I wasn't going to say anything about this because it just seems like another ridiculous scuffle in our endless culture war, and it has provoked little more than knee-jerk reactions on either side of the issue. I certainly don't dispute that in America you have a right to build a place of worship wherever you want. I think it's been pretty clearly established that the Muslim community behind the building of this mosque hate what al-Qaeda stands for and have no hidden jihadist agenda. And I don't think there's any question that the nativist, right-wing arguments opposed to the building of this mosque are in the wrong.
I have not made a thorough study of this issue, but in my reading so far I have not heard any explanation about what the Cordobar folks' thinking was in choosing this site. I am happy to be educated about that if anyone knows. But it seems politically obtuse and naive if they did not think their choosing a site near ground zero would provoke a firestorm of controversy, perhaps leading eventually to violence by right-wingers convinced building this mosque can only be understood as a Muslim middle finger to New Yorkers.
I hope this all dies down, but I have to wonder why anybody would choose to put themselves and their community in the middle of a firestorm like this. Unless we assume an unlikely cluelessness on the part of the Cordoba folks, it's pretty clear that their choice of this site was deliberately provocative. They wanted to make a statement. I certainly don't question their right to make that statement, but I can also understand why a majority of New Yorkers don't like it. It's a statement that builds no bridges.
Sometimes you have to be willing to pay the price to make
statements that people need to hear, but what was the statement exactly?
Is it worth provoking this uproar and living with the negative feelings
it will have generated for years to come? It will be a statement worth making if in the long run this turns out to be what Obama calls an "educational moment", but Americans on either side of the issue don't seem particularly well disposed to learn anything new. Mostly it's provoked predictable cant.
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