Moving the "Ground Zero mosque" to Greenwich Village.

A cool new idea from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.



Makes sense to me!

"The Ground Zero Mosque will be so hip, everyone will stop fighting."

Could wacky, chaotic architecture make everyone happy... or at least flummox us long enough for the whole controversy to dissipate?

There's good reason to love Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.

As a consequence of his proposal to build a mosque 2 blocks from Ground Zero, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has become quite famous — specifically famous for his assurances of moderation and his asserted desire to promote intercultural connection and harmony. You can doubt his motives or be suspicious of whether he's really at heart all that moderate. But the fact remains: He's world famous for his moderation now, and he's going to have to stick to it. That's great, isn't it?

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf promised on Monday to resolve the fierce dispute around plans to build a Muslim community center and mosque two blocks from ground zero, while noting that he does not believe the spot chosen for the center is “hallowed ground.”

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, he promised to find a way out of the current impasse around the planned center, which opponents say is insensitive to the memory of 9/11 and which supporters say sends the opposite message, that Muslims, like other Americans, object to and were victims of the attacks.

“Everything is on the table,” he said. “We really are focused on solving it” in a way that will be best for everyone concerned, he added. “I give you my pledge.”

He may not have meant to get himself into this position. But he's now the designated moderate imam. He's pretty much going to have to play out his role, and it's great to have someone in that role. Is he the one who deserves all this attention? Is he all that well suited to speak for others and follow through as a force for moderation? Who knows? But he's here now, and circumstances have bestowed this prominence and responsibility on him. It will be exceedingly difficult for him to back out of it now. He will have to be the man events have chosen him to be. And we need that man.

I celebrate Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.

"There is a McDonald's two blocks from Ground Zero. Trust me, McDonald's has killed far more people than the terrorists."

Michael Moore weighs in on the near-Ground-Zero mosque.

"We are, of course, now against any other group burning Qurans. We would right now ask no one to burn Qurans. We are absolutely strong on that. It is not the time to do it."

It's the Rev. Terry Jones, who doesn't belong in the national spotlight and is probably not the smartest man in central Florida:

Standing outside his 50-member Pentecostal church, the Dover Outreach Center, alongside Imam Muhammad Musri, the president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, Jones said he relented when Musri assured him that the New York mosque will be moved.

Jones had never invoked the mosque controversy as a reason for his planned protest. He cited his belief that the Quran is evil because it espouses something other than biblical truth and incites radical, violent behavior among Muslims.

But he said Thursday that that he prayed about the decision and concluded that if the mosque was moved, it would be a sign from God to call off the Quran burning....

"We are canceling the event because we have agreed, I take him at his word, he has agreed to move the Ground Zero mosque," Jones said. "I verified that three or four times with witnesses. I trust that man who gave me that. I believe he is a man of integrity, a man of his word, I do not believe that he lied to me."

Jones said that if the mosque is not moved, "then I think Islam is a very poor example of religion. I think that would be very pitiful. I do not expect that."

This is a man with a tiny church, who never should have caught our attention. God knows why the President of the United States started talking about him:

OBAMA: If he's listening, I just hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values of Americans. That this country has been built on the notions of religious freedom and religious tolerance. 

And as a very practical matter, as commander of chief of the Armed Forces of the United States I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan. We're already seeing protests against Americans just by the mere threat...that he's making.

… this is a recruitment bonanza for Al Qaeda. You know, you could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan. This could increase the recruitment of individuals who'd be willing to blow themselves up in American cities, or European cities. You know and so you know, I just hope that, he says he's … he's someone who's motivated by his faith....

STEPHANOPOULOS: I wonder what this must feel like from behind your desk. You're President of the United States. You have to deal with the fallout. And he's a pastor who's got 30 followers in his church. Does it make you feel helpless or angry?

OBAMA: It, well it is frustrating. Now, on the other hand, we are a government of laws. And so, we have to abide by those laws. And my understanding is that he can be cited for public burning. But that's the extent of the laws that we have available to us. You know, part of this country's history is people doing destructive or offensive or harmful things. And yet, we still have to make sure that we're following the laws. And that's part of what I love about this country.

Oh, lord. There's so much wrong with that! And yet our President, unlike Mr. Jones, is supposedly very, very smart. For one thing, Obama eventually gets around to Jones's freedom of expression, but that treasured right is presented as an obstacle that the President has got to put up with, because it is, technically, law. Why isn't it one of the "values of Americans" like "religious freedom and religious tolerance"? But, no, in Obama's view, the symbolic speech of burning a book because you think it's evil is "completely contrary to our values of Americans."

So: the values of "religious freedom and religious tolerance" are what really matters... except that Jones's opinion is religious. If the point is that Jones has the right to burn the book, but he should refrain from exercising it and be sensitive to the feelings of others, then Obama is contradicting the approach he took to the close-to-Ground-Zero mosque, which is that the overwhelmingly important matter is that there is a right to build the mosque and he really doesn't want to talk about whether it's a good idea.

