Islamophobia, Park51 and Stu Bykofsky's Collective Guilt For Thee, But Not For Me

Oh, Stu.

Stu Bykofsky's at it again. He's in the Daily News today, taking on the "Ground Zero mosque" issue by decrying the intolerance and insensitivity ... of the left.

No really.

I don't oppose building Cordoba House or Park51, or whatever it's called this week, near Ground Zero, but I understand why many dislike the location.

They are assaulted by the Hard Left as un-American, Islamophobic bigots. Is that fair? Is there no other possible explanation for their opposition?

The Hard Left demands, rightfully, that we not judge all Muslims by the acts of a few, but then judges all conservatives by the acts or remarks of a few.

It's disheartening that the same progressives who condemned Sen. Joe McCarthy's guilt-by-association tactics find it so easy to smear their opponents.

I'm not quite sure who all Stu is lumping into the "hard left" here, but I get the feeling it includes a lot of people who are merely, you know, liberal. And vigorous about defending First Amendment freedoms.

The problem here is that Stu gives the game away with is appraisal of the project.

Two-thirds of Americans agree that Muslims have a right to build it, yet think the location is unhelpful. They may be letting emotion trump reason, but are they Islamophobes?

If you despise - as I do - the Westboro Baptist Church for holding up "God Hates Fags" signs and desecrating soldiers' funerals, are you anti-Christian?

Well, Stu, no. But if you oppose the presence of, say, Lutherans or Catholics or Methodists at military funerals because they're Christians and Fred Phelps is a Christian, then yes: you're anti-Christian. You'd be burdening an entire religion with collective guilt from the actions of a few jerks. And that would be irrational, unthinking and unconcerned with the facts. More than that: It would be wrong.

That's more or less what's happening with the "Ground Zero mosque." (Which, as has been pointed out many times, isn't actually at Ground Zero.)

So what Stu is really saying here is: Collective guilt for thee, but not for me. It's understandable that all Muslims be painted as terrorists-in-waiting, but oh so unfair to paint all critics as Islamophobes! Stu's complaint breaks down under the weight of its own contradictions.

It also breaks down under the weight of, you know, the facts: Plenty of liberals have praised Sen. Orrin Hatch -- a conservative's conservative -- for defending the First Amendment rights of the Park51 leaders. Lots of them have linked to columns by former Bush aides Michael Gerson and Mark McKinnon mounting a similar defense. So we're not calling all conservatives "Islamophobes." Just the Islamophobic ones.

The ADL, Ilario Pentano, the Ground Zero mosque, and what it means to be an American

A few years ago, a friend of mine -- an editor, only about 10 years older than I, a man of some Italian lineage -- looked ahead to the 2008 elections and declared, flatly, that Barack Obama would never be president.

"Nobody becomes president whose last name ends in a vowel," he said.

The remark struck me, because I wasn't really used to thinking of my friend in ethnic terms.(He'd was a little over-rhapsodic about "The Sopranos," but then again, what man wasn't?) But my friend was heir to a not-so-distant history, the son of a family that -- thanks to its Mediterranean origins -- had just a few decades previous been considered not-quite-fully American. By 2005 or 2006, whenever I had that discussion with my friend, those days seemed past -- but he still felt it in his bones.

I thought about my friend last night, when I read the New York Times' story about how the Anti-Defamation League has decided to oppose the Cordoba House, better known as the Ground Zero mosque. I was already saddened by the turn of events when I stopped, gobstruck, by the Times' pullback to a national overview of the story.

In North Carolina, Ilario Pantano, a former Marine and a Republican candidate for Congress, has also campaigned on the issue, and says it is stirring voters in his rural district, some 600 miles away from ground zero.

A few days ago, at a roadside pizza shop in the small town of Salemburg, he attacked the proposal before an enthusiastic crowd of hog farmers and military veterans.

“Uniformly, there was disgust and disdain in the room for the idea,” Mr. Pantano said.

