If a YMCA or a YMHA were planned for 51 Park Place in Lower
Manhattan, two blocks from the Twin Towers’ former site, who would have
noticed?
Instead, the equivalent of a Muslim Y (without the implied
male exclusivity) is to be built there. What’s the big deal?
There can be only one answer: Consciously or not, a majority
of Americans believe all American Muslims are associated with the 9/11 attacks
on the World Trade Center. Although the U.S. government position is that the
attacks were perpetrated not by Islam but rather by fanatics who warped the
religion, the opposition to Cordoba House, now known as Park51, shows that most
Americans don’t believe it. They hold all Muslims responsible. That’s
disgraceful collective guilt based on religion.
Just when one thinks that politics can’t sink any deeper
into the sewage, conservatives and Republicans come along to prove one wrong.
Who cares what Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and their ilk really think about
the Islamic cultural center (not a mosque) located two vision-obstructed blocks
from (not at) Ground Zero? What counts is that they are eager to exploit
Americans’ ignorant fears for political advantage. Gingrich, ever the pseudo
intellectual, suggests that Nazis would not be permitted to build a center near
the Holocaust Museum. He hopes you’ll not realize that (1) the developers of
Park51 aren’t Nazis or supporters of al-Qaeda, and (2) they own the property on
which the center is to be built.
Fanatical Christians and Jews have killed many innocent
people, believing they were doing God’s will. Reasonable people do not hold
Christianity and Judaism culpable for those crimes. Why the double standard
with Muslims? Several million Muslims live peacefully in the United States.
What more needs to be said?
It takes only minutes on the Internet to learn there are
different Muslim traditions. Feisal Abdul Rauf, director of Park51, is no bin
Ladenite. As William Dalrymple writes, Rauf “is one of America’s leading
thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and
outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His
videos and sermons preach love ... and reconciliation.... But in the eyes of
Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping
apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.”
Moreover, Rauf’s mainstream credentials are indisputable.
President Bush used to send him on goodwill missions to the Middle East.
President Obama continues to so. Rauf was invited to speak at the memorial
service for Daniel Pearl, the Jewish reporter for the Wall Street Journal whom
jihadists brutally murdered. In his remarks, Rauf said, “We are here to assert
the Islamic conviction of the moral equivalency of our Abrahamic faiths. If to
be a Jew means to say with all one’s heart, mind, and soul ... hear O Israel,
the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always
been one, Mr. Pearl. If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all
of my heart, mind, and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love
for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one, Mr.
Pearl.”
This hardly sounds like someone with sympathy for killers of
the innocent. He is a conciliator, which makes the location near Ground Zero
especially appropriate. We don’t have to agree with everything he says to
understand that.
The ignorance displayed in the opposition to Rauf cannot be
separated from the general American ignorance of U.S. foreign policy. History
did not begin on 9/11. It was the culmination of six decades of violence
against and oppression of Muslims in the Middle East, both inflicted and
sponsored by American regimes, Republican and Democrat. Predictably, that
record provoked a tiny minority to strike at innocent people nine years ago,
including many Muslims. Thankfully, not all Muslims hold all Americans
responsible for the U.S. government’s continuing aggression. What message does
it send when Americans persecute rather than applaud conciliatory Muslims?
The way to prevent another 9/11 is to change U.S. foreign
policy. The ugly reaction to Park51 shows that we have bin Laden exactly where
he wants us.
* Sheldon Richman is
senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens:
Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine.
Visit his blog “Free Association” at www.sheldonrichman.com.
Send him email.
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Thank you for this well-reasoned, accurate, and patriotic response to this non-issue. Allowing Muslims to worship, play basketball, or conduct whatever legal activities they wish, anywhere they want is EXACTLY what America is all about. Fighting it only sinks to the level of the extremists.
Freedom of religion is a fundamental part of American life. No one would fight the building of a church in Oklahoma City where terrorist (Christian) Timothy McVeigh’s bomb killed innocent people. People have killed in the name of religion for centuries. It’s time we rose above that level to live together in peace, no matter what beliefs (or lack of beliefs) we share.