“Islam is EVIL
and everyone who aids and abets Islam is EVIL. Practicing Muslims are EVIL. …
The only thing Muslims have ever accomplished is establishing Islam as a
VICIOUS WORLDWIDE CRIMINAL SYNDICATE to enslave 22% of the world's population
against their cumulative will.”
(Egghead, 8/15&16/2010) “why
should america give our enemies inside privledges ,obama is way wrong to think
a mousqe would make new yorkers love the islamic people more or somehow move us
forward in tolerance by accepting them as being innocent religious folk wwho
just want to worship thier false GOD! there is no allah> there was a mohomad
as leader of islamic prophecy however he is reall y dead and is not going to
return to rule as is our LORD YESHUA-JESUS THE CHRIST.” (Gunn, 8/16/2010)
These comments,
taken verbatim from Pamela Geller’s popular right-wing blog Atlasshrugs, are not unusual examples of
what passes for discourse on the internet today. Search any current hot-button topic, and one
can easily find as much choice hatred as one can stomach. Prejudice exists everywhere, in all human
beings, and vitriol is not limited to one side of the political aisle. Nor is Islamophobia new to America. But in recent months, the tenor of the
bigotry has changed, and its temperature has increased. What makes this intensification of hatred new
and unusual is its irony, in that its inspiration is founded not in a new
attack but an attempt to heal old wounds.
Over the years
since the original attacks on September 11th, 2001, there have been numerous
calls, chiefly from conservative pundits, for moderate voices in Islam to speak
up against the radicals in their faith.
Although many such voices have answered those calls, the mainstream
media, which by its nature focuses more intently on the negative than on the
positive, has muted those moderate responses even as it cried aloud that no one
was answering. It may be that honest
moderate voices were never in fact welcome, for now, when a clear answer has
been put forth and augmented with action, what comes back in response is not
acceptance and gratitude but rejection and accusations of malice.
The answer and
action in question are the proposed Park 51 Islamic Center in New York,
NY. This project, which was greenlighted
by the city in August, 2010, will be built on the site of an old Burlington
Coat Factory, and will sport an auditorium seating 500, a swimming pool, a
library, and a small mosque. The
project’s director, Feisal Abdul Rauf, a Kuwaiti-born naturalized American
citizen, is an Imam in the moderate, mystical branch of Islam known as Sufism. His stated intention in building the center
is to provide “a platform … to strengthen the voice of the moderates … it’s my
duty as an American Muslim to stand between you, the American non-Muslim, and
the radicals who are trying to kill you.”
(Michaud, 2010)
This would seem
a straightforward response to the call for moderate Islam. Yet both Rauf and his proposed center are
under attack. Rauf himself has been deemed
“Radical Rauf” by blogger Pamela Geller (2010), and other conservative pundits
have reflexively taken to referring to him as a radical, although there appears
to be no evidence linking Rauf to any extremist Muslims or organizations. (The claim for Rauf’s supposed radicalism is
based on comments made by Rauf in 2006 pointing out that Islamic terrorism is in
part a response to the terrorism historically practiced by the United States;
this observation has been made by many commentators on the left, and is
considered treasonous by certain conservatives.) It would seem that, in the eyes of some on
the right, any Muslim who claims to be moderate but who has not allied him or
herself with American conservatism (such as former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali) is
automatically a liberal, therefore a “radical.”
While the
personal attacks on Imam Rauf are limited to the farthest fringe of the right
wing, Rauf’s proposed center itself has also come under attack on a broader
scale, chiefly for three of its aspects:
its location, its name, and its purpose.
While the center’s purpose would seem clear—to serve as a means of
creating interfaith dialogue and strengthening relations between moderate Islam
and mainstream American society—there are those who believe that any mosque, no
matter its intentions, must be a nefarious thing. Nonie Darwish, the president of Former
Muslims United, has said, “A mosque is not just a place for worship. It’s a place where war was started, where
commandments to do jihad start, where incitements against non-Muslims
occur. It’s a place where ammunition was
stored.” (Goodstein, 2010) Darwish’s claims appear to be based upon
history, and in that context may well be true—but it is difficult to see how
they might apply to an American Islamic Center run by a Sufi Imam. Also, there are at present approximately 1,900
mosques already existing in the United States, of which apparently 0% serve as
al-Qaeda armories.
Park 51 was
originally named the Cordoba Center.
“Cordoba” is a commonplace name in Islamic culture, a reference to the
Spanish city which in medieval times was the capital of the Islamic empire’s
outpost in Europe. In those days, the
height of Islam’s triumph, Cordoba was an egalitarian center of civilization,
noted for its nigh-unique tolerance of Christians and Jews. However, some people consider it a reference
to Islamic conquest, and in deference to those criticisms, Imam Rauf changed
the name. It was a small concession, but
it demonstrates Rauf’s sensitivity to his critics, and his desire to build
bridges rather than burn them.
