Not After 9/11, NOW! Why are Anti-Mosque Protests Sweeping Across America ?

I remember walking through Manhattans Mid-town weeks after 9/11 and I was both dismayed and proud of what I encountered. The protesters were advocating against going to war.
What we didn't see was wide-spread attacks on Muslims. On the contrary most political and religious leaders defended Islam and their American followers. Americans are proud of that too.

Almost 10 years later a new Mosque/community center has been proposed and approved by NYC only blocks away from a ground zero monument yet to be completed. To the families of victims it is seen as the ultimate insult, however legal, to the memory of their loved ones and many regular-Americans agree.

Then we saw The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/us/08mosque.html?_r=1) published an article exposing the growing trend of anti-Mosque protests highlighting the blatant arguments to suppress religious freedom. The NYT articles point was intended not only to expose a troubling trend but also to conflate the non-racist arguments against the ground zero mosque with the racist protests elsewhere; with the intent of discrediting the arguments against the ground zero mosque.
Yet the fact remains, after 9/11 there was little anti-Islam activity, whereas, now Mosque building across Amercia –reflecting a constitutional right to practice religious freedom- is being challenged!

Recently I have been called a bigot by a reader of my blog who opposed my article questioning the reasoning of building a Mosque so close to ground zero. The full essay can be viewed at http://factoru.blogspot.com/2010/05/between-mosque-and-hard-place.html. But the thesis is that Muslims know there are questions about their beliefs and anger against the actions committed by people who claim to be Muslims. So I asked why not avoid insulting people? What was gained by using religious freedom to again victimize the victims? Did they expect such an actions to strengthen the harmony between Americas religious communities? My conclusion was that whatever the intentions, they forced the average American to choose between a Mosque -representing religious freedom- and a hard place -representing the insult and disregard that victims of 9/11 feel.

Indeed after 9/11 there was no “choice”, every community, except for a few who exercised their freedom to dance in New Jersey as the towers and people burned, gathered together and denounced the suicide-murder. For most Americans, like myself, it was another instance of the triumph of American exceptionalism -rationality and law trumped irrational anger and frustration, and there were no wide-spread attacks on Muslim-American community. After all Muslim were also lost in the inferno of hate, many spoke out against the terror, their religion was victimized by their suicidal coreligionists.

Yet now Americans turn on their tv’s and they see Muslims completely rejecting the feelings of many good and honest Americans. The same America that elected a Black president and refused to blame Islam for Fort Hood the attempted Christmas-day bombing, despite 9/11… Muslim-Americans like Farreed Zakaree, the CNN anchor and writer who returned an ADL award, because the ADL DID recognize the legitimacy, however irrational, of the victims feelings and opposed the mosque ON THOSE GROUNDS.

Muslim-Americans the overwhelming majority who espouse peace could have come out and declared
“WE ARE A PEACFUL RELIGOUN WE BELIEVED THIS MOSQUE WOULD FOSTER UNDERSTANDING AND HARMONY, BUT FOR THE SAKE OF PEACE AND THE STILL TRAUMATIZED VICTIMS, ESSPECIALY CONSIDERING RECENT AMERICAN HISTORY, WE WILL FIND A LESS SENSATIVE AREA IN LOWER MANHATTAN FOR THIS MOSQUE.”
Instead Muslims told me that they opposed the Mosque because of the unnecessary disunity it causes, but now support it because they feel under attack. But I say this is not the way you respond to an attack in America. Not one major America-Muslim organization publicized and acknowledged the feelings of the victims. Not one organization said “you know what we understand”!
Indeed America refuses to blame American-Muslims for the horror committed in its name, and I believe it will continue to do so.

When Americans saw American-Muslims going out of their way to insult America. They said “perhaps Muslims don’t understand the pain this mosque is causing”, let us explain it to them -dissuade them from using this location. That didn’t work. So then they asked “is this what we can expect from the Muslim-American community in the future”? To deliberately insult, like the fringe racists who now feel free to openly stand in front of Mosques with dogs at their side hurling insults? To use freedom of religion to create disharmony amongst religious communities? To be unable to adjust to real concerns by deeply hurt people? To add insult to injury and label the emotionally injured who ONLY remember their children and parents and call them bigots!!! Is this a religion of understanding is this a community which has leaders that understand that the law is a means for coexistence not an ends on to itself?

Of course protesting in front of mosques simply because they are Muslim institutions is wrong. Of course the Mosque/community center is legal, and Muslims are free to build anywhere the law allows them! Of course American-Muslims, (except the American-Muslims that provided support to the 9/11 hijackers) are not to blame for 9/11 and to blame them is wrong! Of Course!

But do Muslim-Americans understand that this Mosque will achieve the what the hijackers were unable to achieve, wide-spread religious conflict? Do Muslim-Americans not feel the grief that so many Americans victimized by 9/11 feel?

Then again by now the Mosque supporters realize what they are doing and continue to act, if they didn't at the onset.

If that is the case it does not make Mosque protesting outside of the ground zero mosque right, but it certainly explains it.

Between a Mosque and a Hard Place

Let’s say that Christians decided that it is important to have a Church overlooking Dachau, a German concentration camp where 100,000s of Jews and others were exterminated . Would that be wrong?

On one hand just because the Nazi’s of Germany happened to be both from a Christian nation and expressing an extreme manifestation of Antisemitism is not a reason to besmirch the whole Christian faith 60 years later.

At the same time it would be in very bad taste and completely unnecessary. Not because the Church was directly responsible for the Holocaust, but because there is an association. Thankfully the Church has not placed Jews in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between commonsense-respect or being labeled anti-Christian.

Yet what would happen if the Church did insist on building a towering church overlooking Dachau BEFORE the actual Dachau memorial was constructed, say in 1955? Then Jews would be forced to choose between being seen as unjustly stereotyping all Christians or feeling that the memory of their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters was not receiving the respect it deserved. After all most individuals visiting the site would easily make a hurtful connection between the Cross, Antisemitism, and the Nazis.

Why then have some in the American-Muslim community placed us, average Americans, in the uncomfortable and unnecessary position of choosing between the victims of horrific Islamic-terror and our values of absolute tolerance?

Who gains from building a Mosque 15 stories above the site of ground-zero, BEFORE ground-zero and the wounds that it opened recover? Bigots will become more bigoted, stereotypes will be affirmed, and many victims will feel once again victimized. Is there no location available for 100 million elsewhere in Manhattan?

How can the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba (this term has very sinister connotations, accidentally?) Initiative, be so sure that they can raise the 100 million necessary to follow thru on this project? Are there so many supporters of this project IN our country? If not who is funding this and why?

Perhaps it is a ploy to “reveal” Americas anti-Muslim and hypocritical nature, and was never intended to actually be built, or even a right-wing conspiracy to galvanize anti-Muslim sentiment in America. Or a left-wing conspiracy to force America to accept Islam while affirming American values to the rest of the world.

Whatever the warped meaning, they, whoever they are, have put us between a Mosque and a hard place.