From: Romi Elnagar <bluesapphire48@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 11:33 AM
Subject: [bangla-vision] Siddiqui: No grounds for 'mosque' hysteria
To:
Siddiqui: No grounds for 'mosque' hysteria By Haroon Siddiqui Editorial Page The raging controversy over the "Ground Zero Mosque" is quintessentially American: free of facts and logic and unapologetically exploitative of emotional issues in the tradition of bare-knuckled partisan politics; yet also an occasion for responsible leaders to call on fellow Americans to live up to their highest ideals, despite the lingering trauma of 9/11 and the ravages of an economic crisis. In raising their voices against all the ugliness going around, President Barack Obama and, in particular, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York have displayed the best of America and set an example of how to deal with bigots — confront them. First, the facts: The mosque is not a mosque at all. It's envisaged as a Muslim Y, with a swimming pool, restaurant, galleries and an auditorium, open to non-Muslims. It's not at the World Trade Center but two blocks north and wouldn't be visible from the site. Even if it were, it'd be "a very appropriate place," as Bloomberg said. It would "tell the world there's freedom of religion for everyone" in America. The initiators of the project are not "radical Islamists" and "jihadists" but rather Manhattanites, through and through. Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, who came to the U.S. as a child from Kuwait, is a graduate of Columbia University. A follower of Sufism, that mystical branch of Islam, he has been called "a Muslim Deepak Chopra" by someone who meant it as a compliment. Rauf condemns violence, denounces anti-Semitism, attends Seders. He's vice-chair of the Inter-Faith Center in New York. He did say that "the U.S. policies were an accessory to the crime" of 9/11 but has since been an adviser to the FBI and also helped the State Department promote the U.S. in the Muslim world. His wife, Daisy Khan, sits on a board of a 9/11 memorial and museum. The project developer, Sharif al-Gamal, was born in the U.S. and was injured on 9/11 delivering water bottles to emergency crews that fateful day. The proposed 13-storey building has the support of the United Jewish Federation of New York, along with a local church and also 9/11 Families for a Peaceful Tomorrow. The building was approved, 29 to 1, by the neighbourhood council committee and unanimously by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. It was initially called the Cordoba Centre — not to glorify the Muslim conquest centuries ago of Catholic Spain, as Newt Gingrich claimed, but rather to evoke the spirit of interreligious cosmopolitanism of that city when Europe was in the Dark Ages. The project has since been given a very NYC name, Park51. Opponents of the project have advanced several arguments. • "The mosque" is an affront to the memory of 9/11 victims and should not be anywhere near the site. This is based on the premise that all Muslims are collectively guilty for Sept. 11. This racist narrative — meant to deflect attention away from American foreign policies — has it that Muslims have not condemned terrorism enough, though they have, repeatedly and forcefully, and been the greatest victims of terrorism. Obama acknowledged both those truths when defending Park51. • Why can't "the mosque" be moved elsewhere? The answer has been that doing so would be to concede to falsehood and discrimination. Besides, how far from Ground Zero would be far enough? This is a political, not a religious matter. There's nothing holy about Park51. Muslims can pray anywhere, in a clean space. Ironically, it's the World Trade Center site that's being bathed in sacredness. As a Republican contender for a House seat from West Virginia said: "Ground Zero is hallowed ground to Americans." • The West need not be nice to Muslims as long as Muslim countries persecute their minorities, such as Coptic Christians in Egypt, Baha'is in Iran, Chaldeans in Iraq, etc. In other words, since they are awful, we should be as well. Democracies should behave like dictatorships. • The project's $100 million funding is suspect — the money may come from Saudi Arabia (15 of the 19 murderers of 9/11 were Saudis). This innuendo is being circulated just as the U.S. is secretly negotiating a record $60-billion defence contract with Saudi Arabia. Saudi money is halal for armaments, haram for mosques. • An inflammatory argument has been that all mosques, or most of the 1,900 ones in the U.S., are breeding grounds for extremism, terrorism and terrorists. This theme has emerged in opposition to mosque projects in California, Connecticut, Kentucky, Michigan, New York state, Texas and Tennessee. But Muslim terrorists in the West are emerging not from mosques but from public schools (Toronto 18), beer parlours and soccer fields (London 7/7), even the U.S. Army (Major Nidal Hasan), etc. And a study by Duke University and the University of California has concluded that mosques are acting as a deterrent to militancy, organizing anti-violence forums and youth programs. If all this new McCarthy-ism gets you down, read the following. Bloomberg has been heroic, anchoring his defence of the project in his childhood memories of Medford, Mass., where Jews were barred from several neighbourhoods. "We would betray our values if we treated Muslims differently than anyone else." Evoking the emergency crews who worked on 9/11, he said: "In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked: 'What God do you pray to? What beliefs do you hold?' "To cave in to popular sentiment would be to hand over a victory to the terrorists." For his part, Obama said: "Muslims have the same right to practise their religion as anyone else in this country. ...This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable." But the next day he backpedalled, saying he had defended only the constitutional right to private property and the right to religion and not spoken about the wisdom of the location of the project. That prompted Rabbi Irwin Kula of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York to say that "the distinction between the right to build and the wisdom to build is a very, very, very dangerous distinction." The protests are led by discredited politicians desperate for the limelight — Sarah Palin (she of the Tweet: "PLS refudiate" the mosque), Gingrich, George Pataki and Rudy Giuliani, along with some nervous Congressional candidates for the mid-term elections in November. They must know that Park51 has all the needed approvals but keep talking about it anyway as a wedge issue. The protesters include: • Neo-cons and evangelicals hypercritical of Muslims. They bring in tow a handful of "ex-Muslims," such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and known Islamophobes, such as Dutch politician Geert Wilders. They say that the real problem is Islam itself, Qur'an being so full of violence. (They have obviously never fully read the Bible.) • Tea Party malcontents looking for scapegoats at a time when there's little economic hope, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not going well — wars that for them were all about kicking ass. • Obama haters, especially the fifth of Americans who believe the myth that he is a Muslim. These groups are noisy but marginal. This is the opposite of Europe, where Islamophobia has gone mainstream. In North America, it is still held in disdain. Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears on Thursday and Sunday. |
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