Ilario Pantano? That's a name with lots and lots of vowels! He's the son of an Italian immigrant, and he grew up in Hell's Kitchen, New York! Now yes, he's a Marine -- one with a controversial history -- but does anybody think that Ilario Pentano would've stood a chance in hell of being elected to Congress in, say, 1960? From North Carolina?


I don't mean to pick on my Tarheel friends. The North Carolina of 2010 is different from the North Carolina of 1960. That's at least partly because the America of 2010 is different from the America of 1960. (Or the America, say, of 1941.) Italian Americans -- except, maybe, for the ones on "Jersey Shore" -- aren't really seen as "others" anymore. The emphasis, for people who aren't Italian-American, is a little less "Italian" and a little more "American." Both sides have benefited from the exchange, I think. But it's not been that long since Ilario Pantano would've been seen as not-quite-American. He, at least, has reaped the rewards of an America that has broadened its mind about who gets to be in the club of "real Americans."

And he's using those rewards ... to try to keep other people out of the club.

The Anti-Defamation League fares much, much worse in this comparison, of course, because its whole reason for existing was to fight for the right of Jewish-Americans to live fully as Americans. And now it, too, has seen fit to try to keep other people out of the club.

Here, astonishingly, is the "about" section at the ADL's website:

The Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913 "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all." Now the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency, ADL fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all.

A leader in the development of materials, programs and services, ADL builds bridges of communication, understanding and respect among diverse groups, carrying out its mission through a network of 30 Regional and Satellite Offices in the United States and abroad.

The parts in bold? Those words can no longer be considered true in any meaningful sense. They are, in fact, a lie. It hurts me to say so.

The people who oppose Cordoba House -- the people who, somewhat gleefully, would have America march off in a "clash of the civilizations" against the Muslim religion -- would have us believe that Islam, and Muslims, are a monolith. That the most extreme interpretations of that faith are, in fact, the only legitimate interpretations. That Osama bin Laden is no different from Feisal Abdul Rauf is no different from my halal butcher down the street.

But that's untrue. It's pernicious nonsense. And given five minutes of honest, empathetic thinking, most Americans would have to concede the actual truth: That it's complicated. That there are a few real violent nutjobs, like Osama and Al Qaeda, and a few more not-violent-but-still-kinda-asshole-types who want their religion to rule the rest of us -- and a whole lot more people who have faith, who wrestle with its demands, and just try to live each day as best their conscience allows.

Which is no different, really from the rest of America. Or the rest of humanity.

Listen: a terrible wound was inflicted upon America on 9/11. I know: I saw the wreckage of the towers myself and smelled the smoke. I visited the field in rural Pennsylvania where Flight 93 crashed. These experiences marked me and changed my life.

But we betray our values, deeply and perhaps irreparably, if we hold all Muslims culpable for the acts of a few. This moment is a crucible. I really believe that, 20 years from now, a few people will be pround of having been on the right side of this issue -- and the few people who still stand up then for today's discrimination will be viewed much like Ann Coulter defending McCarthyism today: as embarrassments.

The history of America encompasses many stories, many narratives, but one of them is this: the ever-expanding notion of what it means to be American. Ilario Pentano is, I believe, aware of this story. The folks at the ADL certainly are. We are always proud when those definitions expand -- and always ashamed, even if it takes a few years, when they contract. This can be a moment when we choose to be proud before posterity. I sincerely hope it is.

The Cordoba House mosque, Ground Zero, and all you religious people trying to run my life

That's the topic of my Scripps Howard column with Ben Boychuk this week. Since you already got most of my take in blog form last week, let me do something different and focus on Ben's take.

An excerpt:

Now let's contrast Washington with Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the Cordoba House project who wrote a fascinating book in 2004 called "What's Right with Islam Is What's Right with America." In it, Rauf casually argues that the U.S. Constitution and the core principles of Islamic law (sharia) are not in conflict at all and, indeed, the "American political structure is sharia-compliant."

