Of Mosques and Men

Cordoba House is a community center planned for an empty building in lower Manhattan, two blocks from the World Trade Center site. The center will include a swimming pool, day-care center, library, auditorium and mosque. It's basically a Muslim version of the YMCA, and the local community board approved it by a 29-1 vote. No big deal.

A very big deal. The mosque part has naturally gotten bigots, political opportunists and people who are just plain frightened by anyone who is "other" up in arms:

• Pamela Geller, the head of a group called Stop Islamization of America, calls the project the "911 Mega Mosque" and demands that it be halted. (She also wrongly claims that the center will be opened on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.)
  
• Sarah Palin called on "peaceful Muslims" to "refudiate" the center. (Upon being informed that "refudiate" is not a word, she compared herself to Shakespeare.)
• Carl Paladino, a GOP candidate for governor of New York, is running on a platform of using eminent domain to seize the former Burlington Coat Factory building and turn it into a "war memorial."
• A group calling itself the National Republican Trust PAC created a blatantly fear-mongering TV ad, using images of armed terrorists and the WTC rubble to oppose the center.
  
• Geller (among others) whipped up public hatred in a rally near the center site, during which police had to come to the rescue of several Coptic Christians from Egypt who were targeted for speaking Arabic.
  

All these people basically say the same thing - that anything Muslim near the Trade Center site is an intolerable insult to the victims of 9/11 and that the center organizers are terrorist supporters, a claim for which there is no evidence at all. The Cordoba House organizers have thus been jammed into the impossible position of proving that they are not terrorists.

What a mess. And it's steeped in the belief that all Muslims are the same. Since the 9/11 terrorists were Muslims, the reasoning goes, all Muslims must be in league with al Qaeda, and every mosque is by definition a jihadist training center. The aforementioned ad is particularly blatant in tarring everyone with the same brush: "And to celebrate that murder of more than three thousand Americans," it says, "they want to build a monstrous 13-story mosque at Ground Zero."

Putting the factual errors aside, the catch-all word "they" excuses bigotry and stereotyping. "They" think. "They" say. "They" do.

By the same logic, all Christians are crusading Left Behind-type fanatics who cheer at the thought of all non-Christians (and even the "wrong" kind of Christians) burning in hell forever. Is that true? Of course not. But stereotypes are insidious, dangerous things.

Do some Muslims, even some American Muslims, genuinely believe that followers of other faiths should be injured or killed? Unfortunately yes, and they're the ones who get all the press. But you find publicity-hungry fanatics in every religion, and I have yet to hear anyone screaming about building a JCC somewhere.

When asked why the center should not be built, opponents always fall back on the same excuse: because it's Muslim.

Muslims were killed on 9/11 too, you know. Dozens of Muslims worked at the Trade Center or were passengers on the doomed flights. But they apparently don't count because nineteen people who claimed the same faith did something truly horrible. And Muslims living in New York (or anywhere else) are now required to live as second-class citizens for the same reason.

What would happen if Jews wanted to build a Chabad House two blocks from the Trade Center site? Or if Buddhists wanted to build a meditation center? Or, for that matter, if a Christian group wanted to build a community center near a bombed abortion clinic? Would we see the same sort of fear and loathing we see now?

Of course not. Because those religions are "peaceful." Have we really been so indoctrinated by post-9/11 fear and loathing that we automatically believe all Muslims to be hate-crazed killers? Are we really so ruled by our own fears that we can be stampeded into shrieking denunciation of a community center solely because of which religion is associated with it?

Those who scream about a fictional "mega mosque" or mosques in general are very clear about what they are saying: that the freedom of religion for which America is justly admired does not apply to everyone. In their world, Muslims are forbidden from following their faith if anyone else objects. Doesn't matter how ludicrous the objection might be, it's still forbidden. Just imagine the uproar that would occur if people objected to a church camp being built near, say, the site of the Salem Witch Trials.

That's the thing about freedom of religion - it's either granted to everyone or it's not freedom at all. If some people are deemed unworthy of that freedom, we become a nation divided into denominations, in which only the "favored" ones can operate freely and all others must stick to the shadows for fear of official sanctions.

(Tennessee Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey, in the GOP gubernatorial primary, has already come out in favor of denying freedom of religion to Muslims. "Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult whatever you want to call it," he said at a recent campaign event. "Now certainly we do protect our religions, but at the same time this is something we are going to have to face.")

So let Cordoba House be built. And let mosques be built wherever a Muslim community needs a place to pray. For every time a Muslim somewhere in the world sees that Muslims in America enjoy the exact same freedoms and opportunities as any other American, al Qaeda loses another follower.

Everyone wins. Except for the bigots, and they deserve to lose.