by Eric Martin
Shorter Harry Reid:
This woman who lost her son in Iraq is less American than you and me because she is a Muslim. And so was her son.
Shameful and craven.
Everyone involved in this despicable anti-Muslim hate fest should be deeply ashamed of themselves. To the core. This is not only un-American – though it is without a doubt – it is also cruel to people that deserve far better.
Unfortunately, if the subject is American Politics as it is, the moral of the story is the astounding fact that there is something worse than a (spineless) Democrat (trying to hold onto his seat in a conservative state): that something is called ‘a Republican’. Not very satisfying. Americans don’t like to choose between ‘awful’ and ‘much worse’. We like choices between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, etc. It’s a stupid human trick to not understand the much more typical (especially nowadays) choice between ‘awful’ and ‘worse’.
I wonder though, Eric, how you appeal to the shame of people who have no shame?
Yes, you are right all around. And the answer to the latter is, keep trying I suppose. At the very least, I can create some latent, nagging unpleasantness deep in the psyche of the subject, even if the person is unable to identify the source or cares enough to rectify the situation.
Hey, I go to war with the consciences I have to appeal to, not the…
Well, Barack and Harry said the same thing that, oh wait, Marty said. Of course they have the right to build the cultural center right where they plan. People have died, and I would defend to the death, their right to build it.
That doesn’t make it a good idea.
Why that concept is such a struggle I am not sure.
Very sad to see mothers bury their young sons yet others have time to hit the airwaves over religion. No wonder I do not ascribe to any of them.
What makes it a bad idea, Marty?
Why that concept is such a struggle I am not sure
Maybe it’s an unfortunate deficiency in the recommended levels of shamelessness, arrogance, and cruelty.
Marty, you and Reid think it’s a bad idea. Obama did not say that.
Yes, thank Allah that Harry Reid has stepped up to protect this Hallowed Ground from besmirchment.
Everyone involved indeed, and that includes some of those ostensibly well-meaning people (ie who claim to be on the side of tolerance) with national megaphones who decided “engaging” the bigots rather than marginalizing them via ignoring them (no one ever had the power to threaten the freedom to worship on that site) was the better course, if only for their own ratings (I’m talking to you, Keith Olbermann, Chris Mttews). There are controversies that are necessarily going to be national in scope, and there there are ones that go national only because the national forces on one side choose to engage the national forces on the other who are seeking to nationalize a local matter. I guess people can decide for themselves which this case is an example of.
Yes, Mike D., I’m sure if Olbermann and Matthews had just ignored Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich the media wouldn’t have covered their comments at all. Both sides are to blame. Naturally.
If some small-town racist posts a sign in his yard, then don’t give it attention by denouncing it nationally. But when people whose every word is lapped up by the media are spreading hatred, then I don’t see ignoring it as a valid alternative to responding.
“That doesn’t make it a good idea.
Why that concept is such a struggle I am not sure.”
In my case, it’s because I hate to encourage bigotry in any way.
Yes, there are people who lost family on 9/11 who don’t want the center built there. I read a piece by a Muslim woman who opposes it–she lost her mother to the 9/11 attackers and her family fled from the Iranian revolution. And her arguments are completely irrational. link She actually fears that the center might become a bastion of Muslim fundamentalism.
You can sympathize with someone who has suffered like she has, but draw the line at giving any support to the incoherent bigoted feelings she expresses.
BTW, anyone who thinks you can’t be bigoted against your own religion hasn’t met me. Or a bunch of other people with a rather complex relationship to one’s faith. Which I mention in case someone thinks it’s odd for me to refer to a Muslim as bigoted against Islam.
KCinDC, that would be the only way to avoid or mitigate what we’re now experiencing. I don’t mean to spread the blame equally – I clearly said there are those who are stirring this up purposely. But faced with that, the media and the tolerant have choices, and they chose to engage. Taking the demagoguery as a given (which if we don’t there is nothing to discuss), then your position is that you want this thing to blow up to the size it has and not stay at whatever is the maximal size it could have reached if those who disagree with the bigots had simply denied them oxygen. I feel differently.
Marty,
I would note that Obama did not say what Reid said about it being a bad idea. Not at all.
Further, I asked you weeks ago, and repeatedly since, to formulate an argument against expanding the community center a few blocks from the WTC that wasn’t based on either: (a) ignorance; or (b) bigotry.
Thus far, you have refused. Which is your right, of course.
However, if you wonder why people are struggling with the concept that it is a bad idea, the fact that you (who presumably aren’t so struggling) have as of yet to formulate an argument not rooted in either ignorance or bigotry should offer a clue.
If you can’t do it, why would you suggest that it is self-evident?
It is clearly historically precedented that “America” does not trust descendents of those we are at war with. I don’t see this as a step away from American attitudes. That we are looking at an entire religion/ethnicity/funny name and or hat gear might be new, but I don’t have a lot of data to support that. I suspect in WWII there was little trust of anyone who was not clearly “white” regardless whether we were bombing their ancestral home.
It is a step away from our ideal, which Jacob has provided yeoman’s work to focus on, but it is not a step away from the past.
That CPL Khan is exactly the soldier we need to be most effective is only the least sad part.
But faced with that, the media and the tolerant have choices, and they chose to engage. Taking the demagoguery as a given (which if we don’t there is nothing to discuss), then your position is that you want this thing to blow up to the size it has and not stay at whatever is the maximal size it could have reached if those who disagree with the bigots had simply denied them oxygen. I feel differently.
Mike, the problem is that the media itself was busy stirring the controversey, not “engaging” it as mere reporters or even tolerant supporters.
This whole thing was ginned up by right wing media, namely Fox News, the NY Post and the WSJ – the Rupert Murdoch family.
So to argue that if the media had just backed off it would have gone away misses the point that the media was not a neutral party here – the media was guilty of the crime itself, not inadvertant abetting.
What’s the right thing to do with bigots who shout and holler that they’re offended about something? Ignore them? Or shout them down?
Marty appals me with his distinction between a right and a “good idea”. Sure, sure, you don’t have to exercise your right to free speech all the time; it may not be a “good idea” to speak of rope in the house of a hanged man and all that. But Lower Manhattan is NOT HIS HOUSE. He would not even KNOW about the “Ground Zero Mosque” unless the Professional Right had decided to make him aware of it. (Or, to forestall accusations of mind-reading, let me say that someone like ME would not have heard of it but for the shouting and hollering of the Palins and the Gingriches; and I don’t think Marty has any more personal ties to Lower Manhattan than I do.) Given that the Professional Right HAS chosen to shout and holler, at both me and Marty; and given that they are pushing the “but c’mon” line with some apparent success; and given that we have the RIGHT to shout back at them; is it a “good idea” to do so?
Yes, it is. Ignoring troublemakers like Palin and Gingrich, much less yielding to them, is appeasement — if I may borrow an oft-used right-wing meme. We must fight them on the beaches, and so forth. When they try to claim Lower Manhattan as a Sudetenland that belongs to their burgeoning Reich, we can stand up to them at the risk of war, or we can be polite. Fnck politeness, say I. Letting them conquer defenseless minds by unilateral shouting and hollering is too polite for me.
Bring on the holy war, I say. Let’s settle this thing once and for all. The Gingrich-Palin axis may have executed a succesful blitzkrieg so far, but it has been successful mainly due to lack of effective resistance from the wimpy armies of the mush-minded. Their conquests must not stand.
I don’t know whether to count people who take the “but c’mon” line as dupes or as allies of the Professional Right. But I know for damn sure that THEY are the reason an atheist like me is in this fight. No imam ever made me pick a side on the “Ground Zero Mosque” question. It was Mullah Gingrich and Ayatollah Palin that forced me to take up arms — by shouting and hollering either to, or for, people like Marty. I would love to make common cause with Marty against demagogic troublemakers. But we need to agree, first, who the demagocic troublemakers ARE.
–TP
if we governed according to mob rule, we’d still have slaves and women wouldn’t be able to vote.
Fnck the Democrats. If the country elects Republicans in the fall, they run the country further into the ground and America responds by electing more Democrats, then we deserve watching our country disintegrate around us.
Given the status quo: Let it all fncking burn.
[Edited to conform to posting rules]
Why the fnck did I move back here?
There isn’t any way to rationalize that it is a bad idea to build that community center that doesn’t involve pandering to bigotry or outright bigotry.
It’s a good idea to build the mosque there because we are one nation and should stand together. Nine Eleven was a tragedy for all of us including the Islamic citizens of New York. There is no way in hell that it is an affront to other Americans for some of our fellow citizens to build a community center near ground zero. People who feel affronted need to get over themselves.
@ Tony P
Bravo!
Or: Wish I’d said that.
And her arguments are completely irrational.
Indeed. She deplores the politicization her mother’s death, so she does logical thing and pleads with
the Gingriches, Palins and Reids to cease their demagoguerythe Cordoba House to find a new location “far away” from the WTC site. Because, you know, they should have foreseen that proposing to provide a pool and gym for the kids of lower Manhattan would have brought out the hyenas.Nine Eleven was a tragedy for all of us including the Islamic citizens of New York.
Some of the congregation that had regularly prayed at the prayer space at the community center were killed on 9/11.
But, according to the bigots and the ignorant, expanding that community center (and overcrowded prayer space) is an insult to those that died on 9/11. Including those that prayed there while alive.
Morans.
“Further, I asked you weeks ago, and repeatedly since, to formulate an argument against expanding the community center a few blocks from the WTC that wasn’t based on either: (a) ignorance; or (b) bigotry.”
No you didn’t. You asked me to formulate an argument that didn’t involve the feelings of those who still have an emotional reaction to their families and friends (and perhaps just fellow Americans) being killed two blocks away by Muslim extremists.
Yet you ask me to take into account the feelings of Muslim Americans who aren’t Muslim extremists and understand how all of this bad publicity must feel to them, which I do.
When I expressed empathy for both sides you categorically said that only one side was worthy of empathy.
So no, you disappeared everyone who had a friend, relative, loved one or acquaintance who died that day who is still trying to deal with it.
The statement was that there was nothing to get over, to you.
If it is a bad idea it is because it causes pain to some people unnecessarily. If it overcomes or helps heal that pain then that will be great. But that probably only happens if the discussion is actually had over a period of time where those people can deal with it.
So calling them bigots or ignorant is pretty much against the whole concept of healing espoused by the people who want to build it in the first place.
And, of course, Obama did try to have it both ways. “I won’t comment on whether it is a good idea, just that they have a right to build there” is pretty weak tea, hoping everyone would just assume he was agreeing with them.
The great campaigner at, not quite, his best.
It may be weak tea, Marty, but it wasn’t agreeing with you and Reid.
You asked me to formulate an argument that didn’t involve the feelings of those who still have an emotional reaction to their families and friends (and perhaps just fellow Americans) being killed two blocks away by Muslim extremists.
No, I did not. I believe you are mistaken, as I don’t really think you would be lying. I asked you to formulate an argument that is not based on either ignorance or bigotry. I ask again.
You mentioned that some people had emotional reactions. I acknowledged this, but pointed out that their emotional reactions in opposition to the mosque were based on either ignorance or bigotry.
Merely stating that something is an “emotional reaction” does not excuse the underlying gesture. People that wanted to imprison Japanese Americans indiscriminately might have been emotional about their reaction to Pearl Harbor. That does not mean we should defer to their emotionalism.
So no, you disappeared everyone who had a friend, relative, loved one or acquaintance who died that day who is still trying to deal with it.
Again, I’m hoping your are just mistaken here, but find it harder to extend you that credit.
Marty, I’ve told you this before. I know I have, and I can’t imagine why you choose to dismiss it: I lost 5 friends that day. I attended multiple funerals that September. Another pair of brothers (both friends of mine) lost their father.
I “am” those people, and I did not disappear them. However, again, emotional reactions based on either ignorance or bigotry should not be deferred to.
The statement was that there was nothing to get over, to you.
Again, this is either a mistake or a lie, and I request that you retract.
Yet you ask me to take into account the feelings of Muslim Americans who aren’t Muslim extremists and understand how all of this bad publicity must feel to them, which I do.
Huh? Yeah, I ask you to take into account the feelings of people that are being discriminated unjustly rather than…defend the right of people to unjustly discriminate against other Americans.
You think that’s wrong?
If it is a bad idea it is because it causes pain to some people unnecessarily. If it overcomes or helps heal that pain then that will be great. But that probably only happens if the discussion is actually had over a period of time where those people can deal with it.
So calling them bigots or ignorant is pretty much against the whole concept of healing espoused by the people who want to build it in the first place.
Again, formulate an argument that is not either based on ignorance or bigotry. The “pain” or anger comes from either bigotry against all Muslims or treating all Muslims as al-Qaeda clones.
My point, all along, is that we should not give in to emotional arguments based on either ignorance or bigotry that result in dscrimination against innocent people.
Unless you disagree.
What wonkie said.
Some day we will have a President who is not a wimp. This Great Leader will not timidly confine himself to forthright support of the 1st Amendment. He will boldly announce whether or not he considers this or that proposed church, synagogue, mosque, abortion clinic or shooting range a “good idea”. That will please Marty, no doubt.
As for “If it is a bad idea it is because it causes pain to some people unnecessarily”, I can only quote Eric Cantor again: “But c’mon!” The vast majority of people who are pained unnecessarily are people who would never have experienced a bit of “pain”, “unnecessary” or otherwise, but for the mouth-frothing, spittle-flecked outrage of the Professional Right.
–TP
People have died, and I would defend to the death, their right to build it.
