If only xenophobia was not so politically viable. While liberal politicians have tiptoed warily around the issue, many conservatives have enjoyed filling the airwaves with various invectives, half truths, and generalizations. While the terrorists were ostensibly Muslim, one would think to take the word of a group of men who hijacked planes and flew them into buildings with a grain of salt. Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, who collectively haverewritten history and invented fantastic new words, have continuously waxed Islam delenda est while drowning in tidal waves of ignorance. Provocative statements win votes. As it stands, around 60% of Americans oppose the construction of the center in its planned location, and with election season nearing there is no better time for politicians to jump on the bandwagon. Indeed, the “ground zero mosque” was originally reported in the New York Times, yet did not become controversial until the New York Post jumped on it a full five weeks later. That the majority of Americans are against the center is not reason enough to stop its construction; as Thomas Jefferson would note, the minority must be protected against the tyranny of the majority. Ask any educator who teaches evolutionary biology in public school where they would be if the public had their way.
Xenophobia, and so-called “islamophobia”, of course, are not the cause of much of the opposition to the construction of the center. No one can force Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the head of the proposal for Park51, not to build where he wishes. For government officials to discourage him sets a dangerous precedent. The constitution has afforded Americans with numerous indelible rights, one of which, as almost every commentator on the controversy has noted, is freedom of religion. Perhaps most dangerously, it is commonly argued that while it is legally acceptable for the community center to be built, sensitivity demands that it is not. Yet the community center infringes on the rights of none. The existing perception that all Americans should be freed from any possible offense is incorrect. It would be impossible, and unjust, to tell those who lost family members and friends in the attacks how to feel about the creation of the center, yet to insist that the imam should not build the Islamic center because it is near the site of the attacks on the World Trade Towers is guilt by meager association. As nearly any American Muslim will tell you, al-Qaeda is as Islam as the KKK is to Christianity. Feisal Abdul Rauf and his group are not exactly, as one man said, "the same people who took down the twin towers." Indeed, Rauf, banked by the State Department, is currently on a tour of the Middle East speaking of tolerance and multifaith relations and has rubbed shoulders with Condoleeza Rice and Karen Hughes. The center itself is envisioned as a place for dialogue among faiths and is modeled after the Jewish community center in Manhattan.
While it would be only a momentary betrayal of America’s history of dedication to equity and religious autonomy if Park51 were not to be built, the repercussions would be significant, in a country that still struggles to find conciliation with its large Muslim contingent and catharsis nearly a decade later after the attacks that shook its core. The war in Afghanistan, undertaken in the harrowing days subsequent to September 11, is one fundamentally against religious extremism, and it would be a poor job to reject the center when it is such a powerful symbol ready to stand against fanaticism in all of its forms.
Posted on August 26, 2010
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