Ground Zero Mosque: Shooting Low and Shooting High
NEW YORK, N.Y. – Even after Manhattan’s Landmarks Preservation Committee denied historical status last week to the Ground Zero building proposed to become a mosque, the debate over the Islamic center’s right to exist has not withered. The issue actually had potential to simplify after Mayor Bloomberg showed unwavering support for the mosque, saying anyone who disagrees with him should be ashamed of themselves.
But even after the mayor’s castigation of mosque opponents, the critics and supporters of the controversial Islamic cultural center have continued to opine. Governor Paterson has also chimed in now, telling New Yorkers he understands their qualms with the project, and that he would be willing to provide state aid should the mosque choose to move to a different location.
One thing is for sure: the mosque will be built. But arguments presented thus far have bounced from one extreme to the next, and few analysts have confined themselves to moderation. The proponents are weak and overly defensive, while the critics are self-destructive.
What the naysayers don’t seem to understand is that the only terms upon which Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s mosque project will be halted is if he is proven to have dangerous connections to radical Islamic groups. Any other protest will appear as a claim that the religion of Islam is inherently a reprehensible and dangerous ideology. When Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich says the mosque is a slap in the face they are following a dangerous logic. It concludes: the mosque is bad because it’s next to a place where people from a mosque did bad things. Imagine a group is split into two sects: dangerous and peaceful. If a congregation from the ‘peaceful’ division were to set up shop next to a crime scene committed by the ‘dangerous’ division, there would be no problem. If a group from the ‘dangerous’ division did the same, there would be trouble. So when the mosque is protested because it is an institution of the Islamic faith – without any radical ties – that distinguishing line is removed and the faith as a whole is impugned.
Nobody, especially the Mayor of New York, will ever reject the mosque on the grounds of limiting religious freedom. If, however, the critics exercised more tact in their protest they might have more success preventing the building. In their fervor they overlook what is their only reasonable point: that the Imam in charge of the operation, Rauf, is egregiously pushing what he knows to be a very controversial agenda that can only work positively for him. While he professes to be a teacher of peace, his statements on Hamas and the degree of radicalism of the 9/11 terrorists are dubious at best.
And in profiling Rauf and his deliberate instigation, the commentary from mosque supporters is simplistic and naive. Richard Cohen’s mostly accurate assessment of Gringich’s remarks collapses when he says “[n]ineteen so-called ‘jihadists’ crashed four airplanes that day.” Newt’s failure to distinguish the radicals as an abnormality is matched by Richard’s inability to recognize any connection between Islam and the 9/11 terrorists.
In typical fashion, Cohen and the leftists can’t bring themselves to use the term ‘Islamic extremism’ for fear of political incorrectness, and the Palin populists follow the one-way road of thinking that again drives them right into a wreck. The argument has proven to be unproductive, and it epitomizes the increasingly narrow minds on each side of the political spectrum.
The mosque plan will undoubtedly succeed in all legal procedures – and it should – but the fact that Bloomberg did not have the spine to even encourage Rauf to consider a different location is disconcerting. Governor Paterson, although offering a possibly impractical solution, has been one of the few to take the proper approach: to preserve our inalienable right to freedom of religion while retaining our backbone as Americans who don’t forget our fallen.