That doesn’t make it a good idea.
That *does* make it a good idea, Marty. It’s a *perfect* idea. It’s absolutely not like ‘putting up nazi signs at the holocaust museum’, or whatever it is that that pig Gingrich said.
Tony P. is right about everything he wrote, and specifically, right about the fact that had wild radioactive boar in and around the GOP not ginned this up, none of us would even know there was to be an Islamic center in lower Manhattan (as if any of these people could care less about NYC anyway). Even conservatives (like Laura Ingraham) who did hear about it (probably because of the W. Bush connection) didn’t have a problem with it until she was told to.
If this sort of thing didn’t have really bad consequences, it would be merely pathetic.
“You mentioned that some people had emotional reactions. I acknowledged this, but pointed out that their emotional reactions in opposition to the mosque were based on either ignorance or bigotry.”
This is the point that we disagree on. People can object to the simplest of things that remind them of a painful experience. I haven’t played golf since my father died in May, I just can’t make myself do it. When I drive by our favorite course it is still pretty bad, so I avoid that route. It strikes me that avoiding that reminder doesn’t make me a golf bigot.
As for this:
From your Southern Strategy 2.0 comment:
Again, simply says that there is nothing valid to get over, as I said.
Giving in is different than empathizing. If the people building this center decide to move it because it seems to be causing pain, then they are being empathetic, if they build it to create healing then they recognize there is something to heal.
You seem to deny the very essence of what they say they are hoping to accomplish.
And no, I am certain that I can’t create an argument that will satisfy you, you can’t seperate a particular instance, a forever reminder very near the site that creates a particular emotional reaction, from a general feeling against all Muslims.
go Angle, go!
Muslims have apparently been worshiping at that site for nearly a year now. Have these 9/11 families been in pain from it all that time, or was it only when Geller/Palin/Gingrich/etc. started shrieking that they discovered they should feel bad about it?
The local planning board voted for it, after holding public hearings. If you don’t live in NYC you have no right to object to it, it’s not in your backyard.
“was it only when Geller/Palin/Gingrich/etc. started shrieking that they discovered they should feel bad about it?”
I am sure this is a fair question, although I would add NYT, Fox, etc.
Now I see it. I just needed a good analogy!
Attempting to block the construction, on private property, for a place of worship is certainly legal.
But shouldn’t we consider all the families of 9/11 victims golf games?
People can object to the simplest of things that remind them of a painful experience. I haven’t played golf since my father died in May, I just can’t make myself do it.
That’s a poor analogy, Marty. The absurdity of your ‘Am I a golf bigot?’ proves not that your argument is strong, but that it’s weak – absurd. You are managing your own grief, which is pretty different from pissing on a basic American value, not to mention telling other people what *they* must do (or not do).
If the people building this center decide to move it because it seems to be causing pain, then they are being empathetic, if they build it to create healing then they recognize there is something to heal.
Who has said there’s nothing to heal? Eric – who lives with his family in Manhattan? Don’t think so. Who, Marty? If you ignore everything else, just answer that one, please.
That you recognize the possibility that they would do the latter of the two things explodes the ‘argument’ against building the center.
Yes, I understand that scapegoating can be effective politics, that whispering poison into people’s ears like Screwtape can make an emotional connection, and create an emotional reaction. So?
“You asked me to formulate an argument that didn’t involve the feelings of those who still have an emotional reaction to their families and friends (and perhaps just fellow Americans) being killed two blocks away by Muslim extremists.”
The key words here are “Muslim extremists”. There is no indication that the Muslims who wish to build a community center have any connection to, affinity with, or sympathy toward Muslim extremists. Therefore there is no basis for anyone to get into a snit about their center.
The Muslims of New York aren’t causing annyone any pain. The pain felt by some individuals is self inflicted and based on their inablity to tell one Muslim from another. Hey, bigotry hurts!
I’m kind of confused about why we’re talking about building anything. If the Cordoba folk turn around and say “ok, ok, we’re not going to build anything…instead, we’re going to rent a room in the building next door and use it to hold services every week”, would any of the furor really die down? Marty, would you still have a problem with that?
If we’ve gotten to the point where a group of Americans must be shamed out of renting a room for prayer, I’d like to know….Then we could reconfigure the discussion so that instead of talking about buildings we could talk about the real issue: Muslims are not allowed to pray near Ground Zero because that hurts Sarah Palin’s feelings or something.
Why that concept is such a struggle I am not sure.
Because the people who want to build the community center had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.
Nothing.
They happen to share the same religion, in the same way that your local Quaker congregation shares the same religion with dominionist fundamentalist Christians.
It’s not like nobody’s feelings aren’t going to be hurt if the Cordoba Institute doesn’t build the center. The couple million Muslims who live, work, and raise their families here are going to be hurt.
And it’s not like nobody’s going to be offended. I’m going to be offended.
It strikes me that avoiding that reminder doesn’t make me a golf bigot.
That’s all well and good, and I’m sorry for your loss, but if you insisted that *no golf course be built* within ten miles of your father’s house, to save your tender feelings, you’d be a d*ck.
http://www.wtc.com/about/retail
So, there you have your sacred space that must be kept free of any whiff of Muslim taint. Sweet Lord, the depths of cynicism required by this controversy boggle the mind.
No, Marty–the problem is that you can’t separate a specific incident perpetrated by specific muslim extremists from a general feeling against all Muslims.
The problem is not with this community center. The problem is not with the people running it. The problem is 100% generated by you and all the other people who are transferring the animus against al Qaeda–remember them?–onto people who have done nothing whatsoever to deserve it, simply because they share a religion.
That is bigotry. It is indefensible.
Marty
Do you ever consider how much “hallowed ground” America has created in Muslim countries? How many Iraqis or Afghans have been killed, displaced, imprisoned, tortured, or orphaned? How many Pakistanis or Yemenis?
That doesn’t make it a good idea.
Why that concept is such a struggle I am not sure.”
Let me make myslef clear, on this, Marty: I hate bullies and I hate bigots. Opposing the Cordoba House empowers bigots. To even consider or take seriously the demands of bigotted Republican (and Democratic) crazies only empowers the forces of hate and violence in this country and defies our values of religious tolerance. If you staand with New Gingrich and Sarah Palin, you stand with the forces of hatred and are spitting on American values.
I hate bigots and bullies. You makes defenses of them. You side with Gingrich over Bloomberg, and thus commit a serious moral error. The funny thing is that the moral high ground is so, so clear, just as it was clear for those who opposed Jim Crow, but you, trying to be the “white moderate,” can only seek to empower the unhinged hatred of the right that is lashing out at American citizens because of their religion.
Me? I see the outlandish statements of Gingrich and Palin trying to whip up hatred with repspect to the Cordoba House and think, “those are a pair of bullies and bigots. I hate bullies and bigots. I’d better make sure they get smacked down.” You do the opposite and engage in public apologetics for them. Why is that?
This is fairly consistent with your unabashed support of torture, as well. In short: you tend to take a rather submissive posture towards the hate of the Republican right because you obviously have a servile nature towards the party of wealth and bigotry. Or perhaps it’s part and an overall shortcoming in your moral understanding. I mean, Marty, if you can’t oppose hatred and bigotry, what can you stand against? Tell me, Marty? When can we expect you ever to be helpful or act morally when it’s required of you? And if the answer is never, the, really, what good are you to the rest of our society? Could we have expected you to simply say, “well, gee, they shouldn’t have been walking across that bridge,” when Bull Conner turned the hoses on the civil rights marchers? You’re not helping anyone, Marty. You’re harming them.
Well said, Fats. We’re over in Baghdad throwing up fncking Burger Kings and Pizza Huts and calling it good. We’re the same people who said “Sh*t happens” when 5,000 years of Iraqi cultural history was destroyed during our invasion, tanks rolling over ancient temple grounds and the National Library on fire because we didn’t think it was as important as the Oil Ministry. Oh, we care so much! We’re as bad as the fncking Turks who blew up the Parthenon.
[Edited to improve posting rules compliance]
And it’s not like nobody’s going to be offended. I’m going to be offended.
Sometimes, you have to offend somebody. Young Elizabeth Bennett chose wisely. Old Harry Reid, not so much.
–TP
Apart from all that, the rabid right has made pretty clear that any Muslim presence in the US is to be considered defilement of hallowed ground*. Those that oppose just new places of Muslim worship and don’t demand blowing up all existing mosques are now the moderates. There are unfortunately far too many that would vote without hesitation for going 1290 or 1492 on all Muslims, expelling them from the land under confiscation of their property.
*not to forget that the same often consider NYC as an equal abomination in itself. Some, or so I hear, even applauded 9/11 at first because they saw it as God’s revenge on the godless coatal liberals.
Marty,
This is what I said:
People have the right to harbor animus against al-Qaeda for what was done. They don’t need to “get over” that.
This is what you said:
Again, simply says that there is nothing valid to get over, as I said.
No, that is the OPPOSITE of what I said.
It very clearly, in plain English, says that they can and still could and even should still harbor animus against al-Qaeda. It says, in plain English, that they don’t need to get over that.
Then I added:
However, blaming all Muslims didn’t make any more sense then than it does now, so that part is not “to be over” so much as “should never have been.”
Which is the point.
I haven’t played golf since my father died in May, I just can’t make myself do it. When I drive by our favorite course it is still pretty bad, so I avoid that route. It strikes me that avoiding that reminder doesn’t make me a golf bigot.
Well, golfers are not a religion or a group being discriminated against, but if you demanded that no golf courses be built within a certain radius of your house or hometown, and then demanded that everyone defer to your emotions on this, you would be unreasonable. Not a bigot, because it would not be based in bigotry. But if you said that the reason you think this is beacuse “all golfers are terrorists” and that’s why you oppose the golf course, then you would be a bigot. Albeit a quirky one.
if they build it to create healing then they recognize there is something to heal.
You seem to deny the very essence of what they say they are hoping to accomplish.
First of all, there are many reasons to build it, including the actual need for Muslims that live and work in the area.
Regardless, I don’t deny the existence of bigotry and ignorance in need of healing. I am in fact emphasizing that. And that needs to heal. But the way to heal it is to show that Muslims are normal, law abiding, patriotic Americans and an integrated part of the City I live in. In the neighborhood I live in.
And you do that by going forward and building the site as an exemplar, and allowing Muslims to live their everyday lives without being harrassed. Bigots and ignorant people be damned.
The thing is, I can actually understand why some folks would be bothered by the Cordoba folks building their center on Park Place.
And it might not be due specifically to bigotry, in the sense of their believing that “all Muslims are bad”.
The problem is that the effect is exactly the same as explicit, blatant bigotry.
The folks in the Cordoba Institute had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. They have, consistently, condemned the attacks in the strongest language.
The folks who attacked us were Muslims, and the Cordoba folks are Muslims. That’s the only connection. And there are something like a billion to a billion and a half Muslims on the planet.
During WWI, German Americans were harassed. That was wrong.
During WWII, we indiscriminately rounded up Japanese Americans and moved them to internment camps. That was wrong.
And now, in the face of terror attacks and threats, we’re harassing Muslims. It was wrong then, it’s wrong now.
The only reason this is an issue at all is because it has been taken up by the screaming flying monkey circus on the right wing blogs. Pam Geller, then Palin and Gingrich, and their pals. Without their helpful input, it’s highly likely that nobody outside of lower Manhattan would have ever known or cared that the Cordoba center was being considered.
I hesitate to even mention this, because I’m afraid it will bring the shrieking harpies down on their heads as well, but there is a masjid on Warren St, exactly two blocks up from Park Pl, making it precisely four blocks from the WTC site.
It is, by all appearances, a tiny little storefront joint. It’s been there for something like 30 years.
Should they be forced to close down? If not, why not? Is two blocks too close, but four blocks not too close? Is a crappy little storefront masjid OK, but a Muslim Y a step too far? Is something that’s been there for a while OK, but something new no good?
The fact of the matter is that there are no good answers to these questions, because the questions are absurd.
The people who don’t want the Cordoba center to be built hold that opinion because the Cordoba folks are Muslim, and Muslims attacked us on 9/11. The *only connection* between the two groups is the fact that they are Muslim. There is *no other connection*.
The folks who feel this way may not think of themselves as bigots, because they may retain, in some part of their brain, an understanding that not all Muslims are bloodthirsty murderous fanatics, but they are behaving as bigots. And if they continue to do so, they will end up as bigots, because their position is utterly unreasonable outside of the blinkered logic of bigotry.
There’s nothing new about this crap, our history is full of it, and it’s always wrong.
9/11 was almost ten years ago. Muslims live here, in peace and in good faith, and have done so in large numbers for over a hundred years.
Folks who lost loved ones on 9/11 will never “get over it”, because it’s a permanent loss. It’s part of you, because your love for the folks you’ve lost is part of you.
But it sure as hell is time for us, as a nation, to get over our fear and distrust of Muslims. They’re just people, like anybody else. They’re not all murderers, they aren’t all trying to kill us, or make us wear funny headgear, and they’re not all trying to establish the United States of Sharia.
They’re just people, like you and me.
I feel a little bad for Marty. He’s offered himself up as the sacrificial lamb, holding a very unpopular opinion (on this blog, anyway). I’m sure he’s a good guy, and he didn’t instigate this controversy. But he’s not a very good arguer, since he simply ignores points he has no answer for. When your position is indefensible, you have to do that.
I notice that he’s joined by Professional Atheist and evident humorless fool Sam Harris (via Sullivan), who makes idiotic arguments against:
You’d think that so subtle a thinker as Sam would understand the difference between proximate and actual causes.
