Manhattan mischief

The idea that building a mosque at Ground Zero highlights Muslim insensitivity to “Americans” is cowardly, illogical.

I generally agree with Tarek Fatah’s secularist, socialist positions, particularly as badly-needed remedies for the deadly morass of issues facing the Muslim world today. But his recent essay in the Ottawa Citizen is an exception. “Mischief in Manhattan,” co-written by Fatah and Raheel Raza, does have points worth considering. The main thesis, however – that the plan for building a mosque at Ground Zero is an example of Muslims’ insensitivity to “Americans” (since when are Americans and Muslims mutually exclusive terms?) – and as such, should be abandoned because it will remind “Americans” of Muslims’ dastardly attacks on the World Trade Centre, is both cowardly and illogical.

First, it’s no bravery to cow down to the most retrograde reactionaries in the US, who want to paint all Muslims with the kind of broad brush-strokes Fatah and Raza deploy when they state their opinion that there should be no mosque or Islamic centre at the site “where Muslims killed thousands of New Yorkers.” Should all Muslims, most of them moderate and sane, living useful lives as American citizens, become scapegoats for the sins of a few crazies, most of whom were not even Americans? To fear, as Fatah and Raza do, that, “If this mosque does get built, it will forever be a lightning rod for those who have little room for Muslims or Islam in the US” – is to pander to the bigotry of anti-Islam racists. It is also to go against the very foundation of this country. As President Obama, standing up for the right to put a mosque near the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York, warned, “The country risks losing its distinct identity if it ignores basic American values such as religious freedom.”

That said, valid questions are raised by the Fatah-Raza duo. Why indeed do we need another mosque in a city which houses 30 already, and when the money – an alleged 100 million dollars – could have been better “directed at dying and needy Muslims in Darfur or Pakistan”? And where is the funding for the mosque coming from? I agree with Fatah that Saudi Arabian funding for the project would tarnish its avowed purpose to serve as a bridge-building symbol between communities of Americans. But is the funding coming from Saudi sources? This is wild speculation, given that Imam Feisal Rauf, the man behind the project and leader-founder of the interfaith Cordoba Initiative in NYC said in a radio interview, "We hope to raise it [the money] from a combination of gifts from the local Muslim community and perhaps from some combination of bonds...” Some have even gone so far as to compare Rauf with Slobodan Milosevic and the butchers of Belgrade. This comparison is absurd.

“He could have proposed a memorial to the 9/11 dead with a denouncement of the doctrine of armed jihad, but he chose not to” is the final canard spewed forth by Fatah and his colleague. Even a cursory research into the career of Feisal reveals that he has spoken out numerous times against jihadist Islam. Indeed, the idea of the mosque is precisely to memorialise the victims of 9/11 and to open the doors for reconciliation between Americans of all faiths.

Whatever one’s religious affiliation (or not), thinking folks should repudiate Fatah and Raza’s bizarre and dangerous argument as the real mischief in town.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 23^rd, 2010.