You know, a key religious freedom value is that government must not treat different religions differently. But Obama takes one attitude toward the NYC Muslims and another toward the Florida Christian. With respect to the former, he highlighted the right and wouldn't express an opinion about how that right should be exercised. With the later, he begrudgingly acknowledged the right after stressing the importance of the individual's restraint and sensitivity toward others.

Now, you might jump to say that Obama thus favored Muslims over Christians, but think about how it's actually the other way around. Without hesitation, he called upon the Christian to exercise forbearance and to care for the feelings of others. He didn't dare say that to Muslims. And he talked about Muslims as if they are incapable of understanding a society based on individual liberty and freedom of expression. Obama propounds the stereotype of irrational Muslims who resort to acts of violence when they don't like what people are saying.

Ironically, Rev. Jones wanted to burn the Koran because it seemed to him that it "incites radical, violent behavior among Muslims." And Obama wanted Jones to refrain from burning the Koran because it would incite radical, violent behavior among Muslims.

"People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation..."

"... much like building a mosque at Ground Zero."

Exactly and obviously. Nice squelching by Sarah Palin.

"So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse."

Marty Peretz, The New Republic's owner, opines about Muslims.

"Some Muslims said their situation felt more precarious now..."

"... under a president who is perceived as not only friendly to Muslims but is wrongly believed by many Americans to be Muslim himself — than it was under President George W. Bush."

[Eboo Patel, a founder and director of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based community service program] explained, “After Sept. 11, we had a Republican president who had the confidence and trust of red America, who went to a mosque and said, ‘Islam means peace,’ and who said ‘Muslims are our neighbors and friends,’ and who distinguished between terrorism and Islam.”

Now, unlike Mr. Bush then, the politicians with sway in red state America are the ones whipping up fear and hatred of Muslims, Mr. Patel said.

So Bush was better, but somehow the problems are still the Republicans' fault. 

50% of NYC residents oppose the mosque near Ground Zero, and only 35% support it.

This NYT poll undermines the belief that the attitude toward the mosque is quite different in New York City and those of us who don't live there don't understand. Here, for example, is a comment written in an August 2d thread on this blog:

Do you live there Ann? No. So its actually none of your business. So you should just shut up about it.

I however, DO vote in that district. I own property in that district. That is MY community board. And I wholeheartedly support that mosque. The vast majority of those in that district support the mosque. And there is another mosque just one block away.

And it is not the Ground Zero Mosque. You can't even see the mosque from Ground Zero.

There was zero controversy about this mosque until the bigots made a stink about this. And yes, you're siding with the bigots now.

Obviously you no zilch about New York City. You have no connections to New York City. You are not a voter in New York City.

This mosque is trying to build bridges with the community. That means community board #1, who support this.

It certain does not mean YOU or Sarah Palin's "fake America".

So the bigots should just mind their own business.

Muslims in Community Board #1 have the right to pray in their neighborhood.

On the other hand, this commenter (downtownlad) can say the poll supports his position. If you break out Manhattan, 51% support the mosque and 41% oppose it.

***

And while we're on the subject of the mosque, did you hear Mark Steyn on the subject (as he was guest-hosting on the Rush Limbaugh show yesterday)? I can't find a transcript or long enough audio clip. He doesn't so much care about building the mosque. He's more concerned with the failure to rebuild on the WTC site and where Imam Rauf gets his money. Perhaps opposition to the mosque is displaced disappointment with America's failure to demonstrate its strength and its values with a dramatic, finished, brilliant architectural achievement that dominates lower Manhattan. It's been 10 years.

"They have a right to rally. But what they don't have the right [to] do is distort what Dr. King's dream was about."

Said Al Sharpton, narrowly defining rights. It's so close to the time when everyone was talking about the mosque near Ground Zero and even the staunch opponents assured us that there was a right to build the mosque, but that didn't mean it was a good thing to do.

I haven't been following this controversy, and I don't really know what Glenn Beck and his cohort are doing that could be construed as "distort[ing] what Dr. King's dream was about." But it's quite obvious that we all do have a right to distort King's ideas or any other ideas as much as we damned well please. And Sharpton and the rest of us also have a right to say that there is no such right, but it's not good to say that. Because it's not true. And it's anti-freedom. Ironically.

"But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism."

Writes Christopher Hitchens, noting the naivete of the talk of religious tolerance in defense of the mosque near Ground Zero:

As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything "offensive" to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter …

As for the gorgeous mosaic of religious pluralism, it's easy enough to find mosque Web sites and DVDs that peddle the most disgusting attacks on Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and other Muslims—to say nothing of insane diatribes about women and homosexuals. This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be "phobic." A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational.

