to our own bigotry, which is a refined, 'Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte' form of despicableness."

A few people, like John Boehner and whoever writes Sarah Palin's tweets went so far as to say, "See, this is exactly the same thing we were decrying with the Ground Zero mosque." Except it wasn't, because the Ground Zero mosque was a thing they had made up!

None of this bothered Terry Jones at all! Why should it? In the long history of fringe religious figures saying and doing stupid things, it is exceedingly rare for the media to provide much attention to them. Pat Robertson has been telling America that gay people cause hurricanes for years, and it never amounts to much in the way of coverage beyond a periodic reminder that Pat Robertson is a complete fool. Terry Jones, however, had been given something very precious: he was now "one side of a great debate" who possessed "an interesting point of view."

And the media worked very hard to push the case that Jones was part of a debate. Now, Quran burning was an election-year issue, for which every candidate had to answer. And they even went so far as to ask Jones repeatedly, "What if President Obama told you not to do this? What if former President George W. Bush told you not to do this?" They were literally brokering negotiations between an idiot cult leader and some of the most powerful and important people in the world!

By now, things were terribly out of control. President Obama had to publicly state that Quran burning is a stupid thing to do. Imagine how out of touch you have to be that you need to go all the way to the White House to find that answer! Other important people were compelled to interject at this point. General David Petraeus had to come forward and state the plainly obvious: that all the public attention being given to this Quran burning would undermine the ability of U.S. forces to conduct their counterinsurgency operations, which depend heavily on winning the "hearts of minds" of Afghans. I think a lot of people read this as Petraeus speaking out against the attention-seeker, Terry Jones. But I think he was speaking more directly to the attention-givers. And everything that Justin Elliot reports here, I believe, lends credence to my contention.

Eventually, Robert Gates -- the Secretary of Defense, who is running two wars! -- had to call Jones up and try to convince him not to do this. "Which is crazy," says Alex Pareene, accurately, because when, exactly, did the Pentagon start negotiating with two-bit terrorists?

All of this finally culminated with yesterday's press conference, where Terry Jones lied and said that the Park51 community center was going to move, thanks to him. You see where this is headed now, don't you? Now the people behind Park51 are on the hook for stopping this Quran burning, and all of the negative external impact it may have. Now, all of the refined hate-merchants from early in the story can say that if the "Ground Zero mosque" isn't moved, immediately, American troops could die!

To go back to Charlie Brooker, let's remember that after sizing up the incompetence that pervaded the Park51 coverage, he warned that the "media" should just "give up" before they "[made] things worse." Pretty prophetic, isn't it? They got played, and played badly, by a dude with 14th-century religious beliefs, 19th-century facial hair and ultra-modern media savvy. Terry Jones has essentially blackmailed some of the most important people in America, with the assistance of the media.

Let's remember that all of this paralysis was caused by 50 people who wanted to burn a book that's available for free, on the Internet!

There were many, many moments where someone could have simply said, "No, we should really not be doing this. These Islamophobes are objectively wrong, objectively stupid, objectively contradictory, objectively harmful, and by God, as someone with a functioning brain and a devotion to the pursuit of reason above all else, I am going to stand here and say no to all of this." But as it turns out, it wasn't until yesterday afternoon that someone finally had the guts to say maybe we cannot really believe a word this man is saying.

Well, they should have thought of that before they decided to point a bunch of teevee cameras at him, I guess.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/10/this-is-how-the-media-wor_n_712229.html

Quranamok

Quranamok
The clarifying chaos of the Quran-burning saga.
By William Saletan
Posted Friday, Sept. 10, 2010, at 10:50 AM ET
SLATE

So let me get this straight: A Florida minister who has fewer than 50 followers, doesn't answer to any Christian organization, and doesn't even know the other pastors in his town set off panic and violence around the world by holding hostage a few copies of the Quran. He withstood pleas from the National Association of Evangelicals, the World Evangelical Alliance, the U.S. Secretary of State, and the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Then, in negotiations with an imam from Orlando, he agreed to surrender his hostages in exchange for what he thought was a deal to relocate a Manhattan mosque from its planned site near Ground Zero. But the imam in Manhattan said he had made no such deal and hadn't even talked to the imam from Orlando. So now the minister says he was double-crossed and might burn his hostages after all.

