Excellent pieces in The New York Times today by Frank Rich, Nicholas Kristoff and Maureen Dowd (I stopped reading her a few years ago, but she wrote three great pieces this week and is writing like an adult again) on the proposed Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero.
Rich in particular points out that lost in this stupid debate over the proposed Muslim YMCA (or YuMMA if it's for Muslims*) is how demonizing Islam really hurts our fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Newt Gingrich's statements alone will make an excellent Al Qaeda recruitment video. And nothing would please Osama bin Laden more than to see a moderate and open minded iman lose this fight to build the cultural center in the land of free.
To say nothing of the fact that two mosques already exist near Ground Zero, as does a strip club.
This has been a sordid and sad week for our Republic. I've already blogged on the 'Obama is a Muslim poll.' My initial take was it loudly demonstrated the stupidity of 1 in 5 Americans. But I want to fine tune that assessment; I think that poll - and the right wing hysteria over the proposed cultural center - primarily underscores how ideological many Americans are in the age of Fox News and the media/internet echo chamber.
There are way too many Americans who do not care about the facts, whose ideology makes it impossible for them to think straight. There are myriad causes for that. Right wingers see a black guy with a name like Obama and assume he's a Muslim/socialist/fill in blank. Many baby boomers and ex-hippies think 'feel' is more important that facts. So a boomer like George W. Bush invades Iraq despite there being no proof of weapons of mass destruction because he 'feels' that an enemy like Saddam Hussein MUST have some.
And of course his fellow boomer, Bill Clinton, chose 'feel' over facts quite a bit in his personal life.
I think the anti-Islamic Community Center folks will trigger a backlash. Being mean, to put it simply, may resonate in the short term but makes you look bigoted and un-American in the long term. That's been true with supporters of slavery, Jim Crow, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrants groups, etc. etc. The arc of American history almost always - eventually - bends towards justice and the expansion of personal freedoms.
How ironic that a party currently dominated by ideologues who want less government are so determined to restrict a groups religious freedom? Or so strongly opposes the right to everyone to get married.
But I also like the fact that Obama is back on message and calling for tolerance. The courage of his convictions, and our American values, should win out in the case of the Ground Zero Islamic center.
And if the President needs more inspiration he should look to the Prime Minister of Turkey. Yes, Turkey.
Last Sunday, the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was allowed to celebrate the Dormition of the Theotokos (the falling asleep in the Lord of the Virgin Mary) in the formerly Greek city of Trabzon (in the Pontic region of modern Turkey). As it is here in the world's greatest nation/democracy, right-wing nationalists attacked Turkey's Prime Minister Tayip Erdogan for allowing the Patriarch to a) leave Constantinople and b) hold the service in a former Orthodox monastary.
For an interesting take on this story check out this column in the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.
Erdogan's response is equally apt for New York and Turkey: “Whoever believes in his ideas does not fear freedom of ideas." The Prime Minister added that critics of allowing the ceremony "create a climate of fear to provoke unrest."
That's what ideologues do, and hopefully they will not get away with it here in the land of the free and the land of brave.
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