More on that "Ground Zero Mosque"

Michael Balter 8/27/2010 12:59:00 PM

I’ve been debating this issue with a Jewish friend of mine who is against the mosque but should know better (he is a liberal and voted for Obama, but he is a New Yorker now living in Paris.) He thought putting a mosque there was “idiotic” and “tasteless” and that it wasn't just bigots who thought that way but "reasonable people" too. Here is what I said to him:
9/11 was carried out by an organization called Al-Qaeda. It claimed to be acting in the name of Islam, but it wasn’t. Likewise, the KKK claimed to be acting in the name of Jesus Christ when it burnt crosses and lynched Black people, but it wasn’t either, and we don’t blame Christians or Christianity itself for those actions.
What does the Islamic cultural center have to do with 9/11? Nothing whatsoever, unless you want to blame Islam and all Muslims for it.
As Bloomberg said, how big should the no-mosque zone be? How far would a mosque have to be from Ground Zero before it was not tasteless or idiotic? 4 blocks? 6 blocks? 10? All of downtown? All of Manhattan?
No one said a peep about the center for months, and then some conservative bloggers made a deal out of it, and right-wing and racist politicians seized on it as a wedge issue for the upcoming elections. Unfortunately, some “reasonable people” have been suckered into falling into their trap and helping them do their work. Meanwhile, a lot of other Americans are remembering our core values of religious freedom and tolerance and pointing out that Constitutional rights only have meaning if they are allowed to be expressed without intimidation.
Nazism was a racist movement in which a small fringe sucked in a lot of “reasonable people,” indeed pretty much a whole nation. It was also a movement that scapegoated an entire religious and ethnic group for the perceived sins of a few of its members. It’s just a matter of degree.
Photo: Seth Wenig / AP
Michael Balter

Posted by Michael Balter

I have been a working journalist for more than 40 years, beginning in Los Angeles as an investigative reporter and then in Paris as a travel, food, and science writer. For more than 20 years I have covered anthropology and archaeology writer for Science, Audubon, Scientific American, SAPIENS, and other publications. I have also covered sexual misconduct for The Verge, Scientific American, and others; I write about mental health, especially schizophrenia; and I engage in occasional media criticism. I returned to the USA in October 2017 after 30 years in Paris, and now live in the New York City area, where I currently teach journalism at City College of New York (I previously taught journalism at Boston University and New York University.) For more about me and what I do, copies of my articles, information about my book, and other goodies, please visit MY WEB SITE

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2 Comments

trencherbone said…
There'll be no virgins waiting for Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his fellow mosqueteers when they depart this world and go down to meet Allah and Mohammed.

They've really screwed things up for the Religion of Peace™. Even if they build their Victory Mosque, it'll be a Pyrrhic Victory. All they've done is woken the proverbial American Sleeping Giant to the true nature of Islam.
August 27, 2010 at 5:42 PM
Anne Gilbert said…
Michael:

I"ve been "out of the loop" for a while, and so didn't see your comment on this whole "Ground Zero Mosque" mess. I did see it repeated and repeated and repeated endlessly on TV, along with the progress of Hurricane Earl, and was just appalled at the ignorance people have shown regarding this Islamic cultural center with a prayer room. And listening to the news, you'd get the impression that this "mosque' is going to be built right at Ground Zero, not two or so blocks away.For the moment, the Right Wing Noise Machine has triumphed.
September 10, 2010 at 9:55 PM
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