Someday, perhaps after a few more Qurans, American flags, effigies, cars, and embassies have been torched, all of this will be sorted out. But for now, let's be clear about one thing this crazy episode has proved: Nobody in it controls anybody else.

That's more than a punch line. It's a refudiation of the mentality that led us into this mess. Remember how the frenzy over the Manhattan community center started? Conspiracy theorists concocted a global Muslim plot to erect a "victory mosque" at Ground Zero. The Weekly Standard spun a diabolical web linking the imam behind the project to Hamas, the Gaza flotilla, Pakistani jihadists, and "the Iranian clerical dictatorship." Newt Gingrich depicted the project as part of an insidious scheme to bring the U.S. under the control of Islamic law.

The minister in Florida, Terry Jones, seized on the controversy to peddle his theory that "Islam is of the devil." But which Islam? Jones never bothered to read the book he was preparing to burn, which is why he never understood that Islam, like Christianity, is a religion of multiple interpretations, encompassing believers who often disagree with one another. You might recall, for instance, the Iran-Iraq War. So it must have come as quite a shock to Jones when the Manhattan imam disagreed with the Orlando imam about relocating the Ground Zero mosque (which wasn't a mosque and wasn't at Ground Zero—but let's not get bogged down in details) and said they had never even talked about it. Aren't all these imams connected on Glenn Beck's chalkboard? Don't they confer all the time? Apparently not.

Meanwhile, the Gingriches and Joneses of the Muslim world have cooked up their own theories. They think the Quran-burning stunt is an American plot and that President Obama is behind it. In the past 48 hours, they've marched against the U.S., incinerated American flags, and threatened jihad. Thousands of Afghans gathered in their capital and five provinces. Some chanted "Death to the Christians." Others threw rocks at a NATO base. One man was killed. A British Islamist is urging Muslims everywhere to burn the stars and stripes.

Sorry, but the world doesn't work this way anymore. Christians don't control Christians, Americans don't control Americans, Afghans don't control Afghans, and Muslims don't control Muslims. The curse of our age isn't a global empire of infidels or Islamists. It's the collapse of empires and the rise of rogues. In this world, an imam in Manhattan who preaches reconciliation isn't your enemy. He's your friend.

he chaos of the last 24 hours—in fact, of the last two weeks—has trashed all the conspiracy theories. The Manhattan imam, Fesal Abdul Rauf, went on CNN and condemned Hamas terrorism. Jones went on MSNBC and said he wouldn't cancel his Quran-burning party even if his political hero, George W. Bush, asked him to. Sarah Palin denounced Jones' plan. Gingrich scrapped a promised video address to a 9/11 rally against the Manhattan community center. Jones dropped out of sight and didn't even return calls from fellow Islam-basher Rev. Franklin Graham. Then Jones cut a deal with an agent of the religion of the devil, only to discover that the agents of the devil didn't speak for one another.

I've been to churches like Jones' before. They may subscribe nominally to a denomination, but they're fiercely independent. The minister runs the church and interprets the Bible in his own peculiar manner, all the while insisting that he's just reading it the way God wrote it. How hard is it to grasp that mosques and imams vary in pretty much the same way? Some preach hate. Some preach love. Some preach bogus literalism. Some think the Manhattan community center should be moved.

The bargain Jones thought he had struck—canceling the Quran burning in exchange for moving the community center—has been brewing as a moral-equivalence fantasy all week. Sarah Palin suggested it yesterday: "People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation—much like building a mosque at Ground Zero." This morning, Gingrich chimed in, telling ABC's Good Morning America that "it's wrong to burn the Quran, and it's wrong to build the mosque at Ground Zero, and both should be stopped." This is a silly and insulting proposition. If I offered to cancel my Torah burning in exchange for you relocating your synagogue, you'd recognize my offer right away as extortion.

