Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
Ricochet's own William McGurn has a powerful and subtle column in today's WSJ: WTC Mosque Meet The Auschwitz Nuns. In anticipation of today's unanimous decision by New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission not to block the building of the Ground Zero Mosque, Brother McGurn remembers what happened in the 1980's when Jews protested the presence of Carmelite Nuns at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland:
What did Pope John Paul II do? He waited, and he counseled. And when he saw that the nuns were not budging—and that their presence was doing more harm than good—he asked the Carmelites to move. He acknowledged that his letter would probably be a trial to each of the sisters, but asked them to accept it while continuing to pursue their mission in that same city at another convent that had been built for them.
Let's remember what this means. By their own lights, the nuns believed they were doing only good. They may have had a legal title to be where they were. And it is likely that they never would have been forced to move by local authorities had they insisted on staying.
The point Bill carefully and rather puckishly doesn't make is that PJP2 may have been operating under a different set of assumptions than Mosque promoter Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and toward a different goal: ie. Christian love and kindness.
All ideas of freedom of religion aside, the mosque is an act of such immense cultural insensitivity it almost amounts to purposeful cruelty. It would not be perpetrated by any religion dedicated to anything like the late Pope's principles.
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May '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
The builders of this mosque are not at all culturally insensitive. They know exactly what they are doing.
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
Thanks for the plug, Andrew. I am getting, as you no doubt might have expected, quite a bit of response. Most of the emails that have come to me have been thoughtful, though many have disagreed. One was from a Muslim fellow in NJ who said he had same problem of people trying to use red tape to stop him from building a mosque in his town -- but that he believes it is not in the interests of American Muslims to try to build one near ground zero.
It just seems to me that in America we're not just individuals with rights. We are communities of neighbors, and being neighborly sometimes means you refrain from doing something that will not go down with your neighbors -- even though you yourself see nothing wrong with it.
Jun '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
There is no neighborly intent involved. As PJS says, "They know exactly what they are doing". Thanks, Mr. McGurn, for showing us what real neighborly intent looks like.
In the meantime, we still have a hole in the ground where the twin towers once stood.
May '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
That fellow is correct, of course, but the people who advocate a global war between the religions would see it differently. With this act of provocation, and the anticipated follow-up insults once the proposed center is completed, they hope to make life ever more difficult for Muslims in the US. That helps their recruiting and brings them closer to the desired open war.
Jun '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
If their real goal is what they say it is--mutual respect--they couldn't accomplish it any better than by moving the location of the mosque, as a voluntary act of sensitivity and community spirit. We'll make it clear that it's something they weren't forced to do, but they did in a spirit of cooperation. Everybody wins.
Jun '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
etoiledunord:
If their real goal is what they say it is--mutual respect--they couldn't accomplish it any better than by moving the location of the mosque, as a voluntary act of sensitivity and community spirit. We'll make it clear that it's something they weren't forced to do, but they did in a spirit of cooperation. Everybody wins.
Totally agree. I think you've described the precise way that John Paul II went about it. A voluntary action based on genuine concern for others. We'll see if Mr. Abdul Rauf is the man John Paul II was. Call my cynical, but I doubt it.
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
It really blows my mind, all, how little exposure this perspective is getting, despite its eminent reasonableness and practicality from from a Christian, Muslim, atheist, or Cheeto-worshipping standpoint.
My two cents? It's wrong to grant landmark status to a building just to keep Cordoba House away from Ground Zero. But issue here was never merely legal. It's saddening to me that the debate sseems to be slipping into Symbolism vs. Symbolism, with one side insisting the GZM sends a GOOD message and the other insisting it sends a BAD one. When we let symbolic thinking override political judgment, we come to imagine that anything impolitic is wrong because it 'sends the wrong message', because 'the optics are bad'. In reality, to be impolitic is to be unwise, imprudent, and indiscreet, and to refuse to persuaded away from behaving in such a manner.
Jul '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
I wrote my thesis about Edith Stein and the Carmelite nuns at Auschwitz, so this comparison has been on my mind for a while now. It's nice to see others discussing it and to see the comparison so well-articulated. I suspect this argument will fall on deaf ears though, and I have absolutely no expectation that Mr. Abdul Rauf is anywhere close to the man Pope John Paul II was. I do think this situation is slightly different in that polls are indicating only about 20% of Americans think this is a tolerable situation (and I honestly cannot fathom any of them live here in NYC or were here on 9/11 but Mayor Bloomberg seems to be living proof that I'm wrong). I also don't believe the Carmelite convent was a security threat, and despite Mayor Bloomberg and Mr. Cuomo's assertions...I see the Cordoba House as bulls-eye for extremists, which will endanger many innocent New Yorkers. I was comforted that the mayor thinks the architectural aesthetic of the proposed building was more than just cause to see it through, however...
May '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
Well, we can fix that in a jiffy! Just tell the Saudis they can build a mosque there.
May '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
This argument about sensitivity isn't very persuasive to me. I regret that some people will be offended by the construction of this mosque and community center, but as someone who holds a lot of opinions that offend on the sensitivities of others -- from opposing affirmative action to insisting that folks accused of rape have a right to face their accuser to supporting the Danish cartoonists -- I am very reluctant to grant that this debate should be seen through the lens of sensitivity.
I'm especially curious about people who never concerned themselves with sensitivity when the Danish cartoonists chose to draw political cartoons of Mohammad, but who view this controversy as one whose outcome should be dictated by people who are taking offense.