Thank god we have you to alert us to these carefully researched facts, Sam. Oh, and thanks for recommending passivity – great idea.
You shouldn’t smoke weed before writing, Sam.
I fear religion – very much so. I’m vehemently against suppressing it (not fair and it doesn’t work anyway), but I fear it. The greatest summing up of 9/11, IMO, was by (I believe) a Muslim, who immediately said, ‘Religion did this’. He was right. Not ‘Islam’, or ‘Christianity’, but ‘religion’. Only immoderate and zealous Idealism can rationalize atrocities like 9/11, or the Crusades, or the Holocaust (secular religion), or the countless others. You’d think Harris would have figured that out, being a Professional Atheist and all. I’d suspected it before, but now I’m sure that he’s a Professional Jackass, too.
So, we have a real community center, consisting of real people, being quite carelessly used by several as an excuse to beat their hobbyhorses. We have Christianists tacitly militating against Islam because it’s the ‘wrong team’, and fools like Harris deciding that singling out Islam is a great way to further their arguments against religion as a whole. Either way, it’s Holy War, which is about as tragically stupid as it gets.
Echoing what was said above: what about *my* feelings? I’m deeply hurt. Really. Offended and hurt and ashamed. At times like this I wonder not whether our species will survive, but whether we deserve to do.
Just before checking out the latest here moments ago, I heard a radio spot on NPR featuring Mayor Bloomberg reiterating his support for the mosque, after which they mentioned Harry Reid’s statements. I muttered a few obscenities toward the spineless political coward and found this post seconds later. I would spit on Harry Reid right now if I could. I expect this crap from the prominent members of the right-wing cabal in this country, but not the Democratic Senate leader. F**k him. (I haven’t read any comments yet.)
At times like this I wonder not whether our species will survive, but whether we deserve to do.
humans just aren’t very smart, in general, consistently. but we’re smart enough to know that. so we set up systems of rules and laws and morals to help guide us through times when our own intellects will likely be overwhelmed by circumstance. but we’re too stupid to follow those rules when the time comes.
heh
Can we all cool it with the f-bombs, please? Or dispense with that posting rule; one or the other.
Well, I guess an election year is enough to make anyone weak in the knees.
What really needs to happen is for Gingrich, Palin and company to be called out and denounced for their cynical political opportunism, and for anyone else -Dem, Rep – who pitches their voice in on all this just to be seen to be having a stand on this, when they don’t have the backbones necessary to even stand.
Without trying to add fuel to the fire over religion, I’m trying calmly right now to bear in mind that Gingrich is a recent convert to Catholicism, and that some of this is religious opportunism – he needs to be seen by the religious sector of his base as stalwart on this. The fact as well that Obama supported the construction of it (though he seems to be trying to backpedal on that, unconvincingly IMO) just eggs them on.
Throughout the hysteria over the Cordoba Initiative, my understanding is that this is less a mosque as it is a cultural and study center, of which the mosque itself is only one component. It’s on that basis that I can’t think of a better place to build it. That would honor the victims and their families, not dishonor them, and strangle at birth the shame that political charlatans and cowards are making out of all this just for the elections.
Our politics has never been terribly pretty, but as of late it’s really descended to a new low. I expected the controversy to have emerged over this place; I was still naive enough not to have expected the viciousness and insensitivity from people who piously wrap themselves in what only looks like better.
I am beyond sadness right now. We really have made ourselves into a pack of slinking hyenas.
Marty, you and Reid think it’s a bad idea. Obama did not say that.
Posted by: KCinDC | August 16, 2010 at 06:58 PM
Actually he did, or kinda did, or kinda didn’t – doing his best Governor imitation:
Ooh, I love to dance the little sidestep / Now they see me, now they don’t / I’ve come and gone / And ooh, I love to sweep around a wide step / Cut a little swath / And lead the people on!
He knew exactly what he was told to say and exactly how to say it. And so did Harry.
Slarti: I though the posting rule about using swear words had to do with work filters. Thus, I put in an asterisk or two to stay clear of those.
Unless there is something I’m missing?
No, blogbudsman, Obama didn’t say what Reid said.
He didn’t venture an opinion on that aspect directly, though his comments have been overall supportive.
Reid did venture an opinion on that aspect direclty, and came out against it as a bad idea.
Simple.
Try harder.
ditto
ditto regarding the posting rules, I meant.
Harry Reid is a useless coward. This is hardly news. If he’d had the guts to stand up to lies from Republicans, he had plenty of chances to before, and he hasn’t before.
He also had plenty of chances to stand up for the fundamental rules of the Constitution during the Bush years, and didn’t then either.
Having the largest majority in decades hasn’t been enough to break many of these useless Democrats from their reflexive craven crouches when the Republicans start to talk mean. Makes it real hard to get excited about voting for them.
We can has new majority leader now?
That doesn’t make it a good idea.
Why that concept is such a struggle I am not sure.
That’s not what I struggle with. What I struggle with is the concept that whether or not it’s a good idea is any of your or my business.
humans just aren’t very smart, in general, consistently.
“People are smart.”
“A *person* is smart. *People* are dumb panicky animals and you know it.”
Pitch-perfect lulz from Amanda Marcotte:
Not anymore.
And, of course, Obama did try to have it both ways. “I won’t comment on whether it is a good idea, just that they have a right to build there” is pretty weak tea, hoping everyone would just assume he was agreeing with them.
I agree with this.
I’m not going to defend anything else Marty has said here, because I find it indefensible, but Eric, russell, and many others here are already saying what needs to be said.
But Obama is most emphatically trying to split the difference here, in true Clintonian fashion, and it’s maddening.
Somehow Michael Bloomberg and Jerry Nadler have managed to make clear, unequivocal statements that left no one trying to figure out what they “really” meant, but the President is incapable of that.
Can we all cool it with the f-bombs, please?
As an f-bomb frequent-flier (with asterisks of course), I’m happy to drop my use of that particular bit of verbal spice.
Mostly because it just bugs some people, and I can probably find another way to make my point.
“Farging” comes to mind as an alternative, plus it’s funny if you’ve seen the movie.
If you catch me on a jazz gig, however, all bets are off, there are only so many concessions a guy can be asked to make.
And no, “verbal spice” wasn’t the one who dressed up like a librarian.
But Obama is most emphatically trying to split the difference here
Couldn’t agree more. And I think there isn’t a difference here to split, you gotta be on one side or the other.
“I would that you were cold or hot!”
To once again steal a bit from Jon Stewart, Obama now better hope Obama from the campaign doesn’t hear about this!
Seriously, his biggest assets in the campaign were 1) Republican economic policies creating a disaster (which Hillary shared), 2) Being able to credibly oppose the war in Iraq without “for it before against it” nonsense, and 3) plenty of times where it seemed like he actually GOT what was going on, and where we needed to go, which he seems to have completely forgotten since taking office.
Still probably the best choice from the ones we were offered, but DAMN it’s disappointing.
My own personal take on this is: I’m not happy about any mosque plans near the WTC site, but it’s not mine to say whether it gets to happen or not. It’s akin to taking offense on behalf of some complete strangers: you just have to let them decide if it’s offensive or not, because they’re adults. If they’re ok with it, and indeed welcome it, who am I to gainsay them?
I really have to wonder exactly which statement of Obama’s people are listening to in order to get “tapdancing” or “splitting the difference” out of it.
His original statement completely ignored the “is it a good idea” topic–rightfully, because it’s none of the President’s business. But then the usual loons and even nominally sane folks who ought to know better started misinterpreting or outright lying about it, claiming he was supporting it–when what he was supporting was their right to build there.
So he issued a clarification–and I can imagine him thinking, “how fscking stupid are these people that I actually have to explain this?”–saying that he was not taking a position on whether or not it was a good idea, only their rights.
You know what? That’s not a trivial distinction. It’s the difference between “I support the Klan” and “I support the Klan’s right to peacefully assemble”. As President, it is not his place to take sides in a local zoning dispute–he cannot come out and say whether he thinks Cordoba is a good idea or bad idea. The last time he did something like that, he got kicked around for saying that the stupid actions of some cops were stupid.
So to make his position clear, he simply says that he’s not taking a position on whether it’s a good or bad idea, only on what their constitutional rights are. Why is this so hard to grasp?
The only tapdancing going on here is by the people who are struggling to explain how their conflation of al Qaeda with the Muslims behind Cordoba is not outright bigotry.
And the only stupidity in Obama’s clarification was that he had to make it at all.
russell mentioned the imprisonment of American citizens for the crime of being of Japanese descent during WWII.
That put me in mind of MLK Jr’s quote, “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
Maybe we’re making some kind of progress when we haven’t simply rounded up everyone who might be Muslim and stick ’em all in concentration camps. Maybe it’s progress when “all” we’re talking about is depriving Americans of their 1st Amendment rights in order for the yahoos and bigots of the Right and the GOP to score some political points.
It’s infuriating, and nauseating, that we still have such yahoos and bigots at all, and that they have any influence at all in America much less the amount of influence they do have.
But in view of our own history, maybe the fact that the yahoos and bigots aren’t actually out murdering Muslims – are only talking about insulting, dispossessing, and demonizing them – is the best we can hope for.
One thing is clear, though: we absolutely need a new national anthem. When yahoos and bigots get to set the agenda and frame the issues, we have no goddamn business going around calling this country home of the free and land of the brave.
My own personal take on this is: I’m not happy about any mosque plans near the WTC site
Can I ask why?
Sure!
Land of the free and the home of the brave.
Slartibartfast, why are you not happy about any mosque plans near the WTC site?
Also, cleaving religiously to the distinction between “can’t” and “may” is a bit insulting on a messageboard. Literalism to absurdity makes us all work a little harder than we must to converse with you.
Eric both can and may ask why. Whether I choose to answer is my own affair.
Not being snide, just: my reasons are my own, and not necessarily rational.
I assume that the improvement is in the not-every-Muslim part?
Not being snide, just: my reasons are my own, and not necessarily rational.
Slarti, just FYI, I’m sure you didn’t mean it, but your comments come across as really snide or maybe passive aggressive. It is totally fine to have reasons that you don’t want to discuss. But when someone asks “can I ask you why”, the correct answer in such situations is generally “I’d rather not talk about it” or “I’d prefer you didn’t”. This is true even though technically speaking they weren’t asking you about your reasons but were asking if they could ask you about their reasons.
Then I have good news and bad news for you, Slart.
The good news is that Cordoba House isn’t a mosque, although it contains one as simply one part of the larger community center.
The bad news is that there has already been a mosque only a few blocks away from the WTC for around 40 years, the Masjid Manhattan. It’s still there.
The phrase “Ground Zero Mosque” has, as I heard it put today, “not one true syllable”. We need to stop perpetuating the lie that that’s what it is. The fact that the YMCA is a Christian organization and many contain worship spaces does not make your local Y a church.
Maybe we’re making some kind of progress when we haven’t simply rounded up everyone who might be Muslim and stick ’em all in concentration camps.
I worry that the difference might be more distributional. Japanese folks in the 1940s seem to have been largely confined to ghettos that made them easier targets. Muslims today seem to be more broadly distributed and less concentrated. I could be wrong but I could the sense that there are some places in the US with a Muslim presence where people are OK with them and many many places with virtually no Muslims where people are much more angry and hateful towards Muslims.
Plus, one motivation in the 40s was that non-Japanese folk got to take all their stuff once they were interned; the legal climate today makes such profitable internment less likely it seems to me.
I really hope you’re right that we’re making progress, but I fear you might not be.
We had that anthem discussion several times but it was usually about the tune or that it is the only anthem about a failed rocket attack. I usually propose to chose Battle Cry of Freedom with several ‘approved’ text versions. Btw, in the past the US was proud to provide the anthem in all the languages spoken by immigrants, so that even those that had not yet learned English could join. I somewhere even read the text of the Hawaian version. Now the right even proposes to make it a crime to sing it in any other language but English (with extra penalties for “José can you see?”).
The fact that the YMCA is a Christian organization and many contain worship spaces does not make your local Y a church.
You know what I hate? When my flight from Boston’s Logan International Church to San Francisco International Church gets delayed. But I am glad that all facilities that contain a room dedicated to prayer are now considered to be places of worship and nothing more. Do they still offer tours of the Pentagon Church/Mosque complex? It is supposed to be the largest Church and largest Mosque in the world, right?
Sorry that my lame attempt at humor has confused so many people.
I’m neither elated nor despondent. I said I didn’t like it, not that I was horribly bent out of shape by it. I am neither hot nor cold.
“That’s not what I struggle with. What I struggle with is the concept that whether or not it’s a good idea is any of your or my business.”
I concede this point and stipulate that I have been carrying on this discussion because I think it is part of a larger discussion. I find the first reaction to almost any disagreement, especially where it concerns issues that have emotion tied to them, has become the other side are bigots or ignorant.
I disgree that those are the only alternatives to what Eric says.
However, it is an incredibly powerful argument in the vein of “when did you stop beating your dog”. Any answer can be designated as having a basis in bigotry, so discussion is completely useless unless the other side, in this case Eric et al, actually try to see the other side from an empathetic standpoint. Which they don’t.
So, back to your comment Hogan, you are absolutely correct. I am unlikely to ever BE in lower Manhattan, much less live there. They have approved it as far as I can tell and this particular activity is none of my business.
For the record….
I have *no problem* with people who are uncomfortable with the Cordoba center being built. I’m not one of those people, but I can understand why some folks might have, at an emotional level, some greater or lesser degree of discomfort.
