Nicole Belle attempts to beat back some of the misinformation surrounding the GOP’s recent cause celebre: opposition to the expansion of the community center run by a moderate Muslim group a few blocks from the World Trade Center.
First and foremost, the Cordoba House is not a mosque as Muslims generally use the term. There will be no minarets, no calls to prayer. It is a cultural center, which will include a prayer room. From their website:
This proposed project is about promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture. Cordoba House will provide a place where individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, will find a center of learning, art and culture; and most importantly, a center guided by Islamic values in their truest form – compassion, generosity, and respect for all.
The site will contain tremendous amounts of resources that otherwise would not exist in Lower Manhattan; a 500-seat auditorium, swimming pool, art exhibition spaces, bookstores, restaurants – all these services would form a cultural nexus for a region of New York City that, as it continues to grow, requires the sort of hub that Cordoba House will provide.
That sounds really insensitive, doesn’t it? The Cordoba House is planned along the same lines as the nearby 92nd St Y, which offers Jewish cultural events through out the year.
Secondly, it’s not at Ground Zero. It’s two blocks away and the thirteen story building will be dwarfed by the 105 story Freedom Tower and 9/11 Memorial and Museum that are actually being built at Ground Zero.
I’d add a couple of thoughts to this: First, as a friend reminded me recently, it’s time to retire the “Ground Zero” phrase as the way to describe the World Trade Center site. It’s been almost ten years since the attack, and with construction underway, it is time to put down the langauge of the siege. This is something that I will aspire to.
Semantic quibbles aside, the Cordoba community center site is two blocks north of the WTC (along West Broadway) and a half block to the east, with several large buildings in its line of sight (including the rather large Barclay Towers apartment building). In other words, it is unlikely that anything other than glimpses of the taller World Trade Center buildings, with head tilted upward sharply, will be possible from the site in question.
So the proposed site is not “at” the WTC site, nor does it “overlook” it. Not that it should matter if the Cordoba site was directly adjacent, but it is telling that opponents of the Cordoba project exaggerate for effect. Back to Belle:
Thirdly, and it’s embarrassing to see Americans once again championing ignorance, but Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the chairman of the Cordoba House, is a Sufi. Al Qaeda is Sunni (actually, more accurately Wahabi) and consider Sufis apostates. Al Qaeda has less tolerance for Imam Rauf than Sarah Palin, as frightening as that is to consider.
And finally, as much as it pains me to have to point out something so obvious, it was not just Christians and Jews who died on 9/11, any more than it was…just Americans. And the Muslims who live and wish to gather in New York at the Cordoba House are more than likely Americans. You know, with their Constitutionally-protected right to practice the faith of their choice. Do they not deserve a chance to heal from this tragedy as well?
Apparently not, according to some.
UPDATE: Matt Duss makes the point that the Cordoba issue is a question about fealty to American values, and the durability thereof. Marc Lynch is also spot-on:
It’s not just the clear national security imperative to build strong, positive relations with Muslims at home and abroad, and to avoid strengthening al-Qaeda’s narrative of a clash of civilizations. It’s not just about the security needs in counter-terrorism, where the Muslim-Americans most offended by right-wing bigotry are the main bulwark against radicalization in their communities. It’s that the right-wing campaigns are so deeply and fundamentally contrary to American values. America is exceptional for its acceptance of faith in public life and for its tolerance of different religions within a common national identity. While the GOP base may thrill at the escalating anti-Islamic rhetoric, most mainstream Americans will recoil when this hits prime time. It may not look like it right now, but I think that the rising anti-Islamic trend on the right will backfire by highlighting its true extremism, if not downright lunacy.
That remains to be seen. Although it is likely that, long term, this is a losing strategy, just as the Southern Strategy has weakened the GOP’s demographic base going forward, it could provide a short term boost. Recall, the Southern Strategy paid dividends for decades.
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I am a red neck hillbilly racist radical atheist.
If I have no reason to oppose the Muslims, why would anyone doubt that I would rather that they are accommodated by “freedom of religion?”
I don’t discriminate, I hate all religions uniformly. Me and religion parted company after I witnessed the end of the first of three separate massacres of unarmed Vietnamese in that Hell Hole we created in Vietnam.
No Muslim center, no problem, tear down that obscene edifice known as the St. Patrick’s cathedral.