"Islamic law and American democratic principles have many things in common," Rauf wrote, stressing that sharia's support for "political justice" and "economic justice ... for the weak and impoverished" "sounds suspiciously like the Declaration of Independence."

To the casual reader, maybe. Fact is, sharia doesn't recognize the separation of church and state, has a medieval understanding of equal rights and sanctions treating Christians and Jews as second-class citizens who must pay a tax to receive Muslim protection. In other words, to "demean themselves as good citizens" in a "sharia-compliant" America is something very different from what George Washington would have understood.

I'll sum up, at the risk of oversimplifying: Muslims -- at least the Muslims involved in Cordoba House -- think that society should be run according to Islamic precepts. And my response is: Of course they do!

To my liberal, agnostic eyes, though, that doesn't appear all that different from, well, any other religious group -- or, admittedly, that different from secularists who'd like to get through the political day without having to argue against somebody else's faith. There are very few people who think that society shouldn't be run according to their particular view of the universe.

Let's take the Southern Baptists. Here are some excerpts from a resolution "on political engagement" members of the convention approved in 2008:

WHEREAS, Christians acting as the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matthew 5:13-16) have a responsibility to engage their culture, including participating in the political process; and

WHEREAS, Candidates for political office seek the endorsement of Christians for their candidacies; and

WHEREAS, Christians exercising their rights as responsible citizens may choose to endorse candidates for political office as part of the exercise of their engagement of culture; and

WHEREAS, Christians should seek to apply their spiritual and moral values to the political process rather than politicize the church;

(snip)


now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That we urge Christians to engage the culture through discipleship within the churches and through participation in the democratic public policy and political process in order to help fulfill the kingdom mandate taught in the Bible and expressed in the Baptist Faith and Message “to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth, and brotherly love,” while always protecting freedom of conscience; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage our churches regularly to teach and preach biblical truth on moral issues and to urge their members to vote according to their beliefs, convictions, and values; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we call on candidates for political office to endorse the Judeo-Christian beliefs, convictions, and values upon which society should rest.

Now, see, I find that last part alarming -- the Constitution pretty clearly states there should be "no religious test" for public office, but the Southern Baptist Convention believes candidates should have to pass the test anyway. They may not be at odds with the letter of the law, but it's certainly against the spirit. And the Southern Baptist Convention does this all the time, letting officials know they don't want gay people to serve in the military or have marriage rights or even have the right to hold a job! Baptists aren't just stating personal preferences: They're stating that American society should be run along Southern Baptist lines.

But let's not pick on merely the examples I find objectionable. Let's take a look at a rather more liberal church, one whose beliefs are somewhat closer to my own: The Episcopal Church of America. Here's a list of legislation passed by church leaders at their 2009 convention -- there's a condemnation of "first strike" military action, a condemnation of the invasion of Iraq and America's "sin committed in Iraq," and even a call to end the U.S. embargo in Cuba. Episcopalians, in other words, want the United States to run its foreign policy along lines acceptable to a branch of the Church of England!

How crazy is that?

Well, it's both kinda crazy and not-so-crazy. It is -- again from my agnostic eyes -- a little weird that we let our speculations about the possibility of a divine entity who may or may not exist guide how we organize our society. But in my warmer, wiser moments, I realize that politics are an expression of values -- and that an invidual's values are shaped by their religion, or shape the religion itself.

On the other hand: America's about as secular as it ever has been in its history. And it's still pretty religious. Somehow, we've survived pretty well without becoming a theocracy and without banning Bibles from public streets. So maybe it's ok if I recognize that the tensions exist, but that they haven't overwhelmed our system. Southern Baptists surely have an influence on our governance, but they don't out-and-out run things. What's more, Southern Baptists have attempted to influence and shape American governance in a decidedly conservative way -- and yet there's never been any serious effort, that I know of, to deny them their First Amendment rights of worship. Why would we treat Muslims differently?