The issue to me is extrapolating from there to saying that they should not build it.
It’s a big country, everyone is not going to agree or feel the same way about everything.
The problems arise when we insist that other people do, or not do, things based on *our* preferences.
The thing I find most hateful in the case at hand is how folks who oppose the Cordoba center, or Park51, or whatever it’s being called today, have decided that the way to go about getting their way is to smear the Cordoba institute folks.
Every public statement they’ve ever made, every financial detail of their organization, every wink, blink, or nod they’ve ever committed in public, are now in the process of being examined in gory detail, to find any hint of impropriety or any connection, no matter how insubstantial, to anything resembling terrorism anywhere in the world.
The public discussion is now well, well past the point of what they have actually said or done, and is now at the “it would be foolish not to speculate” point.
Driving home last night, I heard some guy going on at length about how little money they had, and that therefore the Saudis were going to pay for it, and we all know what other things *they* pay for, and even if the facts aren’t there to substantiate that claim, it would be foolish not to speculate.
That’s the state of the public argument about the place now.
It’s a freaking witch hunt, and if the Cordoba folks decide to pack it in and go on vacation for a year or two, I would find it hard to blame them.
“I don’t like it”, no problem.
“I don’t like it and I wish they wouldn’t do it”, well, we all have our druthers.
“I don’t like it, so they shouldn’t be allowed to do it”, is a problem.
“I don’t like it, so I’m going to crucify these folks publicly in order to get my way”, is reprehensible.
“I don’t really care, but I can mobilize my base by demonizing these people”, even more so.
To those who stand with Gingrich’s comment comparing the Cordoba effort to ‘putting up nazi signs at the holocaust museum’, I have a question. However obnoxious a Nazi sign at the Holocaust Museum would be, would you also object to some Germans putting up a sign, in German, saying “Never again”? Just because of who put it up? Or because it was in the same language used by the Nazis?
Because that is what we are talking about here. Some people who, while they share something (Islam, broadly defined, not the way the perpetrators defined it) with the perpetrators, are opposed to what was done and want to try to keep it from happening again. In short, you are saying that, if some member of a large group does something evil, nobody else from that group can ever again be seen as virtuous. Which is pretty obvious nonsense — as you can see if you look at the entire history of all of the groups that you belong to.
That’s kind of what I was getting at, russell: I would not embark on a jihad of sorts to expel the infidels from our holy land, or some such.
“Sure!”
Now I understand the request to cool it with the f-bombs. 😉
It was a set-up!
Brave enough to be free of the homeland.
As usual, Jon Stewart examines the issue and lays it to rest. I particularly enjoyed two parts
1. The Catholic church near a playground comparison (in part because I thought of that one myself)
2. The fact that Glenn Beck is pretending to be horrified by a statement identical to one he made himself.
link
Well, that’s nice. Now that you’ve unnecessarily clarified a point that wasn’t in dispute, try responding to some part of my reply that’s topical and relevant.
Like, you know, the fact that whether your feelings towards a mosque near the WTC site are positive or negative are completely irrelevant to this debate because it’s not a goddamn mosque, and because one already exists.
You know, those two points. They were pretty explicit in my reply. They’re at the center of this entire debate. You might try acknowledging that they were made instead of indulging in your usual pattern of passive-aggressive deflection by ignoring anything that weakens your argument in favor of derailing the discussion with irrelevant pedantry.
Someone, Eric perhaps, commented that the proposed construction is an expansion of an existing facility. Is this right? Or is this new construction? Does anyone have a good description of what is currently at the proposed site?
I’ll make my point in a bit. This piece of info is germane, although my follow on comment may not be.
McK: AFAIK, the site is currently occupied by this unused building:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100815/pl_afp/uspoliticsreligionattacks
which used to be a Burlington Coat Factory. The plan is to tear that down and replace it with this:
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2010/08/01/adl-says-no-to-park51-ground-zero-muslim-cultural-center-claims-survivors-entitled-to-be-racist/
which is a rather higher building (13 stories, not 6).
Someone, Eric perhaps, commented that the proposed construction is an expansion of an existing facility. Is this right? Or is this new construction? Does anyone have a good description of what is currently at the proposed site?
The same religious community has a small mosque a few blocks away. They are proposing building a community center: think of a YMCA but replacing the C with an I. It would have a gym, libraries, meeting space, and a room for prayer. Most of the community center is intended to serve everyone, Muslim or not. The prayer space is obviously of interest mostly to Muslims. You can find drawings on the Cordoba Institute’s web site if you look.
I didn’t say they were relevant. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a mosque or not, because (as I most clearly stated) I have no intentions whatsoever of doing anything about them. I’m not sure how I can make that any more clear.
But in the interest of closing out the urgent Q&A: I don’t think an Islamic cultural center that close to GZ is that hot of an idea, either. The mosque was, as you pointed out, already there, so: even more OBE than the cultural center. I don’t think the mosque was a bad idea, at the time. ANd as I’ve already stated, I’m not at all interested in cleansing the holy land of infidels.
Please let me know if I’ve left any of your other points unaddressed.
Note, Catsy, that the comment that I responded to (and you can tell I was responding to that comment, and not the larger debate, because I helpfully blockquoted it) was:
So: I said (in so many words) that I’m on one side or another, but not in a way that’s going to affect the outcome.
Full stop.
Slarti, you say:
“I didn’t say they were relevant. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a mosque or not, because (as I most clearly stated) I have no intentions whatsoever of doing anything about them. I’m not sure how I can make that any more clear.”
[original emphasis not added because I don’t know how]
and then later you say
“So: I said (in so many words) that I’m on one side or another, but not in a way that’s going to affect the outcome.”
You protest that you won’t do anything about Park51, and that your opinions won’t affect the outcome of the construction of Park51. However, you’re protesting against strawmen, because Catsy never said (and to my knowledge, no one did) that you would do anything or affect any outcome. We are all well aware that this is, in the context of ObWi, an academic discussion (unless John Thullen is, as I have long suspected, Mike Bloomberg).
It matters whether it’s a mosque or not because you called it a mosque, which was a mistake regardless of how influential your opinion is.
Also, you responded to a fraction of Catsy’s comment – “Then I have good news and bad news for you, Slart”- and chose to ignore the rest. That is what Catsy was presumably referring to when he said:
“ignoring anything that weakens your argument”
It matters whether it’s a mosque or not because you called it a mosque
If I’m not mistaken, when Slarti referred to a “mosque” he was referring to Manhattan Masjid, a pre-existing mosque a couple of blocks further uptown. Rather than to Park51 or whatever other names the Cordoba proposal has gone by.
Not looking to speak for Slarti, just (hopefully) offering a clarification.
Consider me corrected, on the record. I’ve heard the mosque/not a mosque discussion enough to have been aware of the reality, so I have no excuse.
That’s because the rest wasn’t really that important to me. That it was so important to Catsy is, well, Catsy’s burden to carry, not mine.
I don’t have an argument to weaken, here, so I’m not sure where you’re going with this. russell said something, I said something else, and there isn’t really much more to it than that.
Come to think of it, I’m so completely in alignment with russell’s comment of 12:11 that I’m going to let y’all argue with him, instead, about why he feels that way.
Thanks, russell, but: no. Just a mistake.
Also, regarding this comment of mine, which Slarti was responding to:
And I think there isn’t a difference here to split, you gotta be on one side or the other.
My issue here was with Obama. I’d have liked him to make a more affirmative statement about the center, something more like what Bloomberg said.
Obama, however, has bigger things to worry about than my opinion, and has to represent and work with a broader range of folks than Bloomberg does.
So, it looks to me like he just wants to confine his comments to the strict facts of the legal issues, and stay the hell out of the culture wars.
That disappoints me, but I’m not wearing his shoes.
Sorry Slarti, I did attribute more to you than you’d actually said. You said you’re not happy, which isn’t an argument, and you declined to give your reasons (which rich I respect). I was raring for an argument is all.
I do understand why many people are uncomfortable with Park51, but I am not sympathetic to their discomfort, nor do I think it should dictate the Cordoba House’s location. I am looking forward to MckT’s take on it.
Which right*
Also, Slarti, your earlier statements do not seem congruous with russell’s 12:11, because you’ve expressed discomfort both with the idea of a newly constructed nearby mosque (not proposed, as you noted) or a religious community center. Russell didn’t say he was uncomfortable:
“I have *no problem* with people who are uncomfortable with the Cordoba center being built. I’m not one of those people, but I can understand why some folks might have, at an emotional level, some greater or lesser degree of discomfort.”
So I’m not clear on which parts precisely you agreed with.
Regarding the mosque/community center distinction, I don’t know that it should matter. What if it were, strictly speaking, a mosque? Would anyone here retract their support for it?
I think it gives ground to the opposition to say “Well, it’s not even really a mosque. It’s just a YMCA-like thingy.” That implies that there’s something objectionable about mosques. Why let them have that?
The real point is that muslims have 1st Amendment rights like everyone else, including building houses of worship. There is no compelling reason to believe that the group that wants to build whatever it is that they want to build has a problematic agenda of any sort that would override their rights under the constitution to build it. Quite to the contrary, the have demonstrated an agenda that is helpful to America’s interests, and it is being either ignored or mischaracterized as something sinister.
F**k that sh*t, I say, mosque or not. Build it.
If Slarti is in error, it’s an error committed today on the NYT, WaPo and WSJ editorial pages. Repeatedly. By proponents of the “mosque” as well as opponents.
But whether it’s a mosque or a community center, the First Amendment says they have the right to build there. No doubt about that. Denial of a building permit would run afoul of the 1st and 14th amendments.
It doesn’t matter whether Cordoba is a moderate or a extremist sympathizer. The constitution drives these decisions 24/7, period.
Arguing the prime mover’s moderation, arguing the healing nature of this project implicitly accepts the notion that fundamental constitutional rights are discretionary.
Our 1st amendment allows madrasas (feel free to correct spelling) and speech up to but not including incitement to riot and calling for the violent overthrow of the US government.
So, whoever would be perfectly within their rights to build a mosque right where it was currently scheduled and to explicitly dedicate that mosque to the martyrs who died on 9-11 in the name of Islam. This would all be protected speech.
Now, if the above protected speech took place, would the opponents still be ignorant and/or bigoted?
Yes and no. Yes, because apparently 68% of the country are ignorant and/or bigoted and they would be ignorant and/or bigoted even if they were legitimately protesting or even voting for Ralph Nader. Once a bigot, always a bigot. Not so with ignorance, that, in theory, can be fixed, but that hasn’t happened yet, so yes is part of the answer. No, because they would be protesting, as every American has the right to do, declared enemies of the US and western civilization to use our freedoms against us.
The problem for the 68% of Americans who are ignorant or bigoted lies is separating good Islam from not-so-good Islam. Making this distinction is not an issue at ObiWi. Elsewhere, however, there is a definite problem separating the wheat from the isolated, extremist chaff.
Maybe it’s just that the average person focuses mainly on the internalized core of their shot of big picture. Trying to walk in their shoes and starting with Lockerbie and working our way up to the Times Square attempted bombing (with the dozen plus incidents in between, 9-11 being only the most infamous), fold in three separate multiple shootings in the name of Islam (Baltimore, Little Rock, Ft. Hood)post 9-11, the odd bit such as Daniel Pearl and the world wide riots (with multiple fatalities) on the report that someone had defaced a Koran at Guantanamo and then add all of that to Iran, Syria, Lybia, pre-invasion Iraq (I know, Saddam was secular, it’s not what I know, it’s what everyone else thinks they know), and for people who aren’t as discerning as Eric and the rest here, it looks a lot like the not-so-good part of Islam isn’t not-so-small and, really, for people who don’t have the time or the inclination to study the issue carefully, it’s kind of hard to tell the good folks from the not-so-good folks, even knowing full well that the good folks outnumber the not-so-good folks by a big margin.
So, while there seems to be widespread ignorance of the constitution and how it applies (hardly a new thing), plenty of no-doubt-about-it bigotry, and a lot of generalizing about Islam (a subject on which most Americans are ignorant, but most of what they know and remember is summarized above), that isn’t the only thing at play here.
The Cordoba movement (my term, I can’t remember names) may be the moderate, kumbaya, let’s come together and have a big hug types I infer from some of the pro-Cordoba comments above. Let’s assume they are. There is still one piece of this whole thing that doesn’t quite fit.
If I wanted to move into an area about which I knew or should reasonably know people different than me have strong feelings, I would do so lightly. If my motivations were high and pure and conciliatory, I would be extremely solicitous of those who’s feelings and sensibilities I knew might be aroused, even if I knew that the reasons why others would be troubled were grounded in irrational fear, ignorance and even bigotry. I would do all of this because I wanted to mend fences, bring people together and extend the hand in peace and good will. And so, if the reaction I got was like what the Cordoba movement is getting, I would simply say, “Sorry, my apologies. I am not here to cause additional pain or to cause any problems. Just the opposite. I will move down the street a half dozen blocks, and please, when we open our doors, come by and see us.”
In other words, anyone can utter unprovable pieties. Anyone can declare themselves moderate, peace loving, non-confrontational, etc. Objective actions, however, carry a lot more weight that empty words (most words are empty unless and until backed by corroborating action).
The furor generated by the Cordoba movement’s choice of location was eminently foreseeable, to them most of all. Yet, they went forward. Then, as the furor swells, do they give way, extend the hand in peace? No, they stand firm, they stand on their rights.