Palin, Gingrich, and their chorus of right-wing commentators have had four months to explain, without resort to group blame or religious discrimination, why no Muslim house of worship should be built near Ground Zero. They have yet to answer the question. That's why they keep talking about "sensitivity" and "provocation"—words that cloak the intellectual crudity behind the sentiment.

Eventually, it will dawn on them that the Muslims who want to swim, eat, and worship at a community center in Lower Manhattan really are different from the Muslims who flew planes into the World Trade Center. And maybe they'll figure out that the imam in Manhattan disagrees not just with the imam in Orlando, but with imams in Gaza and Pakistan, too. The manifest chaos of Christianity is an easy starting point for this kind of reflection. Jones is a fool and a hater, but he's his own man.

So is Fred Phelps. His Westboro Baptist Church, headquartered at godhatesfags.com, is now pledging to pick up where Jones left off, burning not just the Quran but the American flag [PDF] on 9/11. There will always be some angry crackpot ready to defile your flag, burn your scripture, or hijack your airliner. These crackpots don't speak for your religion or mine. They speak for themselves.

Yesterday in Iowa, Gingrich said the Quran-burning episode just shows that the U.S. "has some people who are outrageous, as every country does, and they don't represent the country." A wonderful lesson. If only it were true of Islam.

SOURCE: http://www.slate.com/id/2266870/

We Didn't Start the Fire

We Didn't Start the Fire
You aren't responsible for Quran burners. Don't hold Muslims responsible for 9/11.
By William Saletan
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2010, at 11:07 AM ET
SLATE

Two days ago, hundreds of Afghans gathered in Kabul to denounce the United States for burning the Quran. They torched American flags, chanted "Death to America," and carried signs calling for the death of President Obama. Some of them hurled rocks at U.S. troops. A student in the crowd said of the planned Quran burning: "We know this is not just the decision of a church. It is the decision of the president and the entire United States."

e's wrong, of course. The Quran burning is the brainchild of a Florida minister and his tiny fundamentalist church. It has been condemned by the White House, the State Department, the commanding U.S. general in Afghanistan, Christian organizations, and countless Americans. But when clerics in Egypt denounce the incendiary plan, we feel the heat. When thousands of Muslims rally against it in Indonesia, they do so outside our embassy. When an imam in Kabul threatens retaliation, he casts a shadow on all of us: "If they decide to burn the holy Quran, I will announce jihad against these Christians and infidels."

This is how it feels to be judged by the sins of others who destroy in the name of your faith. You're no more responsible for 30 Christian extremists in Florida than Muslims are for the 9/11 hijackers. Yet most of us, when polled, say that no Muslim house of worship should be built near the site of the 9/11 attacks. In saying this, we implicitly hold all Muslims accountable for the crime of the 9/11 hijackers.

Now you know how it feels to be judged that way. It's inaccurate, and it's wrong.

Of course the two situations are different. The hijackers killed 3,000 people; the Quran burners would destroy only their own property. The hijackers were organized by a global terrorist network; the Quran burners are acting alone. But the Quran burners claim to speak for Christianity, just as the hijackers claimed to speak for Islam. And the Quran burners have many open supporters on Facebook in addition to others who are quietly cheering them on.

You, your country, and your faith are being held accountable for the deeds of these people. A widely viewed YouTube video combines "International Burn-the-Quran Day" shirts proclaiming "ISLAM IS OF THE DEVIL" (marketed by the same Florida church), satirical cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed, European criticism of Islamic veils, and myths about U.S. troops flushing a Quran down a toilet. The video says these "attacks on Muslims," including U.S. invasions of Muslim countries, expose the "hatred of the disbelievers." It calls on Muslims to "rise up and do something."

The video also features a sign at a rally: "No More Mosques." Our indiscriminate, collective-responsibility campaign against mosques is being used in an indiscriminate, collective-responsibility campaign against us and our troops.