In this view, it's good to frame the debate in terms of tolerance, but don't wimp out halfway through. Keep going, and insist on tolerance all around. I think that's a better position than meeting intolerance with intolerance. It's more enlightened, it puts us on the path to liberty, and it requires quite a bit more courage.

Protest and counterprotest in NYC — 1,000 against the mosque near Ground Zero and 200 for it.

They were mostly peaceful, and they didn't really disagree at a high level of abstract principle. All — or mostly all — believe in freedom of religion, respect for the WTC victims, and opposition to those who attacked us on 9/11.

Off the abstract level, we have our troubles... but can you feel the harmony... now and then?

"A mosque at the edge of Ground Zero would be much more than a house of worship; it would be a symbol, interpreted differently by different audiences."

"For some it would be the ultimate expression of the freedom of religion we enjoy in America; for others, a searing reminder of terrible deaths at the hands of murderers calling themselves Muslims. I suspect that the terrorists might celebrate its presence as a twisted victory over our society's freedoms. Rauf and his congregation are certainly free to locate their mosque near Ground Zero. But I hope and pray that they will show uncommon courtesy and decide not to."

Karen Hughes weighs in on the mosque controversy.

Americans who believe Obama is a Christian: 34%.

Americans who believe Obama is a Muslim: 20%.

More than a third of conservative Republicans now say Obama is a Muslim, nearly double the percentage saying so early last year. Independents, too, are now more apt to see the president as a Muslim: Among independents, 18 percent say he is a Muslim, up eight percentage points.

So the less popular Obama is generally, the more likely he is to be perceived as a Muslim? Is this fair to Obama? Is this fair to Muslims?

The linked WaPo article tags on this final paragraph:

In the Time poll, 25 percent say most Muslims in the United States are not patriotic Americans. But the survey also indicates that the public's opposition to the center may be more complicated than just anti-Muslim sentiment. Fifty-five percent said they would accept a Muslim community center and place of worship two blocks from their own home.

May be more complicated! Good lord! The Washington Post has a low opinion of Americans!

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the mosque in the Ground Zero zone...

... and on other "religious tolerance" issues in the news lately (such as "the eviction of American missionaries from Morocco earlier this year, the minaret ban in Switzerland last year, and the recent burka ban in France"). She'd like to reframe these issues in terms "of what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the 'Clash of Civilizations.'"

[T]he survival of the West depends on Americans, Europeans and other Westerners reaffirming their shared civilization as unique—and uniting to defend it against challenges from non-Western civilizations....
President Obama, in his own way, is a One Worlder. In his 2009 Cairo speech, he called for a new era of understanding between America and the Muslim world. It would be a world based on "mutual respect, and . . . upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles."

The president's hope was that moderate Muslims would eagerly accept this invitation to be friends. The extremist minority—nonstate actors like al Qaeda—could then be picked off with drones....

The greatest advantage of Huntington's civilizational model of international relations is that it reflects the world as it is—not as we wish it to be. It allows us to distinguish friends from enemies....

Our civilization is not indestructible: It needs to be actively defended. This was perhaps Huntington's most important insight. The first step towards winning this clash of civilizations is to understand how the other side is waging it—and to rid ourselves of the One World illusion.

I question whether either model is really "the world as it is," but I certainly agree that it's crucial to face reality. Nevertheless, our ideals form a part of the reality that exists now and the reality that we are making for the future.  Ali never explains why the "Clash of Civilizations" template works better in the real world than Obama's idea. I'd guess that one needs to check one's perceptions alternately with both templates and that Obama does that and more as he decides what actions to take and what to say in speeches. He may do that badly on many occasions, but it's inconceivable that his aspirations toward mutual respect and shared principles blot out his awareness of the discord and disconnect.

"How is this opposition to the mosque being funded? How is this being ginned up?”

Asks Pelosi, going all conspiracy theory. It just can't be that people — and it's the vast majority of Americans! — actually read/hear news reports and commentary and arrive at opinions.

Meanwhile, the right is headed over to the conspiracy place too.

"Critics say Obama's message becoming 'incoherent.'"

Yes, of course. It was built into Obama's style of communication that it would become incoherent when it moved from campaign oratory — which he seemed so good at — to the real work of governing — which requires you to make specific decisions about the details. At a high plane of principle and abstraction, there is a beautiful harmony. For example, most Americans believe in freedom of religion and reject discriminating against a particular religion. That's not what the dispute over the mosque near Ground Zero is about. Yet Obama thought he could participate in the dispute by doing nothing more than celebrating those principles.

What happened was, most people thought he was taking a position on the wisdom of building the mosque. That is, they didn't see that he was remaining aloof on the high plane of abstraction, beckoning them to join him up there and bask once again in the beautiful harmony that radiated from his glorious presidential campaign. But they'd moved on to trying to solve particular problems, and — like a law student handing in a D exam — Obama hadn't done the hard work of applying the doctrine to the fact pattern.