Fine, they have every right to do so. But, to me, this has more than incidental indicia of provocation by design. Can I say it probably was provocation with malice aforethought? No, I can’t. I don’t know enough and I am not a mind reader. But, the pieces don’t all fit as they should either.
McKinney: Does it make a difference to your analysis that there was already a mosque in a basement on Warren Street, two blocks away from Park51 and not that much farther from the WTC site? And that the congregation (if that’s the word I want) lost that space in the spring of 2009? And that the Cordoba Initiative bought the property on Park Place partly in order to provide an alternative (and enhanced) venue for that congregation, which had already outgrown its earlier space?
If you’re interested in reasons other than a big raised middle finger to the survivors of 9/11 for the decision to use that space, does that one make sense to you?
The furor generated by the Cordoba movement’s choice of location was eminently foreseeable, to them most of all.
Baloney. And what Hogan said.
Hogan, it does. There are so many ‘facts’ flying around, it’s hard to tell who’s got the right of it and who does not. It is also a fact that the movement could have been away from Ground Zero and not toward it.
McKinney, at least you’re consistent. Just like LGBT people, the Cordoba people can kiss ass for a few more decades or centuries, and maybe the idiots will come around. And as dessert on the cake, it’ll be our own fault if they don’t, because we didn’t behave perfectly enough while we stayed meekly and olive-branchishly in our position of second-class citizenship.
The Corcoba people are Americans.
Not lesser Americans, or second-class Americans. Americans.
My ancestors were lesser Americans when they came here: Italian, Catholic. So were at least some of the ancestors of almost every one of us. (I leave aside the issue of whose land it was in the first place, as predating the dynamic I’m talking about.) I’m a lesser American to many people still, no longer (probably) because I have some Italian ancestry, but because I’m gay.
I’m not accepting that. It’s my America too. And I’m happy to share it, whether with Muslim Americans or with the bigots who don’t want to share it with either of us. But the latter have to share. That’s what “real Americans” do.
Our 1st amendment allows madrasas (feel free to correct spelling) and speech up to but not including incitement to riot and calling for the violent overthrow of the US government.
A minor quibble: I attended a madrassa. And so did you. So did everyone. Madrassa is the Arabic word for school. It was a word spoken often in my suburban home when I was growing up — and I attended mostly Catholic schools. I assume you do not have a problem with “school” in general, so you may wish to qualify your future statements regarding the evils of madrassas.
…starting with Lockerbie…
Do you know that many experts think the Lockerbie bombing was ordered by the Iranian government in retaliation for the US Navy destroying an Iranian passenger airliner for no reason and then refusing to apologize? Its a funny story actually: the US Navy ship that destroyed the airliner was supposed to be assisted by US Naval aircraft, but the air wing commander knew the captain of the missile boat personally and believed that he was such a hyperaggressive trigger happy lunatic that US Navy pilots were in danger of getting shot down by him. Turns out the air wing commander was right: the US Navy captain was a hyperaggressive trigger happy lunatic who ended up murdering a few hundred people. Good times, eh?
It seems kind of crazy to think about Lockerbie without addressing the fact that it was most likely a retaliatory attack for the brutal murder of a few hundred Iranians by the US government.
It is also a fact that the movement could have been away from Ground Zero and not toward it.
Yeah, because real estate in Manhattan of any sort, fitting any need, is so readily available. Are you serious, McKinney? Do you really think they decided on this spot because they knew moving a couple of blocks closer, as opposed to a couple of block further, would have caused such an uproar? You’re really working at the margins, I think, on this one.
And what’s with the “I don’t know, but the pieces just don’t fit” reasoning with regard to their intentions? Seriously, what has this group done that you object to, specifically and demonstrably, McKinney?
I find the first reaction to almost any disagreement, especially where it concerns issues that have emotion tied to them, has become the other side are bigots or ignorant.
Marty, let me clarify: I’m not saying that everyone opposed to Park51 are bigots or ignorant. However, the opposition to Park51 is based on either ignorance or bigotry. That does not make one a bigot or ignorant, however. Just that their position in this instance is.
Again, for the umpteenth time, I invite you to come up with a rationale for opposing it that does not either:
1. Equate the Cordoba group with al-Qaeda (ignorance); or
2. Equate all Muslims with terrorists (bigotry plus ignorance).
Go ahead. Yes, I understand that people are reacting emotionally, but, again, the emotional response is based on either #1 or #2 above.
If you can enunciate another rationale, I would be more empathetic. As is, you are asking me to feel empathy for people that want to hold all Muslims accountable for the actions of a few, and last time I checked, that is a nasty sort of business. As Richard Cohen pointed out, that is the basis of all pogroms throughout history.
And pogroms are not good things.
I won’t empathize even with pogrom-lite.
Muslim Americans are Americans. They deserve to be able to build houses of worship wherever they want, even if al-Qaeda are also Muslims. If that offends people and upsets them, well, them’s the breaks.
I’m sure many Confederates were quite emotional post-Civil War. Doesn’t mean I would have empathized with the KKK.
JanieM–perhaps I am not consistent. I am not counseling kumbaya by the Cordoba movement. That is the inference I drew from commenters above, i.e. that the Cordoba folks are the peace makers here. All I am saying, there are aspects of their approach that are not peace-maker consistent.
The LGBT angle is different. The Cordova Movement isn’t jeopardizing anyone’s rights, including their own. In the end, they win, the fight’s over and we go on. My issue re Perry is the fallout setting the movement back.
It is also a fact that the movement could have been away from Ground Zero and not toward it.
I’m pretty sure the real estate market in Manhattan is more constrained than that.
It’s my America too.
As usual, David Huddleston shows us the way. (Warning: offensive language. Or as Gertrude Stein would say, inaccrochable.)
In other words, anyone can utter unprovable pieties. Anyone can declare themselves moderate, peace loving, non-confrontational, etc. Objective actions, however, carry a lot more weight that empty words (most words are empty unless and until backed by corroborating action).
George Bush sent Rauf around the globe as a goodwill ambassador for America. The man, and his wife, have worked tirelessly to promote interfaith cooperation with many Jewish and Christian allies. They have worked to promote womens’ rights in Islam.
Their objective actions are manifold. You focus on a building permit and exclude the rest. Not good.
The furor generated by the Cordoba movement’s choice of location was eminently foreseeable, to them most of all. Yet, they went forward. Then, as the furor swells, do they give way, extend the hand in peace? No, they stand firm, they stand on their rights.
Fine, they have every right to do so. But, to me, this has more than incidental indicia of provocation by design. Can I say it probably was provocation with malice aforethought? No, I can’t. I don’t know enough and I am not a mind reader. But, the pieces don’t all fit as they should either.
Why would they foresee this when they already have a prayer space a few blocks away and there are other, non-affiliate Muslim prayer spaces in the area?
When there are multiple strip clubs and adult video stores even closer to the WTC?
This is a fake controversey stirred up by right wing demagogues. They should neither foresee, nor cave in to such.
Feh.
I say: don’t give in to bigotry and ignorance. Stand strong like MLK, Gandhi, Mandela, Biko and others that fought for equal rights.
The rest can just catch up to what is right.
All I am saying, there are aspects of their approach that are not peace-maker consistent.
McK, “peace-maker” does not mean patsy.
My great teacher Danaan Parry, whom I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, was the most persuasive practitioner and teacher of peace-making I’ve ever had the pleasure and challenge of meeting in person. His business card read, “Danaan Parry — Global Troublemaker.”
Caving in to other people’s other people’s projections of their own darkness in your direction is not peace-making.
What JanieM said. It is incumbent on those that are behaving ignorantly or in a bigoted fashion to make peace.
Not the ones simply going about their lives in a normal way.
I mean, there are multiple churches closer to the WTC. Why not mosques?
Do you really think they decided on this spot because they knew moving a couple of blocks closer, as opposed to a couple of block further, would have caused such an uproar? You’re really working at the margins, I think, on this one.
I am saying I don’t know what the intent was. I am saying that, reconciliation-wise, the Cordoba movement is not advancing the ball. A negative inference, even if it doesn’t preponderate, is reasonably drawn from that fact.
If it were objectively shown that P51 was the only available and suitable location in the Cordoba price range, that would be compelling evidence against a provocative intent. Evidence that other, suitable properties farther away from Ground Zero would push the fact finder the other way.
But McTex, you are suggesting that they are provoking others by…being Muslim American. And being Muslim American too close to WTC.
That is not “provocation.” That is simply existing.
And so, if the reaction I got was like what the Cordoba movement is getting, I would simply say, “Sorry, my apologies. I am not here to cause additional pain or to cause any problems. Just the opposite. I will move down the street a half dozen blocks, and please, when we open our doors, come by and see us.”
You have described the situation inaccurately, McKinney. The ‘reaction’ Cordoba is getting is after the fact. Nobody had a problem with it for two years, including Fox News and various Republicans and their media organs. The Cordoba Imam worked for George Bush; he was ON FOX as a ‘good muslim’, etc. etc. It’s only a problem now, in August 2010 (coincidentally enough, shortly before midterm elections).
If there had been a local outcry at the start, or at least closer to the start, that would be something else. BUT THERE WASN’T. I wouldn’t call what we’re experiencing now a true ‘reaction’. It’s manufactured.
This is not the complicated, nuanced issue you and Marty think it is. This is the crassest of politics. BTW, ignorance is not temporary for people who don’t wish it to be so.
You have decided these Cordoba people are guilty until proven innocent (since they’re Muslims); they are guilty until they satisfy criteria which change arbitrarily, viz, they aren’t really moderate if they don’t do what the GOP and you have suddenly, in August, decided they must do.
McKinney, here is a pretty good timeline of the whole mess.
Click through and read the supporting articles (they’re hyperlinks in the Salon piece) if you have time, I think it will help give you a sense of the context of the people and the place.
My take, personally, is that Rauf and the Cordoba folks meant well, and are getting kicked in the teeth for it.
But by all means, do the homework and come to your own conclusion. The only thing I, personally, would ask is that you base your conclusion on what people have actually said and done, rather than on speculations about what their motivations “might” be.
They’ve been pretty clear, from the beginning, about what their motivations are.
If Slarti is in error, it’s an error committed today on the NYT, WaPo and WSJ editorial pages.
Amazing! It’s almost as if the right wing drives media narratives in this country, or something! (See also “death panels.”)
If I wanted to move into an area about which I knew or should reasonably know people different than me have strong feelings, I would do so lightly.
You may want to read this.
if the reaction I got was like what the Cordoba movement is getting, I would simply say, “Sorry, my apologies. I am not here to cause additional pain or to cause any problems. Just the opposite. I will move down the street a half dozen blocks, and please, when we open our doors, come by and see us.”
Ha! Just what kind of Texan are you, anyway?
In other words, anyone can utter unprovable pieties. Anyone can declare themselves moderate, peace loving, non-confrontational, etc.
You mean like you just did, concerning what you would do if it were you who were about to lose the right to do with your own private property thanks to the actions of people who don’t live within 2,000 miles of you?
The furor generated by the Cordoba movement’s choice of location was eminently foreseeable, to them most of all. Yet, they went forward. Then, as the furor swells, do they give way, extend the hand in peace? No, they stand firm, they stand on their rights.
Fine, they have every right to do so. But, to me, this has more than incidental indicia of provocation by design. Can I say it probably was provocation with malice aforethought? No, I can’t.
Again, you need to read the Salon piece I linked to. This is almost entirely the fault of one crazy right wing harpy.
Etc., etc. Get your head in the game, man.
McKinney,
Neither you nor I know much about the Manhattan real estate market, right? Speaking just for myself, I imagine that lots suitable for the construction of 13-story buildings in Manhattan are not that easy to come by. And every one that might be available is within X blocks of Ground Zero.
So, let’s see. The Cordoba people COULD have said to themselves, “Gee, maybe X=2 will offend some people; let’s look for someplace farther away.” Would X=4 be enough, d’you think? How about X=40?
Maybe the Cordoba people explicitly looked for a site as close to Ground Zero as possible. How the hell should I know? And maybe, if they did, their motive was explicitly to provoke Palin and Gingrich (not to mention Harry Reid) into making asses of themselves. How the hell should I know that either? What I am absolutely, positively certain of, however, is that neither Palin nor Gingrich nor any of the “not a good idea” crowd, would have been willing to define the acceptable value of X in advance.
How far did the “shadow of the World Trade Center” extend? I bet a scientifically-minded objectionist could work that out, with sines and cosines. Would you be less suspicious of the motives of the Cordoba Institute if they had worked the trig themselves before shopping for real estate?
–TP
Maybe the Cordoba people explicitly looked for a site as close to Ground Zero as possible.
Part of the reason that they selected the site is because there is a need, due to the large number of Muslims living and working in the area. The last site was overcrowded.
Those Muslim Americans deserve a convenient location to pray and otherwise congregate.
The fact that some Americans will stand judge, with a slide rule, determining just how close to the WTC they are allowed to build, and just how inconvenient their lives will be made, is…perverse.
I am saying that, reconciliation-wise, the Cordoba movement is not advancing the ball.
Nor should they, since they are in the right on this issue. The only way for them to “advance the ball,” according to you, is to roll over for bigots.
BTW, while your narrative about how Americans perceive Islam is what it is, imagine you’re the average Iraqi, just trying to live his or her life, and reflect on just what America has done in and to the Arab world during the same time period that you describe. The overthrowing of the Shah of Iran, provoking the Iran/Iraq War, our support of Israel, Gulf Wars I and II . . . how would you react? You know, just out of curiosity?
