"New
York has many mosques, and that demonstrates that people there aren't bothered
by mosques in and of themselves, but by the decision to build one on the same
site where a criminal attack was carried out by fanatics who saw themselves as
defenders of Islam. The best way to show that Islam doesn't defend this mass
murder would be to build the mosque somewhere else."
Feisal Abdul Rauf, executive director of the Cordoba Initiative, has traveled the world to talk to moderate Muslims on behalf of the U.S. State Department. He now finds himself ensconsed in a fierce battle to prevent his initiative from being completed.
If the objective of building
the "Cordoba House" mosque near Ground Zero is to contribute to understanding
and the coexistence of religions, from that point of
view it is already a complete failure. The intense
dispute that the project has engendered on the ground has shifted into the
political arena, where the GOP offensive against the meaning of erecting a
religious complex in such a place has found strong popular support. So much so
that the party of the president and even a figure as important as Harry Reid, the
Democratic leader of the Senate, has backed the overwhelming sentiment of the
people and expressed his opposition to the site. Without prejudging the fine line that separates
tolerance and the free exercise of religion, if built at Ground Zero, the
mosque would be fraught with symbolism that will be a long way from defending the
principles that its advocates claim to defend. The same Barack
Obama has realized that he couldn't openly support the plan, because while it satisfied
some, it caused pain and indignation for many others, which confirms that the
president would have been better off thinking more deeply, before his words
implied that he supported an idea that deeply divides U.S. society.
New York has many
mosques, and that demonstrates that people there aren't bothered by mosques in
and of themselves, but by the decision to build one on the same site where a
criminal attack was carried out by fanatics who saw themselves as defenders of
Islam. The best way to show that Islam doesn't defend this mass murder would be
to build the mosque somewhere else.