A pastor who preaches at a nearby Florida church is aghast at the global outrage the Quran-burning minister has provoked. "He represents only 30 people in this town," the pastor tells the New York Times. "It needs to get out somehow to the rest of the world that this isn't the face of Christianity."

It will, Reverend. Right after it gets out to the rest of the world that we don't think the 9/11 hijackers are the face of Islam.

SOURCE: http://www.slate.com/id/2266535/

Bloomberg

Although pressure is mounting to cancel the Koran-burning, [NYC} Mayor Bloomberg insists the pastor should be allowed to do what he wants.

"In a strange way, I'm here to defend his right to do that," he said on Tuesday. "I happen to think that it is distasteful... [but] the First Amendment protects everybody, and you can't say that we're going to apply the First Amendment to only those cases where we are in agreement."

SOURCE: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/09/08/2010-09-08_attorney_general_eric_holder_calls_rev_terry_jones_international_burnakoran_day_.html

Burn a Koran Day

Raoux/AP

Petraeus vs. the Pastor

Petraeus vs. the PastorWhy aren't politicians speaking out against the would-be Quran-burner who's endangering our troops?
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2010, at 2:55 PM ET
SLATE
Republicans are usually eager to trumpet their support for the troops and the war against terror. So why aren't they condemning the Florida pastor who plans to lead his congregation in a Quran-burning bonfire on Sept. 11?
Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, issued a statement on Sept. 6, warning that the pastor's action "could endanger our troops," feed the Taliban's propaganda machine, and "undermine the effort to accomplish the critical [war] mission."

Advance word of the burning has already sparked anti-American protests in Kabul, with more scheduled soon. Actual images of burning Qurans, Petraeus said, "would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan—and around the world—to inflame public opinion and incite violence," much like the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib.

So where is John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who brandishes his war-hero credentials at every opportunity and, in the past, has rushed to condemn anyone who dares criticize Gen. Petraeus? Where is the second-ranking Republican, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who also sits on the Foreign Relations Committee? Where is Saxby Chambliss, who loudly supports big-ticket weapons systems in the name of national security (and the jobs they sustain in his home state of Georgia) but has thus far said nothing to support our troops on this front?

he pastor who lit this conflagration—Terry Jones, head of the 50-member (yes, 50-member) Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla.—is quoted in today's Wall Street Journal as saying, "We understand the general's concerns. We are sure that his concerns are legitimate." But, he went on, "We must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam. We will no longer be controlled and dominated by their fears and threats."

And so, to send this message, Jones and his pathetic flock plan to burn the book regarded as holy by 1.5 billion Muslims, only a tiny percentage of whom sympathize with this "radical element," though no doubt his protest will boost those ranks at least a little.

It is appalling enough that a growing number of Americans, caught up in the pre-election backlash against mosques and Muslims generally, seem unaware that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting not only against Muslims but also alongside them, and on behalf of governments led by Muslim parties. (Do they imagine, in their warped pictures of a holy war against Islam, that Nuri al-Maliki and Hamid Karzai are Christians?)

But U.S. senators know better (most of them anyway). So where are they? Whose side are they on? With the exception of Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, who appeared on Fox News to defend the right of American Muslims to build an Islamic community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site (on the conservative principle that owners of private property should be able to do as they please), elected Republicans—and, to be fair, most elected Democrats as well—have ducked and run.

In September 2007, the Senate voted 72-25 to condemn the anti-war group MoveOn.org for running a full-page newspaper ad that denounced Gen. Petraeus, then the U.S. commander in Iraq, as "General Betray Us."

If the senators want to show their genuine support for Petraeus (and not just indulge in an easy political stunt), they should denounce Terry Jones for endangering the troops and providing aid and comfort to the enemy—and, better still, send federal marshals to Gainesville, Fla., to help the local fire chief (who has ordered Jones not to burn the books) maintain public safety.

SOURCE: http://www.slate.com/id/2266404/