What JanieM said. It is incumbent on those that are behaving ignorantly or in a bigoted fashion to make peace.
Not the ones simply going about their lives in a normal way.
I mean, there are multiple churches closer to the WTC. Why not mosques?
You bet. Dumbasses should get smart. No problemo. Who will teach them?
Conciliators turn the other cheek, they bend a little. That is what they do. It’s not what I do, unless I am trying to reconcile.
Why no mosques if there are churches? Eric, you read the first part of my comment. Of course they have a right to do what they are doing. The question is: why there, of all places? If the intent was to reconcile with other faiths, it’s not working. If reconciliation was the intent, and since it’s obviously not working, why aren’t they moving? Perhaps reconciliation was never the motive in the first place?
Now, the Cordoba state of mind is totally irrelevant to their fundamental right to build at P51. I am simply calling into question the whole peacemaker thing. Not rendering a verdict, just raising a question. About the Cordoba state of mind. Nothing else. Just that.
I am doing so largely in response to the majority view here that (1) not only is the Cordoba project completely within their rights (with which I agree), and (2) not only are opponents ignorant and/or bigots (with which I agree with qualifications), but (3) Cordoba is so worthy. Here, I am not so convinced.
If it were objectively shown that P51 was the only available and suitable location in the Cordoba price range, that would be compelling evidence against a provocative intent.
Rauf says the decision to move closer to the WTC site was motivated by a desire to raise a big middle finger (my words, not his) to the terrorists.
You don’t seem to want to, or be able to, allow for the possibility that he’s telling the truth.
The man has a long and well-documented public record, extending back well before he tried to open Park51, that is completely consistent with his stated motivation.
With respect, IMVHO the burden is on you to demonstrate why he should not be taken at his word.
Just because it doesn’t make sense to you, or isn’t what you would do, doesn’t mean it isn’t so.
How many of these places do you suppose are owned by Muslims? There are, after all, a LOT of Arab and Muslim business owners in NYC.
THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS! YOU SITE ROCKS!!!
Steve
Common Cents
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com
Hey, I have an idea: Since you’re swimming in money, McKinney — since we haven’t raised your marginal tax rate to 70% yet — why don’t you find and buy them another piece of property in lower Manhattan at what you consider a sufficient distance so as not to sully the memory of the strip clubs, Burger Kings, souvenir shops and donut places that currently populate the neighborhood of Park51?
Guess I should have just stayed at Jackson State.
If the intent was to reconcile with other faiths, it’s not working.
Based on what? For what faiths are Palin and Gingrich the spokespersons? Which leaders of actual faiths oppose the project?
‘ If the intent was to reconcile with other faiths, it’s not working. ‘
You should go back in time and tell MLK that he was too pushy–if he wanted better race relations between blacks and whites why did so many whites hate his guts?
The question is: why there, of all places?
Um, because the people who will be using it live around there?
McKT:
“I am doing so largely in response to the majority view here that (1) not only is the Cordoba project completely within their rights (with which I agree), and (2) not only are opponents ignorant and/or bigots (with which I agree with qualifications)”
Eric:
“Marty, let me clarify: I’m not saying that everyone opposed to Park51 are bigots or ignorant. However, the opposition to Park51 is based on either ignorance or bigotry. That does not make one a bigot or ignorant, however. Just that their position in this instance is.”
McKT, how did you determine what the majority view on ObWi was, and what was your sample?
If reconciliation was the intent, and since it’s obviously not working, why aren’t they moving? Perhaps reconciliation was never the motive in the first place?
Now, the Cordoba state of mind is totally irrelevant to their fundamental right to build at P51. I am simply calling into question the whole peacemaker thing. Not rendering a verdict, just raising a question. About the Cordoba state of mind. Nothing else. Just that.
Interesting.
As russell said, why not take him at his word?
Also, if Cordoba is really a devious, secretly confrontational group, why did the Bush administration use Rauf repeatedly as an ambassador?
Why did Fox news have him on repeatedly?
Why do so many other relgious leaders from Christians to Jews, work with him on so many issues?
You suspect they have a hidden agenda, provide evidence. Because the overwhelming majority of evidence militates in another direction.
Incidentally, a very good friend of mine (Jewish) has personally worked with Rauf on interfaith projects well before this whole controversey and he vouches for him and is kind of horrified at the negativity directed at him.
I know that’s only an anecdote, but this friend is also a counterterrorism official who has worked at the highest levels of the executive branch. And I trust his opinion.
But McTex, you are suggesting that they are provoking others by…being Muslim American. And being Muslim American too close to WTC.
That is not “provocation.” That is simply existing.
No, Eric. If being Muslim and being close to Ground Zero were provocative to 68% of the country, we would have a much larger problem than what we do. I am saying that, for the reasons I spent a fair amount of time writing down, an overtly Muslim enterprise (mosque, community center, what have you) situated near ground zero is going to produce some reaction.
To Russell and Phil–thanks for the link and the cites. That part stinks worse than any of the rest of it. But, it was predictable. That’s the way some folks roll (the inciters, that is) and, given recent history, Islam brings out the worst in many otherwise pretty decent people. In hindsight this all seems pretty predictable to me. I’m surprised others didn’t see it coming. Maybe not.
Given the time line, relocation at this late date doesn’t look feasible. See my comment above about evidence on timing, etc.
Ha! Just what kind of Texan are you, anyway?
A very fair question.
What James Meredith said, we should have just turned the other cheek. I now realize that the nine of us were not as solicitous of those who’s feelings and sensibilities I knew might be aroused as we should have been.
Why no mosques if there are churches?
There is a mosque quite close to the WTC site. It’s on Warren St, two blocks north of the Park St site.
For reference, there are typically about 20 blocks to the mile in Manhattan. That far downtown the geography is not so cleanly gridded out, so adjust as needed.
But the whole area we’re talking about — lower Manhattan, say below Canal — is really small, maybe a square mile or two, and is *extremely* densely and intensely developed. Every kind of thing you can think of is next to every other kind of thing you can think of.
The place Faud is associated with now (not the mosque on Warren St) is maybe a half mile from the WTC site.
Net/net, Muslims and mosques are not a new thing to the area.
Cordoba is so worthy. Here, I am not so convinced.
Worthy of what?
What spectacular pinnacle of goodness do they have to achieve before folks can simply take them at their word?
They want to build a YMCA, only “I” instead of “C”. They didn’t kill anybody. They aren’t responsible for 9/11, and in fact have worked actively against the brand of Islam that sponsored and implemented that attack.
What hoops do these people have to jump through before people will let them build a freaking community center without being subject to insane, unrelenting suspicion and harrassment?
Um, because the people who will be using it live around there?
Christ, don’t let that get around. The Palinites will be asking them all to move to the Bronx. You know, if they REALLY care about mending fences. Even though they didn’t do anything.
If nothing else, this whole thing has done me a solid in letting the masks fall off of some people who I now know I never, ever need to speak to again.
“1. Equate the Cordoba group with al-Qaeda (ignorance); or
2. Equate all Muslims with terrorists (bigotry plus ignorance).”
or
3) Some Muslims killed my parents, sons, brothers less than two blocks from here and this will be a life long painful reminder of that ACTION which I think is not healing and is unnecessary. This 13 story glass tower is very different than a storefront prayer center four blocks from the site, which I wouldn’t be forced to occasionally see in the skyline from various directions or when I drive by to get from point A to point B.
And, interestingly, you bring up Confederates. But any flag of the old South is seen as hurtful, an argument you made and I concede, because it causes an emotional reminder of slavery and bigotry. Even though many who would fly it never owned a slave, their ancestors didn’t own a slave and they never supported slavery, even then. But all Southerners should not fly that flag because, well, it creates a painful emotional reaction for many who suffered and whos ancestors suffered. Not of Southerners but of slavery, the ACT not the people.
This 13 story glass tower is very different than a storefront prayer center four blocks from the site, which I wouldn’t be forced to occasionally see in the skyline from various directions or when I drive by to get from point A to point B.
Perhaps we should also put all of Manhattan under a darkened dome lest these people ever accidentally espy a crescent moon in the sky.
McKT, how did you determine what the majority view on ObWi was, and what was your sample?
I scan the comments. Marty is in the minority, Eric in the majority.
You suspect they have a hidden agenda, provide evidence.
I simply raised a question. I was pretty careful with my word choice. As is quite customary around here, more than a few commenters who focus carefully on these kinds of issues have added significantly to my fund of knowledge.
Rauf says the decision to move closer to the WTC site was motivated by a desire to raise a big middle finger (my words, not his) to the terrorists.
Again, thanks for the useful datum. Your Salon link was particularly helpful.
Some Muslims killed my parents, sons, brothers less than two blocks from here and this will be a life long painful reminder of that ACTION which I think is not healing and is unnecessary.
But that’s the point: that all Muslims, and Muslim sites, remind the person in question of al-Qaeda is an ignorant or bigoted position.
Once, when I was about 13, me and a buddy were mugged near my home. The mugger was black. If, after that, I had an aversion to all black people such that I worked to keep them from moving into my neighborhood, how would you describe my position?
Would that be rooted in either bigotry or ignorance (all black people are criminals, or all black people are the same as the mugger) or would it be OK, just, you know, an emotional reaction (as if saying that eliminates any further discussion)
But all Southerners should not fly that flag because, well, it creates a painful emotional reaction for many who suffered and whos ancestors suffered. Not of Southerners but of slavery, the ACT not the people.
Because the flag stands for treason in defense of slavery.
Muslims, and mosques, don’t stand for al-Qaeda.
“an overtly Muslim enterprise (mosque, community center, what have you) situated near ground zero is going to produce some reaction.”
If this is a chemistry analogy, it is incomplete; Muslim enterprise and ground zero are not reactive elements in the absence of an agent such as Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin. What you failed to do in your analogy was acknowledge the existence and responsibility of third party actors in this debate.
In the 1950s, a black student enrolled in a white school was going to produce a reaction. Did that mean it was her fault? Did that mean she was wrongheaded in persisting?
Please specify why you disagree, if you do.
Adding, Marty, that if the Park51 site flew the al-Qaeda flag, or put up a pro-al-Qaeda banner ala the confederate flag, you would have a point.
But they are OPPOSED to al-Qaeda! Big time.
Where as the Confederate flag was flown by…the Confederates. Not those opposed to slavery.
May I just point out that this “68%” percent figure that McK keeps throwing around needs to be taken with a HUGE grain of salt, given that so many of the claims that have been made about Cordoba are…as nicely as I can put this…baldfaced lies?
What portion of that 68% “knows” “facts” about the “Ground Zero Mosque” that are simply untrue? And shouldn’t that give us pause before invoking what “the American people” think?
McKT, you are misreading and misrepresenting Eric, and me. I quoted Eric, who specifically said that he does not think all those opposed to park51 are bigots. I quoted that because you claimed that the majority view here is that all opposed to park51 are bigots. If you’re claiming that that is what Eric thinks, you haven’t read his comment, which I quoted for you.
Some Muslims killed my parents, sons, brothers less than two blocks from here and this will be a life long painful reminder of that ACTION which I think is not healing and is unnecessary.
Yes, there are a lot of folks who exactly answer to this description in Manhattan, and in the NYC area generally.
Elsewhere too, but let’s just consider NYC for the moment.
It is *completely understandable* that those folks might be troubled by the plans for Park51.
The thing is, they aren’t the only people involved.
Christ, don’t let that get around. The Palinites will be asking them all to move to the Bronx.
I’m telling you, if Park51 falls through you, lower Manhattan will never see another falafel again.
Then we’ll see who’s sorry.
What hoops do these people have to jump through before people will let them build a freaking community center without being subject to insane, unrelenting suspicion and harrassment?
Good question. Probably the bare minimum would be to renounce clearly and by name all consensus Muslim extremist organizations, no quibbling or parsing, recognize Israel’s right to exist and acknowledge that, as an American, religion is subordinate to civic duty. Please note: I am answering your question, not stating some kind of loyalty oath that Muslims ought to have to take to be treated as any other American. You ask what I think it would take. It would take a lot more for a Muslim than for anybody else. Not fair, not right, but there it is.
The part where people can have opinions and not act on them in a way that is inconsistent with the principles that this country was founded upon.
One of which is freedom of expression.
I’m probably reading more into what russell said than is warranted, but knowing russell, there’s actually a lot more underlying material than that.
Thanks, Julian.
Later addendum: sorry for the delay in posting this, but sometimes life calls and this time, I damned well had to pick up the phone.
One more thing:
JanieM sez:
Absolutely. And, as Americans: open to criticism by other Americans. That’s America, isn’t it?
Absolutely. And, as Americans: open to criticism by other Americans. That’s America, isn’t it?
Yup. And when the criticism is unfair, unjust and irrational, that is America too.
Probably the bare minimum would be to renounce clearly and by name all consensus Muslim extremist organizations, no quibbling or parsing
Consensus to whom?
But any flag of the old South is seen as hurtful
Private citizens may and do fly and display confederate flags. Yes, it’s ugly and hurtful, but you don’t see a concerted effort to make them illegal. The objection is to the STATE flying them, Marty. Get it? Southern states began adopting confederate flags as State flags in the late 1950s. Wonder why would they do that at that time? Hmm?
“Where as the Confederate flag was flown by…the Confederates. Not those opposed to slavery.”
And those who didn’t care about slavery but didn’t like being attacked by the Union army. It was a civil war, lots of people fought for the Confederacy that hadn’t ever owned a slave, or ever thought to own one, or cared not at all about slave owners getting to keep them.
