In the past nine years, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have been invoked, distorted, and exploited to serve a variety of political and ideological agendas. But no such effort has been quite as shameful as the current campaign against the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.
“Ground Zero,” for better or worse, is the widely accepted term of reference for the site where the Twin Towers once stood, and discussions about the fate of that site since 9/11 have been protracted and painful. The families of those who died there differed about what should be built. A skyscraper called One World Trade Center is finally under construction, as well as a museum and a memorial, but the debate continues, along with bitter complaints about the slow progress.
Two blocks away, a group of New Yorkers is at the center of another painful debate, this one over the terms on which American Muslims should be permitted to participate in civic life. They propose to build, on the site of a now-abandoned building, an Islamic community center dedicated to promoting diversity, dialogue, and service. The project’s leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a moderate Sufi, long established in Lower Manhattan, who was called on by the Bush administration to assist with outreach to Muslims overseas. The community center, to be called Park51, would house a mosque, an interfaith program, fitness facilities, a restaurant, and a memorial to the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
The controversy over Park51 was manufactured by opportunists on the Right stoking outrage against what they describe as a “victory mosque” to be built “at Ground Zero” by radical Muslims intent on commemorating their “triumph.” Politicians and pundits from Sarah Palin to Newt Gingrich to Charles Krauthammer have sought to exploit anti-Muslim sentiment, as well as the pain of the 9/11 victims’ families, and have suggested that Islam itself is at war with America. Their opposition to Park51, which polls indicate is now shared by a majority of Americans, is implicitly based on the notion that all Muslims share in the guilt for the 9/11 attacks. It is an overt appeal to religious bigotry, one that both victimizes Muslims at home and makes it more difficult for ambassadors from the United States to the Muslim world, including Imam Rauf, to win cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
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Catholics have been on both sides of religious prejudice in the past. President Barack Obama alluded to past persecution of American Catholics in his August 13 remarks defending religious freedom, and New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg recalled that Catholics were once prohibited from practicing their faith in Lower Manhattan. “We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else,” Bloomberg said in an address defending Park51. “Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure, and there is no neighborhood in this city that is off limits to God’s love and mercy.”
Although he praised Bloomberg’s remarks, New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan passed up the opportunity to take an unequivocal stand. Instead, the archbishop offered tentative support for a “compromise” that would relocate Park51. But calls for the Muslim organizers to change their plans out of “sensitivity,” however well-meaning, would allow the prejudices of some to define the terms of freedom for others. It would set a dangerous precedent to allow the cynicism of those who launched this campaign to prevail over the facts.
Muslims were among those who died in the September 11 attacks. They were among the emergency personnel who responded to the disaster and the workers who sorted through the wreckage at Ground Zero. Muslim Americans, like all other Americans, responded to 9/11 in anger and fear, prayed for peace, grieved the loss of loved ones, and enlisted in the armed forces to fight terrorism. Any version of what happened that day that excludes their presence among the victims is inaccurate. Any argument that places all American Muslims outside the definition of “American” or fails to distinguish between ordinary Muslims and terrorists must be rejected.
Asking Imam Rauf and his community to retreat in the face of a deficient understanding of Islam is unreasonable and deeply harmful to attempts to combat Islamist terrorism at home and abroad. It is also a betrayal of the church’s call to rise above prejudice in relations with other faiths. American Catholics should be standing against the opposition to Park51 and all other manifestations of anti-Muslim prejudice. The bishops should be leading the way.
This editorial was first published on our Web site on August 23, 2010.
Related: Wrong Then, Wrong Now, by Paul Moses; Islam & Modernity, by Patrick J. Ryan
From the dotCommonweal blog: Fact Check from the AP and
John Paul II & the "Ground Zero Mosque"
Yes.
May I assume Commonweal will now also unequicolly support all actions of the pro-life movement, rejecting calls for it to be sensitive to those who would link the predominantly peaceful movement with isolated acts of violence like the murder of George Tiller?
Let me unpack a bit more.
Whenever the pro-life movement takes some sort of action, or the hierarchy voices support for the unborn, you can usually count on Commonweal or dotCommonweal to express some kind of "concern" for how this action will be received by the public at large, which is not sympathetic to the pro-life cause. This has applies to bishops' publicly correcting Catholic stating that the pro-choice position is consistent with Catholic teaching to a pro-life Super Bowl ad featuring a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback and his mother.
Now, those sensitivities are rooted in error, one might even say "bigotry," that the unborn are not deserving of the protections of the law.
