The Ground Zero Mosque? Build It.

Derek Pasquill

What a revolting post and symptomatic of the imbecilic scramble to dhimmitude widespread in liberal circles.

Mind-boggylingly stupid.

Tarka the Rotter

Thin end of the wedge if you ask me. Let's dig deep in our pockets to help fund a church in Riyadh...

Stephen Rothbart

I am sorry, but if the Germans tried to build a monument to the German slain during WW2 next to Auschwitz or some other death camp, the result would be the same. Of course not all German dead were Nazis, but for the most part, Germany has recognized that discretion is the better part of valor, and out of respect, has decided to respect Jewish sensitivities.

The people behind this Mosque should show the same restraint.

At the very least the planners should have asked the relatives of the victims of 9/11 and if even one said they object, that should have been enough.

There are plenty of places for Muslim worship, it did not have to be there.

Tom Chivers

Bravo. Wise and thoughtful. And bravo, as well, to Michael Bloomberg. Not something I've said before.

Conservative Cabbie

So let me get this straight Alex. You ackowledge that the building of the mosque is likely to cause offence, but because Sarah Palin agrees with you, you've done a sudden about face to ensure you are re-aligned with The Atlantic thinking on the matter.

Perhaps you need to re-consider the facts.

1. You say: "is not actually being built at Ground Zero but two blocks away (which, as anyone who knows NYC knows means it is not next door or on the same site at all)"

Are you aware that part of the landing gear and fuselage of one of the hijacked planes crashed through the house which will be knocked down to make way for Cordoba House. Hardly a million miles away Alex.

2. Have you considered why it was called Cordoba House? Celebrating an Islamic caliphate perhaps?

3. And are you really happy to ignore the sensitivities of the families of the victims just because you don't like Palin or Giuliani?

The building of this mosque is insensitive at best, deliberately provocative at worst (and as the man behind the project thinks America brought 9/11 upon itself and supports Hamas, I'm betting on the latter).

Sorry Alex. Very disappointing post.

Hoob

Alex, you are absolutely insulting. It is high time you moved to the Guardian newspaper- where you belong.

canonalberic

This article is a perfect illustration of the demoralising effects intended by the propaganda of the deed.

Seeking to build a "community centre", offering one assumes facilties not dissimilar to those enjoyed by some of the mass-mudering cultists when they found religious enlightenment in Hamburg, is an obvious act of provocation - and this article is just the kind of response it craves.

Dave N

Cordoba? Wasn't that where the Muslims opened their first mosque after conquering Spain? (On the site of a Christian church, of course). The whole thing is quite obviously a Muslim celebration of their more recent victory of 9/11.
It will be built,of course. The Muslim colonists push and the gutless West meekly gives way, as usual.

Carroll Barry-Walsh

Hmm? Aren't Muslims being hoist with their own petard here? This is the community which has made taking offence an art form, which has demanded - to the point of absurdity - that we tiptoe around it and avoid doing all sorts of things in order not to give offence and to respect their sensitivities (however out of keeping they are with the laws, customs and practices of the country in which they live) and, by and large, we have done so for honourable (and not so honourable i.e. fear of violence or the threat of violence) reasons.

Well, now the boot's on the other foot. And yet the decent imam you write about and his congregation do not appear to understand (or, if they do, are ignoring) the sensitivities that Americans (especially the relatives of the dead) feel about this. And one would have thought that if they really wanted to show that it was possible for a person to be a good Muslim and a good American they might have shown a bit more sensitivity about this rather than insisting on their legal rights. They might have realised how it would appear, that maybe more time needed to pass and that, maybe, people feel that all these moderate peace-loving Muslims we hear about have been - how can one put it? - a bit shy about disassociating themselves from the acts of barbarity done in the name of their religion. After all, if the "ummah" is given as a reason for why a Musim in the US feels the pain of a Muslim in Palestine, why shouldn't he equally feel shame at what a Muslim from Saudi Arabia does to that US Muslim's fellow citizens?

You see, Alex, this is where we get to when we start allowing that "feeling offended" should be a basis for law or policy. So if we accept what Mayor Bloomberg says (rightly in my view) then we should also make clear that we are not going to stop saying things that Muslims don't like hearing because we have free speech and that policemen will use dogs to search Muslim houses because that is the law in the UK and Muslim bus drivers and taxi drivers will not be allowed to refuse to carry dogs etc etc.

The opposition to the mosque may be wrong-headed but don't you see that this is not the whole story.

Gaw

Over and above Alex's excellent points, here are some things for opponents to consider:

- There is a shinto shrine on the highway leading to Pearl Harbour.

- Dozens of muslims were victims of the 9/11 attackers.

- The generation of hostility and suspicion between faiths is an objective of Al Qaeda. Opponents are objectively assisting AQ in this goal.

Regardless of principle this last point should appeal to any pragmatic realist: all it will take for AQ to succeed is for us to take them at their own estimation.