But Marty, they fought for the cause of the slave owners whether they believed in it or not. And the flag symbolizes that.
A mosque does not symbolize al-Qaeda. As much as Bin Laden wants that to be the case, we should not help his cause.
If this is a chemistry analogy, it is incomplete; Muslim enterprise and ground zero are not reactive elements in the absence of an agent such as Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin. What you failed to do in your analogy was acknowledge the existence and responsibility of third party actors in this debate.
Agreed. I thought it was implicit.
In the 1950s, a black student enrolled in a white school was going to produce a reaction. Did that mean it was her fault? Did that mean she was wrongheaded in persisting?
Please specify why you disagree, if you do.
I do not disagree, but the contexts are only remotely comparable.
McKT, you are misreading and misrepresenting Eric, and me. I quoted Eric, who specifically said that he does not think all those opposed to park51 are bigots. I quoted that because you claimed that the majority view here is that all opposed to park51 are bigots. If you’re claiming that that is what Eric thinks, you haven’t read his comment, which I quoted for you.
I believe I consistently used the phrase “ignorant and/or bigoted” or words substantively indistinguishable. Ignorance is a morally neutral state of mind. Bigotry is not. I guess I should have said, “the large majority . . . of the 68% . . .” to allow for those dissenters who are neither ignorant nor bigoted, but who just come at it from a different angle.
What portion of that 68% “knows” “facts” about the “Ground Zero Mosque” that are simply untrue? And shouldn’t that give us pause before invoking what “the American people” think?
You know, I’d agree with this but for the arguments I’ve had with a lot of people who are otherwise pretty reasonable. You can talk until you are blue in the face about the 1st Amendment and it just doesn’t get through. There is a boat load of built up hostility toward Islam. People remain frightened and they are very, very put off by this. Ground Zero is like Pearl Harbor for a lot of people. You don’t get rational reactions when emotions run that high.
Consensus to whom?
Hell, Eric, how would I know? The State Department maybe? Hamas would be on the list regardless. Isn’t part of the beef here that someone with Cordoba won’t denounce Hamas?
“The thing is, they aren’t the only people involved.”
You are correct and how they feel matters, too.
Here’s my point of view.
A couple of hours ago, a guy named Aftab installed a voice mail client on my laptop.
One of the web developers in our IT group is looking droopy because he has to fast until sundown.
When I used to work near Fresh Pond in Cambridge, I would get lunch at the Whole Foods. Beautiful women with liquid dark eyes and headscarves would ring up my order.
One of my favorite places to play in Boston is owned by an Arab family. I have no idea if they are Muslim or not, but they treat the bands really well.
None of these people want to kill me. None of them want to make me into a Muslim, none of them want to overthrow the American government and replace it with something sharia based. None of them give any evidence, whatsoever, of wishing me ill in any way.
Mostly, they wish it was sundown so they could eat dinner.
I try to be an open-minded guy, but I have my prejudices. Muslims don’t freak me out, not because I’m such a wonderful person, but because I actually know and interact with them, and I can therefore readily see that the kinds of BS that gets told about them is not true.
They’re just regular people.
The problem here is not Faud, or Cordoba, or the WTC site, or lower Manhattan, or the people who lost loved ones on 9/11 and are therefore uncomfortable with or upset about Park51.
All of those things are manageable issues, and in fact were being fairly well managed by the folks involved.
The problem is the profound ignorance and fear that people have about Islam, and about Muslims living in this country.
And the bigger problem are the people who want to use that ignorance and fear to further their personal agendas, whatever those may be.
It’s easy for me to see other sides of Islam, because Muslims are all around me. Other folks may have to make some effort to do the same, but it’s not that hard.
We’ve been through this a million times, with Germans, Irish, Chinese, Italians, Jews, whoever. And yes, some of those folks attacked us *right here in our very own homeland*. But most, meaning almost all, of them did not, and they live here now and nobody really worries about it all that much.
There are lots of other aspects to this whole thing that strike me pretty unhealthy — the whole “Ground Zero” fetish, for one thing — but the profound ignorance of Islam and Muslims is something we really, really need to get beyond.
Muslims are something like a fifth to a quarter of the population of the world. They’re not going anywhere. In spite of our best efforts to make it otherwise, they don’t all hate us or want to see us dead.
Faud wants to build a Y. There are no scary monsters there, no super-secret agenda that I can make out. He just wants to build a Y.
James Meredith:
A shout-out to you, James, for endorsing my candidacy for Governor of Louisiana.
We coulda been a contenda, you bi-partisan provocateur, you!
You also don’t make public policy or zoning decisions based on irrational or emotional arguments.
This isn’t about the Cordoba House, its backers, or about the proximity of a mosque to GZ. Cordoba has been planned for some time, its backers are exactly the sort of moderate Muslims we claim to want more of, and there has been a major mosque within a few blocks of the WTC for 40 years.
This is about exploiting the intense emotions surrounding 9/11 to demonize a religious minority in order to rile up the conservative base and get votes. There is nothing rational about it. There is not a shred of argument against it that is based on verifiable facts, and plenty which is blatantly counterfactual. And the anti-Muslim sentiment driving it is spreading: the same objections are being raised in other states to new mosques in locations that have no conceivable emotional baggage. It is getting very, very ugly.
This country is getting dangerously close to its own Kristallnacht. I wish that were hyperbole, but it’s not.
And for “Faud” please read “Rauf”.
And I am an idiot.
Thank you.
Mr. Duke, we need to talk.
I think that Obama sending this guy Rauf abroad on State Department junkets to the Mooslim side in the name of so-called peace is dangerous and disgusting.
What say you? I mean, Palin and Gingrich, the entrepreneurs of demagoguery, are handing out torches to the gathering mob, but I figure if you and I kick it up a notch, we can get a piece of the action, too.
Isn’t part of the beef here that someone with Cordoba won’t denounce Hamas?
Please see here under “Criticism”.
Abdul Rauf does not, I fear, meet the bar you’ve set upthread, McK.
The bottom line, to me, is that none of this really matters very much anymore. The damage is done. Whether they open the Center in the Coat Factory or someplace else doesn’t matter now, because…it substantively doesn’t, matter that much. I hope Cordoba sticks to their guns and opens it there, because they have both the legal and moral right to do so. But the message has been sent to American Muslims regardless: you aren’t real Americans. You are guilty until proven innocent, and by the way, what constitutes proof of innocence is constantly shifting. We (the real Americans) will decide when you’ve proven it enough, although we reserve the right to change our minds at any time; if you’re innocent today, you might be adjudged guilty tomorrow.
When the election is over it won’t matter much to the GOP anymore, wherever it’s built. It will be on to the next fake issue; it will be time to recklessly trash somebody else’s reputation, crap on some other basic American value, and generally distract the country from its very real, very big, problems. The Gutter party’s mission is to not only forestall dealing with those problems, but to create more problems – something they are very good at.
Is that glass shattering that I hear?
Come away from the window, children, this is no concern of ours.
Yes, Mr. Rauf is our neighbor, but we are not going to buy trouble.
Zey haf shot vom Rath, zee dogs.
I zink zis might be zee optimal time to make our move.
I vill zend a cable to Himmler.
Who ees zis Herr Pawlenty? Is he, shall ve say, vun of us?
The Cordoba movement (my term, I can’t remember names)
How about doing a modicum of homework next time? It looks like you jumped right to the conclusions about Cordoba Initiative, despite knowing next to nothing about the history of the Park51 proposal, and not even being able to name them correctly. Ten seconds of googling probably could have gotten you the latter.
This is not about McKT or Marty.
The demagogic scum running the modern Republican Party, the new mortal enemy of this country, care nothing about immigration, legal or illegal, they care nothing about Breitbartian racist fantasies, they care nothing about mosques, community centers and falafel stands near the WTC site.
If the 9/11 hijackers had been strippers in pasties flying those planes into the WTC, they WOULD be shutting down the strip joint one block from the WTC site, but not because they gave a crap about strippers killing 3000 Americans.
Ground Zero is higher taxes. Ground Zero is their quest to destroy the Federal Government.
All else is red meat to inflame the 68% who have sincere concerns about the other crap.
Have a nice evening.
The problem for the 68% of Americans who are ignorant or bigoted lies is separating good Islam from not-so-good Islam. Making this distinction is not an issue at ObiWi. Elsewhere, however, there is a definite problem separating the wheat from the isolated, extremist chaff.
Im not sure what you mean- the folks here don’t need to make the distinction between terrorists and non-terrorists? What makes you think this? In fact, this attitude seems much more in line with those who question the center on the basis of it being Muslim rather than any particular agenda or statement by those who run it- whereas the pro-Cordoba faction seems to be well-informed for the most part as to how this center is not at all aligned with terrorists or similar groups.
The furor generated by the Cordoba movement’s choice of location was eminently foreseeable, to them most of all. Yet, they went forward. Then, as the furor swells, do they give way, extend the hand in peace? No, they stand firm, they stand on their rights.
You don’t see any downside to them backing down on such an issue? Not just personal (ie reputational) damage as people who won’t stand up for their rights or for their religion, but damage to Islam in America by allowing it to be tarred by association without a fight, by allowing a religious center to be represented as a provocation?
And isn’t “extend their hand in peace” basically assuming your argument (ie that Cordoba House is a provocation)? You mean that you can tell Cordoba House is a procovation because it would be withdrawn if it were not a provocation- because it is such a provocation? Perhaps those responsible do not consider it a provocation or feel that they should dignify those who do.
Much of your argument upthread is based on placing yourself in the shoes of the drivers of this project and making assumptions based on your read of the situation. I respectfully submit to you that I don’t think you’ve done a good job of this, and that’s leading to your misreading of motive- you’re in their shoes, but still seeing the project as a provocation and Islam as something which needs to prove itself to *ahem* real Americans.
I don’t say this as a mindreader- I say this as someone whose attempts to put myself into their shoes produces very similar actions and statements to the ones Im seeing.
Probably the bare minimum would be to renounce clearly and by name all [terrorism], no quibbling or parsing, recognize Israel’s right to exist and acknowledge that, as an American, religion is subordinate to civic duty
I changed one word to make it more generic- and now, Im thinking that there are quite a few *ahem* real Americans who would fail this civics test.
I’m struck by McKinney’s stipulation that GOOD Muslims must acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. Where the hell does THAT requirement come from? McKinney doesn’t LOOK Jewish 🙂
Many atheist Americans fully support Israel’s right to exist. Not to subjugate Palestinian Arabs, but to exist. Not to occupy all the land that their tribal God promised to Abraham, but to exist. Atheist Americans might go so far as to advocate an American military guarantee of Israel’s 1967 borders. But of course, that’s not enough for “real” Americans. Real Americans need proof that suspect minorities (Muslims, atheists, whatever) are properly supportive of Greater Israel, because Armageddon requires a Greater Israel. So “real” Americans get all het up about an indisputably foreign country because … they’re the true American patriots?!?
What in Christ’s name has ISRAEL got to do with AMERICAN Muslims? What other nation-states must suspect Americans prove their fealty to, before they are accepted as “real” Americans? I swear by the beard of the Prophet that I am asking these stupid, stupid question in all seriousness, and only because McKinney provokes them.
–TP
Park51 – Letter of Support to President Obama from Rabbi Burt Visotzky
Aug 16, 2010
Dear President Obama,
I write to thank you for your support of the plans for the Park51 Islamic Cultural Center in Lower Manhattan and of religious freedom for all Americans. I know I speak for many, many Jewish leaders when I express my thanks for your support of Park51. I have worked with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and with Daisy Khan. I appreciate their commitment to interreligious dialogue and so, have been outspoken in my support for them. I can think of no better memorial to the Americans who gave their lives on Sept. 11, 2001, than a place of prayer, contemplation, and communal engagement.
I also deeply appreciate your standing up for our freedom of religion. It is not sufficient to assert the right to build; only the free exercise of that right is a guarantee of religious freedom. I am distressed at those who would divide America and use hatred of other Americans as a political tool. I applaud your courage at speaking out on this issue. We consider support of Park51 essential to the rights of religious expression for the Jewish community, as well.
My best wishes to you, in the hopes that you continue to serve America in helping ALL of our citizens achieve their basic rights such as healthcare, economic wellbeing, and freedom of expression and religion.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Burt Visotzky
Appleman Professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies
Director, Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies
McKinney, it’s the same thing that riles me up every time we get into a discussion about the relationship between the marginalized and the marginalizers.
Every single time, you put it on us. We’re the ones who are supposed to go slowly, talk nice, predict the reactions of the marginalizers, walk on eggs, and in general take responsibility for any little problems that come up, any delays we encounter on the road to “the mainstream” conceding that we are first-class citizens just like them. Or, as I like to say, that it’s our America too, and our world too.
Now, at the very deepest level of this topic, I agree with you. It is on us.
Slave-owners were never going to end slavery. Southern racists were never going to abolish Jim Crow. Homophobic fellow-citizens were never going to wake up one day and invite us LGBT folks out of the closet.
Every marginalized group has had to stand up one day and demand an end: an end to slavery, an end to Jim Crow, an end to the closet. We all had to stand up and demand (as per Hogan’s Frederick Douglass quote) our place as full partners in America, and in the world.
So in that sense, it is on those of us who have been marginalized by the mainstream, or by those with more power of whatever description, to stand up and say: No more.
Where I part from you is in relation to what comes next.
What comes next is trouble, human nature being what it is. The slave owners, the Jim Crow racists, the homophobes — these people were not just going to roll over and graciously invite us out into the sunshine.