The message of this editorial is that it would be a terrible mistake to refrain from an action because of such sensitivities based on mistake viewpoints.
I look forward to Commonweal's unequivocal support of the pro-life movement, freed from the responsibility to the sensitivities of those coming from mistaken and bigoted views about the unborn.
The word is not "legal" or "illegal," since law, and only law does not totally tell us right from wrong. The only Sovereign we have beyond the law is Jesus Christ. The fair word is "appropriate;" in an abiding love for each other both true Christians and believing Moslims can then come to rest on the propriety of an act. Prudence should rule. Commonweal has always loved the barricades.
Herewith my article for our parish bulletin last weekend:
I have followed with interest, as I am sure many of you have, the public controversy over a major Islamic center proposed for a site two blocks from where the World Trade Center was in New York. I agree with the opinion of our President that while our Constitution guarantees the right of those who own the site to do what they propose, it might not be the most prudent thing to do. I was brought up short, however, by the name of the group that proposes to build this center, the Cordoba Initiative.
For just over a hundred years, from 929 to 1031 A.D., the city of Córdoba in southern Spain governed almost the entire Iberian Peninsula as a Muslim caliphate. A caliph claimed at least moral descent from the Prophet Muhammad, and carried supreme religious and civil authority in his realm. The office only went entirely out of use in the last century, and there are influential elements in the Islamic world who would like to see it restored, not least in Spain, where the 102 years of the Córdoba caliphate were stunning glory days. No Spaniard I know, however, has the least sympathy for such a plan.
The professed agenda of the Cordoba Initiative is to promote mutual understanding among Muslims, Christians and Jews. While the Quran mandates special protection and religious liberty for us as worshipers of what they believe to be the same God, and in possession of a sacred writing (the Bible), we must understand that we would always be second-class citizens in any Islamic regime. Given the rise of radical Islam in our day, and the fact that no one can speak for all Muslims, can we trust any proposed interfaith dialogue with Islam to stay free of what we would call a secular agenda?
I appreciate Mr. Roark's concerns. I am sorry that he shared these concerns in a parish bulletin, as if they somehow reflect a Catholic response. They indeed do not. What he does underline is his own distrust of a "secular agenda" in the important work of interfaith work, which is occurring throughout this country in a variety of ways. It is obvious he has not learned much from this enormous, rich experience.
I understand where this distrust may come from. What do we do as Americans about the diversity of Islam, the thrust of Sunis, and even more importantly, Catholic teaching about the importance of interfaith dialogue, despite the circumstances.
Mr. Roark leaves us in a dilemma about how to move forward in the Church's desire to create reconciliation and dialogue with Islam, and indeed with all religions. The Church though, thank God, has already led the way.
Mr. Roark may also reflect the blurring of boundaries of political ideology and catholic theology happening nationwide where xenophobia and islamaphobia has more to do with the conservative politics than the compassion and openness of Christ.
Extemism is always in contraposition to pluralism, and Mr. Roark may reflect more "white anxiety" as an answer to extremism than to the Church's esteem for Islam and a careful reflection as to who is the real enemy. It is certainly not Islam, at least to Holy Father.
That the editors of Commonweal, in the most urgent human rights battle of our time, have not done everything that they should have done to fight the horror of legalized abortion does not mean that they are wrong about the mosque planned for lower Manhattan. On the second issue, they are right. Period.
I hope that our bishops, who have also failed in the struggle to protect unborn children, will have the courage to reprove any efforts capable of inciting hostility toward our Muslim brothers and sisters.
Keep and spread the Faith.
I am not saying they Commonweal is "wrong" about the mosque.
I am contrasting their response to the center to their response to most pro-life activities, which I think most would agree falls somewhere short of "unequivocal support."
If Commonweal is willing to support the pro-life movement's freedom of expression with equal vigor and conviction to what it was employed here in support of the mosque, that would be most welcome.
John McG, just out of curiosity, what (in your view) should be the law of the land with regard to abortion, and what (if any) consequences should there be for women who have abortions and those who perform and assist with abortions?
Just for the record, I am the pastor of the parish where the reflection abour Cordoba appeared. A substantial portion of the parish are immigrants, so I know plenty about xenophobia. My question is, what do those behind the Cordoba Initiative really want? If it's about a restoration of the caliphate, we have nothing to talk about. If not, then the first step toward dialog would be for them to find a more irenic name for their movement.