Aren't you employing a double standard?
Aug '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
I am very reluctant to grant that this debate should be seen through the lens of sensitivity.
Through what other lens should it be seen if the stated point of the Cordoba Initiative and its choice of this site is to build bridges of understanding between Islam (as it is) and the West (as it is), etc.?
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
Conor, if the Danish cartoonist had murdered several thousand people, I think the sensitivity to his actions would have been dramatically different. But now that I think on it, I do recall video footage of thousands of Muslims calling for his execution after he drew his cartoon. By contrast, when an "artist" took taxpayer dollars and submerged a cross in a container of urine, I don't remember angry mobs taking to the streets in the US, calling for his murder. If there is a double standard, it is that we're not calling for the death of the architect. We'd just like to see the thing built someplace other than on the ashes of the dead.
While we're on the subject of sensitivity, my friend Bob Lee posed the following question:
"If Christian fundamentalists hijacked four plane loads of Haj pilgrims, crashed two into Mecca, one into Medina, and one outside the Royal Saudi compound, then more fundamentalist Christians asked to build a cathedral next to the wreckage in Mecca, what do you think the Islamic reaction would be?"
Aug '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
I'm especially curious about people who never concerned themselves with sensitivity when the Danish cartoonists chose to draw political cartoons of Mohammad...
It probably isn't the most politic thing to do in the Rawlsian original position. But there is no veil of ignorance -- (1) the cartoons were themselves a response to Muslim intimidation over iconoclasm (the difficulty a different Dane had in finding an illustrator for a well-intentioned children's book about Muhammad); and (2) once the death threats and riots began (and not for the first time over this kind of issue), fretting over the politicness or sensitivity of the cartoons becomes moral pecksniffery.
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
We all agree that the Cordoba Initiative deliberately chose a site as close to Ground Zero as it could possibly find for the Cordoba House, which is not a humble mosque dedicated simply to the worship of God but a full-blown community center expressly designed to use its proximity to Ground Zero as part of a public relations campaign to promote a broader and more popular role for Islam in American life. Further, we all agree (I think) that some important questions remain about the compatibility of that mission with some of the funding and the figures associated with CI.
These matters have nothing to do with the sensitivity question. Yet don't they adequately set the terms of the debate? Either you're okay with Cordoba House on that set of facts or your not. I'm not okay with that confluence of mission, location, and organization. They're well within the law setting up shop. But it's well within the bounds of reason to oppose their doing so.
Jun '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
Islam is the most aggressive, authoritative, violent and hateful cult that exists in the world today. Its political/religious philosophy is the antithesis of freedom. Those that allow its insidious foothold in our society are dhimmis. If you do not realize that worldwide sharia is the ultimate goal of Islam, you are a fool. One path of Islam is violent jihad. Another is stealth jihad. The goal is the same. Those of us who allow these wolves onto our land will be the first to be eaten like sheep. Bring your own salt and pepper as you stand in line to have your head lopped off. Unless, of course, you plan on bowing, like our President, to a mad pervert named Mohamed.
Jun '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
I was listening to Hugh Hewitt today (who is a law professor along with being a radio talk host,) and he thinks Ground Zero can be protected as a secular shrine. Just as you can't build any distractions next to a Civil War battlefield, you can be prevented from cluttering Ground Zero with anything that distracts from the central theme of solemn commemoration and patriotism. A church or mosque detracts from the unified secular theme.
Jul '10
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
Can anyone , maybe someone of the Muslim faith, honestly tell me how we are to believe that Imam FAR's lofty purpose in building the Mega-mosque is to bring about mutual respect when it is still against Saudi law for a Non-Muslim (read - Christian,Jew, Buddhist, Agnostic, Atheist etc.) to enter Mecca or Medina?
I highly recommend we educate ourselves on what "Muslim" and all its connotations mean. Shi'ite, Sunni, Sharia Law, Jihad, Jihadi, Caliphate, Wahhabism, Imams, Mullah etc. are very important terms to understand. We should also look at other nations that have large Muslim populations for insight into which Muslim sects are compatible with our Nation's standards of freedom and which are not.
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
Conor Friedersdorf:
I'm especially curious about people who never concerned themselves with sensitivity when the Danish cartoonists chose to draw political cartoons of Mohammad, but who view this controversy as one whose outcome should be dictated by people who are taking offense.
Aren't you employing a double standard? · Aug 3 at 3:29pm
I think people should be free to draw cartoons or build mosques on legally obtained property. But it's not a double standard to be both appalled at the murder of innocents over cartoon drawings -- drawings that were in many cases manufactured by imams and taken on a world tour for the purpose of provocation -- and find it uncool to build a mosque at Ground Zero.
In fact, you could say it's the same standard.
Re: Sensitivity for Thee but Not For Me
Read my colleague Dorothy Rabinowitz's piece in WSJ today on the liberal pieties. As I wrote, I don't believe in any legal or regulatory restrictions for this center that do not apply to other houses of worship. But I do think we come back to issues involving just being a good neighbor, which is more than insisting on your rights at every turn.
One of the drivers of this debate isn't so much the imam, though there are questions about transparency and contradictory remarks he's made. In my mind a bigger driver is the way people such as Mayor Bloomberg are using the issue to once again highlight how enlightened they are. The assumption by these people is always that the American people are hateful bigots who are always on the verge of running amok -- and need to be lectured to about tolerance. No one says it better than Dorothy in today's WSJ.