Unfortunately,
the bridge-burners’ greatest criticism of Park 51 concerns its very location,
and it is here that their concerns are the most legitimately heartfelt—and,
ultimately, unfounded. Park 51’s site is
located two blocks from the World Trade Center, which has earned the Islamic
Center the inaccurate moniker “the Ground Zero Mosque.” Apparently this location is not happenstance
but part and parcel of Imam Rauf’s overarching plan for peace: according to Rauf, building Park 51 near the
WTC is “the right thing to do … America needs it and the Muslim world needs it
… if 9/11 happens there again, I want to be the first to die.” (Michaud, 2010) Rauf’s intentions, however noble, do not seem
to stir the 51% of Americans who oppose Park 51 (PewResearch, 2010). Their emotions are inflamed by the mere proximity
of an Islamic Center to the place where nearly 3000 Americans died at the hands
of radical Islamists. This is the reason
most often cited for opposing to the center:
it is thought insensitive, inappropriate, and inconsiderate of the
victims of 9/11 to build the center so near to Ground Zero. As Josalyn C. wrote in the comments section
at Atlasshrugs, “Yes, they have rights to practice that ‘religion’ and they
have rights to build it there but it's indecent and shameful that they even
considered doing something like this.”
(Josalyn C., 8/15/2010)
Although this
emotion is understandable, it is not universal.
Donna Marsh O’Connor lost her daughter Vanessa, who was pregnant at the
time, to the terrorist attacks. Yet
O’Connor, who is a member of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows,
has not joined the chorus of voices raised in offense at the thought of an
Islamic Center close to the place where her daughter was killed. After her coalition endorsed Park 51,
O’Connor said, “We're a family who is forever changed, certainly forever scarred,
but we're not the victims of 9/11. Our daughter was the victim of 9/11 and we
don't want to see our nation fold.” She
acknowledged the hurt emotions inspired by the center’s location, but insisted,
“we don’t change fundamentally what our nation is about because it will hurt
people … this is what America has always been—a place where people come to
escape religious persecution.”
(Bellantoni, 2010)
Which, of
course, is the point that those who oppose the center seem to miss. Even if Josalyn C. is right in calling Imam Rauf
“indecent and shameful”—and in spite of his intention to heal the wounds caused
by extremists, his choice of location may well legitimately inspire such a
reaction—her feelings, honest and valid as they may be, do not matter. The First Amendment to the United States
Constitution promotes freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression; it
does not, and cannot, guarantee a right not to be offended, not to have your
feelings hurt. It rightly insists that
the plans of Imam Rauf and the words of “Egghead” have an equal right to
coexist in America, even if the latter are hateful, ignorant, and divisive, and
even if the former is peaceful-minded, well-intentioned … and divisive.
Although the
Constitution holds the upper ground, laws and rights may ultimately be weaker
than hurt feelings. It may be that there
is a large contingent of the right wing in this country that does not want to
be healed of the wounds caused by 9/11.
They call for “moderate Islam” to speak up, but may not actually wish to
hear those words, and indeed may only hear them as threats in disguise. They may (or may not) give lip service to
freedom of religion, but in the end they may actively promote fundamentalist
Christianity in direct opposition to what they see as an Islamist threat. The efforts of an Imam Rauf cannot be taken
at face value by this contingent; they can only be seen as Jihad brought to our
shores.
President Obama,
in comments made on August 13, 2010, said unequivocally, “I believe that Muslims
have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this
country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a
community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with
local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious
freedom must be unshakable.” (Jackson,
2010) However, the very next day, the
President equivocated: “I was not
commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put
a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have
that dates back to our founding. That's what our country is about.” (Jackson, 2010)
Although most
interpretations of those statements judge the President to be waffling, I think
it a subtle warning: Barack Obama is
smart enough to know that the “wisdom” here is not a reflection on Imam Rauf’s
intentions, but rather on the consequences of building a “mosque” (for that is
how its enemies will forever see it, with all of its foreign, negative
connotations) so near to Ground Zero.
For it is not difficult, in today’s charged political climate, to
imagine some person, their emotions riled and their thoughts deranged by the
poisonous idea that “Islam is EVIL,” committing mass murder within or even
destroying the “Ground Zero Mosque” in the name of their “LORD YESHUA-JESUS THE
CHRIST.” Imam Rauf’s wish, in the case
of 9/11, to “be the first to die” may well come true … but the terrorists who
murder him may well not be Islamists.
Everyone knows that
the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It is noble and generous of Imam Rauf to want to heal wounds, to protect
America from Muslim extremists. But who
will protect Imam Rauf from America?
--Joshua Hendrickson
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