Wilhelm

Gibberish.

cg

I used to be an admirer of Giuilani. I thought he was excellent at the time of 9/11. He should have shut up immeidately afterwards and his reputatin might be a little better today. I am finding him increasingly repulsive.

call me dave

Build a muslim prayer room at the Spectator.

Tiberius

I think you've been overdoing the cricket, Alex. I'm with my fellow commentators above, who disagree with you.

And you could be in for a severe duffing up from Mel over this, justifiably so.

Simon Mason

Great post Alex. I have friends in NYC also and they were very proud of Bloomberg's speech.

Rhoda Klapp

Bloomberg is right that this is not a thing for the law to decide. But decent people would not insist on this siting, but would build elsewhere. Unless it was in the nature of a statement, designed to offend. Why should it not be built elsewhere?

stephen maybery

Muslims should be bared from opening mosques in Christian countries until the first Christian church is consecrated in Riyadh, and Mecca and Medina are open to non Muslim tourists, and that is not going to happen this side of the second coming.

Fergus Pickering

I think that if this mosque is to be built then it might be wise to build it like a bomb shelter.

DavidDP

Excellent post Alex, as was Bloomberg's speech, reaching, as it did, into America's rich past of developing religious freedom.

Noa

Never mind all the western liberal equivocation and rationalisation used to justify what will inevitably be known as the Twin Towers mosque.

It will be seen in the world for the symbol of what it really is; a victory for resurgent Islam and a defeat for the Christian West.

Justin Power

Alex - welcome back. Unlike most here I absolutely agree with you on this matter and cannot believe the tone of some of these comments - from scared bunnies who would appear to believe that there is no such thing as a pro western moslem. Ugh - get back to the pond at Melanie's.

Andy Gill

The Cordoba Initiative must know exactly how insensitive this proposal is. It is a deliberate slap in the face to the bereaved of 9/11 and to the American people at large,

Hopefully this symbol of Islamic supremacism will be strangled at birth.

Skipjack

As a New Yorker myself, these days I've been bouncing between proud and quiet determination to uphold the worldly values of our city, and the darkest frustration and rage towards those who seek to overthrow them in pursuit of their own agenda. I wish it were enough to peaceably echo the words of the mayor in praise of tolerance, but I now find it needful to call out the cowardice of those who claim a mantle of martyrdom for the dead in religious trimming. I suppose it wouldn't be the Internet if I didn't, but here's the word of someone who has lived in NYC all his life, and was there of course on the day.

No one who died that day did so for Islam. Nor indeed for any other religion, as Christians, Jews, and a great many Muslims were murdered. Not all of them Americans, but I'd say all of them New Yorkers, where you can be anyone but are just as welcome as the next one. Near to 40% of the people who live in the city limits were born in another country, now living in a city of millions.

Those that rail against liberal piety should re-evaluate their own commitment to freedom, for surely the answer to Islamism isn't Christianism, but secularism and pluralism. And if New York is only American when it is convenient for you, then instead the challenge for you is how much more New York can America be.

Stephen Rothbart

Skipjack, it should not be about freedom, liberal tolerance,or Mayor Bloomberg's largesse. It should be that those that decided a Muslim place of worship on a site where thousands died at the hands of the one religion that attracts the kind of people that deliberately and regularly bombs civilian targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, London, New York, Lebanon, Singapore etc, should think it tasteful and even dare I say it, kind, to erect a Mosque, provactively called Cordoba House, on such a sensitive site.

As I said earlier, Germans and Poles have held back from provocative gestures outside of Holocaust inspired death camps out of a sensitivity that seems beyond the reach of the idiots that thought this was a good plan.

The only people that should decide about this matter were the survivors and family members of those that died.

No one else has the right to be so maganaminous at their expense. They have suffered enough.

That this Imam cannot see how crass this decision makes Islam and his constituency look, shows how arrogant and insensitive he is.

Even if Bloomberg had personally invited him to build his Mosque there, a man of better humility would have said, 'thanks, but I think this might be considered inappropriate. I'll build it a bit further away.'

And that is what all this is. Inappropriate.

Skipjack

Mr. Rothbart, you are not being accurate about the nature of the building going up. It is not a mosque, it is a cultural center, which will contain a prayer room, as Alex spelled out above. It is clearly needed for outreach to people such as yourself, who feel that a Muslim presence in the middle of a shared national and international tragedy is inappropriate. And I am not at all sorry to inform you that the families of the victims at the World Trade Center are not of one mind with you on whether to build the Cordoba House.

I also must remind you of what has already been pointed out above. I am disappointed you invoked the Holocaust, but I will pass over it with only the comment that it didn't happen here. What did happen here, and much more of a nature with 9/11, was the attack on Pearl Harbor, and as Gaw said just above there is indeed a Japanese cultural center near to Pearl Harbor. This highlights to me not just the resilience but the confidence of the American people.