Most of us in this country are Christians and Americans and find ways to meld those two identities without threatening the good order of society -- and in lots of cases, society even benefits. And so it is, I believe, with the vast majority of American Muslims.

What's interesting to me, finally, is that my friend Ben and many other conservatives are so opposed to the possible rise of sharia law to dominate and shape America -- nevermind that Islam's numbers are too few to ever really permit that to happen, nevermind there's already a few mosques in New York -- that they seemingly don't have any real confidence in Amerca's ability to shape Islam right back. You know who actually has that confidence? The people behind the Cordoba House proposal in New York.

With the flexibility permitted by America’s religious freedom and openness, American Muslims can catalyze innovations in the global process of ijtihad (Islamic legal interpretation)just as American Jews and Christians birthed new developments in their faiths. They represent the diversity championed by both their own religious history and the heritage of the country in which they reside, positioning them uniquely to reach out to other Muslims and Americans and thus help close the gap in understanding.

Well, yeah. But if we throw up our hands in fear when somebody wants to build a mosque -- or if, worse, we act contrary to our own laws and values and decide not to let the mosque be built -- well, then, we may well blow that opportunity.

Ben closed his portion of the column with these words: "Let us give bigotry no sanction -- and be ever watchful of those who would exploit American openness and freedom to do just that." I couldn't agree more. And I'd add a second statement: "Let us give bigotry no sanction -- and be ever watchful of those who would end American openness and freedom to do just that." And that's the problem posed by those who would refuse the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero. Right now, it's a greater threat than any posed by a hypothetical imposition of sharia law on American citizens.

Sarah Palin, the Ground Zero mosque and the American presidency

More than most American leaders who might run for president someday, Sarah Palin has made a career of dividing "us" and "them." Most famously, she spent parts of the 2008 dismissing her opponents and their allies as residing somewhere outside the "real America" -- and while she apologized for it, her constant grievance-mongering suggests she sees the world, and this country, mostly in terms of its divisions.

Don't get me wrong: Other leaders can be "divisive." Palin is different: The divisions animate her.

I mention all of this because of a recent posting to her Facebook page, which features this title: "An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground." She is, of course, talking about the proposed mosque to be located 600 feet or so from Ground Zero in New York.

I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: “This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists. I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened.”

Palin cites a specific person associated with the proposed mosque whose statements about 9/11, she judges, are insufficiently sympathetic to the victims. But her concerns aren't quite so nuanced or specific -- witness this Tweet which asked all "peace-seeking Muslims" to avoid the provocation.

But it wasn't "peace-seeking Muslims" who flew the planes into the World Trade Center. It was 19 extremists -- people whose ideology unfortunately has broader support than we'd like, but whose views do not represent the vast majority of American Muslims. The truth is that more Muslims died on 9/11 as victims of the attack than as the aggressors. By implicitly lumping them in with criminals and vile murderers, Sarah Palin is suggesting that American Muslims cannot be full citizens of this country -- that they should have the "decency" to accept a "lesser-than" status that denies them the right to practice their religion as fully as their Christian neighbors.

American Muslims, in this view, aren't part of the community of Americans who mourned 9/11 -- they are more closely related to and allied with the transgressors. Not to put too fine a point on it: This isn't dissimilar from the "blood libel" that anti-Semites use to smear all Jews as killers of Jesus Christ. All bear a measure of guilt, regardless of their actions.

This is why Sarah Palin should never be our president. She simply cannot be the president of all Americans. Maybe few presidents ever are -- but they at least have the good sense to attempt it. Even George W. Bush recognized his duty in this regard.

Palin's statements on the mosque issue also point to another reason she should never be president: She cannot distinguish America's friends from its enemies. Her divisiveness would make her a poor president; her inability to make the right kinds of distinctions would make her a dangerous one.

UPDATE: Via Conor Friedersdorf's Twitter feed, this is simply ugly and evil.