There were going to be some battles, people were going to get hurt, or even die. There were going to be setbacks, there were going to be long periods when it felt like two steps forward and three steps back.
But that is going to be true no matter what we do. When people start standing up for their right to be here, to be counted as “real” Americans and full human beings, there is no perfect way to do it, because people who have anchored their sense of their own worth in their notion of someone else’s unworthiness are going to feel threatened, and many of them are going to fight back.
Every time we get to this moment, you hold the marginalized group responsible for the reactions of the marginalizers.
But the marginalizers are responsible for themselves.
You wrote: If I wanted to move into an area about which I knew or should reasonably know people different than me have strong feelings, I would do so lightly. If the reaction I got was like what the Cordoba movement is getting, I would simply say, “Sorry, my apologies. I am not here to cause additional pain or to cause any problems. Just the opposite. I will move down the street a half dozen blocks, and please, when we open our doors, come by and see us.”
Carleton has already made a similar point, but I would suggest that if you think that’s true, then I’m skeptical of your ability to truly imagine yourself into the position of the Cordoba folks (or the LGBT folks you’re always second-guessing). Sure, if you imagine yourself with all the resources (psychological especially) that a straight white successful male in this culture takes for granted, and none of the baggage of generations of racism or a lifetime in the closet, you might be able to be magnanimous enough to scrap two years of negotiations and planning board meetings, who knows how many hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars already sunk into the project, etc.
Sure.
But if you are imagining accurately what you would do, I think you would be wrong to do it.
If people did what you said you’d do, no African American would ever have tried to move into a white neighborhood or integrate a school or a workplace. No gay person would have demanded the right to be judged at work on the basis of job performance instead of on the basis of who they happened to have fallen in love with.
I think it’s a mistake, and wrong, to bow to other people’s demons. Okay, if someone was holding a gun to my head I would probably bow. But I would be very clear in my own mind about the fact that I had just fed the demon.
And all of this doesn’t even start to touch the situation here, where the urge to demonize and marginalize disliked groups has been deliberately churned up for the basest and most cynical reasons.
I have a more specific thought about the Cordoba situation, but I’ll put it in a separate comment.
Damn, JanieM. Next time you’re in Northeast Ohio, I think I want to buy you a drink.
Thanks, Phil. I would love to meet you.
Truth in advertising, though I hate to mention it on a site where people can go all day rhapsodizing about the perfect way to make a martini: I don’t drink. (I got desperately, horrible, godawfully drunk on the Eve of New Year’s Eve, 1968. That was enough for me.)
I do love good food and good conversation, though. 🙂
I’ll probably be out there in October. Write to me sometime at the Boston ObWi dinner group’s gmail account and we can exchange proper email addresses: ObwiBoston at gmail.
Surely you drink water, or milkshakes, or something. 😀
🙂
One of my favorite things in the summer is to go up to a counter at some coffee shop or Dairy Queen and ask for a chocolate ice cream soda without the ice cream. Soda water and chocolate syrup. Great stuff.
I got the idea a long time ago on one of my only two visits to Brooklyn, where my friend, who had grown up there (Jewish+Italian ancestry, a great combination) bought me an egg cream.
It’s fun trying to convince the clerk that yes, I really do want that.
The furor generated by the Cordoba movement’s choice of location was eminently foreseeable, to them most of all. Yet, they went forward. Then, as the furor swells, do they give way, extend the hand in peace? No, they stand firm, they stand on their rights.
I deeply disagree that the furor was eminently foreseeable, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
First: People have linked to articles and timelines that indicate that this project was in the works for a long time without generating any significant amount of attention at all, much less “furor.”
If a furor had arisen a week after the idea was first floated, it might even be a viable question to ask: why not just cave in and put the thing somewhere else? (Four blocks away? Six? How far away would it have to be before it wasn’t even in the neighborhood any more?) I still don’t think it would have been the best idea to feed the demon in that way, but at least as a practical matter it might have been a reasonable cost (to whom?) / benefit (to whom?) analysis to undertake.
But a year or two later? (The nearest thing I can find to a beginning of the timeline is that the group bought the building in July of 2009. From here, linked from Russell’s link far above.)
How much time and money do you think it has taken to get a project like that through the city’s planning process? I don’t know what it’s called in NYC, but where I live it’s the Planning Board, and then, perhaps, the Board of Appeals. Even in my tiny town, just getting permission to build a house can take months, not to mention the various ways of spending money on what the Planning Board wants to see, all aside from the purchase price of the property. And you wouldn’t go before the Board at all if you didn’t already own the property you wanted to build on….
But sure, wave your hand and say they should have given way and extended the hand in peace to the jackals and hyenas who waited til this point in the process to start ginning up a controversy where none had existed before.
As to whether the furor was foreseeable: do you know anything at all about human nature?
Quoting Eric: George Bush sent Rauf around the globe as a goodwill ambassador for America. The man, and his wife, have worked tirelessly to promote interfaith cooperation with many Jewish and Christian allies. They have worked to promote womens’ rights in Islam.
Did you get that? George freaking Bush thought Rauf was one of the good guys.
What kind of a self-image do you think a person like Rauf has?
What kind of a self-image do you have?
Can you honestly say that you have never had the ever-so-human experience of running at top speed into the brick wall of other people’s refusal to take you on your own terms?
And Rauf didn’t just have his own terms to go on (i.e. his own sense that he’s one of the good guys), he had the backing and confidence of the former president of the United States — not well known as a coddler of Islamic extremists — not to mention allies from other religious faiths, and presumably all kinds of positive feedback for his various efforts and campaigns.
The possibility that he just went along blithely assuming that the world would continue to give him positive feedback is so fundamentally and predictably human (if you want something predictable) that I can’t tell whether to laugh or cry when I think about it. Both, I suppose.
Besides that, the notion that this ridiculously manufactured “furor” should have been predictable in advance, and to them most of all, is condescending and unfair. It’s like when people say that Obama should have done this that or the other thing differently because look, what he has actually done has caused the screeching to start.
The screeching was going to start anyhow. There’s no way to make it stop, so you might as well go ahead and do what you’re going to do.
But even more than that — these people were already there, and they (meaning Muslims in general) have been there (meaning this neighborhood in particular and NYC in general) for a long time, going about their business like the rest of us. Why should they necessarily be able to predict that all of a sudden the Palins and the Gingriches and the lunatic anti-Islamic bloggers would choose this particular thing to explode about?
Egg cream.
You are correct and how they feel matters, too.
Not really. The American values of religious tolerance and how we feel about that matters a heckuva lot more than the feelings of bigots and bullies demagoguing the issue. I’d go so far as to say that religious/ethnic tolerance takes precedence over most all other issues involved here. You don’t seem to get that, nor do you seem to understand how dangerous it is to aid and abet the forces of intolerance and bullying and that been unleashed against muslim religious centers across the nation.
Why should they necessarily be able to predict that all of a sudden the Palins and the Gingriches and the lunatic anti-Islamic bloggers would choose this particular thing to explode about?
What, they didn’t know 2010 is an election year?
But seriously, the Gingrich/Palin tantrum is not about the Cordoba Institute any more than “death panels” were about health insurance reform last August. The GOP needs something to whip up its dupes. The “Ground Zero Mosque” is this year’s Thing That Will Doom Us All.
I say “their dupes”, and I mean their dupes. Most self-styled political analysts talk about “their base”, but the GOP’s base is a small number of very rich people who value nothing except tax cuts for themselves. “Death panels” and “Ground Zero Mosques” are mere tactical ploys to work the dupes. They have already used up “gay marriage” and “illegal immigrants”.
For a sure token that I have it right, ask yourself what a Republican Congress led by Speaker Boehner would actually do about the “Ground Zero Mosque” compared to what they would do about tax cuts for the rich.
–TP
If I wanted to move into an area about which I knew or should reasonably know people different than me have strong feelings, I would do so lightly.
Sounds like a good idea. That’s what they did.
If the reaction I got was like what the Cordoba movement is getting
The reaction they got was an approval by the zoning board and basically little reaction all around until quite recently.
I would simply say, “Sorry, my apologies. I am not here to cause additional pain or to cause any problems.
Wait. No, that’s not right at all. When violent, bigoted bullies and demagogues start rallying the forces of religious intolerance and hatred for political gain, you do not say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any harm. I’ll leave now.” Instead you rally morally-minded people to stand up against the forces of hatred and evil and condemn that sort of bigotry and ostracize those like Palin and Gingrich who are spitting on American values. Hateful, violent bigots and bullies within the Republican party who are opposing the Cordoba House will not be mollified by an apologetic desire on their part to move: they will only be encouraged. Haters and bullies do not give up their hate and bullying voluntarily.
Janie, are you familiar with Tommy’s Restaurant on Coventry Rd. in Cleveland Heights? They serve real honest-to-goodness egg creams. And they have a great vegetarian/vegan menu, too!
I don’t know what it’s called in NYC
The Seven Circles of Hell.
Phil — no, I didn’t know about Tommy’s. Sounds like I’ll have to try it out!
Probably the bare minimum would be to renounce clearly and by name all consensus Muslim extremist organizations, no quibbling or parsing, recognize Israel’s right to exist and acknowledge that, as an American, religion is subordinate to civic duty. Please note: I am answering your question, not stating some kind of loyalty oath that Muslims ought to have to take to be treated as any other American.
A form of words that has to be recited in order for people to withdraw their objections to the exercise of basic rights is functionally identical to a loyalty oath. (I’m willing to stipulate that your personal objections to this project are still locked in Schroedinger’s box, and until you open it and collapse the probability waveform into one shape or another, we have no idea whether such objections actually exist.)
But the further problem is this: a basic element of this brouhaha is that you can’t take Muslims at their word. Or rather, you can’t take them at their word when they say “We are working hard for interfaith conciliation” or “We find al-Qaeda abhorrent”; when they say “Death to America” or “Israel should be wiped from the map,” of course we should take them at their word. So if Muslims are always telling the truth when they say bad stuff, but could very well be lying when they say good stuff, what good would it do to require them to say this particular good stuff? Why would people who refuse to believe them on principle suddenly believe them this time?
Two thoughts. What Catsy said at 5:50
McTex: You are absolutely right that there are intense emotional reactions around the WTC site and 9/11.
In this, Marty is also right.
But what Catsy said:
You also don’t make public policy or zoning decisions based on irrational or emotional arguments.
Also, leaders are not supposed to whip up those emotional, irrational tendencies in the underlying population. Leaders are supposed to “lead” people to calmer, more rational, more tolerant positions. Not feed hate, as Palin and Gingrich have consistently done.
Again, Catsy:
This is about exploiting the intense emotions surrounding 9/11 to demonize a religious minority in order to rile up the conservative base and get votes. There is nothing rational about it. There is not a shred of argument against it that is based on verifiable facts, and plenty which is blatantly counterfactual. And the anti-Muslim sentiment driving it is spreading: the same objections are being raised in other states to new mosques in locations that have no conceivable emotional baggage. It is getting very, very ugly.
I have en Egyptian friend who is Coptic Christian, and grew up in Tennesee. He said that he has never been the target of so much animosity merely because of what he looks like (again, he is a Christian!). He’s a level headed guy not prone to hyperbole.
Lastly, what Tony said about the Israel litmus test.
This is the United State of America. Nowhere in that name does the word “Israel” appear. We absolutely should not subject citizens of the USA! to litmus tests about what they feel about foreign countries. Citizens of Israel might ask those questions of fellow Israelis and others. But we are not the same country.
As to State Dept. lists: the US government actively supports the MeK, which is on the State Dept list. So, um, what kind of standard is that?
I probably shouldn’t even be reading this thread, much less commenting on it. I haven’t felt quite this level of despair for this country for quite awhile. It’s not good for my health.
But…
I’m struggling to find a difference between McK and Marty’s line of reasoning here and saying something along the lines of “Given the events of recent years, most Americans find it very difficult not to think of all Catholic clergy, and by extension, all practicing Catholics, as pedophiles. Yes, it’s an emotional and irrational reaction, but what can you do? If Catholics really want to move forward in the spirit of reconciliation, it’s up to them to reassure us explicitly that they do not, in fact, advocate the rape of children.”
Or how about this analogy: A group of victims of child sexual abuse by a former Catholic priest organize to have the church where the abuse took place razed to the ground. Yes, they understand that this will inconvenience the current members of the congregation, who have done nothing wrong, and of course they recognize that under the 1st Amendment the church is free to exist where it always has. But this isn’t a legal question, it’s an emotional one, and if the church in question cares about reconciliation and community, it will assume collective responsibility for the actions of that one priest, tear down the buildings, and rebuild someplace else.
I honestly can’t see the difference. Maybe someone can help me out.
I honestly can’t see the difference.
A lot of Catholics are white, and they’ve been here longer.
A lot of Catholics are white
Well, now they are.
What Hogan said.
The Italians used to be considered a race. And don’t get me started on the Irish.
Although, Catholic Latin Americans are generally not white. I guess.
On ABCNews.com right now:
1. Picture of someone holding up a sign that says “Don’t Glorify Murders of 3,000 No 9/11 Victory Mosque.”
2. ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Organizers Won’t Rule Out Saudi, Iran Funding
3. Karl Rove Slams Obama Sarcasm, Mosque
4. Watch: N.J. Gov. Christie Hits Obama on Muslim Center
5. GOP Gov Blasts Mosque as ‘Political Football’
Apparently this is the most important story in the U.S. right now, or something.