The decision to proceed was not made by the mayor, nor by the families of the victims, who have (mixed) moral voices but not final say, but by the community board itself. The decision belongs to those who live there, and who will decide who they want to be. I can't think of a more appropriate outcome than to recognize the need for inclusion and education in the wake of the destruction brought by religious and cultural hatred and resentment.

cg

Stephen Rothbart - your analogy with Auschwitz is what is inappropriate. They are not talking about building a memorial to the murderers of 9/11. They are talking about a pryaer house. This might strike you as wrong but it is no more wrong thatn building, say, a Lutheran church near Auschwitz, and I can't see anything wrong with that. They are not even talking about building it on Ground Zero. How far away would it have to be to please you?

Stephen Rothbart

Skipjack and cg, a cultural centre with a prayer room and in a house called Cordoba.

And that is not provocative in your minds?

Cordoba being in Spain, which the more extreme exponents of the Caliphate call Andalucia and yearn for its return to Islam, and vow to achieve it.

As for Auschwitz, I raise it because Catholic nuns tried to build a monastery next to it some years ago, and while many in Poland thought it could be OK, many did not, given the Catholic reaction to the Jews living in Poland during the centuries leading up to the Holocaust.

Eventually the Catholic Church yielded and the monastery was shelved.

How far should an Islamic institution be from the site? I guess you have to ask the relatives of the victims of 9/11.

As I said, they are the only ones whose views should count here and even if only one objects, that's enough for me.

john james

this video tells you all you need to know the motives behind this project are not good it is funded by the saudis who if im not mistaken are the major stake holders in fox tv. ;)
at least this guy is wise to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjS0Novt3X4

John David Barnett

An insult to the many who died in 2001. And that is the intention behind this project.

Skipjack

Now that I've slept on the question, I'd say the most interesting thing to me is the number of people who draw an us vs. them ring fence that excludes these Muslims. Obviously I myself put them inside and Al Qaeda outside. But what would you want to know to say these are "good" Muslims, and if not these than could any "good" Muslims put an Islamic center near the World Trade Center?

Again, I think it comes down to whether you think 9/11 was something that happened to all of us or just some of us. I'd say it's a shared experience along with the immigrant experience of America, certainly of New York. It's a valid argument that it certainly happened more to some than others, I just don't think it is enough to exclude someone based on religion, or to interpret someone's very existence as a slap in the face. While Ground Zero is a place where everyone (including me, if you didn't catch that) associates Islam with jihad and murder, it still isn't fair to treat everyone as though they represent the worst of your associations.

karim

Stephen R, I take issue with this: "the one religion that attracts the kind of people that deliberately and regularly bombs civilian targets"

Those acts of terrorism to which you refer are not a product of Islam. The terrorists who carried them out have perverted a beautiful religion to reach own twisted goals. You make it sound like these inherently bad people woke up one day and thought, "Hmmmm, which religion will best justify the murder of innocent people?"

Stephen Rothbart

Karim, the Koran is an absolute doctrine. It is the word of Allah and to go against it is a blashpemy. Unfortunately there is enough in the Koran for those with a certain - shall we say social disfunction - to justify their behavior towards their fellow man, especially Jews and also Christians.

Fortunately the predominant number of the followers of Islam ignore those sections of the Koran that are anti-social, but unfortunately, there are still enough who do not.

A literal interpretation of the Koran can therefore be used to justify slaughter and punishment to those who do not adhere to Islam in all its purest forms, and this includes slaughter even of fellow Muslims.

So these people who flew airliners filled with innocent men, women and children did not wake up one day and decide which religion justified their murder, as you put it. They were already in that religion, and their interpretation of it justified their actions because in the Koran they could find such justification. If you ask me to 'prove' it, I shall, but it will take a much bigger space than this, and I am sure you probably know what I mean. You probably just choose to ignore them too.

That is my point. Of course only a tiny number of Muslims are evil, homicidal maniacs, but the Koran itself provides their cause, and it was that cause that led to 9/11, which may, Skipjack, have happened to all Americans, but is much more deeply felt and personal to those whose loved ones died there.

To compare a sense of grievance with the loss of a husband, wife, son, daughter - whatever, is insensitive to those that suffered that loss.

De Kh

Where do you get off saying that opponents of the mosque are "un-american"?

Most people oppose because they feel it would be insensitive to build the mosque (a bigger building than what is currently there) 2 blocks away from the WTC. You made it seem as if it's not close with your smart little "anyone who knows NYC..." The fact remains, there is a mosque in that area...5 block away...which proves that it's not a case of "we hate Muslims, don't want them around", but a case of "you have the right, but can't you understand why it might not be the right place to build one?".

In fact, instead of viewing it as creating a wedge with the Muslim community, you should be looking at it as an attempt to build bridges. It is a chance for the Muslim community to understand that there are other considerations involved, and things that do matter to others. It's not always about "Islamophobia". The fact is, Muslims CAN build mosques...Just build them in the right place.