Obama's response, when he saw that people had misunderstood what he'd said, was to chide them for misreading. He didn't take advantage of the opportunity to do a rewrite and apply the uncontroversial principles to the controversial real-world problem. He stood firm on his lofty pillar of abstraction.

"The danger here is an incoherent presidency," said David Morey, vice chairman of the Core Strategy Group, who provided communications advice to Obama's 2008 campaign. "Simpler is better, and rising above these issues and leading by controlling the dialogue is what the presidency is all about. So I think that's the job they have to do more effectively as they have in the past [in the campaign]."

No! Simpler is only better if people accept the invitation to ascend to that high plane of abstraction where no particular decisions are made. Even if they do, it's only a temporary harmony, because when a particular decision needs to be made, disagreement will reemerge. That's what Morey is perceiving as "incoherence." To say, Obama should use abstraction to achieve coherence is to say Obama should hide our disagreements by avoiding the hard work of governing.

"There is no question they are having messaging problems at the White House," Morey said. "They've lost control of the dialogue, and they've gotten pulled down by the extremes on the left and right. They've just not had a coherent set of themes."

But Obama should descend on his own from that level of abstraction — that "coherent set of themes." If he doesn't do it himself, he will be "pulled down" by whoever fills the gap and takes specific positions about the details he likes to rise above.

"Communicating as a law professor does not work as president. It's not worked," [Morey] said. "You're drawing fine distinctions and speaking in long enough paragraphs that they can be misconstrued and taken out of context and frankly, handed to your opposition to exploit. And that's clearly what's going on here [with the Islamic center/mosque comments]."

Only a bad law professor operates that way. A good law professor speaks as clearly as possible and draws attention to anything the courts have glossed over or left ambiguous. We lawprofs try to extract the doctrinal rules and point up any place where courts have left the rule mushy. Then we apply those rules to particular factual settings. We hypothesize the most difficult applications of law to fact and help the students work through these hard problems. Obama's lolling at high levels of abstract principle and avoiding the specifics of applying principle to real problems is not the way of the law professor.

Firedoglake deploys mockery of Mormons to criticize the Mormon Harry Reid for opposing the the mosque near Ground Zero.

Making the cliché move of anti-Mormon bigots everywhere, Attaturk homes in on the undewear, titling his post "That’s no Sacred Undergarment, it’s 'Depends.'"

It's a very short post. Other than the reference to Reid's interest in reelection —  that's something we all thought of, right? — there's a question that I take as a rhetorical question meant to accuse Reid of inconsistency:

By the way Harry, I imagine you were up front in making sure the Mormon Church didn’t build some sort of Memorial at the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, because that would be, y’know, offensive to the memories of the victims for the same reasons?

You may need to do a little research to feel the bite that criticism. In the implicit analogy, 1. Mormans are to Muslims as the Mountain Meadow Massacre is to the WTC attack and 2. the memorial at the Mountain Meadows Massacre site is to the Mountain Meadows Massacre as the mosque near the WTC site is to the WTC attack.

I don't really see how the analogy holds up. As I understand it — and please correct me if I'm wrong — the Mountain Meadows memorial is a monument to the victims of the massacre (which occured in 1857). It was put up by Mormons in recent years, and, though today's Mormons were born long after the event and could not possibly have had a causal role in the massacre, they nevertheless take it upon themselves to express regret for what happened. Indeed, there is debate among Mormons about whether the apologies have gone deep enough.

An accurate analogy would be if today's Mormons put their efforts into making public statements informing us that they are not the ones who committed the massacre and that the vast majority of Mormons don't advocate doing that sort of thing, and then they wanted to build a place of worship for themselves near the site of the massacre which they want us to honor because of the way they would be making a show of the moderation of their form of Mormonism.

Come on, Attaturk! You can't even picture Mormons doing that, and certainly if they did, there would be screams of horror and disgust!

"Michael Bloomberg tells people where to smoke and where to walk in Times Square, how much fat they can have in their food..."

"... how much fat they can have in their food, bullies anybody who gets in his way. Now anybody who disagrees with him on the building of this mosque is against freedom of religion and the First Amendment. Why? Because Bloomberg stamps his foot and says so, that's why."

I talk with Byron York about Tiger Woods, Dr. Laura, Michelle Obama, Steven Slater, Al Franken, the Prop 8 same-sex marriage decision, and the Ground Zero mosque..

This one's called "The Luckiest Diavlog on the Face of the Earth" for reasons that become apparent near then end. Also, somewhere in there the tornado sirens (in my town) go off.



ADDED: If you need a non-Flash format, go here and pick MP3/MP4.